Do Dreams Come True?

Find out and support this initiative by clicking here.  

Let's all encourage them to look more broadly than just video and ultimately include audio measurement as well in this work!

This Will Make You Feel Better, Country Radio

As a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, it must be noted that history indicates that country's shares shouldn't be jeopardized by updated encoding technologies as they come online over the coming months.

© Nielsen PPM markets combined average persons trend

• Voltair really took off about a year ago and into the Winter.
• New Country shot up starting last summer.

Why?

IMHO:  Music cycle, season, more stations in format.  While some country stations did buy a Voltair, it took place a few at a time over numerous months. 

Mike O’Malley recently made the statement to an A&O&B client that he can think of sixteen different things that affect time spent listening/time spent exposed (his list didn’t even include Voltair).

Both Mike and Becky Brenner will be sitting in the front row at Nielsen’s December 3-4 client conference in Washington where CBET testing and impact, the new SDK measurement system for digital audio, which reportedly gets away from having to rely on the meter panel and headphone adapter since it is measuring the traffic to the content regardless of how it’s heard, are on a full two days of presentations.

We appreciate Nielsen hosting this meeting and we’re absolutely looking forward to getting as many answers as possible.

Hope to see YOU there.

Nielsen’s Answer To Voltair

In a presentation at the NAB Radio Show in Atlanta Nielsen tells us that the brand new generation PPM encoders, the first update to the technology in eight years, created in response to the proliferation of at least 500 Voltair units across both the US and Canada have generated average quarter hour (AQH) ratings growth in 52% of stations tested during afternoon drive in the Baltimore-Washington market.

48% showed morning drive growth while there was 45% growth in middays.

Roughly 61% of the 289 station-demographic-day combinations tested, Nielsen says, showed no ratings increases using the encoders.

All American PPM stations will have the new encoders by the end of this year.  Since shares are a zero sum game, it seems very likely that the next few months in PPM markets in North America are going to experience changes unseen since the move from diaries to PPM and, prior to that, way back to 1986 when COLRAM's diary was adopted.

Billboard Sep 13, 1986

After that change was implemented, Top 40 suddenly went down and AC stations went through the roof.  Country, over the next few years, had to learn the new rules of the game ushered in by the change in methodology and work to get our listeners to fight for their favorite station at work or face audience erosion.

Numerus in Canada asked all stations using Voltair to unplug them and wait for the new update, which they hope will put all of their subscribers on a level playing field.  It wasn't difficult to guess which stations plugged Voltair in their audio chain and when they stopped using it from tracking PPM trends (up/down). 

The dueling presentations of Nielsen and Telos/Voltair leave many, many unanswered questions.

Country radio has had a great run over the last few years and PPM technology that helped us tell our reach story.  If this change that is going to happen over the next few phases of our surveys helps some stations, will it hurt country? I wish Nielsen was doing more to allay these fears and could give us more insight into their rationale beyond declaring that they have a right to do what they want.

For example, if you're in the mood for a bit of irony, search the Nielsen Newsire site for any news of "enhanced CBET:"

It's no secret that many of us in broadcasting have long wondered if the entire ratings process is a bit of a crap shoot, but I never expected a Nielsen site to suggest it could be an "enhanced bet!"

All irony aside, why isn't there anything on the Nielsen Newswire website about the presentation? 

Why aren't they reporting publicly on their actions and reasoning?  It has been four months since the last Nielsen Audio Advisory Council meeting and radio's reps on the committee continue to be tight-lipped.  Surely, they know that secrecy only breeds conspiracy theories.  Just ask Richard Harker if you don't believe me (click to read his latest update).

If you are a PPM-rated station, here are the questions I hope you'll ask your rep:

1.  Even if I can't actually use my Voltair to process my signal once the enhanced CBET PPM encoder is on my air, why can't I continue to at least use my Voltair as a monitor?  I find this screen very informative and reassuring, especially since CBET is being implemented so quickly with so little testing.

2.  Are there radio groups who have decided to stay with their Voltair processors and won't move to Nielsen's new equipment?  I hear that there are.  What is Nielsen planning to do about that?

