Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 4)

 

The diary has arrives and even since that date another reminder letter and I think at least three phone call reminders have come. I got one on my voicemail and I hung up on the other two. I thought someone was trying to sell me an auto-warranty extension. 

Inside the diary box itself was yet another letter. They're promising $10 per diary. They push that ten-spot hard. But what the hey, it's basically a free tenner. Can't knock that.

Of course by that point you should have already begun keeping the diary.  But after 3 calls and 4 letters if you haven't, you are really quite bad at following instructions.

Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 3)

 

Since the second letter arrived the diary has also landed; I've not scanned any of it yet.  But at first glance, it looks very similar to the last one. [LINK] This communication came with five crisp dollar bills fulfilling the previous promise.

It says that each member of my household, who is 12 years or older, and fills out a diary, will earn us a $10 bonus check each.  I find it interesting that at the $10 mark they switch from cash to check.  I did go back and look, the price remains the same from 2019.

I've moved between each survey which makes me question their claim that households are randomly selected. They state plainly that every household in the U.S. has a chance of being selected, but not that it has an equal chance. Adjectives matter.

It makes me think of the quote often attributed to Disraeli "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 2)

I actually enjoy getting the occasional Nielsen survey.  I make a quick $6 even if I only complete the initial form. I can't imagine I help their data much as I am listening to non-commercial radio and NPR almost exclusively. My favorites are seldom local, so due to the power of the internet I am listening to stations in all 4 time zones of CONUS. 

But isn't that the reality of content today?  Your local morning zoo program is potentially competing with your favorite podcast, and other time-shifted content.  How does Nielsen cope with that?  From what their own numbers tell me, they're just ignoring it. Let the good times roll.

Another Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 1)

For the third time in all the dozens of places I've lived, my home has been selected for a Nielsen Radio Survey. Then just as now the initial communication came with two crisp dollar bills and the promise of a future fiver. Cheap as I am... the return envelope was in the mail the following day. 

But then like now, the opening letter came packed with a few crisp dollar bills. I look forward to seeing the diary when it comes. I will be anonymizing the documents as much as possible to protect Nielsen and their process. But I think their boilerplate language is safe to share, and I have noticed it's already widely shared online on numerous websites, including their own.

But I have to note that the advent of PPM was over 10 years ago. [LINK] I am somewhat surprised to still be seeing paper diaries in 2021. I continue to be surprised this isnt' done via a cell phone app.It paper more cost-effective? 

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 7)

And after it's over you receive a postcard thanking you, and again reminding you to return the diary for your long-promised $10. Mine was slightly mauled by the post, but the gesture remains clear.
My only afterthought these weeks later is how the diary system subtly prompts you to favor terrestrial AM and FM radio.  The instructions  specifically direct you to label stations as AM, FM, Internet or satellite. There are check boxes for AM and FM for you to do that, but none for Internet or Satellite.

The notion of podcasts not even addressed. TV content is routinely time-shifted now with DVR technology etc. Radio programs are as well in the form of podcasts, and other pre-recorded programs etc. But this minutia may not matter in the grand scheme of their survey system. The Nielsen survey seems geared toward live terrestrial radio, perhaps to the detriment of the other content providers.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 6)

Nielsen has it down to a science. Before I even completed the survey, I got a reminder letter with more crisp dollar bills, explaining the importance of the data, and reiterating for an Nth time that I have $10 coming to me if I can return the diary in under 3 weeks.

It's hard to imagine that there are people that get this far but fail to mail a postage-paid envelope to collect the $10. But I am sure it happens.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 5)

So here's the diary itself. The instructions are simplicity itself. Over the last 50 years Nielsen has made these more or less idiot-proof. I prefer to use the term idiot-resistant, as virtually nothing is truly idiot-proof.

Here's a page from the diary itself. Note that it is identical to the instructions. I'd be curious to know how many respondents know the correct brand, call sign and or frequency of the station they're listening to. I do, but I'm a radio geek. In this survey I am what statisticians refer to as an outlier.

Here's the last page. Basic demographic data: age, gender, education, ethnicity, employment status, children, and income. Interestingly it also includes an opinion section. The hilarity that must contain most of the time.

