[BC] NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULE MAKING - Revitalization of the AMRadio Service

[James B. Potter]

Robertm:  

Thank you for the clarification. However, I have heard many times over the
years from multiple sources, some of them insiders,  that the major
consolidators and some independents claim the entire populations of their
COLs and well beyond as listeners for advertising purposes -- a highly
objectionable and fraudulent practice.  How do the big stations account for
their audiences for, say, Coast-to-Coast AM overnight? Diary recording?  No,
they estimate the populations within their claimed nighttime coverage
boundaries and sell from there.  My employment experience with a few large
stations instructs me that old coverage maps from a consultant in the
mid-l950s are reproduced and handed to sales personnel for showing to
potential advertising customers.  One of the major AM stations here in
Springfield, MO, uses such a map to show coverage down to Little Rock, AR,
whereas it barely hits Branson 40 miles south. Etc.  I am highly skeptical
of audience claims, even with diary recording.  The big booming 'blow
torches' do sometimes propagate overnight under good atmospheric conditions
and with a tail wind, but certainly not reliably enough to claim regional
audiences. But I don't have a better suggestion, either.  Probably a more
reliable way to estimate audience size would be to do what NYC TV stations
did in the early 1950s -- Build an AWACS forerunner -- equipped a retired
military airplane with sensitive receivers to pick up the local oscillators
of the TV sets radiated back through the roof antennas in Levittown to count
how many households listened to which channels, particularly on Ed Sullivan
nights -- a practice subsequently outlawed on the basis of privacy invasion.
But it worked technically, and was a believable basis for extrapolation,
albeit illegal.  

Thanks/Regards/J

Behalf Of Robertm
Revitalization of the AMRadio Service

>That may have been true 40 years ago but time buying is much more
sophisticated now. The buyers have real metrics and rarely buy one station.
It is not so much about how big one station is but more about how many
stations can be bundled into a buy.