Speaking of Embargos...

[Joseph Pappalardo]

From: "Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@lycos.com>

> >Curiously, why did the ratings get embargoed?  Did some station employee
> >get a diary or something?
> >
> No expert input in 24 hours. Perhaps no oneknows exactly
> how Providence and Springfield went offline so to speak.
> But if it's so easy for embargoes to occur and they
> can affect a major market like Cleveland, what's
> keeping it from happening in Boston?   Is Boston too
> big?

Emaragos are put in place by Arbitron for a couple of reasons.

One, if Arbitron feels that a non-paying/subsciber station has been
suspected of using them, this is one way of clamping down on them.  Even the
12+ numbers get embargoed, no newspaper quotes, etc...so non-subscribing
stations cannot even quote those numbers "informally" in an embargoed
market.  (i.e..."They were in the paper so everyone knows them...")

Secondly, Arbitron will embargoe a market in the case of a subscribing
station complaint about #'s being scattered around the market...(which the
subscriber is paying for!) and, in turn, lessens the value to the Arbitron
subscriber.  ("Why should I subscribe when everyone already has the
numbers...?)

This way, the only people that get numbers are people that the subscriber's
share them with.

This raises the value of their arbitron subcription.  (And no doubt allows
them to charge comfiscatory rates.)

This is/was usualy a concern only in smaller markets....larger markets it'd
be hard to make a case that someone is diluting your subscriber's purchase.

$.02

jp