Your true feelings on the diary or PPM's

[DavidEduardo]

Look, David, I know you to be a serious booster and defender of radio as an advertising medium.  Your remark about the death of radio as we know it is a little harsh, don't you think?  With an increased sampling size and the stabilizing of the system later on, the PPM will be an accurate reflection of what people listen to, without the "ballot box stuffing" and weighting of the diary system.  I guess you disagree?

The situation may play out favorably, but I have called on too many agencies to believe they are going to happily pay 40% more per point. So stations, faced with a decline in AQH persons, will be cutting deals. And that means adding units. At some point. the listeners pick alternative entertainment sources.

I think this a a critical turning point for radio; I am not encouraged by the potential outcome.

[wgliradio]

The fact that radio revenues are off significantly is due to two things... agencies are very cautious due to the data glitch two weeks ago and the iability to get a good metric comparison with the diary method... so they are buying less radio overall. When this happens, stations add commercial uints to make up for the difference. End result: we will be back to 15 ant 18 minutes of spots an hour on music stations.

Many of us are not yet satisfied that Arbitron has its panel correctly built demograpnhically and we know that the panel is undersized and not totally proportional. The PPM may, indeed, be the death of radio as we know it.

Thus, the business model has failed radio.  Leave it to radio to rely on a third party for its survival... and now that third party is dropping the ball.

How difficult would it have been to a transitional period where we had some time with both systems in play?

[DavidEduardo]

Thus, the business model has failed radio.  Leave it to radio to rely on a third party for its survival... and now that third party is dropping the ball.

There is no failure of the business model. There are difficulties in recruiting persons for research, whether it is for raido or diapers.

How difficult would it have been to a transitional period where we had some time with both systems in play?

Showing how little you know, there were 24 months of PPM tesing in parallel with the PPM.

[wgliradio]

There is no failure of the business model. There are difficulties in recruiting persons for research, whether it is for raido or diapers.

This research is key to the business model.  If it fails....

Showing how little you know, there were 24 months of PPM tesing in parallel with the PPM.

Funny, we've only had PPM installed for 5 months in Market #1.  Doesn't sound like 24 to me.  And NY is going PPM for the next book. 

[DavidEduardo]

There is no failure of the business model. There are difficulties in recruiting persons for research, whether it is for raido or diapers.

This research is key to the business model.  If it fails....

Funny, we've only had PPM installed for 5 months in Market #1.  Doesn't sound like 24 to me.  And NY is going PPM for the next book. 

Houston had 24 months of PPM prior to the service going currency. Arbitron has been running the NY panel since nearly the beginning of the year. That is plenty of time to build a panel and recruit as proportional sample and to work out any technical bugs in the encoding, etc.

They tested in parallel with the diary in Philly for two years, also. How much testing do you suggest they do?

Stations are not going to pay for parallel research, as the PPM is already 60% more expensive than the diary. One thing is to test the system in multiple markets, another is to do simultaneous studies in all markets. Nobody will absorb the cost, and Arbitron can not reasonably be expected to take years of losses to have parallel data.

The PPM concept has not failed; it got MRC certification. What we are seing now are issues of long-term compliance, sample balancing, daily in-tab and such. Arbitron is generally responsive, but some issues will always come up over time. The diary based book and sample are very different from that which Arbitron rolled out in 1965... things like HDHAs and HDBAs, more follow up calls, DST (incentives, etc), elimination of personal placement and retrieval, addition of more stratification variables, like language preference among Hispanics, redefinition of metros, etc., have happened regularly and in response to "new" issues each time.

[wgliradio]

Houston had 24 months of PPM prior to the service going currency. Arbitron has been running the NY panel since nearly the beginning of the year. That is plenty of time to build a panel and recruit as proportional sample and to work out any technical bugs in the encoding, etc.

Obviously it's not enough, or the system itself is flawed to the point where it just may not work.  I quote you

Many of us are not yet satisfied that Arbitron has its panel correctly built demograpnhically and we know that the panel is undersized and not totally proportional. The PPM may, indeed, be the death of radio as we know it.

