Harker: Capturing Digital Streams Key

Digital Dilemma

In the latest installment of The Radio Insights blog, HARKER RESEARCH spotlights the problem NIELSEN has in picking up radio station digital streams. The bottom line is that accurately monitoring stream usage will be key to radio's future success.

"The fundamental problem is that the digital stream of a broadcast contains much less masking content than the same material broadcast over the air," the blog notes. "Less masking content means fewer opportunities to encode, and a greater chance that station listening credit will be lost.

"We’ve heard a great deal about 'enhanced' encoding lately, and how it will solve the problem of content dependent PPM decoder capture and crediting. NIELSEN, however, has only addressed this from the standpoint of analog radio. We haven’t heard anything about solving measurement problems unique to streaming. If radio’s future is digital as everyone seems to agree, the first step is to make sure digital is being measured accurately, and that stations get full credit for their digital audiences."

Read the entire post here.

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