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; ing county patterns according to effec! tive buying income; in making cost allocations by district where that degree ; of detail is desired. For stations they have other values, not the least of which is help in determining rates.
A spokesman for the biggest agency spender in television last year, J. Walter Thompson Co., cited such uses as these and said that, although coverage studies today are less important than they used to be, and their costs may rise in i relation to range of usefulness, he doubted JWT would consider abandoning them — unless, of course, the price got completely out of reason.
Even if the studies are no longer valuable in as many ways as they formerly were, there is no indication that the market for them has vanished. Nielsen j is just now circulating its plans and offering contracts for its so-called NCS ’61 (Closed Circuit, June 13), so acceptance of that one cannot yet be predicted. But ARB has signed up 28 agencies, including 10 of the 25 biggest tv spenders of 1959 (for list see page xx), and claims it has no turn-downs from the others and expects to wind up with contracts from most of them. ARB officials say they have signed up 89% of their agency “quota” already.
While it’s too early to say who will sign for NCS ’61, Nielsen authorities point out that their last coverage study, NBS No. 3, had as television clients 24 of the top 25 tv agencies — all but Parkson — plus 19 other agencies, the three networks and a large number of advertisers and stations.
For Most: A Choice ■ Privately, some of the “uncommitted” agencies say they I lean toward Nielsen coverage service,
1 some toward ARB. The consensus seems to be that a few will buy both I but that a majority will buy only one. There are also those who speculate that, if ARB's sells widely enough, Nielsen may find itself pushed for financial support and, if pushed far enough, may postpone its plans for NCS ’61. Nielsen, i; however, says it has every intention of j going ahead with NCS ’61 and has no I doubt that support will be forthcoming.
The ARB and Nielsen county figures jl show many points of difference at both county and state levels, although their national figures come out pretty much the same (Nielsen, covering the continental U.S., says 45.2 million tv homes for an 87% penetration, while ARB. including Alaska and Hawaii, estimates 46,019,980 or 88% penetration).
ARB's figures also show 648 “reversals” or counties in which ARB findings were lower than those estimated by Advertising Research Foundation and the Nielsen company two years ago.
In state penetration estimates there are some wide differences: For South Dakota, for instance, ARB puts the
figure at 80% while Nielsen puts it at 68%; Mississippi gets 64% from Nielsen, 79% from ARB; Rhode Island shows 98% under ARB. 93% under Nielsen. But five state totals emerge the same in both estimates: Colorado
(83%), Maryland (90%), Utah (89%), Virginia (82%) and Wisconsin (90%).
County Swings ■ Comparisons by county show even more dramatic fluctuations. In Alabama alone there’s a spread of 22 percentage points between the 65% penetration given Cullman county by ARB and the 87% allotted it by Nielsen.
There is no pattern of differences at either the county or state level; in some cases ARB’s are higher; in others, Nielsen’s.
Even while ARB’s estimates were being prepared, they became involved in a sort of backstage controversy with the Advertising Research Foundation.
ARF Dispute ■ With the financial support of the three tv networks plus TvB and NAB, ARF has overseen the preparation of — and lent its name to — three prior sets of county figures since 1955. But when ARB’s procedures were submitted, ARF balked. Some of ARB’s arithmetic, ARF claimed, did not meet ARF standards for accuracy.
ARB countered that the foundation’s objections did not relate to procedures but solely to the fact that ARB’s estimates showed some “reversals,” or county estimates lower than those which ARF had endorsed in previous years.
James Seiler, ARB director, finally wrote ARF that he was convinced his own estimates were more realistic and ought to be published without masking the reversals and that accordingly he would go ahead and publish them.
In a letter dated May 13 he said: “. . . discussions have foundered completely on one basic point . . . whether or not any reversals from your former estimates that occur in individual counties should be shown. Obviously when wholly new interviewing is conducted from new and complete sampling, some of the results must inevitably show reversals when compared with data produced from saturation estimates made years ago utilizing a variety of methods. . . .
“Inasmuch as your committee appears to be completely adamant on this point, we apparently have little choice but to notify you of our withdrawal from the negotiations. We feel very strongly that adoption of the ARF proposal could only mean discarding much of what our survey data has actually produced and, through its use of mandatory levels, deprive the industry of any ability to calculate variances on a realistic basis.
“Accordingly we plan to issue . . .
a new county-by-county tv set count based on our actual interviewing and using the formula we supplied you. We honestly feel it will be the best estimate anyone can currently provide, and we sincerely hope it will meet with your approval. . . .”
ARF Managing Director A.W. Lehman replied in a letter dated May 25 that Mr. Seiler had missed the point: “The point,” he said, “was that ARB data even when adjusted did not meet ARF standards for publication.” He also took exception to Mr. Seiler’s use of the word “negotiations.” There had been no such, he declared, asserting that ARF had been representing the underwriters in an effort “to obtain a method of estimating that would also meet ARF criteria,” and that ARB’s participation had not been as a negotiator but as a guest of the underwriters. “The discussions ended when the underwriters decided that ARF services were no longer required by them,” Mr. Lehman added.
Lehman’s Views ■ Mr. Lehman told Broadcasting that ARF probably would have gone along with the ARB proposals if a so-called “regression formula” could have been developed — as in past studies — that would produce results within acceptable accuracy limits. But following the procedures suggested by ARB, he maintained, would have resulted in “deviations” so “extremely wide” that ARF thought the results “not sufficiently accurate to publish under the ARF name.”
He said ARF was “not so naive” as to think that — if a satisfactory formula had been developed — there would have
BROADCASTING, June 20, 1960
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