Take that, People Meter

MirRam Group partner Luis A. Miranda Jr. says the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) plans to educate the public about "the danger posed by the implementation of Arbitron's PPM," reports Radio Online.

Early this year Arbitron dubbed the Portable People Meter (PPM) the "new ratings currency" for radio, wrote MediaBuyerPlanner. Wikipedia describes PPM thus:

The PPM is worn like a pager, and detects hidden audio tones within a station or network's audio stream, logging each time it finds such a signal. It has proved to be much more accurate than the old handwritten logs or wired meters, and is immune to forgetful test subjects.

The SBS believes PPM could have a potentially devastating impact on Spanish-language radio stations. It has hired a PR firm to "educate" the public about damage that could be caused to Hispanic communities.

And the SBS is not the only concerned interest group. Earlier this week, the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) formed an advisory council specifically targeted to exploring PPM issues.

PPM has struggled with panel sizes in Philadelphia and New York, MediaBuyerPlanner reports. When Arbitron began reporting PPM numbers in New York in October, several stations geared toward minority listeners suffered steep declines.

No format changes were made, said the general manager of two of the stations affected, who said the declines seemed to stem primarily from measurement via PPM rather than the paper diary method.

But Thom Mocarsky, Arbitron's senior vp of press and investor relations, argued PPM offers more precise measurements — so if declines are recorded, it is the paper records that are inaccurate.

It may also be true that a greater number of people are listening to more stations: paper diaries showed the average African-American New Yorker listened to radio 13.7 times a month, while the PPM showed that average number to be 20.4, he said.

"Your total time with radio is being divided among more stations and more occasions" so each station's audience share obviously gets smaller, Mocarsky said.