April 2009 Portable People Meter (PPM) data for New York was supposed to be released today (Wednesday, May 20), but that’s not happening. Arbitron has rescheduled the release for a week later after finding a processing problem with the New York data. No other markets are affected.
Arbitron issued this statement on the PPM problem for New York market:
“April 2009 New York PPM audience estimates and data –originally scheduled for release on Wednesday, May 20 at 12:00 Noon Eastern Time – have been rescheduled to release on Wednesday, May 27 at 12:00 Noon Eastern Time.
New York Weeklies estimates and data for Week 1 of May 2009 – originally scheduled to release on Tuesday, May 26 — have also been rescheduled to release on May 27 at 12:00. April 2009 PPM audience estimates and data for Nassau-Suffolk and Middlesex-Somerset-Union will be released on May 20 as scheduled.
While conducting a quality review in advance of the release of April PPM data, Arbitron discovered that manually entered population numbers in one instance were transposed in the internal files used for processing New York PPM data. We are reprocessing the data to help ensure that appropriate estimates are released for all reported stations. The rescheduled release date is necessary to accommodate reprocessing.
We are also taking additional quality control measures for future reports. These measures include the replacement of manual processes that rely on clerical data entry with automated processes where possible.
We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.”
