They told you so!

BIGresearch VP/Strategy Phil Rist brought up an article the company wrote for us in January 2006, that might explain some of the PPM issues the industry is dealing with today. Said Rist: "If radio industry leaders would have listened to our warning signal in Jan-2006, they wouldn't be so frustrated now. BIGresearch identified the problems with the PPM almost two years ago and that its rollout would be detrimental to the radio industry. Where was radio's leadership?  Broadcasters might as well turn over the keys to the Arbitron-Ad Agency cabal that is controlling their destiny...or they can take back their industry."

He adds that BIGresearch doesn't compete with Arbitron.  "Our message in Jan-2006 was as 'ex-radio guys' who where mystified that the current leadership in the radio industry couldn't see the potential train wreck coming."

The article highlights the problems with PPM, saying its purpose is to discriminate a radio program from "noise." It, however, picks up unintended sound and interprets all data as listening. However, all hearing is not listening as listening refers to something one attends to which may be radio as foreground or background. Yet PPM can not discriminate the difference. As well, while marketers are seeking insights into the impact of media which fragment the audiences, (blogging, IM, Satellite, I-PODS, Picture Phone, etc.) into even smaller audiences, PPM appears only to be able to deliver a gross audience estimate of radio listening/hearing. HD radio will add thousands of new stations and dozens of large markets. How will PPM measure fragmentation where markets may grow by a factor of 2 or 3?
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