On the very last page, beside the edge that seals the diary for mailing, it further says "We sometimes recontact people for special studies. Returning this diary does not commit you to participate in these studies." I would guess this is more specific to ethnic groups who under-represented in the sample. Sadly Radio geek is not a recognized ethnicity.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 4)

This yellow flyer, about 7" x 4" was at the bottom of the box, I missed it on the first pass. It just reiterates who can participate, and who cannot, and again summarizes the simple instructions. They're really working hard at making this as easy as possible to complete.

The $10 Bonus award flyer is 6" x 7" and folded in half to fit in each respondents envelope. It's the same content as elsewhere, except for the (pretty reasonable) fine print:

"In order to receive your bonus check, Nielsen must receive your completed diary within three weeks of the "Finish" date, which is indicated on your diary. Payment for all members of the household whose diaries are received by Nielsen within three weeks of the "Finish" date will be mailed together as one check to the contact person at the household address. Distribution of the funds will be the responsibility of the household contact person. Bonus checks may be mailed by a third-party check vendor who will not try to sell you anything or ask you for money or sell/add your name/address to a mailing list. Checks will be shipped approximately six to eight weeks after Nielsen receives your completed radio ratings diary. Nielsen is not responsible for lost, late or misdirected mail. LIMIT ONE DIARY PER PERSON. Duplicate returned diaries will constitute fraud. Theft, diversion, reproduction, transfer, sale, or purchase of the bonus offer or the accompanying diary is prohibited and constitutes fraud. Offer valid only to intended recipients of Nielsen diary. Void where taxed, restricted or prohibited. Diary must be completed and returned during the relevant diary period. Nielsen reserves the right to verify identification. Fraudulent submissions could result in federal prosecution under the U.S. Mail Fraud statutes (18 United states Code, Sections 1341 and 1342)."

That last claim is a bit obtuse. Section 1341 is for "frauds and swindles" essentially obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses. This protects Nielsen in the rare scenario where you fake or copy some portion of the diary to defraud Nielsen. Somewhere out there is someone who would do that for $10. Section 1342 specifically addresses any fictitious, name, title or address. So reasonably no responding under a fake name. Neither of these prohibits making copies of the documents as Nielsen intimates.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 3)

As much as I appreciate the importance of a ratings system, it's hard to ignore the "Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes" vibe in the continual promise of future cash. But I suppose for most other participants, the ratings themselves are of little interest. They're driven by a combination of money and ease of participation. I am sure Nielsen has studied this as well and has a nice vector diagram that stands as a cultural proxy for laziness and greed.

Most radio listeners listen to local radio, in the car in the commute to and from work. However, in each letter, and this pamphlet Nielsen dives home the point "Listening is any time you hear radio- whether it is on AM, FM, the Internet or satellite." In 2019 most of my radio listening is on the internet, and a minority of those have actual terrestrial broadcasts. They failed to itemize podcasts, but I'll include those as a subset of internet.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 2)

It opens 'Dear Radio Listener"...

So the next thing that came was a box that looks like an order of blank checks. Inside is another letter and one envelope for each member of the household containing yet more crisp dollar bills, a diary, instructions and the promise of a $10 bonus award for each member of the household. Clearly I should have included the cats as house hold members.

I will scan more bits of the package this week.

Nielsen Radio Survey (Part 1)

For the second time in all the dozens of places I've lived my home has been selected for a Nielsen Radio Survey. Actually, the first time I found it in a new apartment in a recycle bin- a pile of junk mail belonging to a prior tenant. It was expired and I missed the opportunity. But I did keep the two dollars. 

But then like now, the opening letter came packed with a few crisp dollar bills. I look forward to seeing the diary when it comes.I will be anonymizing the documents as much as possible to protect Nielsen and their process. But I think their boilerplate language is safe to share, and I have noticed it's already widely shared online on numerous websites, including their own.

But I have to note that the advent of PPM was over 10 years ago. [LINK] I am somewhat surprised to still be seeing paper diaries in 2019. Even if just for sampling reasons they need to connect to a physical household, I'm surprised the envelope doesn't just contain a QR code for a secure cell phone app. But old methods work, and are often the most cost effective.

