CON GAMES: The People Meter That Ate Talk Radio
MARINA DEL REY, CALIFORNIA — In this crazy mixed-up Google-eyed world of new media, nothing will drive old-line linotype types bonkers quicker than the newbie notion that you can actually measure your audience by the jot.
If you look at newspapers and magazines — if you look a print, period, no pun intended — you can lay their troubles on the generic Internet if you like, but more to the point is the brave new world of actual automatic audience measurement. More than anything else, this ultimately explains why print will remain forevermore in the crapper, for the simple and irrevocable reason that their audience measurement is nothing more than a guess-case scenario. In the economic nosedive, those who have heretofore turned to print now ask themselves: why am I spending so much money when I don’t even know who I’m reaching?This should have been nothing but good news for the talkers at the Radio and Records Talk Radio Seminar assembled here in the Bayview Room here on the tippy-top floor at the Marriott Marina Del Rey — a sweeping view even on a smoggy, foggy day — but their chagrin on actual audience measurement was palpable. Whether the presenters were from Nielsen, Arbitron, or elsewhere, the very real sea-change in the industry coming ashore is the Portable People Meter (PPM).
Unlike the more traditional hand-written diaries, the People Meters actually register and report whether a radio show is being heard — in fifteen minute increments, an important twist, as you’ll soon see. But the Talk Radio types high above La-La Land weren’t seeing it that way, because the People Meter is turning ratings upside down.
The best example: Reverend Al Sharpton — yes, he has his own talk show — plunged from #5 to #21 in one market after People Meters were installed, indicating that the traditional diaries were not even within the margin of error when it came to actual audience measurement.
People just don’t like change in radio or anywhere else, but my guess-case scenario is that People Meter’s will prove radio’s salvation. If you can’t really measure your audience in the near-and-present future — and thus gauge the precise impact of advertising — you are going to be adrift in the bay without a paddle. That’s a fact and you can only fake it for so long.
The People Meters may be an annoyance for now but in the long run it provides radio with an answer that print will never cough up.
So what’s the problem? The fifteen-minute increments mean that the clock re-starts for programmers every fifteen minutes. Why? Because advertisers have been doing it that way for television, and if listeners don’t listen for at least five minutes every fifteen then they count as zero. That presages nothing less than a revolution, and not necessarily a good one, in the way radio is programmed, as radio types do everything they can to get people to tune in and then again, and then again….
In the meantime, of course, there will be fear and loathing, but as a new-born radio guy I can tell you talk is here to stay — as long as you know who’s listening.
