Liggins Defends the Electronic Portable People Meter

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Alfred Liggins, chairman of Radio One, testified (before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-NY) that in his opinion, there have been no problems with PPM that could not be explained by typical growing pains that would exist under any new technology introduction. He admitted that measurement of Radio One station shows loss of audience... but while audience is down, his stations have regained ranking, and that is something they can sell.

That opinion was not shared by other minority broadcasters, however, including Inner City’s Charles Warfield and SBS’s Frank Flores, and Jessica Pantanini of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.

(Their opinion) The problems with PPM were in methodology, not technology, and [Flores and Pantanini ] both were amazed that Arbitron was reporting major losses in Hispanic radio listening even while the Hispanic population has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Rep. Edolphus Towns threatened to take matters into his own legislative hands if he is not informed of agreement by all concerned parties on significant steps toward improvement of minority radio audience measurement within 30 days.

Source: Radio Business Report Read more