How do radio stations know that you’re listening to them? Is there a signal sent back somehow?
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There are 3 types of ratings systems for radio in the US. PPM, diary and phone survey.
With PPM you sign up to provide ratings for an entire year and are sent a device that is about the size of a pager that you wear on you whenever you are awake. You wear it in the car, to work, to lunch, etc. Embedded inside the radio signal is a subsignal the meter picks up. That is how it is able to determine what station you are listening to. At then end of the day you plug your meter in and it uploads the data to a Neilson. It is very accurate because it picks up the station you are actually listening to. So if you walk in a store that is playing a radio station you don’t typically listen to, according to the meter, you DID actually listen to that station.
Diary works on recall and only lasts a week. You get a diary in the mail for every person in your household. Starting on Thursday, you write down daily what radio stations you listened to and when. Then on Wednesday of the following week, when you have logged all the stations you have listened to, you send the diary back for processing. What makes this inaccurate is that you are very excited on Thursday and Friday to keep track of what you listened to so you are very diligent in filling it out. Then the weekend comes and you completely forget with everything that happens in your life. That leads to you forgetting Monday also and then Tuesday afternoon you get a call reminding you to send back your diary. At which point you panic and just write down anything for the remaining days, which is presumably your favorite station. Whether you listened to it or not.
Phone surveys work by calling you and asking what you listened to that particular day and maybe the day before. It can be fairly inaccurate also since it is relying on you to remember what you listened to that day and often times instances like the store scenario I referenced in the PPM description aren’t remembered.
The other thing is companies pay MILLIONS of dollars a year for this, often inaccurate information. And in some cases a call from the corporate office of a radio station inquiring about why the ratings were so bad can often result in numbers changing which can impact a radio talents bonus or even put them on the chopping block.
Source: Have done commercial radio for the last 25 years.
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