Radio InSights

Been There. Done That.

2009-07-09T14:37:27-04:00

Radio is still trying to figure out how to exploit social networking, which is ironic since radio essentially created it nearly forty years ago.

The latest wrinkle is Listener Driven Radio. According to the web site:

Listener Driven Radio lets listeners control your broadcast radio station. LDR engages listeners, constantly absorbing their input, votes, and comments about your station's music. This creates a community around your radio station's brand.

We suspect that few programmers remember when KFRC-FM did this in the mid 1970s. Under Dave Sholin’s direction, KFRC-AM’s little automated sister did a 24/7 count-down of the top requested songs. So the innovation of listener driven radio is thirty years old. Been there. Done that.

The technology is new. The concept is very old.

The only reason listener driven radio sounds novel is that radio has pretty much stopped paying attention to our listeners. We go through the motions, whether it might be texting or Twitter, but most stations don’t really care.

There was a time when every music station had a request line and actually answered the phone. Of course, that was when we had live jocks in the studio. There was a time when music stations called record stores and paid attention to sales.

Then we decided that with Call-Out and music testing we didn’t need to tally requests. We didn’t need to answer the phone, because we knew what songs to play.

That was a mistake. Request lines connected listeners to the station. Listeners knew that they could call the station and ask questions, make complaints, and find out what that last song was.

Evening shows on CHR stations were once very important. Often the evening jock was better known than the morning man. Shout-outs and bed-checks were part of a social network connecting the station to its listeners. But a live jock let alone a personality costs money, so now many stations are voice-tracking evenings.

We were creating social networks long before there was a fancy name for it, yet today we are playing catch-up. We’re not quite sure how to exploit Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter because as an industry we’ve forgotten how to connect with listeners.

Now there’s software that claims it can get us in touch with our listeners. Software to get us in touch with listeners is like using Viagra to save a marriage. It misses the point.

A Loss of History

2009-07-02T14:05:48-04:00

PPM is a game-changer in many respects. One of the least discussed aspects of this is radio’s loss of history. We have 40 years of diary based listenership data that we are essentially throwing away in this transition.

It might seem a minor point, given the industry’s limited attention span and our tendency to look no more than a book or two back. After all, you’re no better than your last book, but the fact remains that we are losing perspective and our history.

We were reminded of this recently by a blog post that misused some recent Arbitron numbers to caution radio about a decline in cume, writing:

There is a slow but steady slippage in weekly Cume Ratings. While radio rightfully touts itself as a reach (or Cume) medium, we shouldn’t be complacent about weekly Cume Ratings levels slipping from 95.3% in Arbitron’s Fall 1998 figures to 92% in the most recent RADAR study. The younger demos are cause for particular concern.

The problem is that the blog was comparing Arbitron’s 1998 American Radio Listening Trends to the latest RADAR study. You can see the latest Arbitron report here and the RADAR press release here.

There are multiple errors committed in the analysis. The American Radio Listening Trends are based on listenership in 98 diary measured metro Arbitron markets. RADAR uses a 330,000 person DMA sub-sample of Arbitron’s diary and PPM measured markets.

The differences between the two sets of in-tabs may seem minor, but the analysis expresses concern about a 3% drop in cume over a decade. A small drop like this could easily be a result of mixing methodologies and have nothing to do with an actual decline in cume.

We know that PPM numbers differ from diary numbers. Perhaps the decline is a result of including RADAR PPM data. Perhaps the decline is a result of drawing a separate sub-sample for RADAR. Perhaps the declines are real. The bottom line is that we have no way to tell.

As more markets transition to PPM, it will become even more difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about trends in radio listenership. And it couldn’t come at a worse time.

We recently pointed out here that media usage is not a zero-sum game. People can increase their usage of new media without listening less to radio. Despite that, there is an assumption and belief in many quarters that radio is in decay. New-media pundits are absolutely convinced that people are abandoning radio in droves. “Nobody listens to radio anymore!” Even many people who work within this business believe it.

If we had consistent Arbitron data, we could refute these assertions, but we don’t. And it isn’t just PPM that is causing the problem.

Arbitron’s changes to the diary method are also causing problems. Over the past decade, Arbitron has been changing the rules. To lower costs, diaries that were once rejected are now ok. We have new editing rules that might have a minor impact for individual stations, but have significant implications in our ability to trend national numbers over time.

While Arbitron changed some rules to save money, they kept other rules to save money. In 2003, only 3% of households were cell-only households. The number has steadily grown since then, and now the estimate is something like 20%, considerably higher than that in young and Hispanic households.

This creates a problem for Arbitron and their recruitment of participants. They call households using land-line telephone lists supplied by a third-party company. That means Arbitron is systematically ignoring a growing segment of listeners.

The inability to recruit young cell-only households made Arbitron listening estimates more and more suspect as the years went on. It is quite possible that radio’s apparent declining cume and TSL is related to the failure to include cell-only households.

Nielsen’s diary test in Lexington, Kentucky suggests this might be the case. According to Nielsen:

The Lexington study found that:

Cell-phone-only homes logged nearly 23 hours of radio listening per week compared to just over 19 hours for the total sample.
Listen to 3.5 radio stations compared to less than 3 stations among total sample
Has an AQH total radio rating of 17.3% versus 14.3 rating for the total sample
Skews younger, primarily between the ages of 18 and 34.

So we have to wonder about Arbitron numbers over the past several years. What would the national listenership numbers have been had Arbitron had a representative number of cell-only households? Maybe the “loss” of younger listeners is related to the absence of cell-only households.

Arbitron wasn’t going to address the problem until Fall 2009, but pressure caused them to accelerate the process. We’ll start seeing the impact this Spring, and Arbitron has already released preliminary estimates that confirm Nielsen’s findings.

We have the transition to PPM, which distorts long term trends. We have changes in diary editing rules that distort long term trends. We have Arbitron’s unwillingness to recruit a proportionate number of cell-only households. All these things make it impossible to draw meaningful conclusions about radio listenership trends.

If you are in a PPM market, the transition is like starting over. You might as well throw those diary based books away, because all the numbers that preceded your first PPM book are meaningless.

From this day forward, when you read about “trends” in listenership, be very skeptical. We have given up our history.

Radio is So Far Off the Radar Screen

2009-06-30T11:29:29-04:00

You may have glanced at the headlines regarding the results of a major media study conducted by the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence at Ball State University's Center for Media Design. The study found that the majority of video viewing was still via television. You can find the study here.

In a blog post on the Huffington Post web site, Susan Whiting, Vice Chair and Executive Vice President of the Nielsen Company, described the findings this way:

If you've come across news coverage of the media industry of late, you can be forgiven for believing that audiences are too consumed by their iPhones and the Internet to watch television. These days, suggestions that "TV is on the bubble" might lead you to think consumers are ditching their plasma screens for new platforms. There's just one problem with this — it's wrong. The fact is consumers are watching more television than ever before.

The table to the left (click to expand) is taken from an eMarketer article that you can read here. Mediapost reported the story this way.

So what does this have to do with radio?