Ratings Glossary

We all use ratings information, but it's baffling to me how few users even understand how the metrics are derived. On a day-to-day basis I can honestly say it doesn't matter for most users. Like the speedometer in your car, it is usually enough to know what do do with the data. But there is a downside to ignorance. As a consequence, most of radioland was nonplussed by the legal challenges to PPM. Some of them did have merit, but PPM is undeniably superior to the system it replaces.The problem wasn't that Arbitron faced a possible rebuke. The problem was that the user base was so uninformed as to be unable to take a side.

Take for example the lawsuit Arbitron just settled a in California on March 21st.  Arbitron was taken to task for using land lines for recruiting respondents for their sample. Minority households are known to be statistically less likely to have a land line. Many users of Arbitron measurement data didn't know if this was a benefit or a detriment to them.  Personally I believe that accuracy is a benefit to all users, but I also understand the argument in favor of advantageous bias. It was the state of California itself that brought the suit, no radio stations were specifically named. More here and here.

In fairness I can hardly blame Arbitron. some of the nuance requires a degree in statistics. While the company has some serious, short-comings, namely their delivery method: CD-R via Fed-Ex one market at a time!... They do make an honest effort to disclose their terminology in a fairly straight forward way. Below I quote and elaborate on their basic terms and acronyms. All users should understand everything below. If you don't, you need to call your rep on Monday.  Don't be embarrassed. If you are paying for this data, make it worth your money. More here.

AQH
Average Quarter-Hour: a 15-minute period

Average Quarter-Hour Persons (AQH Persons)
The average number of persons listening to a particular station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period.

Average Quarter-Hour Rating (AQH Rating)
The AQH Persons estimate expressed as a percentage of the population being measured. This estimate is printed for the MSA and DMA. It can also be computed for the TSA.
[AQH Persons / PUR] x 100 = AQH Rating (%)

Cume Persons
The total number of different persons who tune to a radio station during the course of a daypart for at least five minutes.

Cume Rating
The Cume Persons audience expressed as a percentage of all persons estimated to be in the specified demographic group. [Cume Persons / PUR] x 100 = Cume Rating (%)

Daypart
A time period for which audience metrics are reported. In radio we use divide up the 24-hour day  in to segments. These are for scheduling advertisements, but also as a way to easily divide up ratings data. The below only applies to weekdays. More here.
AM Drive: 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM
Midday: 10:00 AM  to 3:00PM
PM Drive: 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Evening: 7:00 PM to 12:00 PM
Overnight: 12:00 PM to 6:00 AM

PUR
Persons Using Radio. This is described in some documentation as "population."  This is somewhat misleading as it's actually just the subset of the population using radio.

Rating (AQH or Cume)
The audience expressed as a percentage of the total population.
[Listeners / Population] x 100 = Rating (%)

Reach
The total number of unique individuals exposed to a song or ad in a given daypart. Reach can be calculated for a single station or multiple stations.

Share
The percentage of those listening to a single radio in a given Metro who are listening to a particular radio station. [AQH Persons to a Station / AQH Persons to All Stations] x 100 = Share (%)

TSL
Time Spend Listening: The amount of time the average listener spent listening to a radio station during a daypart. The estimate may be expressed in number of quarter hours or in hours/minutes.

PPM and College Radio

I was looking at the ratings for Boston this morning and I noticed something I didn't expect. WFNX only had a 0.8 share. They've been the big rock station in Boston for more than a decade and now they can't muster a 1-share. But the PPM books have had some outliers and odd results. Overall PPM seems to be more accurate. So when it's results don't jive with an assumption you have to reconsider your assumptions.So when I saw that WERS had a 0.9 Share... that was something that had to be reconciled. can a college station out-draw a commercial station? Hypothetically it's possible, it seems improbably when you think about marketing budgets but programming really is everything. In Boston WODS, an Oldies station is the number 1 station. That' s also unusual. So I took a look at the other PPM markets looks for this result. PPM is currently in the following 16 markets: Philadelphia, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington DC, Detroit, Boston, Miami, Seattle, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and San Diego.

