Nielsen To Launch Enhanced Radio Ratings Measurement System
Nielsen will launch an improved version of its system for measuring radio listenership in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in October, Nielsen officials said at the NAB Radio show in Atlanta. The new system, an enhanced version of the ratings company's…
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current Critical Band Encoding Technology (CBET) system, is better able to measure ratings in an “acoustically crowded” environment, said Arun Ramaswamy, Nielsen chief engineer. Nielsen rates radio listenership through signals that are encoded in radio broadcasts and picked up by Nielsen's portable people meter (PPM) devices worn by their panelists. Quiet radio content, such as talk, can make it hard to mask the PPM signal, while loud content can make it hard for PPMs to pick up those signals, broadcast industry officials told us. The enhanced CBET process is better able to handle those situations, Ramaswamy said. What is not clear is the effect of Nielsen's new system on The Telos Alliance's Voltair device, which broadcasters buy to improve PPMs' receipt of Nielsen's encoded rating signal. Voltair enhances “opportunities” for the signal to be picked up, said Telos Alliance Director of Multimedia Marketing Kirk Harnack in an interview. Broadcasters have had an 8 percent improvement in their ratings when using Voltair, Telos Alliance Vice President Geoff Steadman told another crowd gathered for Voltair's presentation. Industry officials are concerned that Nielsen may take some sort of action against Voltair or broadcasters who use the device, broadcast attorneys and officials told us. That possibility is one reason for large crowds at the company's events at the radio show, broadcast officials told us. Nielsen Local Media Director Matt O'Grady wouldn't comment on the matter. Steadman said he didn't know how the new CBET system would affect Voltair's product, and the company won't know until it can study the new system.