Radio listening along with a long list of media was measured in the study, but you wouldn’t know it from all the stories. The follow-up reports have all focused on the strength of television or the modest growth in internet video viewing. Nothing about radio.

There are two significant points.

First, as Ms. Whiting points out, media usage is not a zero sum game. Growth in new media usage does not need to come at the expense of traditional media, like radio.

She puts it this way:

Another misconception among some in the industry is that media consumption is a zero-sum game — with television the potential loser. Yet recent research by Ball State University on behalf of the Center for Research Excellence confirms what we at Nielsen continue to find: that people keep adding more media to their lives without abandoning their TVs.

Consumers may watch television online and on mobile devices — while discussing their favorite shows on Facebook and Twitter — but they also watch more television the way they always have: on their televisions, inside their homes.

And other research suggests that radio is in the same boat as television. Despite all this talk about how Slacker, Pandora, satellite, ad nauseam are killing radio, people continue to listen to radio. The death of television (and radio) is just new media puffery.

The second point is that radio is so far off the radar screen that none of the stories that reported the study findings bothered to even raise the issue of radio. Radio today is absolutely invisible. We simply do not exist in the minds of industry insiders.

And we have only ourselves to blame.

Where are our leaders? Who speaks for radio? This media study was funded by Nielsen. Nielsen is out there pointing out the strength of television. Where is Arbitron? Has Arbitron come to the defense of radio? What study has Arbitron done showing the continued strength of radio?
Where is the RAB? Oh yes, the Radio Ad Lab. That’s their contribution. Engagement, Emotion, and the Power of Radio. This the latest example of how out of touch we find the RAB today. It might have been an interesting study twenty years ago, but radio today is fighting for relevance and a place among our new competitors. We don’t need a geeky academic study. We need to prove that people are still using the medium.

Where is the leadership? Who speaks for radio?

The NAB? Television has always dominated the attention of the NAB. That’s why the NRBA, National Radio Broadcasters Association was created in the 1980s. The NAB ran the NRBA out of business, but maybe it is time for a new radio organization that understands the fight we’re in.

We need leadership. We need someone willing to defend radio and put it back on the radar screen.

Arbitron, We Have a Question: Why Cut In-Tabs?

2009-06-29T17:17:09-04:00

This is the most confusing issue we will address in these questions. You may have to read what follows several times to understand the implications, but it will be worth your while.

One of Arbitron’s most effective negotiating tricks is to focus attention on a problem that can be fixed at minimal cost so as to distract from broader problems that would cost much more to fix. One tool in this effort is DDI, Designated Delivery Index.

Arbitron sets quotas for age, sex, ethnicity, and other criteria in an effort to mirror the population of each market. It then recruits families matching the desired criteria. Unfortunately, not all panelists actively participate by carrying their meters, so each month’s In-Tab, those panelists who actually participated in the month’s survey, may not mirror the population.

DDI is a device to obfuscate how far off the in-tab is. Arbitron sets a modest goal of how close it needs to get to the quotas (currently 75- 80% in the most difficult cells), and then indexes the actual in-tab to this goal. The effect of setting a goal well below Arbitron’s own quota and then indexing to this goal is to appear to be reaching desired in-tabs while falling woefully short.

If you are confused by all these arithmetic gymnastics, you are supposed to be. That’s the point. If Arbitron is supposed to have 100 people in a cell and they end up with 80, it is clear that they only achieved 80% of their quota. But if they arbitrarily decide that while their goal is 100, they will settle for 80, then hitting 80 equals a DDI of 100. So they can declare victory, all the while never discussing the actual numbers.

The broader goal of obfuscation is to focus on cells and direct the discussion away from the total in-tabs. As long as Arbitron discusses in-tabs as percentages of goals, they never have to address the drastically lower PPM in-tabs.

Houston’s last diary book had approximately 4,000 diaries in the metro. Last month Houston had 1,435 active panelists. Houston has seen almost a two-thirds drop in the in-tabs going from diaries to PPM.

New York has dropped from 13,000 diaries to about 3,500 active panelists. Philadelphia has dropped from about 4,500 diaries to about 1,400 active panelists, 12+. And so on.

PPM markets have about one-quarter to one-third of the in-tabs they had before.

As PPM rolled out, Arbitron assured stations that even with fewer participants, we would have more accurate ratings compared with the diary. As with so many aspects of PPM, no one bothered to question Arbitron’s assertion. And when it comes to accuracy, PPM has delivered less than the promise.

The formula shown at the top of the page is the calculation for margin of error. (For the sake of brevity, we’re going to skip a great deal on the background of error. Go here if you want to understand more about margin of error.)

All you need to understand about error is that ratings are estimates. Estimates based on surveying a sample of people are subject to error (wobbles). The smaller the sample, the greater the error, the greater the wobbles.

The standard error formula applies to surveys like Presidential elections, but when it comes to radio listening estimates, things get a little more complicated. Using statistical analyzes, Arbitron claims that their rating estimates are more accurate than the traditional formula for calculating error. They use a different formula and something they call ESB, Effective Sample Base.

The ESB is larger than the actual in-tab. For example, New York’s 12+ in-tab in May was 3,822, but Arbitron claims an Effective Sample Base of nearly 32,000. In other words, Arbitron claims that their overall AQH estimates are as accurate as if they surveyed 32,000 people.

That seems like a lot of people until we look back at New York diary surveys. New York’s diary ESB was over 37,000 people. In other words, by Arbitron’s calculations, the Effective Sample Base has declined. According to the ESB numbers, Arbitron lost 5,000 in-tab persons in the switch-over to PPM.

Because of the nature of ESBs, they drop very quickly when looking at demos and dayparts. Looking at W25-49 in morning drive, ESB in New York has dropped from over 8,000 to less than 6,000, a drop of 25%.

We won’t debate whether Arbitron’s ratings are as accurate as they claim. Let’s assume they are. According to their own estimates, cutting in-tabs by two-thirds has significantly reduced the accuracy of radio listening estimates, particularly in standard sales demos and dayparts. Arbitron might be justified in reducing in-tabs with PPM, but not to the extent they did.

You can find out what kind of hit your market has taken by going to your Arbitron ebook, turning to the Methodology tab and selecting Table B. Select a demo and daypart, find the number, square it, and that is your ESB. Then pull out your last diary book, go to the back few pages and find Table B there. Square that. Compare the PPM and diary numbers. That’s the impact of cutting in-tabs by two thirds. If you have any trouble, give us a call.

So here’s our question to Arbitron:

Wasn't the goal of PPM to increase accuracy, not lower it?

Arbitron, We Have a Question : What Are You Hiding?

2009-06-23T15:15:53-04:00

You’ve probably made the pilgrimage to Columbia, or before that to Beltsville to review the diaries. You sit in a small room with your call letters on the door as an Arbitron staff member brings in tray after tray of diaries. It is a ritual as old as Arbitron.

Reviewing the diaries is a great learning experience, because we can essentially watch the process of filling out a diary unfold as we turn the pages. We can see the sloppy handwriting Arbitron editors have to deal with. We can see how loyalty and favoritism impacts the numbers as listeners draw lines down the page rewarding some stations and punishing others.