To preface this I'll say now that I excluded NPR talk and Classical as they obviously demo differently than rock. In New York, WSOU, WFUV, WFMU and WFDU don't even book WBGO came in at the bottom with a 0.3. That pattern continues almost without exception. In San Francisco KCSM gets a 0.5, in Dallas KEOM 0.6, in Houston KTSU 0.5, in Atlanta WCLK 0.5, in Philly WXPN has a 1.5, narrowly bested by WRTI with a 1.6, KPLU scored a 2.2 in Seattle, Minneapolis KCMP 1.6, and in San Diego KSDS got a 1.3.

Of that entire set of stations all are jazz except for three: Both KCMP and WXPN are AAA and KEOM runs a Hot AC mix of sorts. KEOM, while it's book was respectable was still dead last in it's market. WERS leans hard toward Triple A, and it's rating was comparable to the other two, this level of scrutiny proves little. The outlier could be instead a consistent and repeatable sampling problem. But, perhaps this is real and can set a new bar for non-commercial stations. Maybe they can compete on their own terms.

BREAKING NEWS

I avoid covering current events. I stand by that generalization. I always say that when I feel the need to cover them but of my average 250 some posts per year about two are about current events. Onward to the math...For months now we've all been reading about civic organizations, state attorney generals and radio stations suing Arbitron over PPM. I've written before about the natural predisposition of radio to reject all new numbers, especially any numbers that imply your listenership is down. But the reaction to PPM was way over the top.. I was even beginning to suspect that there was some validity to this just because of the wide-spread hostility. Then the story came out today. First thing today the Taylor on Radio-Info newsletter was in my inbox.

“Hispanic stations lost an average of 42% of their AQH ratings with 18-49s, urban stations an average of 34%…” That’s in the latest analysis across all 20 PPM markets done by consultant Randy Kabrich of Arbitron’s previous-diary-book ratings (not shares, but AQH ratings), compared to the latest June People Meter numbers. Kabrich says by comparison, “the non-ethnic-formatted stations lost an average of 16% of their ratings but held their ranks.” While the more serious loss of AQH ratings by the Hispanic and black stations had notable consequences for their ranks. Hispanic stations dropped an average of five ranks, compared to the diary. Urban stations dropped two ranks. Kabrich’s conclusion – “from diary to PPM, in currency ratings, the urban and Hispanic stations have more than double the loss of the non-ethnic stations.”

That just cant be right. First assumption. In the last 3 months 44% of Hispanic radio listeners didn't change the channel. Therefore the number was either too high before or too low. Around 4:30 FMQB sent out their email chiming in on the same topic with similar aplomb. they too were focused on Randy Kabrich, but hits a different more revealing quote:

"Share, which Arbitron uses, is not only not currency, it really can't be used to compare diary to PPM because of the vast differences in the PUR [Persons Using Radio]." Kabrich added, "Arbitron continues to use 12+ share in their comparisons which not only disguises a number of these issues, it is simply not currency and is irrelevant."

Randy is calling out Arbitron on the misuse of sample size. Sample size matters. But, here's why I think Randy is full of crap. Arbitron is guilty of using undersized samples. But, even previous to this the data was blatantly, criminally, unreliably, flawed! It was a diary system loaded with omission, falsehood, bias, non-response, error, and still yet some pretty small samples. If your data sucks it does not matter how big the sample is. It's just wrong. A bigger serving of crap is still crap. 60% more crap? Yes, still crap.

The PPM system removes every kind of error except the under-sized samples. If they samples are heinously undersized what we'll see is a wide variance between books. I don't see that. I think the shift is largely a correction. But not solely.

4 weeks ago Randy made a play for the same story but was focused on Urban radio. Story here. Edison makes the same assessment that I did: undersized samples vary, bias samples skew. Edison research makes the appropriate assessment of Randy's report:

"I simply couldn't understand what Randy was seeing. In the case of KMJQ (the blue line), one sees consistent upwards movement, while the PPM sample goes both up and down. KBXX (the red line) sort of stumbles along until their numbers shot up dramatically, again while the PPM sample gyrates around...We also ran an Analysis of Variance test (ANOVA) and found that the sample size is not associated with the AQH for either station."