3.  Is Nielsen willing to underwrite an objective study on all of the impacts of Pre-CBET,  Post-Voltair and Post CBET PPM ratings by the Media Ratings Council, Council on Research Excellence or a similar body that would include format analyses with much more depth beyond average percentages?

4.  What is it about the stations which were unaffected by the encoder update vs the ones that were improved in the recent test?

5.  Is there any developing information that may make it worth trying some of the high loyalty formats that disappeared eight years ago like smooth jazz, new age, talk and classical again?  If average quarter hours go up at least 14%, what is driving that change?

Arbitron/Nielsen certainly went to PPM measurement in good faith and with no ill intent.  Radio's owners agreed that it was an improvement at the time and I certainly don't believe any broadcaster wants to go back to diaries after they've made the switch, but this new trove of before/after data has the potential to improve our understanding of our measurement methodology.

I hope Nielsen agrees and as Arbitron used to do on a regular basis, tasks an objective researcher to dig deep, reporting back publicly in the common interest of all of us.

A Candid Admission

Last week, Seth Ressler in his AllAccess column hit me right between the ears.

Back when PPM first debuted, since I was long-schooled in the ways to get an unfair advantage to grab "just one more share point" that we all used in diary measurement, I was focused on the wrong thing.
 
I still  wanted the sample size to be more random "like it used to be" and as large as the 48 different weekly samples.  The share compression that resulted from the move to panel measurement seemed to confirm (to me) that I was right and all the issues of PPM would be solved by larger and larger samples.

Call me a slow learner.

• The fact is that audio media simply can't afford to more than quadruple samples and of course both Arbitron and Nielsen have increased samples each time we squeaky wheels made those noises.
• The fact that the cume and usage levels are at all time highs right now makes a good case that we actually already have more than enough to compete adequately against all other media as is - selling results - no matter which of the three or four cume thresholds where the majority of stations clump in every market.

Of course, as Alfred Liggins said on his investor call last week, free market competition requires constant vigilance and if everyone else in town is doing something smart that you're not, you're likely to get hurt in the short run until you catch up.

Ultimately, I worry more that Programmatic buying and selling will be a greater challenge than mysterious black boxes as agencies adopt it in order to save money, failing to consider the compelling personality, brand loyalty, database, social, narrow target and psychographic data that only a human seller can present.

When that is accomplished our sales teams have great stories which more than add powerful value to our sales proposition.

Seth, you are right that our best story is not "how many?" but WHO.

Thanks for the clear thinking and wake up call.

Analysis Paralysis

Numbers nerds (like me!) have been blogging almost daily on Voltair.

Rather than getting smarter with each post, I feel like we all start to send contradicting and conflicting assertions.

We all have been learning less, not more.

Before I crunch anymore random PPM data, it would be nice to know who is using Voltair and who isn’t for one thing. Educated guesses have only the potential to create confusion for all of us.

Yes, A&O&B has a number of clients using the technology right now, but in spite of the perspective that has afforded us, there's a lot we simply do not know.

Like you, I read each new observation, but have ultimately come to the point of reminding myself that “liars figure and figures lie.”

Lets face it.  No one is admitting anything, not because they are hiding anything.  No one knows enough as yet to draw any conclusions.

Things I don’t think anyone knows.

• Nielsen and Numeris don’t know who has been using Voltair.  Even in Canada, where the ratings firm has asked all their subscribers to unplug their Voltair boxes, who knows if all of them actually did so?
• Voltaire users don’t know what happened to their sample geography, proportionality, weighting and all the other factors which can move numbers much more than even the uptrends the manufacturer of Voltair has claimed.

Things I think I know:

• PPM measurement appears to help formats with big cume.  
• Country, Classic Rock and Pop shares increased when PPM came into our lives.
• The average age of radio users dropped by about a decade, which may mean that PPM is measuring radio use by younger listeners who didn’t fill out diaries.
• Talk formats and personalities with long periods of non-music content slipped in the rankers.
• Sample sizes fell precipitously.
• Panel/qualitative research replaced random probability sampling.

