Statistical smoke and mirrors

by Don Keith

Look, I am not necessarily picking on the radio industry trade Inside Radio again.  Or my old friend, Pierre Bouvard, who is quoted in an article in today's email/website edition of the pub.  But somebody needs to once again question their incessant attempts to find blue sky while ignoring the falling sky in the biz of commercial, over-the-air radio.

Ratings: Radio Stable, While TV Stumbles the headline proclaims. "Stable" based on an analysis of Nielsen ratings for both TV and radio by some outfit called MoffettNathanson. Other than wondering if the space bar is broken on their keyboard, I also have to wonder exactly how they come to that conclusion when comparing two entirely different media with drastically different methodology employed to measure viewership/listenership.

See, Nielsen measures much of the other sources of video that compete directly with over-the-air TV.  Things like cable, satellite TV, and the like.  They don't measure most of the stuff that is pulling precious ears away from Rock 107.  Not Pandora, iTunes, or similar.

Notice, too, that the article uses millions of people to show TV's gargantuan loss to non-broadcast sources while employing rating points for radio's almost infinitesimal drop year-over-year.  Frankly, I don't know how many actual listeners radio lost because I don't know how many listeners there are in Nielsen's 48 markets in which the PPM device is used.  Nor does the article tell us what demographics were down in radio as they did when crowing about TV's landslide.

"Radio suffered no such tumble," they note.  OK, broadcast TV lost 600,000 viewers aged 18 to 49.  How many million did broadcast radio lose in that same age group?

Another article in the same day's email digest is a bit sobering, too.   The typical (median) over-the-air radio station--including all those that boast of being all-news or news/talk--has a news staff of...ready for it...one!  One person!  One human being!  The average of all stations has ONE person on its news staff.  And the study quoted notes that in almost 30% of stations that have a position with the title "news director" the job is not even full-time.

Guess why fewer and fewer people depend on local radio to keep them up to date on breaking news.  The medium has gleefully cut staff and is more than happy to allow local TV and web entities with their news apps (along with Twitter and other social media) to have those potential listeners...on a sliver platter.

Shut up and play the hits!