A Willing Buyer, A Willing Seller And A Clever Idea

.. but I have a few concerns before we go too much farther down this road.

Whether Colorado Broadcasters Association President/CEO Justin Sasso or a Nielsen researcher/affiliate rep came up with the concept, it's a brilliant win-win in any case, as 300+ Colorado broadcasters this week at the Doubletree in Grand Junction got a look at some of the latest information from Nielsen on the use of television, radio and other media sources.

Sasso highlighted the value of television and radio as sources that many throughout the state continue to use in receiving their news -- despite of the many newer media platforms developing online.  "We're trying to get people's heads around what's happening, instead of what they're reading in newspapers that these new media sources are taking over, and they're great, but in no way replacing radio and television." - News Channel 5's Jorma Duran

Inside Radio reported yesterday:  "other state associations have used presentations to reinforce the power of broadcasting, these were the first to use custom Nielsen data for a specific state.  Since many broadcasters in the state’s smaller markets aren’t Nielsen subscribers, the CBA commissioned Nielsen to crunch the Colorado numbers and license the data to its members to incorporate into their own presentations for one year."

Regional presentations took place in Ft. Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs and Grand Junction to packed houses in three days, pulling off four regionally customized presentations compiled using Nielsen’s vast database.

The data was licensed from Nielsen, at the CBA’s expense, for one year. CBA members will be able to access the Nielsen data and incorporate pertinent information into their station presentations.

My take, for what it's worth:

It would be wonderful if the 49 other broadcast associations and Nielsen are able to get together to do the same thing regionally in every single state over the coming months to become a fully regional "Audio Today 2015!"

Of course, it would be a nice additional source of revenue for Nielsen, repurposing stats from a new angle that have already been paid for by subscribing radio and TV stations.

For that reason, I hope the price can be kept low and as other state broadcast groups negotiate for them with Nielsen.

I'd encourage the rating firm to use some of that "found money" from these projects to be very transparent about how they manage to merge the very different PPM, condensed market rolling average and very small sample county by county diary data which doesn't come out until the following April, in the year after it was collected.

Hopefully by going to respondent level, Nielsen can give our local clients in small markets all over the country fresh, very reliable regional usage data in as close to real time as possible.