One of the biggest secrets in radio is what’s happening to listening over the long term. Talk to insiders and they will acknowledge that while a huge majority of Americans still listen to the radio the amount of time spent listening continues to decline. Or does it? Well, it depends on how you measure it. And that should add one more reason to the long laundry list of reasons why broadcasters should be irritated at Nielsen, which presumes to produce the accepted unit of measu

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

Aren’t you tired of PPM yet? From Tom Taylor Now: How many PPMs does Nielsen allow in one household? Answer – up to 16. Does that sound large? One current in-tab household has 13 meters, and nine of them belong to people under the age of 17. Nielsen likes stability on the panel, and this particular household has been in the sample for quite a while. Imagine replacing them when they leave after as much as a two-year tenure. That will require placement into multiple households

Once a radio industry – and radio station fan – mainstay, it’s hard for me to find a radio station bumper sticker on the road nowadays. “People won’t put bumper stickers on their cars anymore,” some say. That’s nonsense. People won’t put just any bumper sticker on their cars. Just as people won’t put just any vanity slogan on their license plate or just any branded frame around it. People brand themselves and their cars with symbols that give their lives meaning and tell thei

You’ve heard of Voltair, that’s the audio technology that presumably allows PPM devices to more effectively pick up that all-important encoded signal that says a radio station is near. Every day it’s in the radio biz news headlines, and I don’t know why. If it works, then you should buy one, shouldn’t you? Everyone should, right? It’s not an unfair advantage if it’s available to all, is it? Just go buy one and wring every last bit of credit out of those encoded signals. What

Have you noticed? There hasn’t been a significant new music radio format introduced in a decade. Sure, we’ve had Rhythm AC and Classic Hip Hop and perhaps other approaches that make nominal sense in a smattering of markets. But nothing big, nothing widespread, nothing popular across markets. Not since the so-called Adult Hits format. And that, you should remember, was presented as the antidote to the narrowness of terrestrial radio formats when those were the only formats we

Recently I was in a gathering of brands. Not agencies, brands. Among my conversations was one with the VP and Director of Global Media & Digital Marketing for a well known company that, among other things, produces one of the most famous brands of whiskey in the world. I asked him: What do you spend your day doing, thinking about, worrying about? He talked to me about the time he and his team spend creating personas representing the user segments of his brand. He talked about

If you were born in the 80’s or 90’s, you’re in your late teens to early 30’s today. You are also a digital native and quite unlike older folks, including the older folks running the radio business. That explains why these older folks don’t know a lot about you – only what Nielsen tells them – only what radio their PPM devices are exposed to – and not much else. But oh, there’s much more to know. And it’s terribly important for the future of an industry that must maintain its

I guess I hit close to home with my prior blog post on the Ratings Disaster that is today’s talk radio. The June PPM’s suck for talk radio. Hell. The diary markets coming in are bringing little joy. And many in the talk radio industry just sit back and continue on autopilot with the same hard line conservative narrative hour after hour, ignoring the cultural disconnect that’s happened between the format and society as the once unsinkable Titanic of radio formats begins to sli

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

There’s no doubt about it: Consistency matched to consumer expectations is a big reason why listeners keep coming back to the brands they love. But what happens when new choices and the novelty packed into them abound? And not just “radio” choices, but attention-getting distractions which occupy the same block of time that otherwise would have been devoted to “radio”? It was legendary ad-man David Ogilvy who famously said “Encourage innovation. Change is our life blood, stagn

In order to rally and fight a problem, we must begin by recognizing its existence. The realities of changing consumer usage have certainly provoked action for my clients in what used to be called “newspapers,” I can tell you. But radio has been slower to action not only because the trends have been less dire, but also because so few are willing to stand up and tell the Emperor that he has no clothes. Indeed, some refute the trends altogether. So it is when we hear that radio

Are you sick of this yet? PPM market. After many months of consistent and strong ratings performance, things nosedive. All at once. No explanation. No calls to the station. No sudden change in market or station variables. No mass exodus of fans to another market closer to the beach. No seasonally expected change caused by, say, sports or Christmas. No sudden turn in music trends. No staff changes. Nothing. Yet there it was, suddenly and consistently bad ratings. Until now. Be

It is almost impossible to count the ways in which playing to Arbitron’s PPM measurement methodology may provide short term gains for radio ratings, but very much at the expense of the health of radio brands long-term. And here’s yet another one. It is accepted wisdom that, since PPM supposedly measures behaviors rather than recall of behaviors, then so-called top-of-mind recall is irrelevant. After all, why remind folks that you’re there when they no longer need to remember

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

Today Seth Godin talks “Local.” Says Seth: Local media was an essential business for a century, largely for three reasons: 1. Broadcast signals and newspaper trucks could only travel so far, so ‘local’ was the natural category. 2. Commerce (and thus advertising) was local. 3. Interests tended to align locally as well. Today, of course, the signal travels around the world, so newspapers, radio stations and TV have no incentive to limit themselves. And finally, we’re discoverin

“What’s the future of radio?” “How does radio compete against Pandora et. al.?” “How can we get FM on mobile devices?” “How do we stay in a prominent place on the car dashboard?” These are typical of the questions I hear. And what makes them all similar is that they are asked from the inside-out. That is, the implicit assumption is that radio’s past must be sustained into the future, and with a few tweaks here and there we can dial up our relevance (pun intended) and dial dow

The debate-of-the-week in the radio business is: What do we do to monetize our stream?  Do we simulcast what’s on the air and throw it in as added (non) value, or do we treat the stream as an additional component in our brand arsenal and monetize it as such? Look, there’s no magic in adding what amounts to a second distribution channel for the same content and running the same spots on it to sell it in bulk to agencies which like to buy in bulk and ratings companies that like

What’s the best way for radio to compete in a newly digital mobile environment? Is it to ensure that every mobile phone has an activated FM chip?  Is it, in other words, to expand the limits of existing technology to cover new gadgets which are built fundamentally on newer and more interactive and personal technology?  Is it to turn a mobile phone into the same kind of radio that sits on your nightstand? No, no, a thousand times, no. Wild projections flutter about the radio i

Recently I heard a story of a station in a large market whose ratings have skyrocketed recently.  What sort of genius programming is responsible for this? The kind that lucks out with two PPM panelists in one household who are new to the ratings panel. Long may they live. But this can be monetized, to be sure.  And in a world where much more than half of a station’s revenue comes from agency dollars earmarked for nothing smarter than the lowest cost-per-thousand, you can hear