Sponsor (Nov 1948-June 1949)

SPONSOR SPEAKS Is 8MB Worth Saving? The problem is clear cut. Shall the Bmadcasi Measurement Bureau be amputated from the body broadcast. 0] shall it be improved and continued? BMB is the second tripartite effort in the research field to suffer from committee-itis and personalities. It is the second research organization to have the best fact and figure brains at its disposal which has delivered facts and figures which do not tell the truth about listening. The first was the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (CAB), which died under the consistent attacks of C. E. Hooper, because its facts and figures wouldn't stand up under analysis, and because it cost too much to operate. BMB is essential to advertisers if they arc to be enabled to use broadcasting intelligently and profitably. No other organization even pretends to report listening for all of the U. S. on a station-by-station basis. This is no reflection on A. C. Nielsen or C. E. Hooper. The former, with few exceptions, reports on national listening. not individual areas. Hooper covers 100 city areas, but does not cover nontelephone homes nor non-metropolitan homes. The U. S. Hooperatings are network reports not individual < it\ area indexing. They do cover, in a manner, which many researchers still refuse to accept, telephone and nontelephone homes as well as rural areas. sponsor calls upon all who live by broadcast advertising to support BMB not only by subscription, but by working within the organization to keep it research-correct. There is a tendency to follow the lead of some industry factors and to try to control it by refusing to subscribe. These men think this is the way to correct BMB mis-figuring. No research organization can be kept alive by undernourishment. SPONSOR asks all who believe in honest research to subscribe and to fight like hell to keep BMB facts and figures the best that money and research brains can buy. If BMB is permitted to die it will take years to replace it. Its needed now during broadcast advertising's transition period. It need not be called BMB nor need it be a tripartite effort. What's needed is a nation-wide industry owned organization rendering re ports on station coverage. Agencies and sponsors also have a stake in good broadcast research, and it's time for them also to start talking in terms of the buver as well as the seller paying part of the research bill. TV Needs Spot News Broadcasting, through TV. is losing one of its valuable assets — the public acceptance of it as a major news medium. TV is doing a consistent job of chasing viewers to newspapers for their news. TV set owners seem to forget that radio is still covering the news effectively. All recent surveys indicate that thus far television hasn't done a good job of covering news visually. This isn't surprising because the motion picture industry never attempted to be a spot-news medium, and most newsmen in the visual air medium have come from the newsreel industry. Its not easy and it's expensive to be on top of the news pictorially. either via remote pick-up or film. The newsfront is global. The top news of the day may originate in China. Alaska, or the Argentine. With radio it is possible to give on-the-spot reports of earthshaking events. Radio is able to call on all the facilities of the great newsgathering organizations, plus its own staff men. As yet there is no way pictorially to blanket the world. Nevertheless the way must be found. Television newsmen must not forget the lesson that radio has learned. Yesterday's news is dead news. Applause To a Contemporary When a research organization with man) sources open in it turns to a trade papei for its population figures, that rates applause for the trade publication and for the entire trade publishing field. After months of squabbles about its population figures, which men like Ed Crane) <d Pacific Northwesl Broadcasters attacked <>n man) grounds, the Broadcast Measurement Bureau has announced thai ii \\ ill use the population estimates of Sales Han agement as the base foi projecting the radio homes ,,( the I . S. and individual station eoveiage. Sales Management has spent a number of years developing sources for population reports. Its market reports, both as to population and buying power, have seldom been questioned despite the fact that it has been increasingly difficult to do a census study during the years when population shifts have been as pronounced as they have been during the past ten years. Sales Management has taken as its specific province the reporting of the market facts of America. There have been limes when its estimates h.ive been far more accurate than the ( ensus Bureau itself, although Sales Management has seldom done any crowing aboul the matter. sPonsok pa\s ihis tribute to a ciin temporar) because ii believes in the job which a trade publication must do for the field it represents. Since sales quotas and objectives can never be sei without real market facts, it's logical that Sales Management set its sights on giving its readers these figures. Without facts, without figures, no business or medium of advertising can profit, sponsor has set itself the objective of reporting the facts of broadcast advertising. It has run across the fact that population figures used in the industrv have not always been satisfactory Its happv that the industry, in the person of iis research Organization, has turned to an unquestioned source. Sales Management for its information. Its a tribute to research and Sales Management. It's also a tribute to good trade journalism. 62 SPONSOR