Sounding Out More Complete Ratings

In George Orwell’s “1984,” Big Brother always knew what his constituents were watching on television, because he was looking through their screens and watching them. Now Arbitron, the radio ratings service, wants to eavesdrop on what you’re listening to.

But the goal isn’t world domination. Like anything to do with ratings, it all comes down to money--a more accurate gauge of listening habits, so stations know what to charge their advertisers.

That increased accuracy is supposed to come from the service’s new Portable People Meters, which it has been testing in Philadelphia for two years. But the new, pager-like devices are showing Arbitron and station owners something they didn’t know: a lot more people are listening to radio than they realized.

“Radio has always been looked at as a stepchild to TV,” said Peter Smyth, president and chief executive of Boston-based Greater Media Inc., which owns four stations in Philadelphia that participated in the test. “I think radio has always been under-measured.”

Currently, radio ratings are tallied from weekly diaries in which volunteers write about their listening habits. In contrast, the People Meters are worn all day, and a sensitive microphone picks up encoded signals from any radio station, TV station, cable channel or even Internet broadcast the wearer hears, recording the time and duration that it’s heard.

“It is as passive as you can get. We designed it so the consumer doesn’t have to think about the record-keeping,” said Thom Mocarsky, Arbitron’s vice president of communications. “Radio has been thumping at us for years, ‘Give us something better than the diary.’ ”

He said diary respondents tended to round up or down when writing listening times, “so there are sins of omission.”

“You’re going to write down stations you listen to all the time,” he said, but omit--intentionally or not--ones you only sample occasionally, or are forced to hear because your carpool driver wants it on, for instance. And the Philadelphia tests confirmed that theory, he said.

Diary keepers for the winter 2002 ratings--covering January, February and March--showed only one radio station reaching as much as 20% of the listening audience in Philadelphia. But during a test in April, the People Meters showed 15 stations hitting that mark. According to the winter quarter ratings, the area’s top-rated station, adult contemporary WBEB-FM, reached 17% of the area’s audience. But the People Meters showed 51% of Philadelphia listeners heard WBEB at some point during the month. The reach for Greater Media’s rock station WMMR-FM jumped from 10% to 30%, for example.

Station owners have long argued they had more listeners than the ratings indicated, their supposition based on the number of people attending live remotes or station concerts, or registering online for perks. Mocarsky said the People Meters are uncovering this phantom audience. And if stations can prove they have more listeners, they can charge more for advertising.

But many broadcasters, even though they live and die by incremental changes in their ratings numbers, are not yet ready to embrace the new technology. They want more testing in other cities, and more information about the system’s accuracy and expense.

“I’m not trying to be obstructionist at all,” Greater Media’s Smyth said. “I want all the bugs to be worked out in test markets before this becomes the commerce of radio. What’s the rush? There’s a lot of money at stake here.”

Last year, ad revenue totaled $18.4 billion, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau, the industry’s sales and marketing arm.

Representatives of nine major radio chains met Monday and laid out their concerns about the People Meters, including the cost of switching from diaries to meters, and how the system would account for someone listening to the radio in the shower, for example, or on headphones.

Mocarsky said Arbitron wants to work with the industry but stressed that the testing in Philadelphia isn’t done yet. He added that the new system will be expensive, for stations and Arbitron alike. But the meters can also compile information about TV and cable viewing, so Arbitron is trying to arrange a joint venture with Nielsen Media Research, the television ratings company, to use the meters to gather numbers for it too. Arbitron will save by splitting costs with Nielsen, he said, and the service will cost less if radio, TV and cable channels are all using it.

He wouldn’t comment, though, on how much the People Meters and the 10 years of research behind them are costing Arbitron.

“Can radio afford a lot of meters by themselves? No. But if you share with TV and cable, everybody is contributing to one sample,” thus reducing the cost, Mocarsky said. In addition, that consolidation means the sample can include more people, ostensibly making it more accurate.

If Arbitron and Nielsen embark on a joint venture, Mocarsky said People Meters will start landing in a few other major markets next year, and will be measuring the top 100 markets by 2008.

The meter is a palm-sized, 2.6-ounce device, which, in addition to the microphone, has a motion sensor, so Arbitron knows if it’s being used or not. The company pays volunteers about $20 to participate, more or less depending on how much the device moves around. The participant plugs the meter into a charger before going to bed, and it calls Arbitron via modem in the middle of the night and downloads the information from that day.

But Mocarsky stressed the privacy of the system--personal identifiers are never attached to the numbers, and information about participants is “never, ever, ever, ever” sold to a third party. He also said no one involved has yet expressed any “Big Brother” misgivings.

“It’s not like we walked into the house and said, ‘Put this on.’ They chose to take part. They’re either in or they’re out.”

Los Angeles station owner Saul Levine said he’ll welcome the meters. Levine, owner of the classical KMZT-FM (105.1) and adult standards KSUR-AM (1260), believes the diary system has never accurately measured his audience--older and more upscale than average, and less willing to bother filling out the paperwork.

“The Philadelphia survey, it measured older listening, older persons listening, better than the diary method, and of course the conglomerates wouldn’t like that,” he said. “They’re based on their stations having this youth appeal, big numbers, and that’s what they’re getting the agencies to buy these days.”

He said the large radio chains manipulate Arbitron, counting on listeners to procrastinate and fill out their diaries from memory at the end of the week or month, and holding attention-grabbing contests at those times.

“What it really boils down to is, apparently the People Meter would measure actual listening,” Levine said, which is not what the major chains want. “They like it the way it is, so they can have a contest, give a car away on the day people are filling out their diaries, and do anything they can except measure actual listening.”

But the program director at Power 106, L.A.’s No. 2 station in the winter ratings, says he’s “really optimistic” about the promise of the People Meters.

“The manually filled out diary system has been dated for some time,” said Jimmy Steal, program director of hip-hop KPWR-FM (105.9) and regional vice president for Emmis, which also owns country station KZLA-FM (93.9).

“If the People Meter delivers higher accuracy, and it looks like it does, I can’t imagine broadcasters being afraid of that. Radio will have a more compelling case for advertisers,” he said.

“When it’s electronic and automatic, it seems the downside is a lot less than when we’re relying on recall.”