[BC] Arbitron

[Rich Wood]

------ At 02:56 PM 7/23/2009, Jeff Johnson wrote: -------

>Rich, what has the PPM done to public stations in major markets? We are in
>a large market - Cincinnati - and have long TSL to our AAA music format .
>Of course we have no national buys and rely to a considerable extent on
>membership, so how are stations like ours doing in the PPM markets?

By the looks of it, News/Talk stations are doing very well, in 
general. Like all formats that did well in the diary, the ones with 
unique, well-programmed formats still seem to do about as well as the 
diary.  Like anything with ratings there's a lot of alchemy involved. 
By the TSL standard WLTW, New York, should have dropped like a stone. 
It didn't. It has high TSL. Basically, high cuming stations seem to do well.

I think it's far too soon to overreact, as Smooth Jazz has done. This 
is very new technology coupled with very new methodology. It took us 
years to psyche out the diary until we figured out how program to the 
diary rather than listeners. It made for sucky sounding radio that 
got ratings. We're not far into it and the lawsuits and politicians 
who have no authority over it haven't completely done their damage.

It's now turned into a racial issue when ethnic stations lose 
numbers. This is going to be a long road.

Rich