Radio Ratings Part 6: Burke Vs. TRAC-7

Nielsen's entry to Radio ratings this year reminded me of another similar misstep. Nielsen came into radio ratings exploiting resistance to the new PPM data. Arbitron has been handling that by trying to build confidence in it's new product. It's probably the right tactic, but really... Nielsen is launching a diary system, a system we know to be inherently flawed and inaccurate. Their goal is manipulable bad data to placate radio stations whose ad rates were undermined by the accuracy of PPM. Yes, it is my opinion that one party is knowingly selling bad data and the other party knowingly buying bad data. Welcome to radioland.Burke was founded in 1975 and in 1977 picked up Harry Bolger, the former development director of AC Nielsen to run things. In October of 1978 Burke Broadcast Research entered the radio ratings field with a telephone recall method. Hooper and Crossley had given up on telephone surveys in the 1950s. (Nielsen bought them.) The appeal of telephone surveys is that they are cheap. It's not accuracy, not demographics, and not speed. At the time they were competing with TRAC-7 which also used telephone surveys.

In the mid 1970s Arbitron had a virtual monopoly. Pulse went under in 1973, and radio stations lacked options. In 1977 RAB and NAB cooperated in hiring Audits and Surveys Inc. to develop a competing system. Audits and Surveys Inc. did a study that basically stated the obvious: you cant ask a respondent to recall a whole week of listening in one sitting. TRAC-7 focused on single day recall and large samples. It cost more but was more accurate. In contrast, Burke's sample wasn't even random...

Industry endorsement was not enough. When shopping for favorable data radio readily picked the generic over the brand. In the end Arbitron crushed both. TRAC-7 folded up in June of 1979 and Burke at the end of December. Burke still exists but is now dedicated to marketing research. Audits and Surveys appears to as well...

KDLE is dead, long live KDLE

At 10:00 am on January 15th the radio station known as Indie 103 KDLE (and simulcast KDLD) began stunting. normal programming ended and they played the song "My Way" as recorded by Frank Sinatra. Then came the announcement. Audio below.

It goes something like this:

"This is an important message for the Indie 103.1 Radio Audience -Indie 103.1 will cease broadcasting over this frequency effective immediately. Because of changes in the radio industry and the way radio audiences are measured, stations in this market are being forced to play too much Britney, Puffy and alternative music that is neither new nor cutting edge. Due to these challenges, Indie 103.1 was recently faced with only one option -to play the corporate radio game..."

The claim is spurious. Idolator had a pretty good article somewhat debunking the claim. But here's the basic facts. For the last year KDLE has had a 0.4 share on average, and peaked at a 0.6 share. With the launch of PPM they've dropped to a literal 0.0 share. The numeral is real. The claims against PPM are iffy.

Complaints that the PPM system relies on too small a sample are also sketchy. The entire LA market relies on a sample of 2,800 meters. A couple state attorney generals have sued over similar complaints. But the truth is that the diary system while it may have provided a larger sample it was a bad sample. It was error prone, and biased. The system's basic function relied on human memory and honesty. once the raw data is that flawed, no amount of sampling, skewing, averaging or auditing can fix it.

Nobody claims the diary data was better, only that it was different. Inevitably the complaints of the PPM system are stations who have lost market share. The accuracy gap between the two is better gauged by Nate Silver than any of the office weasels currently making bald statements. (Please save us Nate!) the history of ratings data shows the same reaction. Every time the data improves, someone complains. That someone is whoever's ratings went down.

My problem is with this phrase "Because of changes in the radio industry and the way radio audiences are measured." That's crap. A 0.4 share is nothing to be proud of. The ratings were bad, they got worse. A 0.4 share is the stake in the ground they're defending in the face of PPM. Only 5 stations rank below it in the most recent book: three religious talkers, a spanish sports talker, and a country station in an adjacent market. That said, I quite enjoy the format. I just don't delude myself into thinking that it's popular enough to be commercially viable.

