Near the end of the last century, Apple came out with a slogan that resonated with many consumers: “Think Different.” Many radio people have said the same thing in recent years, and the slew of poor earnings announcements for the second quarter of 2025 from publicly held radio groups should be accelerating that conversation.
As a researcher, I look at radio’s problems from my little part of the world: the ratings. Ever since I entered the industry about 50 years ago, complaining about the ratings has been an art form. No one ever liked Arbitron as a business, even if the people were good folks, and today not many have good things to say about Nielsen Audio. When your career prospects are contingent on whether someone wears a watch on a given day or a near-illiterate draws a line in a paper diary, that’s an unusual way to make a living.
Regardless, what we’ve had from the radio or audio ratings system is methodological continuity. The diary service goes back to the mid-’60s and, other than the Jerry Lee and COLRAM-led diary update in the mid-’80s, has endured in nearly the same form for six decades. PPM was first used to measure radio audiences in Houston and Philadelphia nearly 20 years ago, but Arbitron’s initial patents for the system date back to 1995.
Some aspects of the methodology, notably around recruitment, have changed as we moved from landlines to cell phones. But a programmer who retired in 1970 could look at a 2025 ratings report and probably understand the data. Of course, that programmer would ask, “Why don’t I have a printed book, and what happened to the sideways style?” If you don’t know what that’s about, ask an old radio person!
We still have average quarter hour and cume. Reach and frequency models require both, and radio sells off the AQH number. Some of you have bonuses based on AQH, typically on rank. Yet the idea of an average quarter hour audience in a world that has become digital-focused is completely outdated.
I’ll spare you the history because what matters is the present and the future. The media world has moved to “impressions,” and digital has done well with this measure. I’ve written before that an ad appearing for two seconds on 50% of a website counts as being viewed—therefore, an impression. Not to mention that at least a quarter of all digital “impressions” are “viewed” by bots. When I’ve mentioned that assertion to friends in the business, the typical reaction is that the reported percentage is low. Yet advertisers and agencies keep spending more on digital.
Meanwhile, depending on the market, it takes three or five minutes—not seconds—to create anything for radio AQH or cume, unless those minutes cross a clock quarter hour, in which case there is no audience.
Why do we put up with this mismatch? Stations pay an inordinate amount of money to Nielsen, which then creates estimates that set far higher standards for radio audiences than those for the digital world.
If you think this column is another “Nielsen Sucks” exercise, you’re wrong. Sure, there is much to complain about with respect to the service, but Nielsen is simply continuing a legacy measurement system that has withstood any number of challenges over the years. I can speak from personal experience, having held the title of Director of Research at Birch/Scarborough when the staff was informed of the service’s shutdown in December 1991.
Some operators have decided to forge on without Nielsen. In a handful of cases, they’ve chosen Nielsen’s far smaller competitor, Eastlan. In some cases, the question is whether stations can go without a measurement service entirely. That’s an ROI issue. Is the return on the price of Nielsen data still a strong positive? If you’re in a major market, you may be dealing with a large number of agencies that use the data and still buy radio. For national buys, data is necessary.
But is there enough business coming in to make a fair multiple of the cost of Nielsen data? I can’t answer that question, but market managers, regional managers, and of course CEOs have the data and can decide.
If the system as it stands today is not “fit for purpose,” what should replace it? It’s not reasonable to think that the entire radio and audio industry can move forward with no independent measurement system. The question is, in 2025 and beyond, what data to collect, how to collect it, and what metrics to report? Lurking behind those questions is the bugbear of how much such a system should cost.
In the coming weeks, I’ll put some meat on the bones of this thought process, outlining ideas for a new system. The time has come for the industry to determine whether the current system makes sense anymore. If it doesn’t, let’s consider alternatives.
For those of you attending the BNM Summit and the celebration of Barrett Media’s tenth anniversary in New York this week, I hope you have a great time. Sadly, I’ll miss the summit and the bash, but if you’re there, enjoy!
Let’s meet again next week.
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