The revenue issue is not a negative if you consider, as nearly every significant player does, that radio is not in the AM and FM business but in the content business. The fact that a growing percentage of revenue is not coming from the OTA side proves that radio broadcasters are making progress towards the eventual conversion of all revenue to the digital platform. And when they do, it'll still be "radio".
The larger declines in radio seem to be in the medium markets where there is less agency business and the dependency on local direct is high. The recession killed off even more local independent retailers, so the direct revenue is difficult to maintain.
National agency spend levels have been erratic, but the larger markets that are mostly agency driven have suffered less due to the recession and changes in ad buys. And in the larger markets, stations and station groups have bundled local media such as digital and radio and events and even TV quite successfully.
And it's the agency driven markets that use ratings. So your connection of lower revenues with lack of confidence in ratings does not have any evidence as the clients using ratings also use Nielsen for TV and other measurements and have enormous confidence in the Nielsen brand. The fact that the agencies have the MRC to audit and a approve electronic media ratings is not lost on the broad buying community.
Radio ratings have followed the same concept since Crossley entered the field over 80 years ago: take a small, carefully selected, sample of listeners and project it into the total market being measured. Initially, as radio's major competitor was magazines (Collier's, Life, Look and such) ratings were national and there was no local measurement. After W.W. II and with the advent of TV, ratings transitioned to local as all the new independent radio stations began to compete with the local newspapers as well as the new TV stations.
When Arbitron, in 1970, developed the national sweep periods that allowed side by side comparison of all the major markets, the transition to radio as a totally local medium was complete. And that is where we are today with local media. That's why Pandora, even in its national scope, has opened sales offices in the larger markets... to compete for local dollars.
Which brings this to the real issue: as content becomes platform independent, a unified measurement of OTA, mobile and other new media usage is what advertisers want. And that is what Nielsen has announced as their immediate goal. The "session starts" and "concurrent sessions" measurement of mobile and streaming is a deficient measurement as it does not match the cume-AQH model used to buy TV and radio.
Banners and targeted web ads are the replacement for newspapers. Streaming is the alternative for OTA radio usage, and the measurements will soon be wrapped up in one Nielsen product. And that is because Nielsen has the credibility and the capacity to do it.
