• by January 15, 2002

Arbitron Inc. yesterday announced that it has begun recruiting consumers for the second and final phase of the U.S. market trial of its new radio, television and cable TV audience measurement device - the Portable People Meter (PPM).

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.

Over the next 12 to 16 weeks, Arbitron expects to recruit a representative panel of 1,500 consumers, age 6 and older, in the Philadelphia DMA.

Results from the first phase of the test indicated that the PPM system is capturing TV viewing and radio listening that is not being measured by current audience measurement systems. This second phase is designed to give the industry its first direct look at individual station ratings for radio and television as well as individual cable network ratings generated by the Portable People Meter with audience estimates. These estimates will be compared with individual station and cable network ratings delivered by current audience measurement systems.

As Arbitron begins the second phase of the PPM trial, eight TV stations, 38 radio stations and 22 cable networks serving the Philadelphia market are participating in the trial by encoding their signals using the latest generation of Arbitron encoders. Many of these outlets have been using Arbitron PPM encoders since August 2000.

Nielsen Media Research is providing financial support as well as its television survey research expertise in this trial of the Portable People Meter. Nielsen also has an option to join Arbitron in the commercial deployment of the Arbitron Portable People Meter in the United States.