John Higdon wrote:

There is no use asking if the air is any good if that's all there is to
breathe. The fact is that from inside the industry, the grumbling over
the sample size (and hence the granularity and accuracy) of the ratings
sucks.

Arbitron used diaries. Nielsen does surveys. Pulse and Hooper I believe
relied mainly on telephone calls. Well, Pulse and Hooper are out of business,
probably because advertisers found them lacking.

But Arbitron and Nielsen are still around. And responding to demand, Arb
introduced the PPM to replace diaries. What's amazing is how little this
dramatic change in sampling methodology has changed the standings of stations.

About the only major complaint is that "minority stations" that used to get
credit when people listed them in diaries are apparently hurting. It seems
that people didn't *really* listen to those stations nearly as much as they
listen to the more mainstream stations.


Arbitron remains in business because there is no competition, and the
major broadcasters are too lazy to do anything else.

I'm not so sure about that. Stations have music focus groups which they
either conduct themselves or via an outside agency. Surely they could
contract with some agency to do polling for them if they felt they'd get
anything substantially better than what they get right now.