NABOB REACTS TO NYC PPM Darnella Dunham – Radio and Records The first results from Arbitron’s PPM pre-currency survey in New York City released on Wednesday (Nov. 8) have created deeper concerns for African-American and Hispanic broadcasters. The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) has been vocal about the problems with the methodology, which are adversely affecting stations targeting ethnic audiences.
“The New York City results were even worse for urban and Hispanic radio than the Philadelphia and Houston numbers,” explains NABOB executive director and general counsel Jim Winston. “The New York PPM numbers showed a substantial loss of audience for all stations, but the loss for the urban- and Hispanic-formatted stations was far worse than for the market as a whole.”
Inner City urban AC WBLS and Emmis-owned urban WRKS (98.7 Kiss FM) were among those hit the hardest, with WBLS dropping from No. 1 25-54 in the diary summer book to below the top 10 in October’s PPM survey.
Inner City/New York VP/GM Deon Levingston tells R&R about the first wave of results in New York, “Anybody who is an urban or Hispanic broadcaster is deeply concerned. But urban and Hispanic broadcasters alone shouldn’t be deeply concerned -- anybody in that industry should have some concern regarding the people meter.”
“NABOB has been meeting with Arbitron for months,” says Winston, “and several of our members have been meeting with them for years, urging them to improve their PPM methodology. The New York results demonstrate that the limited changes that Arbitron claims to have implemented have done no good. In light of these highly questionable results, Arbitron should agree that further testing is needed in New York. Instead, Arbitron has cavalierly disregarded all requests to delay the New York rollout date, even though Arbitron is well aware of the negative impact a premature rollout could have on urban-formatted, Hispanic-formatted and minority-owned stations.”
Levingston was on the original NABOB committee that met with Arbitron to discuss its concerns about PPM and believes that Arbitron has no interest in slowing PPM's rollout into more markets, despite its flaws. “Arbitron has made commitments to correct it,” says Levingston. “They’ve taken the approach that, ‘We’re going to do this whether you or your radio partners are concerned or not, and we’re going to fix it as we go along no matter how much it affects your business.”
According to Winston, “The drastic declines in audience for the New York urban and Hispanic stations cannot be attributed to the alleged superiority of the PPM methodology over the diary methodology. Declines this substantial raise serious issues about who and what is actually being measured and how the PPM methodology manipulates that data. Given Arbitron’s virtual monopoly, Arbitron is able to dictate tremendous fee increases, which it knows the stations must pay because there is no other ratings alternative. Therefore, urban-formatted, Hispanic-formatted and minority-owned stations -- formats and stations that have been the most negatively impacted by PPM to date -- are forced to pay increased fees for a service they know produces results that will likely be to their financial detriment.”
Arbitron representatives were not available for comment at press time. |