Today, Chairman Ed Towns of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced a summary of findings from the Committee’s review of information subpoenaed from the Media Ratings Council regarding Arbitron’s Portable People Meter. The PPM is a device that was developed by Arbitron to measure radio station listenership.

Chairman Towns opened an investigation into Arbitron’s use of the PPM in June 2009 amid allegations that the system is based on flawed methodology. The ratings system underrepresents radio listening preferences of minorities and certain age groups. The erroneous ratings have had a disproportionately negative impact on minority and minority-owned radio stations, which have experienced a precipitous drop in advertising revenue.

Flawed Radio Audience Measurement System Threatens Minority Media

Key findings:

•On multiple occasions, the Media Ratings Council (MRC) refused to grant accreditation to PPM for use in all markets across the United States except for Houston and Riverside/San Bernardino. MRC denied Arbitron accreditation because of the company’s continual failure meet MRC minimum accreditation standards.

•“Persistent problems” with Arbitron’s minority sample audiences across the country. For example, New York City 2008 census data indicates African Americans comprised 25 percent and Hispanics comprised 27 percent of the City’s population. The subpoenaed documents show that Arbitron’s New York City sample audiences comprised of only 17.7 percent African-American and 21.5 percent Hispanic participants.

•Arbitron’s PPM radio ratings based on data from an unacceptably low percentage of their sample audiences. For example, in New York, where there is an average of 5400 sample audience participants, Arbitron uses only the data submitted by 2700 persons or 50% of the sample audience in order to create radio station ratings. Therefore, the radio listening habits of over four million ethnic minorities are represented by only 500 Arbitron recruits. The sample audiences are simply an inadequate representation of the true listening habits of New York’s diverse landscape.

•MRC found that Arbitron has made an insufficient effort to use bilingual interviews to recruit Spanish dominant Hispanic sample participants.

Chairman Towns directed Committee investigators to meet with Arbitron’s representatives in early July 2009 after he received many complaints from minority broadcasters about the accuracy PPM data. Although Arbitron promised full cooperation with the investigation, the company immediately prohibited MRC from providing the Committee with any documents related to the PPM. Shortly thereafter, Arbitron provided the Committee with insufficient documents that were either publicly available or biased toward the company. Chairman Towns then chose to issue a subpoena to MRC for the PPM documents.

The Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP) thanks Chairman Towns and supports his efforts to ensure that media ratings systems present an accurate picture of minority and Spanish-language radio listenership.