NIELSEN & RRC AGREE: “WE HAVE COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN NIELSEN’S DIARY RATINGS” • HOW MANY NPR N/T STATIONS ARE THE TOP RADIO NEWS SOURCE IN THEIR MARKET?

Perhaps it was only a poor choice of words when two officials of the Radio Research Consortium (RRC) told Spark News recently:

“This will be the last survey RRC will provide public topline estimates because Nielsen reporting changes are forcing us to provide incomplete topline data.”

NOTE: STORY UPDATE BELOW

9:00am CT 2-15-19

We thought the folks at RRC were using the conventional meaning of the word, but it turns out that is not true. Representatives of RRC and Nielsen went out of their way this week to assure everyone that relations between the two companies are hunky dory.

Nielsen Audio is nation’s largest provider of radio station ratings information. The RRC is a not-for-profit organization that markets Nielsen’s ratings to noncommercial radio stations. 

Nielsen uses two methodologies to determine the ratings: PPM and Diary. This story concerns only markets where the Diary methodology is used.

In the past, RRC has distributed the Diary data in two ways: (1.) Directly to subscribing stations, and (2.) by posting the topline results on the RRC website [link].  RRC says they will discontinue public distribution of the ratings. The reason?

Joanne Church, President and CEO of the RRC told Spark News by email:

“We are not able to provide to subscribers exactly what we have always provided.  It has nothing to do with confidence in the data. We have not stopped providing Nielsen estimates to those diary market stations that want them.”

Nielsen told us In a “background” conversation that the company has confidence in the reliability of the ratings data. Nielsen is in the process of changing from quarterly reports to monthly reports called “continuous audience measurement.”

Nielsen has received some push back because the sample size will not be expanded when “continuous audience measurement” begins on July 1, 2019. The Nielsen official told Spark News that they anticipate no problems with the new system because the sample size will be the same as what Nielsen uses now for the Diary quarterly reports.

For more details about the Nielsen Diary methodology changes, we recommend an excellent article in Inside Radio earlier this week [link].

Nielsen is fine with RRC’s decision not to distribute the Diary data to the public. Nielsen provided this statement:

“We are pleased to have an open and strong relationship with our friends at the RRC and there are no disputes between us. We will let the RRC comment on their own practices.”

Joanne Church at RRC had no further comments.

The relationship between Nielsen and RRC is important to both companies. According to RRC’s 2017 IRS 990 tax filing, RRC reported $6.6 million in revenue. During the same tax year, RRC paid $4.8 million to Nielsen for the data. The majority of the remaining amount was spent on salaries.

We have no beef with RRC, in fact we praised them in January [link] as “a vital resource for public radio since it began brokering Arbitron data in 1981.” 

HOW MANY NPR NEWS/TALK STATIONS ARE THE TOP NEWS SOURCE IN THEIR MARKETS

According to our tabulation of Nielsen Audio PPM data from Fall 2018, there are at least 13 NPR News/Talk station that have a higher AQH share than the commercial news and talk stations in the market.

Plus, 7 of the 13 stations also are the top radio news station in estimated weekly listeners.

The chart on the left shows these stations, their AQH share, rank among radio news and talk stations and details about the competing stations in the market.

For this informal comparison we used November 2018 data for the commercial stations.   

In the last column of the chart “N” means an all news station, “T” means an all-talk station, “N/T” means a station that airs both news and talk programming and, of course, “NPR N/T” means just what it says it is.