Sponsor (Jan-June 1951)

MULTI MARKET RADIO PULSE COMPANION PIECE TO MULTI MARKET TELEPULSE A new Pulse service, at no cost to radio subscribers, will be available during the first week in March. The Multi Market RadioPulse, covering fourteen markets regularly surveyed by Pulse, will be available to stations and agencies now buying individual market reports. This report will be issued bimonthly and will cover network programs appearing in three or more markets. For information about this and other Pulse services . . . Ask The Pulse. THE PULSE Incorporated 15 West 46th Street New York 19, N. Y. could be accepted as the standardized one by the industry. Dr. Sydney Roslow, president of The Pulse. Inc. (whose aided recall services 86 clients ) , admitted freelv : "We would be ready to co-operate with the project in any investigations it would make." But he added: "It would be unwise to narrow down the measurements permissible. When that happens, there will be lack of competition. The people who operate the one standardized service will grow flabb\. stifle initiative, and won't want to improve their technique." A spokesman for the A. C. Nielsen Company I whose 1.500 radio audimeters and some 350 TV audimeters were responsible for 39 new clients in 1950 i said: "Nielsen is always willing to subject itself to a test of its accuracy." But the spokesman said he doubted whether the industry could get together on one standardized yardstick, and recalled how the Broadcast Measurement Bureau was disbanded because of internal friction, in 1949. "The trouble is," he said, "that too many people within the industry have too many individualistic axes to grind. The stations and networks want only that rating that will best enhance their programs. The account executive wants to show the best rating to the sponsor, to show that the ad agency is handling the account wisely. And the advertiser isn't so concerned about accuracy as he is about speed and low cost." Claude E. Hooper ( whose telephone coincidental service measures radio audience in 102 cities, TV audiences in 25 cities, and radio/TV comparisons in 64 cities for 88 clients I declared: "Would I be willing to let this forthcoming committee test the techniques used by the Hooper service? We gave publicity to that answer in our wire nf .", Jul>. I')5(). i,, K.IBS al San Francisco. We have not retracted that statement." With regard to the wisdom of adopting one standard yardstick. Hooper added: "Certainly, it's a good idea — if you are referring to measurements of audience size. There may be some practical limits involved in such a decision, but certainly there could be determined which audience measurements are designed to get at actual size. Measurements should be used for that for which they are designed, and should be called b\ their right name." Furthermore, citing a speech he made recently before the Radio Exec utives Club of New York, he said aided recall and diary measurement techniques are "misused when they masquerade as rating services." He maintained they should be called "indexes," not "ratings," and particularly criticized the aided recall technique for "inflating" ratings. The only valid techniques for measuring audience size, he said, were his own and that of Nielsen, and even then, he claimed, Nielsen had a fixed investment in "outmoded machinery." Allan Jay, director of Videodex l whose diary service in 9,200 tabulated homes is directed to 78 clients) said: "We are quite willing to co-operate with the proposed project, with certain stipulations that were submitted to the Baker committee. And I am quite sure that, in a comparative test for audience measurement, our type of service will bear a closer relationship to the true situation. Not only in the question of 'How many?', but in "Who? and 'How often?', we would excel over alternative techniques under their present administration." WHAT TREB0R DOES 4°* LOCAL ACCOUNTS TREBOR'S STATION (WVET) can do for YOU in ROCHESTER, N.Y. Trebor (Daybreaker-Best by Request) sells out on WVET because Trebor "sells" — and so does WVET. ..at low rate, too. 1280, KC BOB 5000 WATTS IN ROCHESTER, N. Y. Repreiented Nationally by THE BOLLING COMPANY 66 SPONSOR