The author of this commentary is the publisher of Inside Music Media, where this commentary first appeared. Subscription info can be found here.
Nielsen is floating a new (lower) standard for measuring radio quarter-hour listening statistics that would redefine a decades-old measurement, but will it help?
Nielsen wants to slice two minutes off the minimum rule. To get credit for an average quarter hour (AQH) of radio listening, all a station has to do is win three minutes of listening in any given quarter hour. The current standard is only five minutes.
That would presumably help Nielsen client stations artificially boost their listening without actually getting audiences to listen longer.
Nielsen’s side
- Attention spans are way down compared to when the five-minute rule was initially established, so lowering the standard to three minutes helps make up for the inequity.
- Clients get an automatic boost in audience, presumably making them think again about canceling one of a radio station’s biggest expenses.
- Half of radio listening fell to under five minutes, meaning no station AQH credit, so lowering the threshold would boost radio listening without doing anything different than now.
- Higher listening by lowering the AQH standard is virtually expense-free for Nielsen.
The case against
- Advertisers get wise to this move to fraudulently (according to some) tinker with current listening figures.
- Nielsen is unlikely to get reluctant radio stations and groups to come back into the fold and pay for ratings even with this injection of epinephrine to the numbers.
- BUT they may be able to hold on to the remaining subscribers by portraying the three-minute rule as an added benefit, creating a question about Nielsen’s legitimacy in the marketplace.
- By all metrics — most importantly audience and revenue — radio has become a failing industry under the ownership and influence of hedge funds that prop them up, making the easing of AQH listening standards suspect.
- For advertisers that allow stations to bury their ads in top-heavy quarter hours, stations only have to win three minutes before the commercials start, to win what is blatantly not legitimate programming.
What it means
- Radio listening has devolved so badly under hedge fund ownership and bankrupt money-saving companies that Nielsen has to rewrite the rules to make it appear more people are listening when they are not.
- The three-minute rule is not likely to help Nielsen gain new clients but will give remaining clients a reason to stay with them.
- The industry continues to misread why listeners (especially under 50) are rejecting radio listening — they see streaming music as their radio station and don’t trust advertisers at all.
- For sponsors, if they can be dumb enough to allow radio stations to bury their ads in endless unlistenable stop sets, can they be duped into believing less listening helps them buy radio time?
- The bottom line: What they should do is eliminate the average quarter hour listening, which is irrelevant and suspicious, and sell radio using only cume listening — that could be the game-changer.
