As long as Arbitron has produced radio ratings, it has emphasized average quarter-hour (AQH) share as the quintessential measure of a station’s performance. At Arbitron’s web site under "top-line ratings" one finds AQH share. According to Arbitron, looking at share gives us "a bird’s eye view of how the stations in your market are performing."
Apparently that isn’t the case in Philadelphia or Houston. Arbitron stopped publishing share rankers for these two markets some time ago. If you try to look them up on Arbitron’s web site, the ratings appear to have ended in the Fall of 2006 for Philadelphia and Winter 2007 for Houston. Later numbers have been replaced by asterisks, with the explanation being, "data are not available for this station/survey." Clearly that’s not the case. Arbitron continues to measure listenership in both markets and in fact released the latest Philadelphia and Houston ratings this week. However, the rankers Arbitron released for Philadelphia and Houston were based on cume persons.
The obvious question is why? If share gives us a bird’s eye view, why cume persons? Why not publish shares for these two markets like Arbitron does in 298 other markets? The reason is that it would make it too easy to see how much People Meter ratings differ from diary based ratings. It would lead to awkward questions that Arbitron would rather not have to publically address.
If the new ratings "currency" becomes cume persons (and 6+ cume persons at that), Arbitron can back away from it’s attempt to claim that there’s little difference between diary based ratings and PPM based ratings. They can end their quixotic efforts to "reset"costs per point. If they can get everyone to focus on cume, nearly 40 years of ratings history evaporates, and we start over. But it probably won’t work
Cume is to radio what circulation is to newspapers. It is a radio station’s reach. The number one rated station in Houston is KODA. In July it reached 1,705,500 listeners 6+. The number one station in Philadelphia is WBEB. In July it reached 1,969,300 listeners. If radio competed with newspapers, these numbers might mean something, but radio’s nearest competitor (and the other electronically measured medium) is television. When was the last time you saw television ratings reported as circulation? How many people does the show House reach? Unless Nielsen starts reporting television show "circulation," Arbitron will have to begin reporting PPM ratings in a more meaningful way. They might get away with some combination of share and cume rating, but cume persons as radio’s new ratings currency is DOA.
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