The College Radio Zone

The Radio Ratings Game January 2, 2013

Can I just tell Arbitron I’m on Pandora & my iPhone? Radio ratings diary (Photo credit: thinkjose)

Back in the day radio stations would get information on how many listeners they had based on what was known as “The Arbitron Diary”  or The Book. It was a booklet that a select number of  area listeners were sent (randomly chosen) and asked to log their daily/hourly listening habits.   For their effort they were paid a couple of dollars to do this…that’s right one to two bucks…to help a multi million dollar company count “who” was listening to “what” based on a couple of thousand listeners  listening habits.   The reason this was so very important is that “ratings” or who has the most listeners  (in specific  gender & age  groups) get the lions share of advertising dollars for the privilege to advertise on that stations airwaves.

The problem with this system is that, while it started out to be fun for the diary holder, it got boring-quickly, time consuming, tedious and, let’s not forget the 1-2 dollars for the effort… hardly motivational money. So accuracy was difficult to determine.  What would you do if you were chosen? Probably what many typically did.  Listeners with diarys would, in cases, simply fill them out at the end of the time period they were asked to participate in the survey  (useually 2 weeks- a month) and what they would fill in may not be an accurate account of what they actually listened to so some stations may not have received the representation in “the diary” they deserved.  Often the diary would be filled in at the last possible moment with the listeners favorite station (even if they hadn’t actually listened to it) or, if they didn’t have a favorite station, they would put in the last “top of mind” station call letters they remembered.  Everyone associated with radio knows this was the way this game was played and though no one liked it…it was the  accepted way of doing business.  While technology has helped to change the way listeners are now measured there are still some bugs that need to be worked out. The question still being asked within the indusrty is “has technology resolved  unfair ratings? “ Read More

Related articles

• Improved listener measurements change the game in St. Louis radio market (stltoday.com)
• Media Decoder Blog: Arbitron Deal Extends Nielsen’s Reach Into Consumer Habits (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Nielsen buys Arbitron for $1 billion (hotair.com)