Radio Survivor

#12 in our series on radio trends of the decade

Everybody knows the fate of over-the-air radio over the last ten years. “On Demand Killed the Radio Star,” as Boston Globe Media put it in 2005, going so far as to ask whether terrestrial radio is on the way out. Consolidation led to poor broadcasting choices like over-advertising and de-localization, the story goes. MP3 players filled the void. The standard estimate is that radio listening has fallen back to 1994 levels. Among consumers 18 to 24 years old, the tune-in rate has dropped by almost 22%.

But there’s one service that has bucked that trend: National Public Radio. In March, Arbitron surveys indicated that, by the height of the 2008 election, NPR now had an audience of 27.5 million weekly listeners, a jump of 7 percent over the previous year. Total tuning in to all NPR stations had grown to 32.7 million weekly listeners.

Listening to individual NPR shows also soared: 15% up for All Things Considered; 9% for Morning Edition; 21% for Talk of the Nation; and an amazing 13% for non-drive time Fresh Air. (more…)

It looks like Arbitron’s controversial Portable People Meter is still in hot water with the government. The  device, which measures user listening habits sans a written diary,  is scheduled to be the subject of a hearing by the House  Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday,  December 2. This is the committees’ second investigation of the controversial gadget.

“With an unprecedented decline in ratings among popular minority television and radio stations, we must explore the possibility of methodological flaws in the implementation of the PPM,” declared its Chair Edolphus Towns (D-NY, called “ET” by his staff, we’re told).  “As it stands now, the current system jeopardizes the future of minority broadcasting.”

The Portable People Meter is worn by the participant, sort of like a pager. It picks up radio signals around the user and keeps track of the stations to which he or she is listening. Critics of the PPM says its sampling methodology includes too few minority radio fans and that Arbitron recruits an insufficient number of cell phone only households for the device (which are often minority households). Arbitron responds that the  PPM is much more accurate than the old  diary system.

PPM opponents, among them many of the nation’s civil rights groups and minority broadcasting associations (and Stevie Wonder), asked the Federal Communications Commission for a formal investigation of the device, but  the agency offered only a notice of inquiry. Three states have required improvements in the PPM, among them New Jersey. New York, and Maryland. (more…)