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As you’ve probably read in other trade publications (see “RAIN bookmarks” above for links to various industry news sources), responding to industry complaints about the rollout of their Personal People Meter (PPM), Arbitron has pushed back the next steps of the PPM rollout schedule by nine months.

If I may make one reasoned observation to everyone involved in the back-and-forth that lead to this outcome, it’s this: You guys are all NUTS!

Seriously, all of you should have seen this coming months ago and taken measures to head off such an outcome.

Money solves most problems

Specifically, in this case, if not enough people in a given age/sex/race cell are willing to carry a clunky-looking pager around with them 18 hours a day for several months for the compensation you’re offering their stock price took a $200 million hit yesterday (which may be a precursor of even bigger hits down the road). And that’s nothing compared to the fact that a not-insignificant portion of radio’s annual $20 billion in ad revenues is now at risk, too.

Brainpower helps too

The moment Arbitron saw the first Philadelphia PPM results, and realized that the PPM was going to say that the last 40 years’ of diary-based ratings were way off — and that stations serving minorities were going to be dinged the worst?

That’s the point in time when they should have hired on, as consultants, every smart researcher in the history of radio — Tom Birch, Bill Moyes, Jon Coleman, Larry Rosin, Mark Ramsey, maybe even me (AccuRatings, 1991-97), and ideally some market researchers with specific expertise in surveying minority consumers — to help them work on solutions.

And now that I think about it, this actually goes back to my first point. Because Arbitron was too cheap to throw around a few $2,000 bills toward consulting contracts, their stock price took a $200 million hit yesterday — and they’ve put a not-insignificant portion of radio’s annual $20 billion in ad revenues is now at risk, too.

Comment

1. Kurt,
   I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had a bit of research experience as well (Research Group in the late 90’s) and as you said, if we had trouble recruiting for a given study, more money almost always solved the problem. You are also right on with the brainpower issue. You name a virtual whos who in radio research, and I’ll bet that even a part of that group could have gone a long way to solving the sample issue, but it would have probably come down to pay a higher premium to get the desired sample.

   — Michael Dalfonzo · Nov 28, 09:42 AM · #

2. Hmmm?? Where have I heard this story before? Oh, yeah! That’s right! Neilsen People Meters! They had the same problem about not being a true reflection of what the ratings were coming from.

   If you ask me, it’s just postponing the inevitable!

   — Mike · Nov 28, 03:40 PM · #

3. I simply don’t understand how a national survey service can consider any national readings valid when it will convert markets one at a time (and then seemingly completely ignore the smaller ones like mine in South Bend, Indiana). Either it should use one flawed reporting method or another. Doing anything else is like reporting on food staples consumption using bread in some parts of the country and milk in the rest…

   — Anthony Hunt · Nov 29, 07:59 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.

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