WHY ARE SO FEW PEOPLE LISTENING TO STATION STREAMING AUDIO?

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“Melissa” works in an office tower in the Washington Square District of central Philadelphia. She is a fan and core listener of AAA WXPN-FM. 

When she started her job there a couple of years ago she found that it was difficult to receive WXPN’s signal because of the office tower’s bulky steal frame.

So Melissa listens to WXPN’s audio streaming on Alexia. But, according to data from Nielsen Audio, there are very few people in Philadelphia that listen to radio the way Melissa does. In fact, there are so few people listening to WXPN-FM's audio stream that it fails to meet Nielsen’s minimum criteria to be listed in the Philadelphia ‘book.”

WXPN is not the only major public radio with a dearth of streaming audio listeners. WBUR, WNYC-FM and KQED don’t have enough streaming audio listeners to meet Nielsen’s criteria to be listed.

We canvased the April PPM ratings for the top 25 radio markets in the nation and found only 14 public radio stations with enough streaming audio listeners that met Nielsen’s criteria. (See the chart on the left.)

There is no specific format that draws streaming listeners better than other formats. 

Geography doesn’t seem to make any difference. On average, these 14 stations get 6.4% of their total weekly cume.

There is one organization that appears to excel in drawing streaming audio listeners: Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). MPR’s KCMP The Current leads all public radio stations in percentage of streaming audio weekly listeners. We asked Jim McGuinn, PD at 89.3 The Current, why his station performs so well in this metric.  McGuinn told us:

Jim McGuinn

“We’ve seen streaming numbers growing over the past few years, not just in the Nielsen ratings, but more accurately, in our own numbers. Nielsen is prone to wide fluctuations – a smallish cume like 40,000 in Minneapolis is about 12 [PPM] meters out of 1,100, so one family could make it vary greatly.” 

“The Current’s audience is off the charts in terms of early adoption of technology, so not surprised we’d score higher than average with users with voice activated speakers, plugging phones into the car, etc.” 

“Most importantly, we want to meet our audience where they are at – and given the membership business model of public radio, we can monetize scattered listening to streams outside of home market more effectively than commercial radio.”

We noticed the same situation when looking at the April 2019 commercial radio streaming numbers for stations in the Top 25 markets.   

The chart on the left shows seven commercial stations where the weekly cume is greater than 40,000. 

We could find no distinctive pattern. But, Sports Talk WFAN-AM in New York has the nation’s largest streaming audio audience.

After seeing all this data, we have difficulty believing that there are so few people listening to station streams. It doesn't make sense. But the numbers are the numbers, so maybe we are wrong.

If the Nielsen numbers are true, the audience size for station-based streaming audio is about the same as the audience size for HD Radio (without a FM translator). HD Radio is considered by many media observers to be a failure. Does this mean that station-based streaming audio is…also a failure?

Mike Henry

We talked with researcher and consultant Mike Henry of Paragon Media Strategies to see whether he thinks the Nielsen PPM numbers for station streaming audio are accurate. 

Henry told us:

“Yes, these [numbers] line up with what I know to be true.  It shows the continued power of FM broadcast frequencies over digital streaming of the same content.  The streaming percentages should increase over time as people use more mobile and auto devices.”

Still, the low percentage of listeners to station streaming audio seems to defy our own experience. Anecdotally, there are many people like Melissa in Philadelphia. This is how we listen to radio in our own office.

We contacted Nielsen for their perspective but they never replied to our emails.

In search of answers we contacted a well-known large market engineering consultant who requested not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The consultant told us by email:  

“Typically a station has a separate encoder for their webcast, so a stream can be tracked separately from listening to AM/FM.  The problem is, most streaming listening is done over headphones, and it requires the PPM holder to connect their headphones through the PPM device. Many forget to do so.”

“But this is also true for listening to AM/FM over headphones, too.”

“This makes the reported streaming listening a real mess with no good way of really knowing for sure how much or how little streaming listening is really going on.  I always thought Nielsen should require stations submit streaming server logs every week/month to help reconcile things but they don't.”

“So, part of the problem might involve proper station set up of encoding devices and confusing instructions from Nielsen.”

Our consultant brought up another possible factor: Voltair, the black box some stations use to enhance the watermark that trips PPM meters: 

    

“Strictly speaking you need one Voltair device for each PPM encoder. There are a handful of broadcasters that are using PPM “wrong” by using one encoder for multiple broadcast outlets, and therefore might be using one Voltair for everything.” 

“To use Voltair properly, you need to spend the $16,000 for one Voltair device for the broadcasting chain and another $16,000 for the webcast encoder. That’s a lot of money for some media outlets.”

THE ANSWER IS TO MAKE THE RATINGS LESS MECHANICAL & MORE HUMAN BASED

While it is true that stations can do a better job promoting their streaming audio, the problem is that Nielsen's PPM methodology is too error-prone and impersonal.

It is time for an alternative methodology, such as interviews combined with (gulp) diaries. 

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