Tuesday, June 12, 2007

ARB's PPM Houston Hiccup


Arbitron delayed the issue of the data for the week of May 17 to 23, officially only saying
"...while conducting quality control reviews, we observed some unusual listening patterns warranting further review. A rescheduling of the release date will allow the time necessary for additional quality control measures to help ensure we can have complete confidence in the audience estimates we release.”

ARB told the media press that there would be no further info released to the public on this incident, ever.

Is there any other solution to things like this than a larger PPM sample?

At the very least, one wonders if releasing trends as often as every single week and full "books" thirteen times a year is really worth the risk?

The PPM panel is what it is, an influential, but extremely small group of people in a city of millions who have busy lives to live. Sometimes those unplanned, crazy lives are going to affect the mathmetical trends radio lives and dies by.

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