Thursday, February 02, 2012

ARB's Twin Waterbeds, Diary And PPM

RBR: "Given the news that the Media Rating Council (MRC) that it has withdrawn accreditation of the monthly AQH radio ratings data produced by the PPM service in Cleveland, Portland OR, Riverside-San Bernardino, Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, we revisited an interview with MRC Executive Director and CEO George Ivie as to issues surrounding accreditation in PPM markets. First of all, it’s a complex thing to accredit a new service and Arbitron has adjusted the service to meet the compliance needs of the MRC. That takes time and is always under review."

“It’s a complex problem. It’s like a waterbed, you push down on one side and other sides move. You have to push down on the whole bed to hold it all down. If you let go of s
omething, certain things may get worse, other things may get better. You have to really be vigilant.” -- Ivie in Inside Radio

Since the news broke, clients in both PPM and diary markets have been asking if "panic" is the order of the day, as Arbitron Director of Programming Services Jon Miller coincidentally titled his new blog post on ARB's training site and my advice given that, yes, credibility of media measurement is absolutely crucial, but since we've all seen this coming for a very long time is: DON'T (panic).

Keep the pressure on researchers to be as open as possible as they work on the complex sample quality issues that every market is witnessing. Secrecy won't improve anyone's confidence level.

A quick recap of past history as chronicled on this blog alone:
Let's get up to speed about it all at CRS. (click the banner below for a free invitation if you're not in a competitive situation with an A&O client)

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