All of this tells me that we have come to a point that we need less blogging by folks who really don’t have enough information to really know the entire picture.

It think we all can agree that Nielsen's decision to not open their webinar last week to the media was a mistake.  What got reported the next day may or may not have been accurate.  Transparency is the best policy.

It’s time for all Nielsen and Numeris clients to speak loudly to their ratings rep for much more openness and clarity, let alone increasing sample reliability.

It was refreshing recently to learn that Canada's analytics arm has been brainstorming with clients, for example.  We need a lot more of that from Nielsen too.

All of the noise on the technology affecting fewer than 50 markets - albeit the largest ones in North America - is also obscuring an even more pressing issue:  sample quality in the much more numerous diary measurement markets.

Just four years ago we were promised exciting modernizations of the long-outdated approaches being used in radio audience measurement.  After all, Jim Seiler first invented a diary to measure media in 1949! 

Then, Nielsen bought Arbitron and the leapfrog hasn’t croaked once since!

Let’s stop the silly number-crunching without really knowing what is behind the stats we’re all using.  Nielsen and Numeris, please help us all get it right without delay.

It's long past time to focus as an industry on what really will make a huge difference:  increasing sample sizes, better open communication with Nielsen and Numeris clients.

Responsiveness and less secrecy is in order so we all can have more confidence in the data driving our paychecks.

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.

This Changes Everything (Again For Yet Another Year)

Just as Canada celebrates Thanksgiving before it comes to the U.S., Numeris and Stats Can bring something to Canadian broadcasters before Nielsen and the Census Bureau do to American media.

On September 9th, A&O&B Canadian clients were reminded:

The demographic questions in the PPM questionnaire are designed to be comparable to Statistics Canada data where appropriate. The demographics relating to industry, occupation, first language learned and home language will be updated to reflect the 2011 census, data from which was made available in 2013.

The revised panel member questionnaires will be put into field in at the beginning of the 2014-2015 broadcast year. Questionnaires are administered to households when they join the panel and subsequently once a year on their anniversary date. All newly recruited PPM households will receive the revised questionnaires and all existing PPM panel households will receive the revised questionnaires on their anniversary date (as per current procedure).

Demographics for the Industry and Occupation questions will be populated through derivation from the existing answers. The new Industry and Occupation questions will be available for the start of the 2014-15 broadcast year.

The new language questions will take up to one year to become fully populated, and will be available at the beginning of the 2015-16 broadcast year. 
 

In the USA, the more-or-less the same things start to happen on October 1.

The update is a shorthand term for the massive set of demographic estimates and
projections produced for the Nielsen Pop-Facts products. Estimates consist of data
prepared for the current year, and projections (sometimes called forecasts) prepared
for dates five years in the future.

The update is brought up to date for many geographic levels including national, state, county, census tract, and block group. Data is also available for commonly-used areas such as metropolitan areas, cities/towns, ZIP Codes, and media areas such as DMAs. Because it is produced for small areas, the update can be easily aggregated to custom geographic areas specified by the user.

The update begins with the estimation and projection of base counts, such as total population, household population, group quarters population, households, family households, and housing units. Characteristics related to these base counts are then estimated. Population characteristics include age, sex, race, and Hispanic ethnicity.

Households are estimated by age of householder and income. Owner-occupied housing units are estimated by value.

What does this mean to you?

It's highly likely that your station's shares are going to change at least slightly as a result of these updates being made right now.  The only reason they wouldn't would be if you serve an area that hasn't changed in any way since last year and the last census.  Highly unlikely, since even if all other things were stable, everyone got one year older.

Anyone who wants to fully understand their competitive situation simply must fully understand, stay up-to-date with and react to population changes in every market and demographic they target.

As with all things in audience measurement:  it's as much about what they do as what you do!

Nielsen’s House Of Cards

A very cool aspect of the business Mike O’Malley, Becky Brenner and I are in is fully understanding and - many times - being a part of moving ratings. 

