Charlie Profit said:
Believe it or not, there is another service used. Not as widely as Arbitron, (maybe not "accredited", because I'm sure Arbitron has paid a hefty price for that exclusive privilege) but it is legitimate and used by both stations and agencies alike. Again, not doing your research properly.
Eastlan is NOT accredited. And it is primarily in markets below #300.
Accreditation can not be bought. The organization that does accreditation, the MRC, is principally the product of the congressional investigations of ratings in the 60's and is a group of some of the most highly qualified and recongnized statisticians and pollsters in the world. The ratings companies such as Nielsen and Arbitron must have every step of methodology approved, every change approved and the whole procedure audited every year in aprocess that lasts over a month and is totally transparent.
Your accusation of bribery is libelous and, to say the least, coming from someone who has demonstrated about zero knowledge of ratings, a cheap shot.
The TRUTH is something you and many others don't want to acknowledge, part of which is the sample size taken is too small. You just accept it because Arbitron will charge more if you want a larger sample;
Remember that to "double" reliability, you have to quadruple the sample, and that would make the survey cost increase by 250% to 300%. The industry can not afford that, and the margin of error in the current sample is within an acceptable range anyway. There has never been a push for anything except a sample that will allow the more narrow dayparts and demos to have an adequate sample for presentation purposes.
But we all know Arbitron does not accurately measure radio listenership with the handful of diaries.
Here's an interesting comparison so you can see the samples are quite large.
LA has 7,500 diaries per survey. A radio station can do music research with 100 respondents... and they can do one, two, three, four tests of 100 persons and the data will be identical within a tiny margin of error. So stations do not need to test more than 100 persons and you can entrust a station worth hundreds of millions to the responses of 100 persons. So, for the radio market 7,500 diaries is qute a decent figure.
In smaller markets, the ratio of diarykeepers to population is actually lower as we approach markets below size 200.
Everyone jokes about hating Arbitron when you lose, but loving them when you win. There is a reason for it, and it's because of its inaccuracies.
No, it's simple human nature to blame anyone except yourself for problems, and to take full credit when things go well. Success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan. Some stations or programmers blame Arbitron. Seldom is Arbitron at fault... it's station programming.
People don't RESPECT Arbitron, they TOLERATE Arbitron.
Prove it. You can't. It's not true.
There is no respect for Arbitron on the front lines of radio, because radio vets know it is scam.
No, we do not know that. The diary system has been the best system for audience measurement until the still-being-perfected People Meter was introduced. We trust the system enough to use Arbitron as our report card and to institute changes and research projects based on that "report card."
AND IF ARBITRON IS SO TRUSTED, WHY IS THERE SUCH A PUSH FOR A MORE ACCURATE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM?
The new system is the PPM. It is being rolled out over the next 3 years in the top 50 markets, but for the moment will not be used in markets 50 to 300... because the diary is more than adequate to measure those markets. The reason why the larger markets will have PPM is because the PPM provides reports much faster and much more often. Since most agency activity is in these same 50 markets (nearly 30% of all radio billings is in the top 10 markets alone!) the agencies have asked for the PPM. Radio gets a smaller sample for 60% more cost. Again, it's the advertisers who use the data and who can specify the type of measurement they want.
(Irrational rant edited)
The Arbitron methodology is flawed. Here's just one example why: When a station gets penalized by Arbitron (for whatever reason, usually for sharing the book with a non-subscriber) how can the book [that excludes the "guilty" radio station] be an ACCURATE TRUE HONEST REPRESENTATION of what stations the listeners are listening to? It ISN'T
Here you show your shortcomings in understanding the system. If a situation like you describe occurs, no commercial station is left out of the e-Book and no station at all (including educational, religious and out of market) is left out of Maximiser. What happens is the station that is stealing the data is given a cease and desist order to stop using it, billed for the usage it made, and the market is embargoed... which means no data is released to the press, local or national. NO STATION IS LEFT OUT OF THE REPORT.
Your statement above is simply NOT TRUE.
and yet the information is published as FACT and stations use it, and the agencies use it...but THAT station gets EXCLUDED from the book and may not be considered for potential buys as a result. And their over all rating for the year goes down, which directly affects the CCP they can charge. IT'S A SHAM David. It's a mockery of our business, and yet stations and groups still PAY for the RATINGS (i.e. you don't pay, you don't show). And people like you defend them.
Except for the fact that stations are not left out for pilfering Arbitron data... and their ratings are still published as always.
Another example: I lost diaries to the "larger" station in my market because listeners failed to put my call letters.
Over 85% of diary entries nationally don't include call letters. Most, about 80%, are written in by frequency. Next, by station or program name. Failure to put in calls is not a concern to anyone but you.
But they were clearly listening to my station based on the other info included, like the fact that they were listening to Dr. Laura. We were the ONLY station in our market carrying her at the time. But the "larger" station gets the diary by default when the calls are not on the diary.
That's not true. Arbitron up to two years ago got a roster of slogans and show names from each station in the quarterly SIP and used the slogan and progam tool in editing to find what show or what talent was on what station.
And I got it straight from the horses mouth at Arbitron. It's not a TRUE, HONEST AND ACCURATE MEASURING SYSTEM. It is designed to favor the few. The DOJ really needs to look into this scam.
Any subscriber has the right to view every diary for the subscribed markets. The system is totally transparent. Obviously, you have misunderstood what Arbitron told you as there are several levels of crediting diary entries, down to ascription where confusing entries are randomly assigned to eligible potential stations based on proportionality to trailing cume for each. Read the Purple Book before you make statements totally devoid of fact.
The agencies make their money by spending someone else's money. The more they spend, the more they make. It is in the agencies best interest to buy the most expensive stations in the market, because it actually looks like they are doing more with their clients money by showing $300 spots vs $25-$50 spots.
Agencies buy listeners. The $300 spot will get you 6 times the listeners of the $50 spot in most cases. With agency buys, they specify a cost per ratings point for each market. The station with 0.8 rating (usually about a 4 share) can get twice as much per spot as the station with a 0.4 rating because they have twice the audience. The agency does not look better buying a station with a higher rate since they will pay the same amount per listener on each station.
So, You also made a mockery of my random pick of market 125 [I didn't verify that "Lansing" would have 3-4 talkers, I figured you were smart enough to understand the question and answer it.
You were the one who said "market 125." I just looked it up, looked at the talkers and looked at the share. You opened that door.
Pick any market with 3-4 Talk stations...how about Salt Lake City. Go wild and answer the question: When is the last time a 3rd or 4th ranked Talk Station in SLC (market 30 something) got a DECENT buy for women 45-54.
Talkers tend to be around 60% male, so they don't get a lot of female buys. Further, lots of female clients have a "no ocntroversy" dictate, so that limits it further. But lets look at Salt Lake. There are 7 talkers there, but two of them have 13 of the 15 shares, with the other 5 dividing 2 share points. As such, the # 3 to #7 will never get on agency buys as they are not even in the top 20 stations in market 31. The first two are #1 and #3 12+ in the market, and probably have decent 25-54... and will be on lots of buys, both of them.
However, there are not a lot of buys so specific as 54-54 women. 35-54, maybe. or 25-44. Or 25-54. Or Hispanic women 18-49. But you picked a seldom seen demo.
Again, the stations with bigger audiences get bought more often. The ones with small audiences are mostly going to have to do good direct selling. And the bigger the audience size the higher the rate, the smaller the audience, the lower the rate. This is the same for magazine circulation, number of direct mail pieces, newspaper circulation, etc. Even billboards are priced based on how many cars pass by each one each day. Ad rates are in direct proportion to ad impressions.