Harker: Nielsen CBET's Extra Listening Was Listening Lost

PPM Credit ... Or Blame?

In the most recent posting on its Radio Insights blog, HARKER RESEARCH took NIELSEN to task for trumpeting news that its enhanced CBET technology was responsible for a 13% increase in average AQH radio listening (NET NEWS, 3/30). "We have to take our hat off to NIELSEN," RICHARD HARKER wrote. "It takes a lot of balls chutzpah to spend years dismissing concerns that PPM wasn’t capturing all radio listening, announcing the 13% increase, and declaring, 'There is a reason NIELSEN is so optimistic about audio.' Huh?

"Yes, it’s great news that radio ratings are up, but radio has lived for nearly a decade chained to a flawed ratings methodology that has hurt radio by undercounting its listeners," he continued. "It wasn’t that many months ago that NIELSEN claimed that PPM credited all the listening that radio stations deserved. Any rating gains that VOLTAIR produced were spurious artifacts and double counting ... It seems rather ironic that he should now declare eCBET, the enhanced code, a huge success ... so NIELSEN is now claiming credit for the gains after making the same changes to encoding that the company criticized VOLTAIR for doing."

Read the entire post here.

« see more Net News