cooking The Book

"Honesty underlies everything
we do, and everything we say,
to every customer."
                     -Steve Morris, Arbitron President and CEO

"We're Number One!!!" Even when they're in the same market, stations and their hypermanic talent blatantly promo themselves as at the very pinnacle of the local ratings. Unfortunately, they're light on the details and here's why:

For a fee, Arbitron, the subscribers-only ratings service (known as The Book) will make its local and regional radio ratings reflect the numbers a station wants to see; that is: numbers it can sell. Customizing survey areas, dayshares, demographics and time periods to support stations' ad-selling strategies, Arbitron serves up the numbers in any manner of configurations to help sales departments demonstrate the value of their audiences to advertisers.

Frinstance: if the "Lush Rimjob Show" can be heard in three cities, but is number one in just one , and only among 18-35 year-old married male Chinese Volvo drivers who drink coffee and own one or more labrador retrievers, Arbitron will provide customized results conveniently sans the embarrassing survey areas or more inclusive demographics and make Lush Numero Uno even though many other stations are kicking his ample ass in overall ratings in the three city coverage area.

Accuracy in the overall ratings are questionable as well. Arbitron compiles numbers from a list of  "listener diaries," mailed out to people they allege are randomly selected. They're supposed to fill out the long and rather time-consuming surveys and mail them back.

Arbitron says these diaries are sent to some two million people in the US over the age of 12; but admit only half send them back. Since there are over 230 million people in the US in that age category, the sample is pretty pathetic in terms of the population as a whole.

NPR and other public broadcasters are not surveyed, since they're non-commercial and Arbitron is nothing if not about business.  That leaves a large part of the local listener story left untold especially in liberal markets like Seattle where NPR is widely tuned in.

It also throws into question the numbers that conservative talk supposedly enjoys and the conventional wisdom that there's not enough progressive interest in radio talk for it to pencil.

Air America has shown that with entertaining and substantive formats and hosts it can succeed. Much will be riding on whether it can entice station managers to try the new daring format and attract the hidden audience that Arbitron ignores.

Comments

[chuck]

thanks for this