• by April 17, 2002

Arbitron Inc. released an initial round of ratings results from the second phase of the Portable People Meter (PPM) U.S. market trial in Philadelphia.

The PPM is a pager-sized device that is carried by consumers. It automatically detects inaudible codes that TV and radio broadcasters as well as cable networks embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by Arbitron. At the end of each day, the survey participants place the meters into base stations that recharge the devices and send the collected codes to Arbitron for tabulation.

The meters are equipped with a motion sensor that allows Arbitron to monitor the compliance of the PPM survey participants every day - a quality control feature unique to the Arbitron Portable People Meter in the realm of media research.

Compared to existing methods of measuring media audiences, the Portable People Meter continues to report higher average quarter-hour audiences on a 24-hour day, total-week basis for the combined electronic media stations and networks that encoded full time. The February 2002 PPM results show increased average quarter-hour audiences for broadcast and cable television, and somewhat higher average quarter-hour audiences for radio. For the month of February 2002, 35 radio stations, seven broadcast television stations and 20 cable networks were encoding their audio full time and were included in the ratings comparisons.