Arbitron’s Portable People Meter & it effect on Hispanic Radio.

By now almost everyone in the media industry has heard about Arbitron’s latest attempt to improve its present day system of “diary keeping” to a new and supposedly “improved” method of electronic measurement called the “Portable People Meter”- PPM. This new technology has already replaced the diary in two major markets- Houston and Philadelphia. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose are scheduled to follow in the Fall of this year.

The transition has been far from smooth. In fact, for some broadcasters it has been an extremely tumultuous ride with potentially dire consequences. What has happened? Well most of us knew from examining what happened in the Philadelphia market first and then in Houston that formats that appealed to an Urban or Hispanic listener were going to have a much harder time getting the same results as they had in the diary world when compared with this new methodology. The results in both Philadelphia and Houston showed a dramatic falloff in the stations that serviced the Urban and Hispanic audiences; far greater than the typically projected 20-30% drop offs in average audience deliveries. No one could have forecasted what was about to happen in New York. Arbitron had planned all along to begin the official “switch” from the diary method to PPM on December 31st last year starting with what it termed a “pre-currency” period. During this time (October to December 2007) the PPM ratings were going to be released into the marketplace but only for the purpose of getting it acclimated to the system and its unique peculiarities.

What happened? Quite Simply …the falloffs for the Spanish-language radio stations were dramatic in audience size, ranking and most importantly the actual time that panelists reported listening to their favorite radio stations. Some stations were off by more than 70% in average quarter hour delivery and the lofty rank positions some of them held in the most recent diary findings were vanquished in this new technology. How bad? Look at the real hard facts….WSKQ ranked # 2 in the Fall Arbitron (12+ M-Su 6A-12M) fell to 5th in the October PPM (pre-currency) and to 9th in the very last PPM survey this past March. WPAT who ranked number 7th (but has been as high as 4th in recent books) fell to 15th in October.

Making matters worse is that the “big” selling point for this new technology has been that the PPM method in general will report higher CUME numbers than the diary method. From what we can see when comparing October to March PPM data the entire Hispanic listening audience as reflected by CUME numbers is shrinking in the NY ADI. The Hispanic universe that measured 6.6M in October fell to 5.5M in March-so what seems to be the “strong selling” point begins to lose its luster in this new world for the Hispanic radio market. To complicate matters even farther this new service seems to indicate that “Spanish-speaking” radio listeners are “now” listening more to English-language radio stations than it was reported in the diary. Could this have anything to do with the way Arbitron has decided to measure the Hispanic listening audience? Arbitron selects the Hispanic panelist by primarily asking one question – “do you speak Spanish at home?” They feel that this question alone can differentiate Spanish dominant listeners from the rest of the market. Apart from that there is nothing in their research that measures or reflects the listener’s “country of origin” as it pertains to the Hispanic listener. Needless to say we have serious concerns with both issues.

Why do the Hispanic and Urban stations seem to be most affected by the results as reported in PPM according to Arbitron? Arbitron believes that most of the problem lies in the fact that Urban and Hispanic listeners have traditionally reported “more” listening using the recall diary method. Quite simply the “fans” of these radio stations say they listen much more often to their favorite radio stations making the “time spent listening” always among the highest in almost any metropolitan market. New York was no different. That goes away in this type of measurement because what the portable meter measures is “exposure” to a signal not the “likes or dislikes” of the listener. Can the difference be that great? In New York the TSL (Time Spent Listening) levels dropped from a range of 65% to 93% for all the Hispanic stations measured in the February PPM when compared to the Fall Arbitron numbers. The difference was night and day and the results were felt in the numbers we reported beforehand. The question is this….were the ratings that we have been given via the diary that tainted? Aren’t these the very same ratings and information given to us in the fall and now in February/March coming from the very same company? Which ones are we to believe and how come the only “formats” adversely affected are Urban and Hispanic?

We know that there is “something” wrong here…Arbitron knows that there is something wrong but no one knows how to fix it. This much is certain IT HAS TO BE FIXED! If not the legacy of PPM will be that it changed the landscape of radio as we now know it by eventually driving more broadcasters away from formats that service the Black and Hispanic communities.

No one needs that!

Frank Flores
VP & GM
WSKQ-FM & WPAT-FM
New York
Spanish Broadcasting System