WCRB to simulcast on 88.7 in R.I.

[Bill Smith]

Since I am no longer carrying a people meter, I can speak without fear of the 
PPM police busting me. Here in St Louis the base is $5/mo. It can go up to 
$15/mo depending on the amount of time you wear it. There were $50 bonus 
payments every six months. Getting the 17 year old stepdaughter to carry it was 
nearly impossible. Naturally you couldn't pry the cell phone away from her but 
that people meter just didn't go with her goth look...
 
Bill



________________________________
From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org>
To: Mark Laurence <marklaurence@mac.com>
Cc: boston Radio Interest <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Fri, June 3, 2011 5:18:00 PM
Subject: Re: WCRB to simulcast on 88.7 in R.I.

<<On Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:04:41 +0000 (GMT), Mark Laurence <marklaurence@mac.com> 
said:

> PPM ratings for the most recent month in Boston show:

> 94.1% of people age 18-24 cumed radio in April.  They listen an average
> of 10 hours 15 minutes a week.

Sample size?

I'm generally pretty suspicious of these numbers, for three reasons:

(1) The sample is very small, particularly when sliced down into
narrow demos like this.

(2) The sample is highly biased.  What non-user of radio is likely to
agree to participate?  How much compensation is Arbitron even offering
these days?  (Is it still $5?)  For a lot of young people, that's not
nearly enough to get them to carry a pager-sized device with them
wherever they go.  How does Arbitron even identify the sample?

(3) People are exposed to radio in many different places over which
they may have little or no control.  They can hardly be said to be
listening in this situation.

-GAWollman