Arbitron Radio Needs 3 Years To Implement Language-Preference Weighting?
January 3, 2003
President/U.S. Media Services Owen Charlebois sent a letter to the major Spanish broadcasters and Hispanic ad agencies, stating that the reason that we needed the additional time to formulate the high-level timeline for the project plan is that their current processing system requires an end-to-end reengineering in order accommodate the addition of new features and options such as weighting Hispanic diaries by language preference.
Below is the text of Arbitron’s letter to the Hispanic Broadcasters:
Dear Broadcaster:
In November, we announced Arbitron’s commitment to enhancing our Radio Market Report services by implementing weighting by the language preference of Hispanic diarykeepers, and that we would discuss the timing and other details of the project plan early in 2003.
The reason that we needed the additional time to formulate the high-level timeline for the project plan is that our current processing system requires an end-to-end reengineering in order accommodate the addition of new features and options such as weighting Hispanic diaries by language preference.
Today, we are writing to tell you that we anticipate that the reengineering of our software systems will be completed by the Winter 2006 survey; roughly three years from today.
While this means that language weighting will not be a component of our syndicated local market reports before the Winter 2006 survey, we have been exploring a number of options for interim services that would provide the industry with the benefits of language weighting while our processing systems are being reengineered. Today, we are presenting to you, and the industry, a specific proposal for an interim Hispanic radio ratings service.
Specifically, we have found a way to add language weighting as an enhancement to an existing Arbitron product—our Hispanic Market Service (formerly known as the Hispanic Tape Service). Based solely on the Hispanic diaries extracted from our syndicated reports, the Hispanic Market Service is used today by more than 250 advertising agencies that plan and buy a significant portion of the dollars spent nationally on Hispanic radio.
The Hispanic Market Service is a robust, full-featured summary data set that runs through TAPSCAN® as well as Donovan, Strata, and other third-party processing systems used by agencies, advertisers and radio stations across the United States. It is an important tool that advertisers and agencies currently use when planning and placing commercial schedules to reach Hispanic listeners.
A key factor that determines when and for how many markets we can add language weighting to the Hispanic Market Service is the availability of appropriate universe estimates for the language preference of Hispanics. We are currently working with Nielsen Media Research to gain access to their estimates so that we can determine if their DMA® household information can provide acceptable universe estimates at the persons level for radio Metros.
We are hopeful that our current due diligence with Nielsen Media Research will yield universe estimates that can be applied at the persons level within radio Metros, and that are acceptable to the industry and the Media Rating Council. If this happens by November, we believe we could use the Hispanic Market Service to deliver estimates of radio listening by Hispanics, weighted for language preference in a select number of markets with the delivery of the Summer/Fall 2003 combined survey. The Summer/Fall 2003 Hispanic Market Service is slated to be processed and delivered in February 2004.
This e-mail represents the start of a conversation we would like to have with you about our proposal. On February 6, we are holding a WebEx and teleconference presentation open to all our customers to review our proposal in detail, as well as other options that we have been exploring. Also in that call, we will want to hear your thoughts about this proposed interim step prior to the full implementation of language weighting. Very shortly, we will be e-mailing an invitation to you with instructions on how you can participate.
Now that we have unveiled this proposal, Arbitron plans to begin a period of intense consultation with all of our customers—broadcasters, agencies and advertisers. Our goal is to gather input on this proposal throughout February and March and announce a decision about the implementation of this interim service by the end of April.
Thank you.
Owen Charlebois
President, U.S. Media Services
To view features and capabilities of the current Hispanic Market Service CLICK below:
http://www.arbitron.com/radio_stations/hispanicservice.htm
