• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 9, 2007

A year after Nielsen settled a bloody feud with News Corp. over supposed minority biases in its local people meter TV ratings system, the New York rollout of Arbitron's new portable people meter system is proving devastating for stations with minority radio formats in the nation's largest media market.

Arbitron's first measurements of New York City radio listening with its Portable People Meter technology delivered bad news for radio stations targeting African-American and Hispanic audiences, with ratings significantly lower than those previously generated by Arbitron's personal diary system. Although PPM ratings won't be used as the official market currency for ad sales until January, the October preview is giving many broadcasters cause for alarm.

Among the stations taking the biggest hits were WRKS/98.7 FM, WBLS/107.5 FM, WQHT/97.1 FM, WCAA/105.9 FM, WADO/1280 AM, and WPAT/93.1 FM. As urban and Hispanic formats tumbled, rock and contemporary formats surged, led by WLTW/106.7 FM, WHTZ/100.3 FM, and WCBS/101.1 FM. WCBS recently ditched its automated "Jack" programming and reverted to its "oldies" format.

Urban and Hispanic format station bosses weren't slow to express their concern. Programming director Vinny Brown of WBLS warned the New York Daily News that "these numbers could put us out of business," adding, "It's not just us. Listeners need to know this could threaten the future of black and Hispanic radio across the board." Under Arbitron's old ratings system, based on paper diaries, WBLS captured a 5.2% share of the 25-54 demographic, but tumbled by almost half under PPM, to 3% share. Previously in the number one spot, its flagship Wendy Williams Show now doesn't even appear in the top 10.

According to Cox Radio CEO Bob Neil, "because the New York market is more compact, there were some incredibly dramatic falls in terms of ranks. Both the African-American stations and Hispanic stations had big, big decreases." While conceding that New York's PPM results are still "pre-currency," Neil opined, "the troubling thing is that Arbitron has known for a while about these sampling issues, and you'd think they would have been especially careful" in the largest market in the country.

The sharp changes in listening patterns among New York audiences closely resemble big shifts already seen in the two markets where PPM ratings have gone live--Philadelphia and Houston. In both places urban and Hispanic formats took big hits in ratings, leading radio execs to complain publicly about flaws in Arbitron's sampling methods.

In August, Alfred Liggins--CEO of Radio One, the nation's largest urban format broadcaster--said he was troubled by "wild swings" in ratings for Radio One's stations in Houston and Philadelphia. And on August 16th, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters issued a statement criticizing "significant flaws" in the PPM service, including substantial under-representation of the two most important age cohorts--18-24 and 25-54--among African-Americans. NABOB chairman Jim Winston said "we have seen all radio audiences decline, and urban radio station audiences decline significantly, under PPM," adding, "the samples in both Philadelphia and Houston for this demo have been consistently and substantially below the proportion of the population represented by this demo, and substantially below the sample size Arbitron set for itself to reach."

According to Neil, the same problem is now also cropping up in Long Island, the 20th largest metro in the country, where Arbitron appears to be missing sample target sizes by a significant margin. "The total number of 25- to-34-year-old women in their sample is 30 for the entire market, and there's just no way that can be right."