OT: Understand Station Ratings question

[Fran3]

This may be the wrong forum but maybe someone will help me clear this up...

We will use Jacksonville, FL as an example... There ratings are here...
http://ratings.radio-online.com/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb107

where it says this at the bottom of the ratings...
"This profile contains an quarter hour share (AQH) rating -- the average number of persons, ages 6+, who listened during any average quarter hour from 6am to midnight, Monday through Sunday in the Metro Survey Area."

I have read two conflicting explinations for AQH Share:
A. AQH Share for a given station is mathematically expressed as [AQH Persons listening to station / AQH Persons listening to all market radio stations] * 100."

B. AQH Share is [AQH persons listening to station / AQH Total Market Population] * 100

Question 1: Which is it?

Question 2: What we are trying to do is determine the actual number of people listening and if "B" above we can do it because we know the total market population... but if it is "A" above I don't know how to get there as we do not actually know the total number of people listening
- So the question is how can we convert AQH Share for a station into number of listeners?

Thanks for any help.

[w9wi]

B is not the share, it's the rating.


Imagine that you're measuring the audience in a very small market, with 1,000 residents. At 8:30am, 400 people are listening to WAAA and 200 are listening to WBBB.

WAAA has a 67 share - 2/3 of those listening to radio at 8:30am are listening to WAAA. WBBB has a 33 share - 1/3 of those listening are listening to WBBB.

WAAA has a 40 rating - 40% of those who own a radio are listening to WAAA. WBBB has a 20 rating.


Now, let's measure the same market again, at 3:00am. 4 people are listening to WAAA; two are listening to WBBB. (the rest are asleep:) )

WAAA still has a 67 share; 2/3 of those listening to radio are tuned to WAAA. And WBBB still has a 33 share.

But the ratings are a lot lower. WAAA now has a 0.4 rating, WBBB a 0.2.


I'm an engineer, not a salesperson, but I find the text you quoted ambiguous. (and yes, you did quote it correctly) The figures (in the May 15 column) sum to 87.3% which leads me to believe you're looking at share, not rating. The missing 13% probably belongs to stations that don't subscribe to the book. I don't see any religious stations listed - and I'm 100% certain there are successful religious stations in Jacksonville.

To answer your question... I think you're going to have to ring up Nielsen and order a copy of the numbers. Pretty much, they give away the 6+ shares to satisfy curiosity and because those numbers aren't of much value in selling airtime. If you want figures that are actually useful, you have to pay for them.

[Fran3]

Thanks Doug.
I think your right. We are going to have to call the rating company.

[kkiddkkidd]

And as has been proven regularly... If you want decent numbers on Arbitron, you have to subscribe.