PPM Update: Meeting Benchmarks, October Rollout Still On

Rollout Still Set For October

In spite of YESTERDAY's announcement that NEW YORK Attorney General ANDREW CUOMO will look into the PPM, as well as this morning's heated debate over it in the NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL, ARBITRON held its monthly PPM update conference call and revealed data that indicated that all systems were go for OCTOBER 8th's rollout of eight new markets. In fact, the 234 listeners on the conference call saw data that showed Black and Hispanic representation meeting almost all of its preordained benchmarks.

The 10 markets' PPM DDI in AUGUST was tabulated to average 106 for 6+, 102 for 18-54, and 83 for 18-34. In all, they met or exceeded 56 of the 57 18-34 cells in the 10 markets. Black DDI averaged 109; Hispanic DDI averaged 116.

In-tab didn't fare as well. Although the lion's share still met their respective benchmarks, certain cells, such as 18-34 black women in NASSAU SUFFOLK, were close. 6+ in-tabs in PHILADELPHIA and HOUSTON were in the low 70s, which BILL ROSE attributed to the expected summer decline.

All the markets "under construction" seemed to be in good shape, with the possible exception of WASHINGTON, DC, which ROSE attributed to users who are listening to nearby BALTIMORE stations, which aren't encoded yet. In all, "We're in pretty good shape," he said. "We're not fully baked, but we'll look better next month."

However, ARBITRON may have gone a bit overboard in SAN FRANCISCO, where Hispanic representation was well past 100. ARBITRON's BETH WEBB noted that they "might pull back on the deferential survey treatments."

Also presented were digital streaming data. A few more stations met the minimum cume requirements, but the overall characteristics remained the same--online listening is largely workplace-based, and skews older. Nevertheless, Z100 and KROQ got listed, as well as KOST and WLTW. KROQ, in fact, met the minimum requirement for one week in AUGUST in LONG ISLAND.

Other items of note:

* Rhythmic Top 40/Dance THE PULSE 87.7/NEW YORK wasn't part of the precurrency because it's a TV station operating as dance radio station, and not officially licensed as a radio station. Nevertheless they have been encoded and will receive custom PPM reports. BOUVARD cited their cume to be in the neighborhood of 600,000.

* When it comes to CPO, or cell phone-only households, ARBITORN relies on a national average in tabulate the data. Currently it's at 7.5% of the total panel, but next year it will be raised to 10%.

The bottom line: BOUVARD felt "really good" about the current results and expects the OCTOBER rollout to proceed without interruption.

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