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Last month, Nielsen announced that the New York PPM monthlies for June and July 2024 would be reissued because the company had an incorrect age for one of the panelists. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the individual was 50 years old while Nielsen had the person’s age as 49. Let’s talk about how reissues work.
In this case, the age discrepancy matters because the panelist’s listening was included in the 18-49 demographic (as well as 25-49, 35-49, etc.). More importantly, their daily weights will change which would potentially revise the estimates and ranks. Remember that Nielsen weights the data on discrete age cells and because we want to see demos ending in both 49 and 54, the 45-54 demo is split into 45-49 and 50-54 for weighting purposes. That means smaller sample sizes and a greater opportunity for large weights.
Even in New York, market number one, the sample size in these cells is small. So, a change for one person changes the weights for every panelist in those cells. Remember, a PPM monthly is the average of 28 one-day surveys and panelists have different weights each day because the sample is different every day (not everyone wears their meter every day). I hope this makes sense to you once you get past the initial reaction of “It’s 2024, how can the industry be dependent on a system that works this way?”.
This reissue will be an even greater pain in the butt for Nielsen than what is noted above. My assumption is Nationwide data for the New York DMA will also have to be reissued, and for two quarters!
When Dave Willinski was in charge of this aspect of policy in the Arbitron days (I used to refer to Dave as the “Diary Detective”), many reissues resulted from someone in the business getting their hands on diaries, whether directly or indirectly. He said it was typically jilted ex-spouses or ex-lovers that would turn in their former other half. In other words, if you’re going to cheat (and please don’t as it can be a career-killer), don’t tell your spouse or significant other.
Also, if you’re going to cheat, don’t use industry terminology. When I worked the TV side at Clear Channel in the ‘90s, Bob Paine at Nielsen called me about a problem with some Albany TV diaries. They were apparently filled in by an employee of our Fox affiliate. One of the giveaways was that few TV viewers ever wrote in “Paid Programming” as the program being viewed.
Sometimes, diary editors make systematic mistakes that matter, such as confusing a station name and crediting the wrong station. Other times, it was a processing error. Shortly after joining Arbitron in 1999 following my Clear Channel tenure, Arbitron reissued Fort Myers-Naples because of a previous mistake. The general manager at Clear Channel had a letter from Arbitron stating the issue wouldn’t happen again, but it did. We didn’t want to reissue, but when the letter was produced, the market was reissued.
Only media research geeks can have a “favorite reissue” and mine was in late December 2018 when every PPM market had to be reissued or re-run for the December monthly. Somehow, one day of the month was left out of the calculations. I was reviewing New York for Cumulus and checked the day-by-day estimates. On one day, every station in the market had a zero AQH with minimal cume. The only way iHeart’s WLTW could get a zero in New York during the Christmas season was if a neutron bomb wiped out the entire population of the New York metro. I hadn’t heard that news, so it had to be a Nielsen error.
It wasn’t easy to find anyone at work at Nielsen during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I eventually tracked down my friend Danny Monistere and he got the ball rolling. Every released PPM market was reissued and the ones that had not been released were re-run. Kudos also to Dr. Gary Heller at Audacy who was only a couple of hours behind me in discovering that fiasco.
Reissues can happen for any number of reasons and while Nielsen has developed policies over the years, there is still nuance involved. How bad does the “error” need to be for a reissue to take place, assuming someone finds the bug? Generally, look for a change in rank in the top stations in a key selling demo/daypart.
If a post-reissue change would have station A moving up from 18th to 17th, forget it. If Station A moves up from 4th to 2nd in P25-54, that’s reissue territory. Market size can play a role, too. The top ten stations in Los Angeles may matter while in Bowling Green, it may be the top three. Much like penalties in hockey, reissues can be a judgment call.
There are times when tampering results in the removal of the household from the panel with no reissue. I was involved in one in a Cumulus market that decimated a competitor, but you never heard about it. We had another one that Nielsen never acted on. The PD for our station reached out to me that he chatted up someone in the VIP area of a local concert. The individual was not in radio nor had a link to the performers. He was a friend of a competitive PD because his household had meters or that’s what he claimed. Nielsen was never able to find the household.
Reissues are a double-edged sword. You may not believe it, but Nielsen wants to ‘do the right thing’ despite the problems caused by reissues. Reissues upset media plans that are already in place in the market, which is why Nielsen looks for situations that are likely to directly affect commerce or bring the integrity of the survey into question.
While reissues make the trade press headlines, they are actually few and far between considering the volume of data that Nielsen handles each year and the number of reports the company issues. This isn’t being a ‘Nielsen apologist’ but instead the result of ‘been there, done that’ for a lot of years. I think we can agree that we’d rather see Nielsen reissue when warranted than stonewall and cover up mistakes.
Let’s meet again next week.