We make it our business to know what causes, just for a few examples, WMZQ/Washington to grow from a 2.7 a few months ago to a 4.1 6+ in the current month;  how WYCD/Detroit got back up to a 6.2 after a 5.3-5.5 trend and the driver of KNIX/Phoenix’s largest PPM share in the station’s history this month, a 6.2, after a 5.0 last month.

As a result, we were all extremely relieved to see Nielsen’s announcement yesterday on the Los Angeles sample that in spite of one media related household that resulted in Univision firing a manager at LA 102.9 “our analysis revealed that any significant differences in the estimates over the past year were isolated primarily to a single station” and didn’t impact much else. 

It turns out that the wobbly numbers affecting many other stations were a result of a UPS driver who listened to radio all day in his delivery truck and the rest of his family traveling to Mexico but leaving their meters at home in hopes they’d still be paid their premiums to help underwrite their vacation.

Two homes is all it took!

Lets face it.  Due to the very small sample sizes, especially when it comes to ultra core radio users, it’s as much an art as it is a science to keep PPM panels consistent and believable.

If Nielsen had been forced to rebuild their entire Los Angeles panel, it would have been expensive and a lengthy process, affecting immense revenues in the nation’s second largest metro.

Bye Bye P-1 Report, Hello Cluster Analysis "Junkies"

It has been fascinating to watch Nielsen decide to stop offering a report that was created almost thirty years ago even as radio researcher Mark Kassof released a report that indicates almost exactly the same statistical relationship of a radio station's heaviest users to their total averages.

35% of all listeners, multivariate data pioneer Kassof finds, account for about 70% of all listening for the typical radio station.

As "Research Doctor" Roger Wimmer and longtime researcher Pierre Bouvard recall, a bright programmer/researcher - Gary Donohue - originated the concept of segmenting radio tuning into quintiles for programming and marketing.

Donohue's "Fingerprint" stats from back in the diary-only days proved that about 30% of radio listeners gave stations roughly 70% of their listening.

When you see two completely different research approaches yield very close to the same result over a very long period of time, you have to believe that you are approaching that rare entity:  THE TRUTH.

Just because Nielsen has unplugged the "P-1 report," it's still vital to know who your heaviest users are, where they live and how they perceive and behave.

If you need assistance in creating your own reports to analyze their use of your station, A&O&B would be delighted to assist.

The Format's Up, But You Went Down

Among the things more than three decades of consulting has taught me:  every market situation is different and every station within those markets is unique.

When a format is down nationally and your station or show is also off about the same percentage, it's not time to beat yourself up too much.  Music trends, events and buzz move up and down over time and of course it's possible for a great radio station's programmer to foresee those evolutions and adjust rotations and other non-music elements to compensate better than the average PD did.

That's what separates the cream of the crop.  Moving up when most other stations in your format feels good.  It takes a special skill set to understand what it takes to achieve it.  Consultants and researchers are very helpful in teaching what it takes to out-perform.

However, when everyone else in your format us up and you are down, that's the time when you really need to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you know what happened or if you need to call for expert assistance.

"Arbitron Ratings:  Radio audience figures, compiled with no basis in science or reason, used to fire Air Personalities."   — Gerry House (from “Glossary Of Terms” in “Country Music Broke My Brain”)

It's The Panel

After more than a half century of radio ratings diary measurement, we have all become accustomed to certain metrics.  The arrival of PPM over the last decade has changed the math completely.

For the average country station still being rated by diaries this ratio remains quite constant:  a little more than one third of diarykeepers account for almost three quarters of average quarter hour audience. 

For that reason, radio's research companies have learned that a random probability sample composed of about 60% of a station's "core" (P1/heaviest users) and some 40% of that station's cume as found at random in a metro population provides a reliable indication of how that broadcaster is going to do in the next diary survey.

When PPM started to roll out in the top 50 U.S. and Canada's major markets over the last decade that formula no longer "worked."  Many radio stations back when their first PPM ratings were released were unpleasantly surprised to find out that performing extremely well in a traditional perceptual research project fielded with the time-honored sample parameters was no predictor of PPM scores!

