So, my Arbitron story:
At the beginning of April I got the mail that every radio nerd dreams of: an invitation to carry a Portable People Meter for Arbitron.
That's right. All my years of bitching about format changes, changing playlists, program rescheduling, overplayed songs -- I would finally have a fractional say about what I listen to on the radio. My voice would be heard!!
I quickly called them back, but we were due to go on vacation the following week, so I asked them to send all of the stuff to my work but we wouldn't be able to start using them until this week. They said this was fine.
So this past Monday I excitedly opened the big box left on my desk, and got everything charged up. Then I started digging around about PPMs and found this article:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2012-07-04/music/the-meter-s-running/Ugh, I didn't want that to happen to KFOG or any other station I like. I was so excited, I posted it to Facebook, with this comment:
{quote}
So, now that we have PPMs(!), I'm going to tune *out* KFOG anytime they play a "safe" oldie.
We also listen to KQED a lot, so hopefully that will help them. I'll try to tune in KSCU and KKUP more to give our local stations their due. My commute is so short though, I don't know if it'll make much of a difference though.
{quote}
When I brought the meters home, everybody was moderately excited -- cash for wearing a meter, woot! Seeing my 7-year old lope around the hallway to keep his meter "active" was hilarious. (It checks for movement every 15
minutes.)
We listened to some KQED, some KFOG, and watched John Oliver on HBO.
Tuesday morning, I made sure to "wake up" our meters to make sure KFOG got credit for our 7-8AM listening. When I got to the kitchen, I heard some banal classic rock playing in the living and was horrified to see my kids had
turned the radio to KFOX. KFOX? That's not even one of our presets. Aaaagh!
Kids brought meters to school, but I told them to keep it in their backpacks, so they "lost" about 6 hours of data there. I wore mine all day, and listened to only slightly more KSCU than usual. Well, ok, I did stream it to my laptop, which is rare.
So what an unpleasant shock to have my 7-year old ask me this morning why his meter had a message to call an 800-number this morning. And in fact, all our pagers had the message.
So I called, and was informed of the bad news -- we were randomly being removed from the program.
I was so disappointed.
Was it my Facebook post? (Later that night in a panic I hid it from any of the KFOG DJs I'm friends with.) Did we not provide enough data on commercial radio stations? Did my KSCU "binge" throw off their numbers? Was it because of the kids not wearing their meters for a 6-hour stretch during
the day?
These articles seem to indicate that in the past Arbitron would call to nag you to wear your meter, especially problematic for kids. I couldn't find any articles explaining why somebody might get cut from the program after
only two days:
http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2011/01/confessions-of-a-ppm-wearer-blatherwatch-has-unplugged-its-ppm.htmlhttp://www.markramseymedia.com/2011/02/a-shocking-peek-at-the-real-people-of-ppm/http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/radiowaves/article/Diary-of-a-portable-people-meter-person-3256625.phpAt any rate, I'm really kind of bummed out about it. :-{
