December 1, 2014
Since so much of the news about radio ratings tends to focus on markets using Nielsen Audio’s PPM electronic audience measurement system, it’s easy to forget just how many markets, stations and listeners are still surveyed using paper diaries.
In a post over the holiday weekend, Inside Tucson Business columnist John Schuster details just what the whole diary process is like, revealing his own experience with keeping a Nielsen diary (although throughout the feature he refers to the ratings company by its former name ‘Arbitron‘). Schuster indicates that the experience actually did make him pay more active attention to what he was listening to as he completed his Thurday through Wednesday task of receiving his diary and then manually documenting his radio listening in it for seven days.
“The system is outdated because Tucson is considered too small a market to bother with upgraded PPM (People Meter) ratings equipment,” he writes. “The folks at Arbitron (sic) are really nice, but call a lot to try to beg you to return the outdated diaries, and they supply participants with crisp, sequentially ordered dollar bills — five of them total.”
Read more HERE.
