BirchResearch Corporation has issued its first radio ratings report since 1992. The new ratings book is for the Northern North Carolina-Southside Virginia Radio Metro, with an estimated 12+ population of 206,738. It includes the cities of Henderson, Oxford and Roxboro, NC and South Boston and South Hill, VA.
Tom Birch has a special reason for wanting ratings in that market – he owns four stations there. But if others are interested, BirchResearch could produce ratings in other radio markets.
Birch told RBR/TVBR his Lakes Media LLC subscribes to Arbitron for county data in its coverage area straddling the state line, but he has been frustrated by the lack of research available to small market owners in non-metro areas. So, he drew on his long experience to come up with a new ratings product for his market.
Birch outsourced personal telephone interviews of 1,009 households in the market to Discovery Research Group in Denver, with used a random-digit-dialing sample frame from Survey Sampling. BirchResearch then processed the data – and Tom Birch notes that computer programs have made that part a lot easier and faster today than when he was last churning out radio ratings nearly 20 years ago.
Now that he has the annual (Spring) survey compiled, he will be pitching it to other groups in the region, including the big clusters in Raleigh, whose stations are heavily reported in the Northern North Carolina-Southside Virginia. And, of course, he’ll be presenting it to agencies in Richmond, Raleigh and Charlotte.
Birch acknowledges that there will be some raised eyebrows about a possible conflict of interest. “I have spent two decades building a name in the research business and I’m not going to flush it for a small market radio company,” he told RBR/TVBR. Besides, he noted, his own 1 AM/3 FM cluster does not dominate the market.
What about other markets? “I’m not going to be aggressively marketing it,” he said. But if someone is interested, well, he’s not going to turn down the opportunity.