****UPDATE 01-19-09****

You didn't think I'd stop there did you? On the 16th just minutes before midnight, Indie 103 made the big switch, ending a year of alternative rock for "El Gato" a Regional Mexican playlist. With the demographics of the metro it inevitably will outperform Indie 103, but it's a sad day nonetheless. The only question that remains for me is whether of not it will survive online. In prior years Y100 and WOXY have tried to survive online to mixed results.

I will however give them points for the most abrupt flip ever. They played "Gimmie Gimmie" by Black Flag then after a quick noise effect and a couple samples BANG it was all tuba and espanol. Audio below:

Radio Ratings Part 5: The First Scandal!

I should clarify the title.. the first big scandal. There had already been little ones. Any ratings system that raises any station or programs standing inherently lowers another. It's a zero sum game. So for every step forward there was a flurry of back room deals, bribes, and sabotage to attempt to stop progress. Within the context of the resistance to Arbitron's PPM I am reminded of the previous hullabaloo in 1963. But it was the radio networks that invited statisticians into the fray in the first place. they were hiring them to debunk any system that was a detriment to their ad revenues.

I am reminded of a quote from the film A Few Good Men "You can't handle the truth!" That was truly that was the issue. The networks really didn't give a crap about accuracy. They just wanted to validate higher ad rates. When it began to backfire with the possibility of lower ad rates they shit a collective brick. They all complained but only Stanley Breyer had the cajones to pick a fight. In 1950 with the growing use of the multiple ratings systems it became clear that they were all generating conflicting data. This data determined ad rates which determined ad revenues. Some ad buyers tried to correlate listenership to sales to measure ad effectiveness. Instead of working, it just made everybody look bad. The listenership numbers sometimes outright defied the sales numbers.

It was radio station 1100 KJBS-AM that bitch-slapped the entire industry. They used both the Hooper and Pulse data and were furious about the discrepancies between them. Station Manager Stanley Breyer ran a full-page advertisement in the trade magazine Broadcasting-Telecasting, headed, “Two Umpires Behind the Plate Isn’t Any Good in Broadcasting, Either.” (If anyone has a scan of that ad, or there whereabouts of Stanley Breyer please fill me in.)

NAB formed a "Special Test Survey Committee" to investigate radio ratings. Essentially every business attached to marketing, advertising an media chimed on on the issue. The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) polled its members in 1952, on the issue. Their members asked for an “ending [to] confusion in radio and TV audience ratings." A bigger uglier committee was formed. They took in hundreds of pages of testimony. Then as they were about ready to issue a report the chairman of the committee Dr. E. L. Deckinger actually said "This study will be the Kinsey Report of the TV industry.” The scandal actually really hurt some agency's. For some that had been already losing companies to the already dominant Arbitron and Nielsen it was the beginning of the end.

But somehow in 1954 the Recommended Standards for Radio and Television Audience Size Measurements report lacked the promised Kinsey-level of punch. Both NAB and ARF really failed on their own to produce any action beyond printing thick reports and thinning out the industry. So they took a shot at congressional action. It wasn't' the first time they'd tried to flex that lobbyist money but it was probably the first time they went the brute force method. (It began a long-standing tradition)

Senator A. N. "Mike" Monroney, chairman of the Senate Interstate and Commerce Committee. It was a smaller but far meaner and uglier committee. It was 1956 and they had already been having hearings on TV. Monroney prodded Senator Warren Magnuson (pictured) into investigating the ratings topic. Magnuson sent perfunctory letters to the ratings companies inquiring as to their techniques. Magnuson then held a hearing on June 26th 1958. The concepts were so academic, and the elected officially so ignorant that the hearing degenerated into an educational briefing. Nielsen, Sindlinger, Roslow, and and Seiler escaped unharmed. Later that year the TV quiz show scandal seemed to distract everyone and the stink under the porch settled down. Ultimately I think the consensus was that the ratings systems were imperfect not rigged. More here.

So history repeats itself. The dissenters of PPM are the stations who incur losses under the more granular data. thankfully the Senate Interstate and Commerce Committee is pretty disinterested in ratings. They're much more focused on white space auctions, satellite radio mergers and cross-ownership regulations...

