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 October 1, 2007 Moon on . . . Radio Audience Ratings
It seems as if anytime I mention that I work in radio, someone says, "I don’t listen to the radio anymore. I hear the same songs over and over, there are too many commercials, and the DJs talk too much." This attitude is particularly common among people in their late teens and 20s -- as well as those over 50. When I hear that, I always ask, "Have you ever been asked to take part in the ratings by Arbitron?" About one in six says, "Yes." Then I ask, "Well, did you take part? Did you fill out the radio diary and return it on time?" The number of Yeses falls precipitously. At that point, I say, "Then you have no one to blame but yourself." In North America, radio audience ratings are produced primarily by the US company Arbitron and its Canadian counterpart, the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM). Both produce similar reports of radio listening. The primary tool they use is a seven-day personal diary, mailed to all members of cooperating households 12 years and older. Each respondent is supposed to fill out the diary daily, registering all the radio they heard during the day. The ratings week begins in the US on Thursday. (That’s why most radio contests offer their biggest prizes on Thursdays.) In practice, however, respondents tend not to be so diligent, and may fill out their diaries over the weekend and on Wednesday, the final evening of the survey week. Arbitron randomly calls households and asks the person who answers the phone (so long as that person is 12 or older) if the members of the family are willing to fill out diaries. The interviewer then asks how many persons 12 or older reside at the address. A week or two later, a box containing a diary for each member of the household, plus a small premium (usually $1 or $2 per person). If all goes well, everyone fills out and returns his or her diary. From the listening recorded, Arbitron then produces estimates of the sizes of the audiences pulled in by various programs and stations. Although Arbitron and the BBM try to produce representative audience surveys, they encounter many problems, many caused by the prospective respondents themselves. In the mid-1970s, when I began working in radio-audience research, it was not as difficult to get good survey results as it is today. Most people’s phone numbers were listed. Most would cooperate in the survey process. That’s not the case today. The paper diary on which both Arbitron and the BBM have relied was a great technique back in the late 1960s, when Arbitron began measuring radio audiences. But it isn’t anymore. For instance, Arbitron constantly struggles to gain cooperation from people aged 18 to 34. The company has tried increased premiums (the few dollars participants are paid up front) and augmented premiums (a buck or so at the beginning of the survey, and a bit more later in the survey week). They’ve redesigned the diaries to make them simpler and more attractive. They’ve even spiffed up the package in which the diaries are sent to households. Each attempt provides a temporary boost in cooperation, followed by a decrease sometime later. An increasing problem is that many young people today have only a cell phone number, and US law currently prohibits the random dialing of cell phones. The research organizations thus have no way of soliciting their cooperation. However, Arbitron has said it will be able to legally contact cell-phone-only folks beginning next year. But that still doesn’t guarantee that 18-to-34-year-olds will cooperate at any greater rate than they do now. Another problem is that no matter how diligent Arbitron and BBM are, their samples are, when all is said and done, self-selected -- which doesn’t make for good research. People have the choice of cooperating or not -- first, when Arbitron contacts them, and later, when it’s time to fill out and return the diary. Over the years, a general description of the type of person who is willing to cooperate has emerged. Not every respondent fits this profile, but enough do that they constitute the majority of respondents. They probably live in a blue-collar community or neighborhood. They probably have a high school education or a bit more, but few have graduate degrees. Chances are they’re of lower-middle or middle-middle class. Although the ratings organizations would disagree, it’s my informed opinion that this can skew the audience estimates -- the ratings. Those people who complete and return diaries don’t constitute a representative cross section of the population, but only one segment of it. But because they’re the ones who participate in the survey, it’s their tastes that radio serves. Radio stations have two masters: listeners and advertisers. To get advertisers, a station must have listeners. The more listeners it has, the more it can charge for commercials. So stations cater to diary keepers, because they’re the listeners who count. This means that music stations play the music diary keepers like to hear (as determined by surveys of such "research-friendly" people), and talk stations feature hosts who strike a chord with the people most likely to fill out diaries. In general, the higher the educational level and/or income of prospective respondents, the less likely they are to agree to participate. But it’s exactly these people who are the ones most likely to complain about too many commercials or talky disc jockeys or the same tired music played over and over. Hoist by their own petard, they are. My word to them: If you want your opinions to count, and you’re asked by one of the ratings operations to participate in a listening survey, do so. It could be the start of remaking the medium of radio to serve a broader range of tastes. ...Thom Moon
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He’s Thom Moon, a radio geek with more than 30
years in the business, and who specializes in audience research. He’s worked in radio
audience ratings (which determines who listens to what station), audience analysis, been
managing editor of a radio trade journal, and currently edits a series of newsletters for
radio programmers and commercial-time salespeople for a major radio
research-and-promotions firm. He’s one part frustrated program director, another part
would-be general manager and recovering entrepreneur, and a part-time radio tech head.
He’ll be commenting regularly here on radio topics. One warning: Moon tends to fall
into the editorial "we," hoping that by so doing he won’t be the only one
blamed . . .