Six years ago at the annual December programming "fly-in," Nielsen Audio's clever research crunchers revealed new insights into emerging major market panel samples that still help explain why that may have been happening:

 

• Unlike in diary measurement where lighter users often fail to report their usage, PPM captures it all, so instead of the vast majority of AQH audience coming from heavy users, it's more of a 50/50 proposition.  
• Roughly half of all radio average quarter hour ratings now reflect extremely light, "drive by," perhaps even unintentional use.  Those people listen an average of under three minutes per occasion, bringing average "time spent exposed" when down when compared to diary driven data.
• Heavy users (P-1's) are still in the sample, accounting for about half the usage of the average radio station's shares.  Their average occasion is ten+ times as long as the other half of the sample, typically something like 35 minutes.
• PPM also shows that those heavy users listen to about twice as many radio stations in an average week that they would have written down, on average, when they filled out a listening diary.
• Savvy programmers and researchers have now had more than six years to fully understand these new dynamics and our ability to project results has been improving, but there is still much to learn, but it's important to keep in mind that actual listening has not changed.  
• You can get the about the same number of quarter hours by targeting either group or many more than you did in diaries if you can find a way to bridge the gaps and constantly satisfy both of them.
• Listeners still perceive and make use of radio in the same ways they always have.  It's the measurement techniques and the sample that changed, requiring new usage tactics and perceptual-driven strategies.

What's In It For You?

When it comes to excuses on "why I don't need to do that," I've heard them all.

1.  "I don't need to do remotes or other personal appearances.  It kills the theater of the mind I create.  I'd prefer to use the magic of radio and have them picture me the way they want to.  If they meet me face to face, that's gone."

Nice try.  My theory on this one is that this person is naturally shy and insecure.  Maybe they got into radio so they could be outgoing and be themself without ever having to face rejection.

As their manager/coach, assure them that everyone is insecure and shy and those of us in the entertainment business can't be as successful as our potential if we don't face and overcome that demon.

Sometimes you simply have to force them out of that comfort zone, placing a set number of remote broadcasts and public appearances in their employment agreement so they have no choice but to do them if they want the job.

Make them get out in front of the broadcast desk close to people, looking each listener they meet directly in the eye and repeat the listener's name as least three times as they interact with them. 

Often, this alone fixes the problem as they begin to realize that people who come wanting to meet them enjoy their personality and they have nothing to fear.

2.  "I don't do social media.  My entire show is social."

No, it's not.  It's a broadcast.  If you get too personal on AM/FM radio by playing every request people ask for, using every phone call you get on air without editing them, your ratings are going to go down because your show will be loved by the folks who call, but boring to the mass audience.

If being on the radio for you is just to have people call you and tell you how wonderful you are because you do your show just for them, you're never going to be as successful if you talk to everyone, but do it with a "one to one" vocabulary.

Your task when the microphone is open is to curate everything that is going on right now.  Choose only the best material and maximum value to the listener who chooses to sample you.

Keep them listening longer by being as entertaining and engaging as possible.

Use all of your social tools to build those personal relationships one person at a time.

Tailor which social platforms you use to the tastes of each individual listener.  Use them all, but don't broadcast one post to all of them.  Consider what makes a user of each platform choose that one and make sure they know you understand what makes them unique and special, not just a number in your database.

Need a good example of how this is done?  I have one word for you:  Ellen.

If her great example along with those intellectual/logical explanations don't work, I go for the jugular and tell the personality that failing to use every medium at their disposal in exactly the way its users expect will cost them competitively in the ratings.

To #1:  if you don't get out into the community and also use social and expect the audience to grow every day, you better be the most consistently entertaining personality available to your target in every minute of every day so that they never get tempted to try anything else.  Cume is always going down unless you work hard to keep it growing.

To #2:  If you knew exactly who had ratings diaries or was carrying a Personal People Meter right now, wouldn't you want to take extra care to find out what they are doing, what they like and dislike?

Try this experiment:

Go to the mall and randomly ask people if they have ever participated in the radio ratings.  If you ask 100 people, you'll be lucky to find five who say yes.

