NYC COUNCIL SPEAKER SAYS 'SHELVE PPM' All Access New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and a group of her colleagues yesterday urged Arbitron to ditch the scheduled PPM monitoring of New Yorkers' radio habits -- saying the method will skew results against minority-audience stations, reports The New York Post.
This latest episode is similar to the uproar when Nielsen was planning to use new technology to measure audiences.
"We want to make sure that in the five boroughs minority radio continues to flourish and thrive," Quinn said at a press conference yesterday denouncing the Portable People Meters.
Sanford Moore, an Emmis Urban AC WRKS (KISS-FM)/New York radio personality, also denounced the move, saying it could "signal the death of minority radio as we have come to know and depend upon it," particularly as a way of learning about news stories.
Arbitron Releases Response
Arbitron released the following this afternoon:
We appreciate the interest of the New York City Council in Arbitron’s New York Portable People Meter radio ratings service.
We are more than willing to present to the Council a complete review of our panel recruitment methods, the composition of the sample and how we apply the two statistical disciplines of random sampling and of weighting to ensure the validity of the Portable People Meter ratings as well as to ensure that all segments of the population are properly represented in the Portable People Meter surveys.
We are well aware of the crucial economic and political role that the media industry, including minority-owned radio stations, has played in New York City. In many ways, the success of these stations is based on confidence that advertisers, who are the financial foundation of the broadcast radio industry, have in Arbitron’s continuing ability to provide the valid, reliable and effective audience measures.
Our goal is to give stations and their advertisers better information about the radio audiences. The insights that the Portable People Meter will deliver can help minority broadcasters enhance diversity in the news that is reported and offer viewpoints that Urban and Hispanic radio are uniquely able to provide and deliver an audience attractive to the advertisers and marketers of the city.
We are proud of our reputation as a good corporate citizen and our New York City roots. We have already been working jointly with NABOB and other concerned parties to enhance the stability and utility of the audience estimates that the Portable People Meter would provide. We will review with the Council the joint progress that we have made to date.
We stand ready to meet with City Council to discuss what Arbitron is currently doing to see the Portable People Meter sample panel is reflective of the diversity of our City so that the advertisers, who underwrite the free, over-the-air broadcast stations that serve our fellow citizens, will have more confidence in their investment in radio. |