KQED-FM no longer top public radio station

KUSC-FM, a Los Angeles classical station licensed to the University of Southern California, is bragging that it is the top rated public radio station in the country, according to Arbitron. Normally that's a crown that KQED or New York's WNYC wears. It may be one more upset caused by Arbitron's switch from diaries to Portable People Meters. During the spring quarter (April 2-June 24) for listeners 6 and older:

• KUSC, 737,000 listeners per week

• WNYC, 721,500

• KQED, 704,300

PPM puts news, talk stations at disadvantage

A former MIT professor and authority on audio technology has found a flaw in Arbitron's new Personal People Meter system of measuring radio audiences that puts stations with low-frequency content (news and talk) at a disadvantage to high-frequency content, such as music.

Here's a link to the paper by Dr. Barry Blesser of 25-Seven Systems.

Arbitron used to measure radio audiences by asking listeners to fill out diaries in which they listed the stations they heard. Last year, Arbitron switched to PPMs, pager-like devices (pictured) worn by listeners. The PPM has a microphone to pick up what a listener hears. The PPM searches the incoming audio for a "watermark" that stations add to their signal to identify themselves. The "watermark" is imperceptible to the listener.

Blesser's research indicates that it takes the PPM longer to register the watermark of low-frequency broadcasts than high-frequency programs.

Even the voice of an announcer can be a factor in whether a station is properly credited under the PPM system:

Considering that a male fundamental pitch might be as low as 80 Hz, some announcers may have a speaking style that is weak in high frequencies. Depending on the structure of the vocal cords and articulation style, there may or may not be any energy at the 12th harmonic of that pitch (which happens to be the center frequency of the first channel of the PPM encoder) for some announcer.

Because fricative phonemes (such as /s/, /z/, /th/, and /f/) contain a broadband hissing component that is like white noise, they can encode large amounts of data. But some announcers may have weak or rapid articulation of such fricatives. Consonants, although short in duration, are good for PPM; pregnant pauses and halting delivery are not. Speaking style matters.

While the typical radio program may produce perfect watermarking performance, and while the average reliability over the universe might be 99%, there are likely to be some announcer voices, vocal articulation styles, and specific genres of music that belong to the 1% failure cases. If a particular program on a particular station is one of the failure cases, that program might experience "bad luck" in its audience ratings.

New consortium will challenge Nielsen

The Financial Times reports that the major TV networks and advertisers such as Procter & Gamble and AT&T are forming a consortium to measure audiences. Both broadcasters and advertisers have had grievances with Nielsen, the granddaddy of audience measurement in TV. The consortium should be up and running by next month.

Luckoff complains about Arbitron methods

Radio Online reports that KGO-AM/KSFO president and gm Mickey Luckoff is calling on Arbitron to increase the number of radio listeners who are given Personal People Meters, the pager-sized devices that keep track of what stations a person hears throughout the day.

Luckoff says the number of PPM panelists (those selected to wear the PPM to measure their radio listening) is far fewer than Arbitron had promised when it switched from diaries to electronic sampling last year. He said broadcasters had been assured there would be as many meters in each market being surveyed as diaries in each market.

"Unfortunately for the radio broadcasting industry and the advertising community, not only was this promise never kept, but in fact only a fraction of that guaranteed number were ever placed," Luckoff writes in an open letter to Arbitron CEO Michael Skarzynski. "In the San Francisco metro for instance, approximately 7200 diaries were distributed every quarter. Now, there are but 2,000 meters -- 800 households surveyed."

"The number of meters being placed in each market is far short of the number originally promised and as a result some of the very same irregularities are beginning to appear as we had been accustomed to seeing in the 'diary era,'" he continued. "PPM have become next to worthless if not actually destructive to many radio broadcasters."

Luckoff sent his letter on Monday and today (Thursday) Arbitron responded by saying it plans to increase the size of its sampling by 10 percent by the end of 2010, according to MediaWeek.

Has KGO 810 been toppled?

Ben Fong-Torres, in his radio column in today's Chronicle, says KGO-AM 810 has been booted from the No. 1 spot in the market among all listeners in January by all-news KCBS. As he notes, KGO's Mickey Luckoff says a survey for just one month is a small sample, and there are a lot of questions about Arbitron's switch to personal people meters. Besides, advertisers don't buy time based on cumulative ratings but on how a station does in a particular demographic. But KCBS came out on top in the morning drive among listeners 25-54, while KGO was 12th. One reason for KCBS' advance is that it now is heard on both AM (740) and FM (106.9). Which raises the question, when will KGO add an FM signal?

KGO-AM, KOIT, KDFC lead radio ratings

The San Francisco fall 2005 Arbitron radio ratings are out and while perennial leader KGO-AM was first, like usual, it was down from 6.4% to 6.1%. Moving up, however, was KOIT followed by classical KDFC. Ben Fong-Torres, in his monthly Chronicle column on radio, mentions the ratings, too. He also says radio stations have formed an alliance to ensure that all of the stations use the same system to deliver dlgital radio, which will mean clearer sound (no static) and additional channels. Fong-Torres answers other HD radio questions as well.