At your next public appearance or remote broadcast, ask the very same question (do NOT do it on social platforms or you'll probably get delisted!) and you'll find that as many as one in ten (or even more) answer in the affirmative.

The point is not to do stealth marketing, but to prove to your recalcitrant talent:

The people who reach out to you socially and come out to say hello to you are more than twice as likely as the average person to participate in the radio ratings when they receive that call.

Don't you want as real and close a relationship with them as you can possibly have?

Impersonally Personal

Creating universally relatable emotional experiences driven by personal stories:  that's what the best of AM/FM audio media does to engage more than 90% of the population every day of the week

You can only do that by talking to as large a cume audience as possible - one person at a time - when the microphone is open.  That's called intimacy, and it's our greatest strength.

Each listener feels that you are talking only to her personally, even if he is riding in a van pool with six others.  At some level, they know they are an "audience," but due to theater of the mind it feels like you're talking only to each individual.

When the mic is off, all other hours of the day, live appearances and social media require a completely different approach.

Change gears.  Genuinely talk to each person.  Listen to his story, being as personal in response as possible.  Make each individual who "likes" and "follows" you feel as if you want to get to know him by name, face to face.  This is what makes being an AM/FM personality so important.  As a bonus:  it feels good to do.

There is no other medium that can equal the real, enduring relationships built on mutual trust that doing it consistently well creates.

It's Not Personal

There's a battle of the vehicle and mobile brewing.


No wonder.  Edison Research president Larry Rosin in New York at IAB Digital Audio Agency Day last week:  “We don’t see a lot of evidence of people listening to less AM-FM radio.  It’s that they’re listening to more internet radio.”  He says the research continues to show more ways to listen to audio is driving up total consumption.  

Inside Radio created the chart from Rosin's presentation.

Adding even more credibility, as Pollack Media's Pat Welch blogged, that the 89-90% number comes pretty close to Nielsen's (92%) estimate also just released.

The percentage jumping off the pages is 18-34's use of "personalized radio" and "on-demand music" twice as much. 

“The main advantage of AM-FM remains very much in the car.” Rosin points out that 81% of 18-34s listen to AM-FM while in cars and trucks, compared with just 30% who listen to web radio in that listening location.  In other locations, Millennials report listening to web radio while at home than those who turn on AM-FM (63% vs. 48%).  At work, 41% told Edison they listened to web radio in the past week compared to 31% who said broadcast radio.  “It all breaks down on the nature of the work.  If people are facing a computer screen all day, they’re very likely to be listening to internet radio.”  Digital listening also scored higher among young adults in locations like at the gym, walking around or on public transport. 

“In all of these other (non-car) locations internet radio is being used more,”  according to Rosen.  Edison’s research found reasons include more choice, clearer signal, song ID, more convenient, stations outside their local area, and live event listening.  At the same time, 40% of those same folks told Edison that they’re actually listening to more AM-FM than a year earlier and another 40% said that they're listening about the same amount of time.  Just 20% of 18-34s claimed to be listening to AM-FM less at the same time 70% of them are using more web radio too.  “Audio is a booming category right now and young people are spending more time with more audio options than they have ever before.”

The findings are based on a 2013 online survey of 3,016 people age 12 funded by TuneIn, Spotify and Pandora.  A video of the entire day is posted on Kurt Hanson's RAIN website.

Jukeboxes are not new.  Top 40 radio was famously created when a smart programmer back in the 50's noticed that the majority of people were putting coins in the machine to hear the same songs over and over.

People have been willing to spend money to hear their favorite tune immediately for as long as live performers have been willing to play requests.

AM/FM radio has never been about personalization.  It was smart of the researchers to create new categories of "radio" for this study.  Our success - the "need" we can still fill better than anyone else - is building community with information, universals, relatables and entertainment value.  I don't see anything in this new info on uses of emerging technology to change that.

It would be a mistake for today's AM-FM radio to try to be something new technologies can do better, just as it has been to cut the resources that create the things nothing else can do as well.

The quality of the service - what our talent talk about and music we select - provides to them has more to do with how much time listeners give us than competing technologies.

