The New Jersey and New York lawsuits against Arbitron demonstrate how far elected officials are willing to go to pander to their constituencies. Emboldened by the rabid attacks of the PPM Coalition and others, the two Attorneys General have drummed up charges that would have made members of the Spanish Inquisition proud.
Despite their claimed interest in accurate ratings, the PPM Coalition’s efforts to introduce race into the debate over PPM makes it clear that they are not interested in accurate radio ratings. Their goal is a ratings service that benefits their own radio stations, even if it compromises the integrity of the ratings.
As Harker Research has frequently noted, PPM is far from perfect. There remain serious methodological flaws that impact the accuracy of PPM ratings. However, PPM offers radio a potentially more accurate measure of radio listening. The diary methodology has benefitted ethnic stations at the expense of general market stations for many years. Ethnic stations attract listeners who feel an obligation to write down ethnic stations. This creates significantly higher TSL for ethnic stations resulting in large shares on relatively small cume bases.
The paradigm changes radically with PPM. With PPM, listeners can demonstrate station solidarity only by actually listening to their stations. They cannot reward their favorite stations as they did by filling diaries with inflated listening.
We disagree with those who say that criticizing Arbitron’s roll-out of PPM hurts radio. We believe that broadcasters have an obligation to hold Arbitron’s feet to the fire and demand that they address the flaws as quickly as possible. This process can only be hampered by politically motivated lawsuits and the narrow-minded constituencies that spawn them.
Yes. The conservative era is nearing an end. Boo hoo hoo.
Posted by: nycvibe | October 15, 2008 at 03:09 PM