Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

ADVERTISERS & AGENCIES AUDIENCE COMPOSITION DATA AVAILABLE, HOOPER, PULSE, NIELSEN TELL N. Y. GROUP Critical timebuyers, media executives hear three major rating services agree that information on listeners can be had if ordered. Speakers attack charges of 'confusion' in rating field. EXECUTIVE SPOKESMEN for three major radio rating services — which seldom meet on common ground as to methods of measuring audiences — were agreed last week that any one of the services can supply audience composition data upon request. They told a group of agency people — mostly made up of timebuyers and media department executives — at a New York luncheon meeting that agencies and others, who often are critical of the services because such data on radio markets are "unavailable," can receive the material on order. Speakers, all top executives in the radio ratings field, appeared at the first luncheon in the second series in the Radio & Television Executives Society's timebuying and selling seminar held Tuesday at the Shelton Hotel. They were James L. Knipe, president of C. E. Hooper Inc.; Dr. Sydney Roslow, director of The Pulse, and E. P. H. James, vice president of A. C. Nielsen Co. Although each speaker stuck by his service as providing the best data, a note of harmony among all three, struck early in the proceedings, lasted through the session until the final bell when concurrence was reached on the question of audience composition. The speakers answered critics who charged "confusion" in the ratings field. Mr. Knipe said he was amazed at the talk of "confusion" because, in essence, a service rating is "simple." "It takes a lot of work [by critics] to make it complicated," he said. Confusion as such, he said, can come about in only three ways: not interviewing enough people, interviewing people at the "wrong time" or failure to recognize "nonsensical" information produced in the interviewing. He said the best test for "validity" of any one of the services is for critics to actually tour and inspect each of the service's physical facilities and, if possible, accompany interviewers on their rounds. He said the Hooper firm contends the "advertising profession" should do "at least two major things": "set up some large experiments in the rating field, and establish a 'code of revelation' to force all of us into the open on every phase of our work." Cautioning that "radio audience is people, not sets," Dr. Roslow said that the main objective was to measure audience wherever it be found. He said there is no "true measurement" against which the services can be compared, but, he added, it is important for users to know the differences among the services. The product of a rating service, he said, should be thought of as a tool to "aid judgment and that's all" — users should not ,go beyond that point, he said. Prime objective of the Nielsen Company is to guard against unusual circumstances at the time of measurement and to eliminate so far as practicable any possible error in the "human element." Toward this goal, Mr. James said, Nielsen had instituted "automation in research" which includes use of audimeters and recordimeters as well as other computing devices. As outlined by Dr. Roslow, Pulse attempts to establish "the best probability sample" possible in order to seek out what the members of the home do so far as listening in the home and "out of home" — the latter group, he said, has grown tremendously and "beyond expectations." Dr. Roslow said listening is "purposeful, has meaning and is habitual," not chaotic. The radio audiences, he declared, . . . "are not morons, they are not stupid" and do not range haphazardly about the dial as many people might think. He said the aided recall technique employed by Pulse is based on principles of memory (associations) and recognition (program schedules etc.), citing the newly-instituted Pulse "call backs" of the not-at-home families, and the incorporation of out-of-home listening with in-home listening in its current reports. Dr. Roslow said Pulse was reporting on 40-50 markets monthly with 100 or more markets covered over the year; Mr. Knipe disclosed that the Hooper Co. is now "back" in more than 100 markets after being supported in 1954 by a group of "some leading agencies" in returning to areas from which it had been "tossed out" by stations, and Mr. James noted that the Nielsen Station Index now covers the 25 "top markets" in the U. S., a number that the company expects to boost to 30 by next March or April. Hooper's Knipe said his firm lost its footing in major cities in the period 1951-53 because the service showed radio declines during tv's growth. He said that the Hooper firm offers a service that does not "conceal" tv's impact on radio — but "now, of course, they [figures] are beginning to show the movement back upward." The Hooper service also does not "protect the lethargic timebuyer" nor "cover up the deteriorating position of a station, as its