They tested in parallel with the diary in Philly for two years, also. How much testing do you suggest they do?

Obviously until they truly feel the numbers with PPM look right.  During this 24 month PPM test, what did the data show compared to the old diary method?   Did Arbitron make those numbers available to subscribers so they could see the type of data collected vs the old system?

Stations are not going to pay for parallel research, as the PPM is already 60% more expensive than the diary. One thing is to test the system in multiple markets, another is to do simultaneous studies in all markets. Nobody will absorb the cost, and Arbitron can not reasonably be expected to take years of losses to have parallel data.

It is in the best interest of broadcasters, which rely heavily on this service as part of its business model, to expect a drastic change in the way data is gathered.   Broadcasters interested in ensuring accurate data gathering should absorb the cost to study the differences in the data.
 

The PPM concept has not failed; it got MRC certification. What we are seing now are issues of long-term compliance, sample balancing, daily in-tab and such. Arbitron is generally responsive, but some issues will always come up over time. The diary based book and sample are very different from that which Arbitron rolled out in 1965... things like HDHAs and HDBAs, more follow up calls, DST (incentives, etc), elimination of personal placement and retrieval, addition of more stratification variables, like language preference among Hispanics, redefinition of metros, etc., have happened regularly and in response to "new" issues each time.

But these were tweaks to the overall system over time that evolved it.  This is a total move to a new system

[DavidEduardo]

Obviously it's not enough, or the system itself is flawed to the point where it just may not work.

It works, but is still being perfected. There is not any way to run the two systems in parallel any longer. We simply have to hope that the issues that have arrisen will be worked on and fixed. 

  I quote you
Many of us are not yet satisfied that Arbitron has its panel correctly built demograpnhically and we know that the panel is undersized and not totally proportional. The PPM may, indeed, be the death of radio as we know it.

Those are two issues. One is getting the panel the right size and fully proportional, and the other is the sales issue coming out of a system that shows much less total listening.

Obviously until they truly feel the numbers with PPM look right. 

And that is being done as the system is rolled out; the numbers will "look" better as the panel is improved so we get the target daily and weekly in-tabs. Nobody knows what "right" is since this is a new system.

During this 24 month PPM test, what did the data show compared to the old diary method?   Did Arbitron make those numbers available to subscribers so they could see the type of data collected vs the old system?

The numbers were given to subscribers in the test markets, and, towards the end of Houston testing, to those subscribed to PPM. They are the subject of confidentiality agreements. In addition, a few of us were invited to receive the Philly numbers around 2002 and 2003, as the first large US test was done. We had to sign confidentiality there, too.

It is in the best interest of broadcasters, which rely heavily on this service as part of its business model, to expect a drastic change in the way data is gathered.   Broadcasters interested in ensuring accurate data gathering should absorb the cost to study the differences in the data.

Broadcasters don't have the resources to do this. It might have been nice, but nobody would have paid for it. That's the difference between reality and utopia.
 

But these were tweaks to the overall system over time that evolved it.  This is a total move to a new system

The changes I mentioned, and many more, were significant ones that affected the listening measurements and rank of many stations. They were hardly tweeks... they were changes so significant that the MRC required over a year of testing in some cases to give certification. For example, the change to language preference took about four years from the agreement to make the change to full implementation.

[wgliradio]

But the changes to the old diary method is not nearly as drastic or different as this.

[DavidEduardo]

But the changes to the old diary method is not nearly as drastic or different as this.

Since you have obviously been working closely with Arbitron, on industry committees, and participating in advisory groups for four decades, I'll take your word for it.

I simply thought that they had changed paper and pencil for a digital recorder.

[jd]

Folks, you may find this interesting.  Call it a "Hitchhiker's Guide to The PPM Galaxy."  Agree or not, it addresses some important issues:

www.paragonmediastrategies.com/theblog/?page_id=73

Maybe you saw Paragon's "PPM Rulebook" earlier, which started with ten rules.  Now they've added three more, including #11, which reads in part:  “View all research with skepticism.”