So last week I penned a strong piece suggesting that the radio industry drop PPM. The argument was stimulated by the discovery that Nielsen households can contain up to 16 meters. For me, this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. The piece sparked a firestorm and almost a thousand Facebook shares, not because my points were so salient (although I hope they were) but because there does not seem to exist a single PPM subscriber who considers themselves satisfie

I have largely steered clear of the Voltair/Nielsen discussion (except for this piece) because it’s so simple: It’s a classic evolutionary dilemma, and in those evolutionary dilemmas the individuals who are most capable of adapting survive and those most finely tuned to their changing environments thrive. In other words, those who spend their hard-earned bucks on Voltair gadgets will have an advantage over those who do not. Now Nielsen announces that it’s “improving” its tech

You get what you ask for. Last week Townsquare Media reported that about 30% of its revenue derived from non-spot sources in 2014 – 42% if you exclude recent acquisitions. And Townsquare isn’t alone. Check out how CBS (the entire company, not just radio) is shedding its dependence on advertising: CBS, which in addition to the CBS Television Network, owns Showtime, CBS Television Stations, CBS Radio, CBS Television Studios and Simon & Schuster, has the most exposure to adverti

If you can’t trust the Nielsen ratings in America’s largest radio market, then where can you trust them? A few days ago, Nielsen delayed the release of May ratings for Los Angeles when “inconsistencies” resulted in the need for more “quality control reviews.” Since then, the problem has only deepened. From the LA Times: Nielsen has been attempting to verify that individuals who participated in its sample audience panel were truly independent and did not have ties to any radio

“It’s the single biggest threat to the radio business today, the measurement system is flawed in a dramatic way.” So says Sean Hannity in Radio Ink: For example, in New York, if you’re listening to The Sean Hannity Radio Show on the WOR website, even if you have a Portable People Meter, I can’t get credit for that. We know that WABC, at times, had well over 1.4 million people listening online. If we can’t get credit for that, then all the data that’s being put out there is ju

Arbitron makes no distinction between Asian Americans and any other group of non-Hispanic, non-African Americans in their sample. That means Asian Americans fall into the vast category called “other,” a category without sub-categories and the sample goals those sub-categories might deserve. In any given market there is no way to know whether Arbitron is properly representing the Asian American population or not. That means odds are overwhelming that they are not. In many mark

A couple weeks ago he profiled a real, live, in-the-flesh PPM panelist.  And he discovered pretty much what any sentient being in radio (no jokes, please) already knew: PPM does not perfectly collect all listening in all situations. To quote the wry, late, and great John Gielgud, “alert the media.” While this story is interesting to the lay reader who knows nothing of the measurement side of the radio business, no broadcaster should be surprised by a word of it. “Pagers are l