Those are the best weapons to take to this inpending on-the-road battle.

We all had better take that very personally.

It Was Just One Number

I know that it takes three measurements in a row to create a trend and one stat can easily be a wobble, but when you're looking at an average of every single country station rated nationally by Nielsen slipping even just .2 after several years of growth can be worrisome, as I blogged last year when the country format "Radio Today" was released.

• Was country over-reacting to the exciting growth of the last few years in teens and 18-34, perhaps turning off Gen X?
• If so, would the format that has resisted fragentation for decades by targeting broadly across all narrow demos within 18-49 and especially 25-54 begin to split?

Selling country is tough enough without having to explain why your station wins in the 12-34 age groups while the other guys dominate 35-54.

Perhaps it was my writing last year.  Or, maybe it was just savvy programmers who saw the same thing I did in their local numbers and adjusted.  Or, maybe the new music coming out from artists, writers and producers in the past year was more mass appeal.

Whatever it was, Nielsen had some good news for us last week in what is now called "Audio Today 2014" (each report uses data from the year prior, so Fall 2008 became Radio Today 2009, Fall 2009 became 2010, etc):

Country's 25-34 Share Trend 
Fall 2008:  11.4 *note that this was Country only, we did not start combining Country + New Country until the next edition of Radio Today
Fall 2009:  12.3
Fall 2010:  12.2
Fall 2011:  12.8
Spring 2012:  12.6
Spring 2013: 13.1

After four years of upticks in the center of 25-54, that slip last year had me concerned and now the new stat's move forward is a big relief to see.

It's called "Gen X" because it's a smaller proportion of the population, of course, so the fact that it's contribution to country's cume is lowest of all adult generations is to be expected.

Time spent listening losses drove last year's dip and it's exciting to see it returned to consistent this year with the demo cells on both sides of it, helping support the rebound.

Of course, the latest uptick is just one number too and can't be called a trend yet either, so you'll want to keep a close eye on all narrow cells in our target in local research.

Thanks to this good news from Nielsen (country ranks #2 in teens, #1 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 and #2 55-64 - exactly the demo balance our sellers expect from us) we all have earned the right to gloat a bit right now.

Change

It's terrific to see Nielsen so quickly releasing studies putting radio in a cross-media light (ie., A Loyal Companion: Radio Remains a Great Way to Reach Local Consumers).

Before celebrating the average daily time spent listening of AM-FM radio in 2013 of two hours let's also dig into their archives from the Arbitron days for a historical perspective.

Of course, a decade ago all of the data was diary survey based so comparing "then" to "now" is apples vs oranges, since if we had national PPM data in 2003 cumes would have been higher and hours tuned would have been lower given the differences between top of mind measurement vs actual usage tracking.

Nonetheless, it's worthwhile just between friends to contemplate the biggest change in radio over the decade:

2013:

It would be an oversimplification to focus solely on the 30% loss of time spent listening to all radio documented by our largest ratings company over those ten years, but it's clear that this is no time to be complacent about usage of our medium.

All of us who create today's "radio" are in a battle against time!

We are in a fight for every minute, every listening occasion, every day of our users' increasingly precious time - by giving them more and better than their other choices.

Or the trendline over the coming years will continue to be a downhill slide.

While You Are In A Giving Mood, Mr. Nielsen...

Thank you so very much for the wonderful gifts last week at the Affiliates' Advisory Country meeting.  More stable data, larger samples, allowing all online-terrestrial simulcasts to show up and not just subscribers as well as better in-station monitoring of PPM encoders all have to cost you money and are all long overdue and appreciated!

May I respectfully suggest you do one more thing that will actually save you money?

Stop suing and thus alienating your prospective customers and instead resume the practice of making 6+ and/or 12+ top line data for all of the radio stations in your quarterly "top line data" releases.

Yes, if a rep is dumb enough to ignore the copyright notice and walk into a client with a print out, trying to sell their station using it, go ahead and take them to court.

But, if someone is simply tracking format or station trends with no intention of profiting from the info, please lend a hand to students of radio and start releasing ALL of the top line data to the trades.