A diary review also confirms what we’ve always known: The process is not flawless. Virtually every review uncovers miss-credited listening, unidentified listening, and other problems that cost us a few quarter-hours. Rarely are these problems serious, but now and then a diary review forces Arbitron to reissue a book.

If you’re old enough, you may also remember Arbitron’s Mechanical. Long before PD Advantage and Maximi$er, we could see a printout of every keypunched diary. The Mechanical showed us every diary by age, sex, county, ZIP code, the time of tune-ins and tune-outs for each listening episode, total number of quarter-hours the person listened, quarter-hours that went to us, and even the person’s PPDV, person per diary value.

Programmers who have never seen a Mechanical probably don’t appreciate how much information it provided. It was like bringing those trays of diaries back to the station, but better. We poured (and sometimes anguished) over each listener, one by one.

The Mechanical is an example of respondent level data. We can see how one single individual impacts the process. It provided a sniff test for each book, a gut check, if you will. It allowed us to see the raw data that went into each book. Sometimes it raised doubts, sometimes it gave us greater confidence, but in either case it was priceless.

While the Mechanical has been replaced with software that gives us a less visceral feel for listener behavior, at least stations in diary markets can still take a look at the diaries. Stations in PPM markets have lost all contact with listeners.

Our PPM clients have asked Arbitron for respondent level data. We have requested PPM respondent level data directly, but all requests have been denied. The only entities with whom Arbitron has shared this information are research companies who ultimately provide Arbiton favorable "research."

We’ve asked Arbitron why they refuse to release respondent level data, and gotten a number of different answers. One argument is that when reviewing a book we are looking at past participants. Now that panelists are on-going participants, their confidentiality must be maintained.

Arbitron can cite MRC rules that require that the anonymity of participants be maintained, but the MRC also states that raw data must be available for inspection. The Mechanical maintained complete respondent anonymity and yet provided the raw data that MRC requires. A PPM Mechanical could do the same thing.

One wonders why so basic a principle as allowing Arbitron clients to review individual participants has been eliminated in the transition to PPM. It would be simple to resurrect the Mechanical so that we can see the same things in PPM markets that we used to see in diary markets.

How can PPM measured stations trust data that they are not allowed to see? How can a station accustomed to the openness of the diary process be expected to have the same confidence in a completely closed process?

There is nothing more essential in creating confidence in PPM than pulling back the curtain and allowing broadcasters to see what is really happening with PPM. We need to see the raw participant data. PPM stations need the process opened in the same way the diary process is open. Without that, we’ll always wonder what Arbitron is hiding with PPM.

So here’s the most important question we need Arbitron to answer:

Why can’t we see respondent level data?

Arbitron We Have a Question: Is PPM Really Passive?

2009-06-20T19:16:28-04:00

Supporters like to point out that PPM is better because it uses a passive method of measurement. Using the word passive conveys the impression that participants are somehow uninvolved in the process, but participants are far from passive when it comes to PPM.

First, a participant has to remember to carry their meter. Leave the meter at home and there is no measurement, and the participant earns no credits. Do that too many times and the participant could be de-installed (fired).

The participant has to keep the meter in motion. Let it stay motionless for half an hour and no measurement, and the participant earns no credits.

The participant has to dock the meter each night and un-dock the meter each morning. Forget to dock the meter for a couple of days and the meter runs down and no data is sent to Arbitron.

All these activities intrude into a family’s life. To remain a panel family, the family’s routine has to be altered. To maximize the rewards that come with being a panel family, everyone has to become a conscientious panelist, making sure the meter is undocked, active at least eight hours, and then docked every single day, day after day, month after month.

That doesn’t sound very passive.

Let’s compare the diary process. One accepts a diary, fills it out, and then mails it back. Yes, there is the issue of whether people fill out diaries contemporaneously with their listening, or fill it out at the end of the week. However, regardless of when they fill out the diary, the process intrudes far less into a person’s life.

Of course PPM supporters are using the word passive in a much more narrow way. They mean that people don’t report their listening as in a diary. The meter records the listening without the panelist realizing it. But the trade-off is the constant attention the meter requires.

So PPM is passive but intrusive. Diaries are un-intrusive but active.

Which is better? As we have pointed out, the more difficult the task, the less cooperative people are. The longer the task lasts, the less cooperative people are. And research has shown that the greater the cooperation, the greater the recorded listening.

So on balance we are more likely to see higher listening levels with less intrusive measures. A four week diary shows less TSL than a one week diary. PPM shows less listening than either one.

There is another aspect of intrusiveness that we have to consider. Take a close look at the pictures to the left. Click on each to enlarge. They are from a Norwegian presentation on PPM. It shows participants wearing their meters.

The first thing to note is that the meter is very visible. It is being worn as if a fashion statement, in pouches or on lanyards. Only the businessman is wearing it as one would a beeper.

As we have pointed out, the meter must hear the station to ID it. If the meter is buried under layers of clothes or in a purse, it can’t hear the station. So the tests that have been done have had panelists wear the meter visibly.

So add to all the other tasks a panelist has to worry about, the need to keep it visible. How intrusive do you think that is?

So here is our question to Arbitron:

Why are all these people wearing their meter on the outside of their clothing?

The Secret Society Called the Media Rating Council

2009-06-16T14:29:10-04:00

David Gunzerath, SVP/Associate Director, of the Media Rating Council took exception to a statement we recently made to Radio Business Report. He wrote:

A PPM-related piece that appeared in RBR’s “Viewpoint” category recently included a statement asserting that the MRC doesn’t consider the technical aspects of a meter in its accreditation process. That’s not the case at all; MRC auditors spend literally hundreds of hours testing the technology of any metered measurement system that we consider for accreditation, both in laboratory settings as well as in a variety of real world environments. So that assessment is very much a part of our process, whether it’s for Nielsen TV meters, or Arbitron PPMs, or online measurement systems, or any other measurement approach that relies a technological component to determine audiences.

It’s also relevant to note that it’s because of our requirement that measurement services seeking MRC accreditation submit all aspects of their services to our audit process, including highly proprietary details such as the technology that underlies their metering systems, that we have strict rules in place for maintaining the confidentiality of audit-related information. In fact, it was the U.S. Congress who originally recommended that MRC adopt this strong confidentiality policy at the time of our organization’s inception in the 1960s.

We'll have to take Mr. Gunzerath's word on that. If you go to the MRC web site here, you'll find very little information. If you dig deeply enough, you may stumble on Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research, a twelve page single spaced document that makes no mention of technical requirements.

If you navigate over to their education page, you'll find many PDF files, none of which have anything to do with electronic measurement. In fact, the whole web site has kind of a 1960's feel to it.

The MRC is a curious organization. They operate at a level of secrecy right out of National Treasure: Book of Secrets. We know more about the election of a Pope than the MRC accreditation process. Mr. Gunzerath claims that the MRC spends hundreds of hours testing the technology of metered systems, but how would a broadcater know that?

