More Accurate Radio Listenership Data

For millennia. . .okay. . . for decades at least, radio station listenership numbers were determined by handing several hundred people in a given radio market a diary in which they were supposed to dutifully record their listening choices and habits.

It was a pretty dicey system but fortunes in advertising revenues were at stake. A Program Director's fate could hinge on those quarterly numbers.

An article in the online version of the Wall Street Journal reveals that Arbitron's new "People Meters" are showing just how inaccurate the old diary system was. In fact, according the article, a station in Philadelphia just switched formats from Spanish-Latin Pop to Alt Rock based on surprsing new data.

An excerpt:

"The People Meter, a pager-sized device that automatically registers what radio station survey participants are listening to, is already yielding more specific -- and, in some cases, surprising -- data. The results from the first two markets indicate that people flip among stations more frequently than they say, that men listen to significantly more radio than women and that employed people listen a lot more than people who don't work. While the diary system pointed to some of these findings, it typically missed how broad they are."

Here's the whole article if it's not locked up behind WSJ's subscription-only wall: