When Ratings DON'T Matter

Ahhh Nielsen ratings.

For many of us, the cause of sleepless nights, stress, and-dare I say, joy? Many in our format have placed ratings growth and success at the top of our priorities. At a commercial station, how could you not? Or even at non-commercials who aggressively pursue underwriting. Aside from those two groups, we celebrate and loathe ratings more than they merit.

Let's start with Nielsen's own words, which are often overlooked: "All audience estimates are approximations subject to statistical variations and other limitations. The reliability of audience estimates cannot be determined to any precise mathematical value or definition. This report is intended to furnish radio station, advertiser and agency clients of Nielsen with an aid in evaluating radio audience size and composition."

Did you catch some key words? "Estimates" (used twice). Followed by "Approximations." Followed by two disclaimers in a row about the reliability (or lack) of Nielsen's numbers. And finally, advice that ratings should be "AN aid." Not THE aid. Out of Nielsen's own mouth!

In case you need more reasons to be wary, I'll share some information about my market. St. Louis is a PPM market (meters measure radio listening instead of diaries). These PPMs are spread to about 1,200 people on a given day. 1,200 out of population of 2.5-million people ages 6+. Not to bore you with too many numbers, but that's 0.048% of my market's population. (Double check my math. I'm in radio!) When you start diving into WHO has those 1,200 meters, you learn that 58 of them are in the hands of teenagers (4.8%). 236 are spread to African Americans. (236 People of Color to tell my market the listening reality for our nearly 700,000 black residents.) To put it plainly: once you start diving into demographics, PPMs are spread very thin. This is why niche, young-leaning, and minority-centric formats don't always impress in the ratings. It's why their numbers can swing wildly. (And, perhaps your own numbers once you start diving into dayparts, narrow-age and gender ranges.)

From there, critics of Nielsen point out inherent flaws in PPM technology. The fact it doesn't measure headphone listening or even low-volume background listening. That nobody wants to carry around a 90s-style pager. Diary market measurement has a number of challenges too, which PPM was meant to solve.

Cue infomercial voice: "But wait, there's even MORE!"

To earn consistently great Nielsen numbers, you must "play the game." Your mainstream commercial competitors are. It's a complex, multi-layered game. Multi-layered because they don't know which efforts will pay off from one month to the next. In other words, it's educated gambling. They're paying for data that tells them the zip codes most likely to have their listeners with PPM's or diaries. They target marketing just to those zips. They even make music decisions based solely on what PPM holders do with the radio. Then there are the infamous Voltaire boxes. The Voltaire is meant to beef up the encoding tones that Nielsen's own equipment misses.

If you're in a PPM market and not using Voltaire, you're in the minority vs. your mainstream commercial counterparts. Here in St. Louis, our three major clusters not only have Voltaire's on each of their main signals and all of their HD signals. They also have supplemental Voltaire units after the FIRST Voltaire. Picture it like this: Nielsen's own PPM hardware. Followed by a Voltaire to encode what Nielsen didn't. Followed by another unit to encode what Nielsen's hardware and the first Voltaire missed. It's an expensive investment that commercial stations forced themselves into.

At JOY-FM, we considered it a minor miracle when we had some months last year and this year at #1 ages 6+. We don't use Voltaire or any of those just mentioned tactics. We do not sell ads; we rarely even chase underwriting. There's no ROI for us in playing "the game." We don't earn any more money or have more true market impact if we are in first place or eighth place. Spending our listener donations on Voltaire's and the supplemental units is money we could use to grow our team, market our product, and serve our audience better.

I'm not gonna lie though. When our two stations pull great ratings, I celebrate! When our numbers are down, it's Nielsen's fault. Kidding not kidding. When they're down just once, so what? When they're down for a number of months in a row, despite Nielsen's flaws, that means *something.* You're smart to watch long term trends, though it's still difficult to correlate them to any particular thing you're doing right or wrong. Twice in my career, I've been able to pinpoint ratings swings to something the station did, and that's only because the changes we made were so drastic that we had every other metric besides ratings telling us the same thing.

Ratings still CAN matter though. My stations spend money on them because we trust there are things long term trends can tell us. "Estimates" though they may be, they're hopefully close enough to reality for us to set fundraising goals from. They give us a glimpse of who actually listens: the broad age ranges and gender splits. (Nielsen, zoomed out, is much more believable than when you zoom in on narrow ranges or specific hours/days.) Ratings (when they're going our way) strengthen our standing with various stakeholders (business partners, industry partners, key donors). Ratings can help us measure product satisfaction (via Time Spent Listening).

The temptation to stick your station worth and self-worth to ratings is understandable. Numbers are tangible. Visible to the whole industry. They speak more plainly than other forms of feedback. They scratch the itch many in CCM have (including me) to show our format is just as viable as anything mainstream is doing. Those aren't bad things, but for stations who don't earn their keep through ratings-driven ad sales, they shouldn't be what drives us.

If you aren't in a commercial situation, sweat Nielsen less and refocus your efforts on going deeper with your whole audience. Once in a while, some will get a PPM or a diary and you'll feel the love in the ratings for a few fleeting moments. Enjoy them!

Then get back to the mission.