What do we really know about the process? Do we know anything that would aid in judging the validity of the tests, the thoroughness of the tests, or what the MRC considers acceptable? No. Mr. Gunzerath invokes the U.S. Congress to tell us that nothing can be shared, lest the MRC and its methods be open to judgment and critique. Opacity in these matters protects power and the powerful.

Elsewhere in in an accreditation update dated November 3, 2003 it is stated that:

MRC membership actively pursues research issues they consider priorities in an effort to improve the quality of research in the marketplace.

The MRC claims to actively pursue research issues. Oh really? To what end? What is the point if nothing can be shared. The MRC has shared nothing more than cryptic press releases regarding PPM. And if past behavior is any indication, we will never learn much more in the future.

Radio needs an organization like the Underwriters Laboratory with transparency and a clearly stated set of criteria for judging products, not a secret society that considers its highest priority to protect those that seek its approval.

Arbitron We Have a Question: Why are Wobbles Worse with PPM?

2009-06-16T12:36:07-04:00

Wobble. You won’t find it in any Arbitron glossary or index, but the word is just as much part of Arbitron’s lexicon as Cume or AQH. While there is no official definition, most broadcasters would agree that a wobble is an inexplicable change in a station’s ratings that cannot be explained by market dynamics or station actions. (Most PDs would add that wobbles are always a downward change. Good books are never by chance!)

Before PPM, Arbitron refused to officially acknowledge the existence of wobbles. When confronted with wild swings in the numbers from one book to another, Arbitron representatives always attributed them to things like lack of advertising, playing the wrong songs, or lunar eclipses.

That all changed with the roll-out of PPM. Suddenly Arbitron started finding all sorts of flaws in the diary methodology. Suddenly, wobbles were a problem that PPM would fix.

While the quarterly report is a measurement over 12 weeks, participants only fill out a one week diary. Each of the 12 weeks is made up of distinct individuals. Because Arbitron doesn’t want to spend any more money than it needs to, it places the fewest diaries in a market it believes necessary to meet its promised sample size.

The company makes an effort to match diary demographics to the population, but until all the diaries come back, there’s no way to know how closely participant demographics match the market’s make-up. (Actually there is, but it involves increased costs that Arbitron is unwilling to shoulder.)

Arbitron tallies the returns by demographics and then comes up with weights to match the diaries to the market. A diary’s PPDV, Person Per Diary Value, tells us how many people each diary represents. If returns fall short in a cell, the PPDV will be large. If returns are more than needed, the PPDV will be smaller.

Wobbles are generally caused by inadequate diary returns. Too few returned diaries in a cell results in a large PPDV, and a large PPDV leads to large swings in the numbers.

PPM was to change all this. Instead of using participants for only one week, participants would become part of a permanent panel. The panel would be carefully recruited to closely match the market’s demographics. Weighting would still be applied, but since the panel was a carefully crafted microcosm of the market, all cells would be equally weighted, and weighted the same each month. This would result in more stable survey-to-survey trends, according to PPM literature.

As with many things related to PPM, the delivery has fallen considerably short of the promise.

Wobbles have not disappeared. In fact, in some respects the wobbles have gotten worse. We are seeing the same kinds of swings in the numbers that we see with the diaries. The problem appears to be the panel.

As we noted earlier, Arbitron is having problems with compliance. Participants are not consistently carrying their meters. As a result, Arbitron is having to employ a dynamic weighting system to compensate for participants who come and go within the active panel.

The weights are even more extreme than with diaries, and because PPM requires even more complicated weighting than the diary system, swings in the numbers are inevitable.

This graph illustrates the impact. We compared the weights employed in New York’s last diary book to New York’s latest PPM month. We calculated the difference between the metro population and the unweighted in-tab by demo and calculated an average mis-match. We then did the same for PPM.

With the diaries, age-sex cells were off by an average of 21% with a dispersion of plus or minus 11%. In the latest PPM month, age-sex cells were off by an average of 23% with a dispersion of 18%. Dispersion tells us how far off from the average most of the cells are.

The PPM panel weighting error is slightly higher than the diary weighting, suggesting that the active panel is no more representative of New York than the diary method was. More importantly, the range of error is almost twice as high as with diaries. That means some cells are being weighted much more severely now with the panel than they were when Arbitron used one-week diaries.

Put another way, Arbitron did a better job of drawing a representative set of diary keepers than it is currently doing with its New York panel.

Note that this analysis looked at only discrete age and sex cells. It did not look at ethnic weighting. The ethnic issues are well documented. Had we included ethnic weighting, the differences would have been considerably greater.

So here are our questions to Arbitron:

What has gone wrong with the panels?
Why are they no more representative than the diary keepers?
How can the problem be fixed?

Arbitron We Have a Question: Where are the Success Stories?

2009-06-15T13:55:54-04:00

Not long ago we questioned PPM’s financial value to radio in the post, What is PPM’s Real Economic Value? You can read it here. For this series of questions to Arbitron, we revisit the question from a slightly different angle.

PPM was supposed to bring radio listening estimates into the 21st century. We were told that electronic measurement would enhance radio’s credibility. It would make radio more competitive with television and Internet measurement and offer media buyers more sophisticated tools to buy radio.

The Forrester/RAB Task Force study The Economic Impact Study of PPM on the Radio Industry seemed to back it up. That’s at least how Arbitron saw it. They hired James Boyle, an investment analyst covering radio, to interpret the findings. Here’s what he wrote in 2005:

The Radio Industry should potentially generate 3% of added, incremental growth. Conversely, the Forrester study predicts that if Radio stands still with Diaries, that Radio should prospectively see about 2% lower growth rate. That’s a substantial 5% point swing between PPM and Diaries.

Looked like a slam-dunk. Over 70% of agencies declared that radio advertising would gain greater credibility from electronic measurement.

Fast forward a few years, and now PPM is a reality. Radio stations can sell PPM numbers and media buyers can buy off PPM numbers. So where are the radio success stories? Where’s the greater credibility? Has PPM ushered in a new era for radio? If it has, we haven’t heard about it.

Why not? The central problem is that compared to diary numbers, PPM estimates are lower. It may be because of greater accuracy, or because of flaws in the methodology, or perhaps an actual decline in listenership. There’s no way to know. Whatever the reason, the numbers are lower.

PPM’s lower listening estimates have made radio more expensive to buy. And we fear that lower listening estimates reinforces the conventional wisdom that radio is in decline.

Arbitron understands the negative implications of lower listening estimates, which is why it brought out the 70 is the new 100 campaign. The goal of the campaign was to convince buyers that buying fewer points off PPM numbers was the same as buying more points off diary numbers. In Planning & Buying Radio Advertising in a PPM World, Arbitron states:

Different measurements methodologies can and do produce different results. We upgraded our measurement methodology, and the scale has changed accordingly.

Arbitron then presents their solution: Just pretend the numbers are higher than they are, using a conversion factor that they invented. No word on how that’s going, but we suspect not well.

An advertising recession is a perfect time to evaluate PPM’s economic value. If PPM gives radio greater credibility and better helps us to compete with other media, then there is no better time to have PPM than during an advertising recession. So where are the success stories?

