Beware the purple portable personal people meter

We can ignore this no more: the Portable People Meter is about to be launched in the Seattle market, and several readers have written to say they've received a letter and a $10 bill from Arbitron President Steve Morris with this glad announcement: 

Your household has been selected to be part of the Arbitron TV and Radio Ratings. This is your chance to count in the ratings! We select only a few households to be part of the Ratings. Your home represents many other households in your area. That's why you are so important to Arbitron.

The PPM is an electronic audience-ratings device to measure how many people are listening (or are, at least exposed) to individual radio and television stations, including cable.

It's worn like a pager, or carried in a handbag detects hidden audio tones in a station or network's audio stream, and automatically logs each time it finds such a signal.

The PPM carrier puts the device in a charger at bedtime, and the day's numbers are transmitted to Columbia, MD to be crunched into a nutritious, yet delicious breakfast food or used by advertisers to buy airtime.

(Family members can earn up to $15 a month by remembering to keep the meter with them. $50 will be given as a bonus for completing 90 days and NOT throwing the damn thing out the car window).

It's obviously more accurate than the decades-old handwritten diaries or hard-wired meters; plus it's immune to forgetful or lazy test subjects.

PPM gives more detailed, hour-by-hour tracking of a station's audience, and the results are delivered to the subscribing stations on a monthly and weekly basis instead of quarterly.

The old diaries were only as good as the user's memory, honesty or work ethic.

After all, ost of us can't remember which stations we punched up in the car and exactly how long we listened before punching up another one... the PPM takes all the guesswork out of that.

Many diarists toted up their listening habits at the end of the period, a situation ripe for error and revisionism.

 A diarist might be working in a car repair where the boss had Rush Limbaugh on all morning, but go home at night and write down that he was listening to Air America. A bank teller might be listening to the goozy, overhead strains of KWRM through the day, but write in the diary she was listening to KEXP.

(Photo: Mr. Morris)

"The People Meter is showing that if time spent listening (tsl) is less than it's ever been," radio consultant Jeff Pollack told the LA Times, "then you better deliver -- you better deliver on personality, deliver on something that's going to be better than the song I just heard."

Promos and ad spot-loads are being examined:  PPM is motivating people to clean up the unnecessary intrusions on the radio that make listeners posh the buttons.

Arbitron's transition to the new tech has been controversial.

Stations that target minorities -- particularly Latinos and African-Americans contend those groups are systematically under-represented in Arbitron's PPM surveys which, they say, underestimates audiences for their stations, and will result in major losses of ad dollars for stations with mainly minority audiences.

Early results from Houston and Philadelphia, the first cities to get the meters showed basic assumptions about radio-listening habits to be erroneous. Among other things, the meters have shown that people listen to more stations than shown by the diaries, but spend less time listening to them.

But courts in New York and New Jersey, Illinois, where suits were filed from all sides have cleared PPMs for action and the conversion continues, as planned.

The last diary ratings for Seattle will be the Winter Book. Meters will be strapped on the bodies of the surveyors in April and will be reporting in full by June.

There might be some big surprises with the new reporting: stay tuned.

Comments

[rozskat]

ESP B’lam, as I was thinking about Arbitron this morning when I read a post that referred to ratings. I participated in one a long time ago. I see payment has gone up quite a bit from the one dollar and two quarters I was paid to keep a dairy. I would fit in the not so honest category as I listed stations I or anyone else would ever listened to or TV shows that no one watched. Does anyone remember the Alan Thicke’s Show with sidekick Arsenio Hall?

I never put much faith in ratings after experiencing Arbitron and the titanic pay I received. At least it was cash and there wasn’t any withholding for taxes. I did fail to report it though.

So what if conservative radio ratings are higher than progressive radio as argued here. It doesn’t add credence to enhance a viewpoint or add to “my side wins” debate unless you own the radio station to set your advertising card rates. How long have we heard about the demise of Air America now besides comments from O’Reilly, Maloney and Malkin?

[Sandor]

Nice shot of Steve Morris, btw. In reality, he's not as charming as that picture makes him look.

[Foo Marley]

Expect KUOW to be the big loser in Seattle. It's been known for awhile that NPR listeners have been savvy and loyal enough
to "mark across" their Arbitron diaries, indicating they listen 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Good thing KUOW has made the
wise decision not to debut any expensive local programs for the time being given the impending loss of underwriting v

[Last Mango]

Foo's thesis is the hopeful one expressed by most commercial radio people in town. Some think the drivetime button-pushers may not be hitting the KIRO FM buton as often as they did previously.

[RobP]

I'll make this unusually bold prediction that the PPM will put TBTL at number one in Jet City.

Hey - stranger things have happened in this town.

[joanie]

I'm interested in seeing the difference between the next books taken via the PPM and the past books. Should be very telling

To think that all these Arby ratings could be based on nothing at all and so many people's lives have been directed by all this nothingness is UNreal.

[AGL]

PPM is online now in 14 markets. As a 30+ year radio professional I have to say while no ratings methodology is perfect, PPM is far better than diaries where listeners "vote" for their favorites or fail to record all their listening. You'll see some change, some formats do better than others, but generally the best programmed radio stations rise to the top. I wouldn't want to go back.

[Kate Krumrey]

Arbo is ruining radio for the listener. Its only recording the crap you can't escape while not reflecting whether you like what you are hearing, have a choice about what you are hearing or buy the products that are being used. Its sadly being used as an excuse to fire some of the experienced talent who have earned their positions and wages. Instead they give us a prefab Walmart version of radio staffed by low paid drones. Blech!