Radio Ratings Part 4: Arbitron

I'm trying to steer clear of the TV ratings systems that are ancillary to my whole radio theme: Telepulse, Videodex Trendex, Telerad, TPI ratings, etc please bear with me. With all the buzz going on between Hooper, Crossley and Nielsen you actually could miss that there were other smaller ratings companies selling equally legitimate products. This included; Sindlinger, Trendex, Inc., the American Research Bureau..and many others. Some of them used very similar methods, others basically branded themselves on the fine differences. The three survey methods were:
1. The Roster Recall Method
2. The Recall method
3. The Coincidental Method

Take Sydney Roslow and the Pulse for example. They used face-to-face interviewing instead of phoners. The interviewees were selected through the same kind of random sampling as Hooper and Crossley. But instead of asking about the last hour or the last day, The Pulse asked them to name the radio stations the interviewee had listened to in the last day, and week! Interviewees were shown a roster of local radio station callsto help them remember. It was called the "roster-recall" method. It sucked. Under this methodology interviewers went from home to home interviewing. It was fast and cheap, and produces a much larger sample, up to 67,000 households, sixty times the size of some competitors. but the samples were less random and therefore less representative.

Sydney was president of The Pulse for 34 years. He went on to pioneer demographic research breaking our Hispanics early in the game. But in the 1970s after a decade of growth they began to lose clients to their competitors. The diary technique was more trusted, and the radio pool was too small for the number of services. They folded in 1978. More here.

Sindlinger and the American Research Bureau were all advocates of the diary method. Sample households are given a diary and asked to record all the radio programs they listen to in a week. On the upside it's cheap and produces a large sample. American Research managed 2,200 radio diaries. As an added bonus, the system also reached low-income households that lacked a phone. The phone surveys of hooper and Crossley eluded that demographic.

Sindlinger was fascinating in it's own right. Eighteen years after even CAB had dropped the recall method Albert Sindlinger brought it back from the dead in 1962. Pulse was using aided recall all throuout, but Sindlinger was using unaided recall alone. The president of ABC networks, Robert Pauley drove Sindlinger to break out the old, dead and debunked method. The reason was the previous to this Sindlinger was running an electronic monitoring system called RADOX but the system was ruled to infringe on one or more of Nielsens patents so proceeding with that platform woudl require paying a royalty to Nielsen.

ABC used the new pathetically innaccurate Sindlinger phone surveys to pick a fight with Nielsen over out-of-home listening. So Robert Pauley convinced Sindlinger to return to radio after being run off once already. The Sindlinger Radio Activity Service (RAS) used about 16,000 samples in his survey so it was at least more sound than the old Hooperatings. he also pioneered the use of computers. He was using an IBM 1620 to help crank out reports faster than Nielsen. ABC just liked it because the ratings were higer with Sindlinger than Nielsen. In the end NBC had enough of the malarkey and hired a NYU statistician to debunk Sindlinger. Af courswe even Albert himself knew it was all crap. In the book "Lies damned lies and Statistics he wrote:The American Research Bureau's system by comparison was pretty substantial. The diary system worked and is still relied upon today. It was founded by Jim Seiler in 1949, and became Arbitron in the 1960s. Arbitron still uses diaries and still knows they have flaws but it's far superior to all three recall methods and lacks the out-of-home listening problem that plagued Nielsen. Today Arbitron has pioneered the Personal People Meter (PPM) a portable device that records radio listening everywhere the subject may travel. It's only in a few markets so far and it has some demographic issues in its sampling but compared to all previous methods it is the most reliable by far. More PPM here.

Radio Ratings Part 3: Nielsen

The AC Nielsen Company was founded in 1923 by Arthur Charles Nielsen, Sr. You'll note yesterday I said that Crossleys work in 1929 was the first radio ratings. There' a 6 year gap there to account for. Well, I'll get to that in a minute.

Arthur Nielsen was born the child of two accountants in Chicago back in 1897. He attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduated with an engineering degree in 1919. he worked for Iskop breifly on refridgeration equipment, but it didn't stick. He needed to get back to his roots, raw math and measurement. So in 1923 he borrowed 45 grand from his frat brothers and founded the AC Nielsen Company.

