On The Kowch Blog For Week Of March 14
UPDATE
REACTION TO LAST WEEK'S BLOG
US Media Guru Mark Ramsey
Disagrees with BBM's Jim MacLeod
From where I sit On The Kowch, we hit a nerve last week with BBM Canada President Jim MacLeod's comments on a controversial US PPM study. Read MacLeod's comments in the box on the right hand side of this page.
This week US media guru Mark Ramsey's is critical of MacLeod's comments. Ramsey was the first in America to blog about Broadcast Architecture's interview with 13 people in Houston who told them how they cheated the system to earn extra money from Arbitron.
Click here to view the video of Ramsey's interview with Broadcast Architecture president Allen Kepler who conducted the controversial PPM study in the US.
MacLeod says he was amazed that Broadcast Architecture accepted the claims of the people interviewed as fact without independent verification. MacLeod was also critical of the study because only 13 people were interviewed.
Click here to read what Ramsey wrote about MacLeod's criticism of the PPM study.
The eight women and five men revealed how they cheated the system by hooking PPM meters to a ceiling fan. Wore more than one PPM at a time if someone in the house forgot to take it with them. PPMs have to be in motion to capture the inaudible signal of radio stations to record the listening habits of the person registered to carry the unit.
The more the PPM is in motion collecting data, the more money the person makes. Cheating the system helped some people earn $150 to $200 a month. The average compensation for someone who agrees to carry a PPM is $25 to $30 a month.
To read the executive summary of the Broadcast Architecture study click here
From where I sit On The Kowch, both BBM and Arbitron need to be more transparent and reveal to broadcasters immediately any irregularities on the part of people participating in the PPM surveys.
They also need to explain to broadcasters what steps are being taken to prevent these irregularities from compromising the accuracy of the ratings in that particular market.
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Comments
McLeod's comments are fair and reasonable about Broadcast Architecture's "study", given that no audience ratings system is perfect. Not even a census counts everybody.
Perhaps I'm more empathetic with Mcleod because I know and respect him, am a Canadian broadcaster and have been a senior executive of BBM in my past life. I know the challenges BBM faces to get it right.
The fact remains, PPM with all its warts, is an huge improvement over the diary which---especially in highly fragmented major markets---is overwhelmed and cannot possibly reflect exposure to a radio station as well. I'm not talking listening vs hearing. That's a separate issue.
The diary is now a reflection of how well radio stations capture "top of mind" through promotion, not programming.
that hundreds maybe thousands of people in the radio business have lost their livelihoods because of a poorly conceived ratings tool that is actually worse than the one it replaced. Yet knowing now what we do now about just how inaccurate and flawed it is, we do nothing about it, and hope that no one will notice.
We were all force fed the Kool Aid of accepting without questioning and now have to live with the results - results which have turned the business on its ear, and sucked all the creativity out of it. Where radio was once an industry that enabled and encouraged creativity, it now stifles in the name of PPM.