That way, both we and you can see the benefits of your very positive moves on everyone's sample.

And, if someone wants to pay a bonus for performance based on 12+, what's the harm?

There is so much info available to any subscribing station both for programming purposes and for sales, a station ignorant enough to try to get business off of a 12+ ranker and nothing more is going to be punished on the streets and you don't need to pay expensive lawyers to rub salt in their wounds.

Thank you, your friend,

-Jaye

$1.3 Billion Is A Lot Of Money

With the approval of Nielsen's takeover of Arbitron, it's dubious that anyone thinks that broadcaster costs are going down anytime soon.

So, since it's fait accompli, let's at least inventory what I hope we all get for the money.

First, thanks to Wired's Tom Valderbilt, some history:

In the years after its founding in Chicago in 1923, the A.C. Nielsen Company thrived, thanks to a commitment to math and technology. While its competitors called random households and asked them what they happened to be listening to on the radio at that moment, Nielsen developed more sophisticated sampling methods. Rather than rely solely on self-reporting, Nielsen employed a device called the Audimeter that used photographic tape to automatically record listening activity. When television arrived, Nielsen used similar meters for viewing—although they were supplemented with paper diaries. But by the late 1950s, Nielsen sat comfortably atop the media-ratings industry. It had few competitors, and since television habits remained static, it had little reason to keep innovating.

Under the terms of the FTC’s approval, as Variety Digital Editor Todd Spangler reports Nielsen must continue to support Project Blueprint, the cross-platform project measuring TV, radio, PC, mobile and tablet engagement that ESPN has been working on with Arbitron and comScore, so perhaps Nielsen CEO David Calhoun's statement (“We are looking forward to providing all of the benefits of the combined company to our new clients in the radio industry and their advertisers, driving incremental value for them as well as our shareholders.”) means that we will all be getting more for the money, better, more reliable data to reflect a more mobile media world.

• Will Nielsen households increase from 25,000 to 75,000 (the national PPM radio panel) at no additional cost to current subscribers?
• Will the increased sample size permit cross-media usage measurement like BBM Canada has been doing since they implemented PPM in 2009, displacing Nielsen's TV measurement?
• Will sample weighting decrease, increasing reliability?
• Will PPM be extended to all TV markets now measured by Nielsen so that radio in those markets gets PPM data at no additional cost?

Skeptics abound, so all eyes will be on Nielsen, starting, perhaps this week, at AdWeek 2013.

After a late 2008 announcement that 50 Cumulus markets were to be measured by Nielsen and a revelation 18 months later that Cumulus CEO Lou Dickey was pleased with the results, the industry never actually saw that public release of the data which was promised, first in June of that year, then later in August and then ultimately Cumulus did not renew their deal with Neilsen, so you'll pardon me if I am fearful.

In February 2010 at Country Radio Seminar, Clear Channel Senior VP/Research Jess Hanson and I attempted to get representatives of the two ratings giants to "take the gloves off," but it turned into a gentle confrontation as then-CEO of Arbitron, Michael Skarzynski ended up a no-show, replaced by the able fencer Dr. Ed Cohen, but Nielsen Media Research's managing director for North America Lorraine Hadfield was ill-equipped to talk competing methodologies with the experienced researcher and stuck to her talking points, meaning that what was billed as a barn-burner actually turned into a good session to catch a nap, which is probably the way both of them had hoped it would be.

Ultimately, as Wired's Vanderbilt wrote, if I may adapt and paraphrase him a bit: "It all adds up to a potentially thrilling new era for radio, television and new media, one that values shows that spark conversations, not just those that hook us for 30 minutes (for TV and just 11 PPM minutes for radio). The stakes are high: Get it right and great programming will continue to thrive. Get it wrong and both the $70 billion television industry and the $16 billion radio business will be in jeopardy—along with your favorite radio station, personality and TV show."

Hopefully, Neilsen makes the most of their huge investment in the future of all U.S. media ratings by improving the value of what they deliver to clients and media buyers .. and wastes no time in doing so.