Wednesday, May 07, 2008

ARB's Patchen Hits A Foul Ball; Randy Kabrich Hits A Home Run



Thanks, Bob, for apologizing to R&R's reporter, but an even bigger "thanks, Randy" for keeping the heat on until ARB gets its stories straight.

As someone who does client station rating analysis day after day, I really would love to be an Arbitron cheerleader. We absolutely need credible, reliable, consistent ratings which demonstrate the power of radio in a trustworthy way if our business is to be viable. These snafus cost us all money.

So, it gives me no pleasure to snipe at the company which has provided the measuring stick I have used for four decades. However, I've never seen such wackiness in all those years of breaking out books, doing diary reviews, interacting with ARB executives.

The under-sampling problem continues…as does the PPDV issue in literally every market I have looked at in the last week. Indexes under 80 are not acceptable or reliable. Therefore the entire Men and Women 18-34 sample is an issue. Not to mention Men 35-44 too, teetering at an Index of 79. This sampling problem continues to grow from just young males a few years ago…to now include Women…and even 35-44 year-old’s.

Think about this for a moment. As a format that targets Persons 25-54, there are 6 cells in the Portland, Oregon, Winter 2008 sample, just as one random example, that are within our target (M25-34, M35-44, M45-54, W25-34, W35-44, W45-54).

50% of the cells that we care about most are under-sampled!!!!!

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