How long does a News-Talk person listen to a station? Ten minutes. How long does a Rock person listen? Ten minutes. How about an Adult Contemporary listener? Ten minutes. Country? Ten minutes Urban? Ten minutes.
See a pattern?
No matter the format, PPM panelists listen exactly ten minutes. Well, now and then maybe nine minutes, but you get the idea.
Identical listening durations across formats is perhaps the most enigmatic aspect of what is arguably the most enigmatic radio listening measurement ever devised.
How did Arbitron explain this phenomenon as PPM rolled-out? They didn’t.
There is no explanation. Yet study after study since has found the same thing. Everyone listens to the radio for the same length of time.
This is how the Daily Occasions meme developed. If everyone listens the same length of time, then there’s no point in trying to increase duration. Can’t be done.
So the only way to grow an audience is to increase occasions. Once the listener has used up her ten minutes, she’s gone. All we can do is to get her to come back later on.
But think about the reasonableness of an identical listening span for every format from News-Talk to Urban and everything in between.
Does that make sense?
Is it possible that maybe the meter has a hard time consistently decoding which station it is hearing for any length of time over ten minutes?
As we showed in our previous post, the meter fails to correctly identify the right station anywhere from 18% up to 77% of the time depending on how loud the radio is playing and the level of other sounds near by.
What if this is the source of the mystical ten minute duration?
And if that's true, it might explain why PPM showed lower listening levels compared to the diaries when Arbitron ran both simultaneously.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Nice. Now add this bit habitual info.
Talking to a neighbor several years ago, a neighbor who had a meter for 6 months until her family opted out because the promised $75 per meter (more like $7) never materialized... anyway. She lamented to me that she didn't understand how the meter measured her morning listening between waking up naked, showering, etc because she didn't have anything to clip the meter to until she put on her work clothes, (any clothing) just before she left the house 1 1/2 hours later.
Maybe this explains why mornings are now deemed less important that Middays and Afternoons. Makes ya think WTF!
The only time this little meter will be effective if it comes in the form of a smaller fashionable wrist appliance like Fitbit or the Nike Fuel band. Otherwise the readings are less than bogus. Right?
Posted by: seandemery | August 01, 2014 at 08:19 AM
As long as agencies keep buying "by the book" and stations keep paying for it, the sampling will NEVER be improved. Garbage in, Garbage Out.
Good Call Richard
Posted by: Dan Deeb | July 30, 2014 at 08:31 PM