RATING THE NEW RATINGS SYSTEM

Early results are in on the new PPM (Portable People Meters) from Philadelphia and Houston, and so far I would have to give them an "A-". I give a "minus" because I don’t believe there is any rating system that is going to be completely or entirely accurate. That being said, the new Arbitron electronic monitoring system may be the best available tool for audience measurement now being offered. One thing for sure, PPMs out-perform the old diary method. I never liked diaries, did not believe them to be accurate, and the methodology was based on erroneous recall of diary participants. I knew this forty years ago when I was a Program Director in San Antonio, and a day time Spanish station placed first in the ARB at night! I was suspect of Arbitron diaries when an ARB diary keeper came by the station to ask me what it might be worth to be paid for filling out his diary in our station’s favor. I was in dismay when a "book" came in showing an album rock station in the ‘70's as number one, yet had only three diary keepers in the Men 18-24 category...each one represented over 30,000! Radio ratings have always been a little "skewed" in some fashion, an inexact science to be sure. I remember twice in the sixties when C.E. Hooper
ratings were taking their co-incidental phone call polling to see who was listening to a station in the past fifteen minutes of their call, I received calls while on the air on our station’s "hotline" (or inside) phone number from Hooper’s surveyor. Naturally, (and truthfully),I said I was listening to my station. To think large advertising buys were made off such mis-information. Now, with the new PPM method, this shouldn’t happen as much. I suppose a rating participant who carries one of these "page-like" devices could call a station and ask to be remunerated for listening only to that station. It’s happened before, as in my above recalled story, and people are very clever at
winning prizes or obtaining favors from the broadcast media. I still believe that a ratings participant knows he or she is a part of something important, and
won't necessarily listen the way they normally would. However,the PPMs have already shown in the early sampling returns, that the diary method was quite poor indeed, and certainly didn’t follow a radio listener’s every movement of the dial. This is going to change a lot of things in the way Radio programs, and the way it sells that programming. A change that’s for the better.
That’s my RadiOpinion, what’s yours? www.garyallyn.com