Radio has been reviewed by Arbitral Diaries for years. The basic formula is that people are randomly selected in a certain area and asked to keep track of the radio stations they listen to daily for a whole week. This is then ERA Calculator and determines everything from station ratings to music changes to earnings etc. However, this archaic measure is going out the door.
Radio is finally catching up to the latest technologies with the advent of a device called the ‘Portable People Meter’. This is a small device that can be placed in a person’s pants and forgotten about for a while. It then listens for signals and automatically records the information. So all listening is now taken into account and the rating system will be more accurate than ever. In the past, people tended to go with their favorite station or not record any stations because they didn’t know exactly what station they were listening to at the time.
Services recently launched in Philadelphia and Houston and will head to New York in the fall. It looks like PPM will be in the top 50 markets for 2010.
So what does all this mean?
PPM could lead to major changes in the way radio companies program their stations. In the past, it was all about reminding listeners what station they were listening to and constantly reminding them. Since this doesn’t matter anymore, you can listen to more music and talk less, less competition and fewer features on radio stations of many formats.
It also appears that rock stations and early music stations are favored by the PPM. Latino stations, which often prefer dailies, could be a less favorable format in the future. It will be very interesting to see what happens with everything from dance stations to Christian and religious stations, talk stations, hip hop stations, etc.
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