Sponsor (July-Dec 1955)

TIMEBUYING BASICS You ask the ratings-maker how big is the audience for a program. That seems like a very simple question. But when you analyze the answers, and you find out why they are different, you find, as Mr. Glenn says, they are all answering somewhat different questions. It is sort of like getting up in the morning and asking your wife, "Is my face red?" and she were to say "Well, if it is, then you are wearing suspenders." You might be able to figure out what she is saying, but you would probably feel that she has answered your question in a rather peculiar way. And if she insisted on answering all your questions that way, you might proceed to have her head examined. Some of us feel from time to time that maybe we ought to have the ratings methods examined, we want to know more about why they are different. That is why the ARF appointed its Committee to study the ratings services, to help us get rid of some of the confusion. Ratings tools are not the beginning and end-all of anything. They are only indications. They are based on relatively small samples, and quite properly so. Nobody could afford to pay the cost that would be necessary to get big samples. So we have a sampling process, and we get these indications. And since they are only indications, they are not absolutely accurate. There are ranges of error about them. I hope you won't try to attach any false accuracy to ratings. If you don't, then you and ratings will get along just fine. The principal point is that the ratings are different because they measure different things, and we wish they would measure the same thing. And you can do your share in getting them to measure the same thing if you will support the ARF's suggestions when they are out. TOM LYNCH: An audience measurement is nothing but an audience measurement. Many people feel that a good rating or audience measurement will insure commercial selling. No one can be sure that commercial selling will be assured unless they have a good commercial and a good product to put across. Ratings are only evaluations — and no one should be a sliderule slave. Numbers are no substitute for thinking. They aid your ideas. Also don't forget program association. A cigar company recently bought a sports show that looked very good, should have covered everything they wanted, but it didn't sell cigars. When they got the audience composition figures they found that 80% of this audience was children. Many people see a national rating and assume that they can use it for everything. I have noted buyers using national rating services as the criterion in every individual market. See what the audience rating covers. B. USE AND MISUSE OF RATINGS LARRY DECKINGER: One point that should be considered in the use and misuse of ratings is that one should be sure to use ratings in the environment in which they were obtained. That is to say, if you have a rating that was obtained in a certain market, it applies only to that particular market and not nationally. Second, don't use the numerical rating in a vacuum. If you are appraising a show, unfortunately, the rating alone won't do the whole job for you. The rating is not the result of just one force. It is the result of a combination of forces. So it must be interpreted that way. What about the competition at that time? Maybe the show is a success, but the spot was a failure. What about the hour of broadcast? Maybe it was on too early or too late. What about the trend? Maybe its present rating is low, perhaps it is four times what it was about two months PAGE 5 ago. So it is going up. I remember some years ago I was asked for a flash statement on how the Inner Sanctum Show with Boris Karloff was doing. This was in the days of Hooper's 30-city ratings. So I looked up Boris Karloff. And there was Boris Karloff with a fat 0.3 rating. Of all the 100 or so shows on the air that Hooper was rating, that was the lowest. So I reported "Boris Karloff is the lowest-rated show on the air, I guess it isn't doing very well." Well, it so happened that that was Inner Sanctum's first rating for its first broadcast. We all know that Inner Sanctum grew and grew and grew to become one of the most durable shows on the air. I was evaluating Inner Sanctum in a vacuum. And that brings one to a third point in the misuse of ratings. Don't let anyone slip you just one rating for a show and try to get you to conclude something on the basis of that one rating. It can be a freak. Another point is this. Don't put all your eggs into one basket. I guess it would be grand if we had one method which would tell us everything. But unfortunately, there just isn't one such perfect method. There are things that one method tells us that other methods don't tell us. Now, it is true you can't buy every rating service. We have to make a decision on what we are going to buy, just as you do in your shops. You, of course, should buy what your research department suggests that you buy. When a station representative calls on you and shows you a figure for Y service and you are buying X service, I think generally it is a wrong thing to say, "We use X service in our shop, we don't use Y. You will have to take those figures to some other agency." I think it is wrong because no one method, at least at the present time, is that much better than the others. You should therefore have as much information as you can get to help you make as good a decision as you can when you buy. The ratings people really are very conscientious. I hope you believe me on that. They are very earnest and I don't say that just because they sell very conscientiously. They genuinely try to do a good job, and they are delighted to have you help them do it. TOM LYNCH: Dr. Deckinger mentioned the misuse of single ratings as the basis for a buy. One rating in a market is never any good. A good client had a habit of going out into the hinterlands and doing a little buying on his own. At one time a contract came back saying that this client had bought a radio baseball show. I looked it over and could find no reason whatsoever for his choice. Looking further, I found that the station had shown our client a 12 rating, which was very, very good. We dug deeper and found this rating was gotten on the day of a Dodger-Giant playoff game. Everyone who carried baseball got a rating that day. A buyer should know his client's marketing strategy. When using ratings, know whether it is advantageous to hit a smaller audience more often or a larger audience less often. In analyzing rating services, read all the fine print, whether local, national or regional. Different bases and formulas make for confusion. They also make a great difference in many decisions. Seasonal variations in ratings are important. Some of the markets still only have two rating services a year, and you have to go back — if you are buying in the winter — to the previous winter for any indication. Yet by that time the program has changed, and everything about the market could be changed. Check all calculations on sales pitches. Usually the more complicated the figures, the more carefully they need analysis. In projection make sure that the service is projectionable, and if local that it is projectionable to city limits or station area. Take small rating changes with a grain of salt. As Ward Dorrell pointed out in the last meeting, the chance of error statistically is great depending on the size of the sample.