One of the radio industry’s most respected researchers, Dr. Ed Cohen writes a weekly business column, heavily focused on ratings research for Barrett Media. His career experiences include serving as VP of Ratings and Research at Cumulus Media, occupying the role of VP of Measurement Innovation at Nielsen Audio, and its predecessor Arbitron. While with Arbitron, Cohen spent five years as the company's President of Research Policy and Communication, and eight years as VP of Domestic Radio Research. Dr. Ed has also held the title of Vice President of Research for iHeartMedia/Clear Channel, and held research positions for the National Association of Broadcasters and Birch/Scarborough Research. He is adjunct faculty in the Department of Broadcast Communications at Western Kentucky University and welcomes your thoughts. Reach him by email at doctoredresearch@gmail.com.
If higher ratings will help business, this potential change will give the industry one more year to come up with a plan to either bring Nielsen’s prices down by trading cost for a less granular service, or to find and encourage competitors to come into the radio space.
In my view, for the sake of the industry and its future, Nielsen needs to relent, but I can’t see this happening while the company is owned by private equity.
"There's a tendency that businesses have to hold things close to the vest... David and I don't believe that's a good strategy. Telling our story is important for everyone involved with Locked On."
What piece of information, what opinion, what story did you share that someone felt so moved by that they'd bring it up with a coworker or fire off a text about it? If the honest answer is "I don't know," that's the problem worth solving.