How do radio stations know that you’re listening to them? Is there a signal sent back somehow?
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They don’t. They conduct “ratings surveys” in order to determine how many listeners they have, but that is estimated, and an aggregate number only. No signal goes back from your radio.
No, there’s no return signal.
Gathering engagement data is therefore pretty tricky, and there are companies like Nielsen Media Research dedicated specifically to gathering that data using surveys and monitoring equipment.
The radio companies themselves also track internet traffic and phone call-ins to try and estimate engagement.
Ratings agencies. For TV (e.g. the Neilsen ratings) they have little boxes that can tell what you’re watching.
For radio its 100% self reporting. They phone you up and ask if you want to be in your areas radio survey. Maybe pay you $2 or $5 or something trivial. They mail you a log or journal and you just write down what radio station you’re listening to throughout the course of a week or a month or whatever.
Then they compile everyone’s answers and crunch some stats and they can extrapolate to the entire population of your area how many people are listening to what.
I used to do it until I got Spotify. Didn’t seem fair to take their $ to return an empty booklet.
The main way they learn is by the sampling techniques mentioned by others. That is also part of the reason they have all those call-in contests. One way to show advertisers that people are listening is by seeing the boards light up as soon as they say “call in now.”
In Sweden some survey agency’s send out small microphones you place by your radio to measure how many listens.
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Internet (e.g. app based) ~~and digital satellite~~ radio stations know because your media player had to reach out and ask for your own personal stream to be sent from the station (essentially).
Terrestrial “over the air” stations don’t know; they use estimates as other commenters explained.
They can track how many people are listening via their website, and to some extent even who’s listening if they use tracking cookies, but they don’t have any way to tell how many people are actually listening on radios. There are companies (Nielson being the biggest one) that send out surveys to find out people’s radio listening and TV watching habits. That is the data the radio stations use to determine who’s listening to them.
And, of course, they assume that if you can hear them that you’re listening.
So when radio stations are bragging to each other about being #1 and having better ratings its all kind of BS? For example, there are 2 Boston Sports radio stations in my area and youll hear them make comments about overtaking so and so hosts in the ratings or being ranked #1 and what not. Is that all really just kind of estimated but they treat it as gospel? Like whoever is #2 usually seems content or at least accepts it. Thats so weird that hosts can get fired for ratings dips when theres really no way at all to be confident in it.
Basically they have no idea. So you tuning in for a particular show, or turning off a particular song… no one will ever know. Pandora and Spotify and all the others can now do what radio has been pretending to do for decades.
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