Stations know exactly how much PPM is costing them in increased Arbitron expenses. Now let’s see the numbers on the other side of the ledger. How much additional revenue has PPM brought in? Has it produced the 5% positive swing that the RAB predicted?

Here are our questions for Arbitron:

What evidence do you have that PPM has financially benefited stations?
Has the effort to reset target rating points worked?
Has the positive image of PPM with agencies resulted in bigger radio budgets?
What evidence do you have that additional revenue from PPM more than offsets your 60% rate hike?

Arbitron, We Have a Question: Why Does Non-Compliance Hurt Ratings?

2009-06-12T15:48:40-04:00

Compliance. A simple concept with all sorts of implications for PPM. Compliance is a measure of the cooperation of a PPM panelist once they have agreed to carry the meter. Unless the meter registers 8 hours of “activity” in a day, the person’s listening is not counted.

There’s a motion detector in the meter hooked to an LED. When the meter is active, the light is green. After twenty minutes of inactivity the light starts flashing, and if within another 10 minutes there hasn’t been activity, the meter stops registering.

If a person agrees to carry the thing, isn’t she going to do it? What’s the impact on ratings if someone agrees to participate and then doesn’t? It turns out that the question has been studied quite a bit over the years. And by Arbitron.

In April 1982 Arbitron wanted to understand what happened when the standard diary is extended to two and four weeks. Will people still fill out the longer diary? What happens to ratings?

Arbitron’s study along with more recent research shows that the longer a person fills out a diary, the more stations they listen to, but the less radio listening they record. Sound familiar? Higher cume and lower TSL. Just like PPM.

The problem is not the methodology. The problem is that people grow tired of being asked to do the same thing over and over. You can get a person to accept a four week diary. They’ll even end up writing down more stations, but over time they become less cooperative. They fill out the diary less often, so their reported listening goes down.

PPM participants are part of a panel that is asked to continue for up to two years. For two years they have to remember to take the meter out of the charger each morning, strap it on for at least eight hours a day, and then dock it each night. Every day. Filling out a four week diary sounds pretty easy by comparison, but diary compliance starts falling off even after two weeks.

Arbitron has been somewhat circumspect about panel fatigue. Like most aspects of PPM, compliance is shrouded in acronyms, indexes, and percentages of percentages, but the numbers indicate the challenge of compliance.

Last month’s client update included several tables that shed light on the matter. For example, Houston had a 6+ in-tab of 2147 panelists. However, the average daily in-tab was 1,535 panelists. In other words, on an average day, almost one-third of panelists who ultimately ended up in the month’s report were non-compliant.

Each day about a third of people who agreed to carry the meter for some reason didn’t show up. That might mean the panelist left it home. It might mean the meter was broken, or it might mean the meter was in a woman’s purse and never “heard” the station she listened to at work all day.

Based on Arbitron’s own research we can speculate that the longer one is in the panel the greater the chance that compliance falls off and that the panelist is making a less conscientious effort to participate.

We’ve noted that as the roll-out has continued, the newest markets seem to begin with listening levels not far below diary estimates, but that over time listening declines. The evidence is only circumstantial, but it does suggest that panel fatigue may be an issue that should be investigated.

Arbitron has the evidence. It can look at listening by length of participation to see if listening declines over time. If long time panelists comply less and listen to less radio, we know that falling listening levels are a result of panelist fatigue.

These are our questions:

What is the distribution of panelist participation length?
What research has Arbitron done on PPM panelist fatigue? What were the findings?
How does panelist listenership vary by participation length?

Arbitron, We Have a Question: What happened to mornings?

2009-06-10T13:41:23-04:00

The negative impact of PPM on listening estimates has curiously been ignored by the industry. Perhaps the recession provided the cover needed to roll out considerably lower estimates. In any case, there has been nary a public whimper from most stations trying to sell smaller numbers (with the exception of some ethnic station operators).

One would think that a new product like PPM that suggested over a half a million quarter-hour persons simply vanished from a single market would attract some attention, but this is the state of radio today.

Losses of this magnitude make radio less competitive because it effectively raises the cost of radio time. The losses are particularly painful because the greatest losses are in radio’s most lucrative day-part, morning drive.

The chart illustrates the problem. This is the percentage change in quarter-hour persons in one market, comparing the last diary book to the latest PPM month. Estimates for every single hour between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. show declines. Of greatest financial concern are the loses in morning drive. The market lost 37% of its quarter-hour persons in the 6 a.m. and 7 a.m hours. The 8 a.m. hour lost 30%.

Think of the impact of these declines to cost per point. Think of the impact.

Arbitron argues that the diary over-estimated listening. They claim that people inflated their listening as they filled out their dairies. But where’s the proof?

Why would a person write down too many minutes of morning listening? And given that the greatest drop was in morning drive, is Arbitron suggesting that people inflated their morning listening more than the rest of the day? For what reason?

Is there a more reasonable explanation for why PPM morning drive estimates are dramatically lower than diary estimates? Yes, the meter. Each morning, the PPM has to be undocked. Unless the meter is undocked, the panelist doesn’t get credit. And panelists love credits. Then the meter has to follow the panelist (presumably attached to her robe) as she begins his day.

Think about your morning routine. Most people spend about an hour preparing for work or school, moving from bedroom, to bathroom, to kitchen, and so on. If the panelist is wearing the meter throughout her morning routine, then everything is fine. The meter will register any listening. But could you carry a meter with you as you get ready for work?

What is the chance that the PPM misses listening that the diary caught? Very high. The diary probably caught the clock radio, the radio in the bathroom, the radio in the kitchen, and probably the first station in the car. If the PPM sat on the bed stand as the panelist rushed to get ready, it probably caught the clock radio, and didn’t catch another station until she got into the car (provided she didn’t leave it on the bed stand or throw it in her purse).

We can’t say how panelists handle the meter while getting ready for work, but common sense suggests that it is the time of day that is most likely to be missed by the meter. The chaos that is a typical household’s morning, is not a time when the meter is top of mind for anyone. British broadcasters cited this very issue in their rejection of PPM. They were concerned that PPM would under-estimate breakfast (morning) listening.

Here are our questions:

If the declines in listening are because PPM is more accurate, why do the declines disproportionately show up in morning drive?

Is it reasonable to expect an average household member to carry the meter throughout their morning routine?

What validation studies have been done since British broadcasters raised their concern to prove that PPM captures all morning radio listening?

Arbitron, We Have a Question: What Happened to the Button-Pushers?

2009-06-08T17:02:33-04:00

While diary keepers typically write down two or three stations in the course of a week, we know that people listen to more stations than that. Independent research suggests that most people listen to at least four stations and some people have up to 10 stations programmed on their radios.

We also know that most listeners are impatient incurable button-pushers. If they don’t hear something they like, they are quick to hit the next pre-set in search of something better.

PPM confirms that people listen to more than two or three stations. But oddly, PPM finds very little button-pushing. According to PPM, the majority of listeners turn the radio on, listen for a short period of time, then turn the radio off.