He shopped around the idea of product evaluation and other consumer surveys. It was very early in the game and it was a struggle to convince advertisers that this data was both useful and accurate. 140 trained field investigators made phone calls to a sample of drug and grocery stores. It wasn't until the mid 1930s that he entered the radio arena.
His inner accountant was continually irritated that radio ratings were based on bad data. People were prone to lie and forget interviewers to lead and obfuscate. He wanted better data. He found the audimeter. Claude Robinson a student at Columbia University developed a rough experimental device to record what radio stations had been listened to. It's uncertain if he even built a model or demonstrated it, but his Professor Frank Stanton did. RCA bought the patent just in case. Two professors at M.I.T. Prof. Robert welder and Louis F. Woodruff had developed the device anopther device and encountered the Robinson patent seeking their own patent. they proceeded with funding from John Shepard, of 680 WNAC-AM. In the end they had to buy the old patent from RCA. Field tests began in 1938. It was years before the device was truly ready for field use. But by 1950 they'd also adapted it for use with television.

But in 1939 ACNielsen was expanding internationally. Hooper had killed C.A.B. and in turn Nielsen would swallow him. The audimeter was far superior to any interview system. It still had faults though. It could record what channel was on and for how long... but not if anyone was actually watching.

The earliest version of the audiometer attached to the radio and tracking channel, time and duration of tuning. The early Audimeters contained tapes or cartridges which were mailed back to Nielsen weekly from each sample home. Later versions of the meter fed the information directly to Nielsen Media Research in real time by a dedicated phone line. In 1973 Nielsen introduced the "Storage Instantaneous Audimeter" that actually stored the data locally and was retrieved in a nightly data dump. It made possible the first set of daily national ratings.
More here.

In 1996, ACNielsen split off the field work portion of it's company forming Nielsen Media Research. NMR was acquired by Dutch conglomerate VNU in 1999. Neilsen now operates in more than 100 countries. Arthur died in 1980.

Radio Ratings Part 2: Crossley

The C.A.B. system really did the same damn thing as Hooper except they called after the program ended! There were some shortcomings from the start at the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting Company. But advertising research was in it's infancy then. It was only in 1908 that Walter Dill Scott, a Northwestern professor published "the Psychology of Advertising." It's here.

The result was that confidence in radio ratings was iffy and listenership was a bit of a mystery and more importantly none of the polling methods were proven. The audience measurement process has varied greatly since it's inception, and although It's roots lie in that first book by Dill-Scott, personally I blame Archibald Maddock Crossley.

In 1918 Crossley was commissioned to form a surveying team for the city of Philadelphia. Early goals were to determine the actual reach of stations. QSL cards were useful, but not broadly applicable. mostly they wanted to know if local affiliates were running their network ads. (Note that's a concern that continues to this very day.) In 1926 he founded the New York market research firm Crossley, Inc and by 1929 Crossley was doing phone surveys. He produced the first radio ratings ever. It was a big enough deal that he wrote a book on the concept called "Watch your Selling Dollar!"

Two big advertisers at the Association of National advertisers wanted to get more empirical. The big push came from Kodak and Davis baking powder. In 1930 the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) joined forces with Crossley to get the job done. They met on February 7th at the Yale Club in New York, he agreed to undertake the task with their endorsement. The Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting Company was founded. More here.

In the first year 49 advertisers subscribed. The wave had begun. Crossley used random numbers from telephone books calling people in about thirty. Then his interviewer would ask about the radio programs they had listened to the day before. This method became known as the recall method. This went on for 16 years. They had a monopoly until 1934 when Hooper was founded, after that it was a slow slide downhill. the first Hooper reports differed from the existing Crosley reports. In the face on continual criticism over methodology, he closed up shop and sold to Hooper.

He continued to do political polls until 1952, retiring in 1962. In 1970 he won an AAPOR award. He died in 1985. Time magazine wrote an epitaph. His grandson Josheph Crossley II founded the Crossley machine Company.