The manure hits the fan in Bob Neil's conference call

He may have signed a contract for Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) as it rolls out to Cox Radio markets, but Cox CEO Bob Neil says he is going to be a difficult customer. He railed against Arbitron in his quarterly conference call yesterday, insisting that there are "massive problems" with the samples in both Houston and Philadelphia, the only two PPM markets currently up and running.

As for the idea that advertising agencies were supposed to be educated by Arbitron to make a one-time adjustment to their CPM targets to switch from diaries from PPM, "that's a load of dog manure," Neil said. He charged that Arbitron has not lived up to its promises to educate agencies about PPM and he intends to keep the pressure on Arbitron to fix that and other problems.

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