Depending on the station and market, button-pushing might make up as little as ten or twenty percent of listening episodes. On average, we found that 4 out of 5 PPM panelists don’t bother to try a second station before they switch off the radio.

The suggestion that 80%+ of PPM panelists don’t bother to check out a second station sounds odd and is contrary to everything we know about radio listeners. Broadcasters might be a bit skeptical of a measurement system that finds no evidence of button pushing.

PPM shows dramatically lower listening levels than the diary and one has to wonder whether this apparent behavior of PPM panelists explains the lower listening estimates. When PPM identifies a radio station and then the audio switches to an unidentifiable source, it is recorded as a switch to non-encoded media. No more radio credit is given. But what if the participant really just switched stations, but PPM couldn’t identify it? Could this explain lower listening estimates and the absence of button pushers with PPM?

Arbitron seems to acknowledge that PPM loses stations regularly because there is a prevision for a station to get credit even when PPM loses it. If a panelist is listening to a station, but then PPM loses the station, the station will receive that lost credit if PPM finds the station again within three minutes. However, if PPM does not identify the station until after three minutes has passed, no radio credit is given.

These are our questions:

What happened to button-pushers. Why doesn’t PPM confirm listener behavior that is well documented?

How does Arbitron explain such a high proportion of listeners who turn on the radio, listen briefly, then turn the radio off?

PPM estimates show lower radio TSL (time spent listening) than any other methodology. What studies have been done to prove that PPM is right and the other methodologies are wrong?

Arbitron, We Have a Question: Where Do They Wear the Thing?

2009-06-05T17:11:35-04:00

While many elements of PPM are state of the art, one of the most critical components of PPM is as old as radio itself. PPM relies on a plain old analog microphone to detect the audio from a radio. PPM is often likened to a beeper, but functionally it is closer to an old hand-held dictation machine.

Radio stations broadcast an audio signature that PPM has to hear for the radio station to receive credit. So in the same way a station has to be loud enough for you to hear it, it has to be loud enough for PPM’s microphone to pick it up.

The problem is that we don’t know how loud is loud enough. Arbitron has assured us that if we can hear the station, PPM can hear the station, but Arbitron has never released details or offered a demonstration.

When we think of a PPM as a dictation machine, all sorts of issues come to mind. A dictation machine has to be close to the audio source to reliably record it. How close does PPM have to be? Ideally, the PPM would be on a desk or table so that its microphone is unobstructed. But that probably doesn’t happen very often.

More likely men wear it on their belt, but where do women wear it? They probably put it in their purse. What happens when the PPM is worn under a heavy coat or in a women’s purse? Since it is just a plain old microphone picking up the audio, then presumably a PPM buried in a purse or tucked in the pocket of a winter coat is going to be hard pressed to hear the station. Try it with a portable dictation machine and see what happens.

Then there’s the issue of noise. Ever try to figure out what radio station is playing at a noisy party? PPM has the same problem. Arbitron acknowledges that PPM may have a hard time detecting a station in a noisy environment. There’s even a crediting process whereby stations can receive credit for listening that was detected but the station couldn’t be identified, so it seems to be an issue.

No matter how sophisticated the system, PPM ultimately depends on a cheap simple microphone to make the whole thing work. Next time you’re in a noisy bar, have them put on your radio station, put a handbag over your head, and see if you can reliably hear the radio station. That is what we are expecting of PPM.

Here are the questions for Arbitron:

At what audio level does PPM reliably identify the station?

At what ambient noise level does PPM have trouble reliably identifying the station?

What kind of headroom do the microphone and amplifier have?

At what excessive audio level does distortion prevent PPM from reliably identifying the station?

And how have these specifications been determined?

Radio Heard Here Thinks You’re a Fool

2009-06-04T13:41:19-04:00

It is only fitting that a misguided campaign such as Radio Heard Here would present equally misguided research to prove the campaign is working. We were highly critical of the campaign when it was announced. You can read our reaction to the campaign here. We have used it several times as a poster child of what’s wrong with today’s NAB and RAB. You can read the latest example here.

Soon after the last post asking why there had been no research on the campaign’s effectiveness, the people behind Radio Heard Here announced the results of a research study that "proved" that Radio Heard Here was working. You can read what little has been released here.

You’ll notice that under Overall Results, there are just 13 questions mentioned, only one of which has anything to do with the campaign. Only five questions are tabulated, and even then only broken out by whether the campaign was heard. There is no explanation of methodology, no link to the complete results, questionnaire, or anything else that would give a reader an opportunity to judge the results independently.

In other words, this is not an objective effort to show the effectiveness of Radio Heard Here. This is a manipulated attempt to selectively show data that appears to prove the campaign is working. The presentation is so transparently deceptive and misleading that everyone connected with this effort should be fired.

If you thought we were too rough on the NAB, RAB, and Radio Heard Here, please read over the results of the study. Then demand your dues back. These people are wasting your money and treating you like a fool.

10 Questions FCC Should Ask Arbitron

2009-06-03T14:52:50-04:00

As we recently noted, the Federal Communications Commission has announced a Notice of Inquiry regarding Arbitron’s PPM. The Inquiry appears to have been fueled by Hispanic and Urban format complaints that PPM has hurt their business. While PPM defenders will argue that these carping self-absorbed crybabies are hurting radio, their efforts may ultimately benefit all broadcasters.

PPM was supposed to bring radio into the 21^st century. Bringing electronic measurement to radio was supposed to help create a level playing field for radio matching the sophistication of both on-line and television audience measurement. Instead, PPM’s lower listening estimates have ended up just reinforcing the impression that radio is in trouble. PPM appears to prove true all the dire predictions of radio’s eminent death. So rather than improve radio’s stature, it has harmed it, hurt revenues, while at the same time dramatically increasing radio station expenses. PPM was supposed to help save radio. PPM has become just another impediment to radio’s revival.

So while an FCC Inquiry is perhaps not the best forum to discuss the intricacies of radio listening estimates, it appears to be the only forum where the relationship between radio’s destruction and PPM has a chance to be heard.

The convention sessions and public forums regarding PPM have always focused on the pitch. PPM has been ceaselessly and tirelessly pitched. In the US, all we’ve been shown is the happy face of PPM. Arbitron has had a much tougher time pitching PPM outside the US.

We like to think of American radio as more mature and sophisticated than radio in other countries, but that’s no longer the case. While American broadcasters were consumed by consolidation, economies of scale, and IPOs, foreign groups were focusing on how to move the medium into the 21^st century.

Today, there are many things we can learn from foreign operators. One thing is to be skeptical of Arbitron claims. The very first market test of PPM was not in the United States, it was in the United Kingdom. UK groups were very interested in electronic measurement and provided Arbitron its first live test of PPM.

The difference between American and UK broadcasters, however, was that rather than accept Arbitron’s assurances that everything about PPM works, RAJAR, the radio industry’s rating council insisted on testing PPM. And after the tests were in, RAJAR rejected PPM. UK broadcasters had serious reservations regarding PPM. They chose not to sign with Arbitron.