programming goes dead on its feet," Mr. Knipe, said. He continued: "Our reports simply do not fit an easy-going timebuyer or a complacent station manager. We show the changes which take place and we show them when they take place. After all, that's what ratings reports are for. They are not meant to be soporifics — lulling advertisers to sleep with reports so lacking in sensitivity as to conceal all the progress and retrogression which are continually going on in the station field, especially now that programming is essentially a city-by-city matter rather than a network decision. "Principal factors in the current resurgence of radio, of which New York City is a fine example, is this remarkable station managerial ability being demonstrated in so many cities around the country. Some of the younger men in the business, as well as a few of the older ones, are refusing to be bound by tradition and, so, are setting up programs which are attractive, interesting, audience-gathering. This trend gives us great hope for the future with respect to the medium . . ." Mr. James, who illustrated his talk by taking a portion of a Nielsen report of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and explaining the figures presented, said of his firm that of course "we go in for gadgets — for mechanized systems wherever possible so as to provide the greatest assistance to timebuyers." He stressed the accuracy and "check upon human error" which he said the Nielsen firm's mechanization afforded. Audience Measurements Blasted by Dobberteen ASSERTING that "we don't know how to measure the audience of our radio broadcasts and our television programs," Harold H. Dobberteen, vice president and media director of Bryan Houston, New York, last week asked: "When are we going to get the measurement on the true commercial audience?" Mr. Dobberteen spoke Thursday at a luncheon meeting of the media research discussion group of the American Marketing Assn. in New York. Looking at research "in terms of the needs of the media buyer," the agency executive said some of the questions for which he thought answers should be forthcoming deal with the "true commercial audience" within a program, at the end of a show, for a spot or station break and in the daytime as compared to the evening. He also said there is a need to figure what the total radio audience — on an average — would be "after you've counted the sets in the bars, on the beaches, in the automobiles and elsewhere as well as those in the homes," he asked his luncheon audience: "Ever try it?" Mr. Dobberteen also said there is need for measuring the efficiency of the delivered message, "an honest reliable count on tv homes . . . tv is now a hundred-million-dollar business and we don't even know how many sets there are . . . where they are. We don't have a regular recurring count and we don't know when we're going to get one. We are trying to struggle along in a blind way with a 1952 set count." Speaking of media comparisons he said that these can be made only when data is known about size of audience reached, amount of duplication, extent of recall and degree of impact. He also noted there is no precise information on when the use of a medium should start, how long it should continue or when it should stop. Another speaker, Dr. Lyndon O. Brown, vice president in charge of media, merchandising and research at Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, New York, said modern media buying methods are based on the engineering approach which demands an accurate measurement of the actual delivery of advertising messages. He said that research which provides "essential facts" has only scratched the surface. 1956 ARB Coverage Study Plotted for 225 Tv Markets STUDY of coverage and viewing habits in 225 key tv markets has been started by American Research Bureau. To be released Feb. 20, the study will follow the pattern of, but be more extensive than, ARB'S 1955 project which covered 140 medium to small markets. Leading advertisers and agencies as well as major networks were consulted in selection of markets. Sixty-three of the 1955 markets are being re-surveyed in the light of changed facilities or other factors. Included will be many medium to small markets never before researched, according to ARB. Systematic directory sampling provides the basis for interviews, with 500 or more separate telephone interviews in each of the 225 markets, or more than 113,000 completed contracts. Reports will include per cent of homes having tv (including uhf saturation); stations covering area, with percent of tv homes able to receive, and frequency of viewing; stations viewed most (with first and second preference) for daytime and evening. James Seiler, ARB director, said, "The expanding study . . . will provide the industry with information on nearly 85% of the television homes in the country, by far the most complete picture it has ever had of coverage and viewing habits." Broadcasting Telecasting January 23, 1956 Page 33