ARBITRON FEELS THE HEAT Ken Tucker, Leila Cobo and Darnella Dunham – Radio and Records The year may have opened with great promise for Arbitron's Portable People Meter, but by the close of 2007, the much-touted electronic ratings methodology ended on a much different note. After launching amid great fanfare in Philadelphia, then Houston, Arbitron ultimately pushed back rollout in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and other markets—in some cases by as much as nine months.
In mid-November, not satisfied with sample size and composition, particularly among 18- to 34-year-old blacks and Hispanics, Clear Channel, Cox, Cumulus and Radio One sent a terse letter to Arbitron calling for the company to take "immediate action" to "fix" low PPM samples.
A number of advertising agencies, who believe the PPM will bring new, much-needed accountability to radio, agreed with broadcasters that something needs to be done.
"We need to work with Arbitron to get better results, because the meters are better than diaries and we can't go backward," Initiative executive VP of broadcast strategy Janice Finkel Greene said at the time.
The fact that the Media Ratings Council has accredited only Arbitron's Houston PPM ratings is another bone of contention for broadcasters. The company has delivered an MRC audit for Philadelphia and is in the process of completing one for New York— but the MRC has not yet announced accreditation for those markets. Some broadcasters believe the PPM should not become currency in those markets without MRC accreditation.
Given the outcry, Arbitron acquiesced and pushed back rollout. "We already have a number of initiatives in the pipeline for implementation in the first quarter of 2008 that we believe will improve the performance of our PPM samples," Arbitron president/CEO Steve Morris said in a statement. "Our intention is to expand significantly this list of improvement initiatives by working closely with customers, industry organizations and community groups.
"We expect that the Media Rating Council will be a particularly valuable source of guidance and advice on the more technically oriented aspects of this review and improvement process and we intend to work closely with the members of the MRC over the next several months," Morris added.
Inner City Broadcasting urban AC WBLS/New York GM Deon Levingston is among those who is convinced that samples need to be improved. When the diary-fueled summer survey results were released for New York Oct. 15, WBLS was ranked No. 1 25-54. But by Nov. 7, the station had fallen to No. 12, according to the PPM. Emmis urban AC WRKS (98.7 Kiss-FM) dropped from No. 3 to No. 9 (see graph, below).
"Arbitron does a great job of sampling over the age of 45," Levingston said before Arbitron announced it had delayed the PPM launch. "But they've consistently done a horrible job of sampling people 18-24 and 25-34. There are over 3 million African-Americans in New York, and the [number of African-Americans being electronically monitored] is 600. I have no idea where those 600 people are or what their listening patterns are as far as where they work, what they do or how they consume radio."
An Arbitron spokesman says the number of African-Americans in the PPM survey is a statistically correct reflection of the New York population. And while Arbitron admits that in some markets the sample sizes of certain demographics have been below target levels—and it is working on increasing those samples—the company believes the ratings data is accurate.
"Arbitron's role is to provide valid estimates of audience size and composition for radio," Morris recently said. "With random sampling as the basic research platform for measuring, there is never 'perfect' measurement, which is why the Media Rating Council mandates that the data are always to be described by suppliers like Arbitron as 'estimates.' "
Another concern that Arbitron seeks to rectify with the PPM—one that broadcasters have recognized for years—involves "voting." Faced with trying to recall exactly which stations they listened to and when, some diarykeepers are known to simply credit their favorite station. Voting is not necessarily unique to any particular format, but urban listeners have proved particularly loyal to their favorites. With electronic measurement in place, stations that received high ratings under the diary system could potentially find out that they don't have the large numbers of listeners they thought they had.
Some broadcasters facing the PPM switch believe the real answer is educating advertisers about the changing metrics. "We continue to tell our customers that the audiences did not change; only the measurement changed," Emmis Radio president Rick Cummings said before Arbitron opted to postpone PPM measurements in New York, where Emmis owns rhythmic WQHT (Hot 97), smooth jazz WQCD (CD 101.9) and WRKS.
PPM data, which is far more detailed than information provided by diaries, can be beneficial, Cummings believes. "We can now categorically prove that the only effective way to reach the tremendous buying power of the African-American consumer is with African-American-targeted stations." |