No such vetting of PPM has taken place in America. In what is supposed to be the toughest most sophisticated radio market in the world, radio rolled over and signed up without asking a single difficult question.

So it has come to an FCC Inquiry.

The likeliest outcome of the inquiry will be a promise from Arbitron that they will work harder to increase ethnic sample size. They will add fractionally to ethnic PPM panel membership and maybe even make a politically astute donation or two and hope the whole matter goes away. It worked in New York and New Jersey.

But there is a small chance that something good will come of this–something that benefits all of radio, not just a couple of operators. If radio takes this opportunity to finally vet PPM and demand that Arbitron provide substantiative answers to serious questions regarding the accuracy and reliability of PPM, maybe radio will get its game back. Maybe it will feel a little less powerless than it feels today.

In that spirit, over the next few weeks we will offer our 10 questions radio needs answered about PPM. Every few days we will post one question and explain why we believe it needs answering. Perhaps some of our questions will make it to the FCC Inquiry, and perhaps radio stations will finally get some answers to critical questions regarding PPM.

NAB & RAB: Gutless or Just Clueless?

2009-05-28T12:58:30-04:00

The Federal Communications Commission has filed a Notice of Inquiry: Impact of Arbitron Audience Ratings on Radio Broadcasters.The FCC has decided to investigate PPM. You can read the notice here.

While the inquiry appears politically motivated, there’s still the slight possibility that the FCC will accomplish something that radio’s representatives at the National Association of Broadcasters and Radio Advertising Bureau have appeared unwilling or incapable of doing--pulling back the Wizard's curtain on PPM.

Ostensibly, the NAB and RAB represent broadcasters. According to the NAB’s web site:

NAB exists to proactively and vigilantly advance the rights and interests of free, local radio and television broadcasters.

According to the RAB’s web site:

The RAB mission is to lead industry initiatives and provide organizational, educational, research and advocacy programs and services that benefit the RAB membership and the Radio industry as a whole.

Making sure that broadcasters have the most accurate ratings possible seems like a critical function of both organizations. The organizations' mission statements certainly would apply to something as vital as ratings. Why then, are both organizations so mute regarding radio ratings?

Accurate ratings have a much greater impact on radio’s bottom line than satellite radio. How much money was spent fighting satellite? And how have broadcasters benefitted from Radio Heard Here? Can anyone document any impact on radio station bottom lines as a result of Radio Heard Here?

Shouldn’t both the NAB and RAB be more concerned about accurate ratings than a pointless misguided quixotic campaign?

What have the two organizations done regarding PPM? They have given Arbitron priceless podium time to peddle PPM. They have helped Arbitron tout the service, and make undocumented claims about its capabilities. Neither organization has made any effort to validate PPM. Neither organization has made any effort to create technical forums where broadcasters can press Arbitron on its claims. They’ve just given Arbitron session after convention session. Does that really serve broadcasters?

The NAB and RAB are either gutless or clueless when it comes to PPM.

Perhaps today’s leadership at NAB and RAB think it is not their places to question Arbitron or press the company to address the many unanswered questions regarding PPM. That hasn’t always been the case. In 1965, the NAB and RAB jointly conducted a radio research methodology study that examined Arbitron’s methodology and compared it to alternative methodologies. Again in 1976, the organizations raised issues with Arbitron’s 90%+ share of the radio ratings business and formed a task force in an attempt to develop a new audience measurement.

So there is a history and tradition of the NAB and RAB helping radio examine and critique rating services. Why not now?

When Nielsen announced their re-entry into radio, did either organization issue a press release welcoming competition to radio measurement? Did either organization publically declare that an open marketplace with competition would assure broadcasters get the best possible service? Why the silence? How does silence on the matter benefit broadcasters?

It is time for the NAB and RAB to get out of the back pocket of Arbitron and start fulfilling their mission statements by representing their members. It is time to take a stand just like in 1965. It is time for a new look at how radio is measured and make sure that broadcasters can trust the audience estimates they depend on.

Who says PPM is more accurate?

2009-05-27T11:20:56-04:00

One of the early assertions about Arbitron’s PPM was that it would provide more accurate ratings than the diary method it replaced. Like most aspects of PPM, the assertion was accepted without debate. But is PPM really more accurate?

The question is far more difficult to answer than you might think. What does accurate mean? How do we measure accuracy? At first it might seem obvious that PPM is more accurate, but it turns out that depending on how we define accuracy, PPM might be less accurate than the diary method.

First, we have to differentiate between accuracy and precision. The words don’t mean the same thing. Something can be accurate and not precise. Something can be precise and not accurate. Take the patterns on two bull’s eyes shown here. The first bullet pattern is very precise with all of the holes in a tight pattern, but all miss the bull’s eye. The shots are not accurate. The second pattern is more scattered, but on average much more accurate. They are closer to the bull’s eye.

We know that PPM can produce more granular ratings, allegedly down to the minute. That would seem more precise than the diary could. But does that make it more accurate? Not necessarily. Neither Arbitron nor any other organization has done the work to really determine which methodology is more accurate.

We also have the very murky area of defining what we are measuring. In the old days, we measured listening. When we asked a person what stations they listened to, we wanted to know the stations they actually listened to. Arbitron doesn’t measure listenership anymore. It measures exposure.

If you walk past the stereos at Walmart on the way to the battery section carrying a PPM, the station playing on the radio will get credit, even though you weren’t even aware of what was playing. If you were a diary keeper, you probably wouldn’t write the station down when you got to filling out your diary.

If you’re a diary keeper who listens to the same station every morning driving to work, you’d probably write the station down all five workdays. If you normally carried a PPM but forget to carry it a couple days a week, the station would lose credit.

In these two very real scenarios, which method provided the more accurate estimate?

If the most important purpose of radio listening estimates is to show advertisers how many people hear their spots, it is quite possible that a diary offers a more accurate estimate than PPM. The more useful method would err by under-estimating listening, not over-estimating listenership. The more accurate method would count only those listeners who were actually aware of what they were listening to, not drive-by exposure.

Given the choice between PPM that measures exposure, not listenership, and diaries that measure listenership weighted by loyalty, advertisers would be better served by using diary estimates rather than PPM estimates.

Radio has not been served by blind acceptance of Arbitron’s PPM. Arbitron’s rush to monetize PPM combined with radio’s unquestioning naivete regarding PPM has stifled the debate on this and many other PPM issues. It is never too late to start asking the important questions.

Smooth Jazz: Death by a thousand (self-inflicted) cuts

2009-05-26T09:19:00-04:00

After a twenty year run, it looks like Smooth Jazz is running out of steam. WNUA is the latest high profile station to drop the format. The format defections have been attributed to PPM, but the story is far more complex than that. As we have pointed out several times in this space, Smooth Jazz was on the road to self-destruction even without PPM. We first warned of problems in June 2008, well before the mass exodus. We again warned of fundimental issues with the Smooth Jazz format in September 2008.

A format is like an organism. Every organism lives in a competitive and dangerous environment. Every station operates in a competitive and dangerous environment. To survive, an organism has to constantly adapt, to stay one step ahead of its predators. To survive, a format has to constantly adapt, to stay one step ahead of its competitors.

Smooth Jazz found a winning formula and stuck with it. When everything’s working, why change? And like many other struggling formats, it discovered too late that keeping everything the same works for a while, and then stops working.

Every organism evolves or dies. Every format evolves or dies. How are you going to evolve today?

More New-Media Tripe

2009-05-18T12:01:02-04:00

It must be great being a new-media pundit. You just declare some traditional medium near death, describe the problem using words like apocalypse, doom and irrelevancy. Then offer a simplistic solution that upon close examination is nothing more than nonsensical gibberish made up of a string of words like symbiosis and digital connectivity.

The latest pundit to weigh in on radio’s problems is Bob Garfield, ad critic for Advertising Age. The fact that a magazine columnist claims to know how to save radio is delightful irony. It’s like GM giving advice to Ford. The medium most challenged to remain relevant today is print. Newspapers and magazines are disappearing at a dizzying rate. Try to find a print copy of Blender, Portfolio, Radar, Men’s Vogue, or Teen. Mr. Garfield’s own publication offers a recent count of the dead and dying magazines here.

We note that Mr. Garfield’s employer still prints ink on paper, a rather quaint process tracing its roots to Gutenberg. But while Ad Age seems comfortable toiling as if it were the 15th century, he apparently believes that using 20th century technology dooms radio.

One might think that working in an industry itself struggling to survive would raise issues of credentials and credibility, but new-media pundits love to fawn over each other’s faux insights. It helps validates their own self-professed wisdom. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mr. Garfield found a warm reception from a fellow “radio is dead” soothsayer.

Under the headline Radio: The End is Near unless you heed Bob Garfield, a radio blog recently gave Mr. Garfield center stage. Declaring that the conversation with Mr. Garfield was so profound that it was, “one of the most important pieces you will read this year,” he begins with this quote from Mr. Garfield:

We’re in the middle of an apocalyptic episode in our industrial history, equivalent to the industrial revolution. And because of the digital world, all of the old structures are shrinking, fragmentation is calamitous, and the yin and yang of media and marketing are flying apart, never to be rejoined.

Don’t you hate it when your yin and yang fly apart? Whatever he means, it sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? Revolution is one of those words that pundits love. Everything new is a revolution. Old media is always dismissed as missing the revolution. But on second thought, isn’t that what new-media pundits said in the 1990s?

Ten years ago radio was declared dead. By this time, everyone was supposed to be listening to internet radio. Broadcast.com signed on in 1998, and a little over a year later was absorbed by Yahoo. Broadcast.com never made a dime, and despite a 10 year head start, Yahoo has yet to figure out how to make money with internet radio. Just for the record, WXYC, a terrestrial radio station, started streaming four years before Broadcast.com

You can probably guess by now that Mr. Garfield has a book to peddle, and you don’t sell books by telling companies to go slow in adopting new technologies. You tell them everything is changing and that they are missing the next big thing!!! Fear sells books. So he declares radio quaintly out of touch:

Radio is an industry that is built using a lot of electricity to transmit radio signals into the ether, a technology that is almost hilariously obsolete in the digital world.

I guess he’s never heard of satellites or cell phones, both of which transmit radio signals into the ether. So does television. Without transmitting radio signals into the ether, a great deal of the digital world would cease to exist. Perhaps Ad Age’s printing presses are steam powered, but let’s not dwell. Hyperbole is also part of selling books. Here’s his punch line:

If you think of yourself as being in the business of sending radio waves through the sky to remote receivers, forget it. It’s all over but the shouting, because that’s not your business. You think it’s your business, but it’s not. It’s just how you used to distribute your product.

Do you think sending radio waves through the air is your business? The broadcasters we work with don’t think their job is sending radio waves through the sky. Were Arthur Godfrey to return from the dead, even he would understand that Mr. Garfield is simply stating the obvious. We are content providers that happen to send our content through the ether. Mr. Garfield is breathlessly announcing something that radio knows all too well.

Mr. Garfield works for a magazine that covers media, but ignores the fact that 90% of Americans use old fashioned radio delivered through the sky. So when Mr. Garfield says that its all over but the shouting, he must not have checked with listeners. If we turned off all the transmitters in this country and made listeners tune to our on-line products, there might be a protest or two. We wonder whether Mr. Garfield might be willing to take some of those calls.

Radio is hilariously obsolete? It is Mr. Garfield who is hilariously out of touch. Perhaps the author is confusing broadcasters with ham operators. The fact is that radio (and television) send signals through the ether because it remains the best medium through which to reach our audiences.

So does Mr. Garfield have any more specific suggestions other than saving electricity? Not surprisingly, he wants radio to be more local. He wants all stations to become, “the news, entertainment, and cultural hubs for their communities.”

I’m talking about all formats of music. I’m talking about real time news, weather, sports, headlines and traffic. I’m talking about cultural events in the community, concerts and what have you, maybe broken down genre by genre. I’m talking about all of it and more.

Apparently Mr. Garfield doesn’t get out of New York very often. He is describing what small and medium market radio has always been. It is what radio sounds like today where stations are operated by owners who live in their markets and care about their communities.

So despite the dismissive tone of Mr. Garfield’s rant, it turns out that he believes radio can survive by essentially continuing to do what knowledgeable broadcasters already understand and do. Be local, relevant, and live.

This quaint little business that Mr. Garfield believes is ignorant of its true value is alive and well. Yes, consolidation coupled with excess leverage has hurt a lot of stations. Yes, we are in a deep advertising recession, but our listeners continue to value radio and tune to it everyday.

Long after Mr. Garfield’s books have contributed to landfills around the country, radio will be strong and vibrant. Radio will survive long after all the new-media pundits have run out of words.

Satisfying Listener Curiosity

2009-04-23T14:55:01-04:00

While it might not be obvious what this has to do with radio, read the following story. You can find the whole story here:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Preston Fosback's front yard has turned into an Internet sensation almost overnight.Thousands of people from all over the world are keeping an eye on the northeast Portland yard via the Internet.

This all started after a thief or thieves twice swiped Obama signs from their yard earlier this year. The 16-year-old and his mom decided to set up a video camera that would stream an image of the yard on the Web so that others could help them keep a round-the-clock lookout for the thief.

The teen didn't realize how popular the stream would become on www.ustream.tv.

"We had five viewers all of a sudden, and I thought, 'Wow, we might get 10 or 20 viewers on this thing' " the teen said. "By the end of the day, I had no idea it would get up to over 500 (viewers)."

People around the world are watching a front lawn in Portland, Oregon. (And if he has 500 viewers, that's a bigger audience than many major market HD stations.) The Portland lawn feed is just one of thousands of live feeds from traffic cams to beach cams, and even underwater cams.

Consider putting a camera in the studio and letting listeners watch while they listen to the station. Yes, it might seem boring to you, but the interest in web cams suggests that your listeners just might take a look from time to time.

Of course this doesn't work if you're voice tracking the station, but if you're old school and believe in using live jocks, then get the most out of them by putting them on a web cam.