(20)11 is my lucky number

According to a recent online article in Mediaweek, radio executives are making mostly positive comments about the PPM data coming out of the trial in Houston! Although the AQH numbers seem to be way down compared to diaries, the reach is much greater.

Check out the savy quote from (Indy's own) Jeff Smulyan of Emmis--advertisers are demanding a more valid way of measuring exposure to radio and the PPM gives them that. Way to go Jeff!

Arbitron apparently is encouraged by the reception, as they have said that their current plan is to have PPMs in the top 50 markets by 2011. Eleven is my lucky number. Coincidence. Yes, probably.

In other Indy radio news, longtime "soft hits" station WTPI has swapped formats to Adult Hits. They are calling themselves the track (weird allusion to the Indy Speedway? Maybe. But now it seems to relate to the term "track" as in "playing 18 tracks in a row during your weekday.").

You can hear them online here.

As much as I enjoyed WTPI's light hits format, their ratings have truly struggled as of late.

Times are changing

One of the reasons I love teaching and doing research in this field is that things are never static for very long. As many of you know, I'm teaching a programming strategies course here at IU. One of the challenges of doing that is that traditional strategies seem to be less and less relevant with each passing day. Now I don't mean to suggest that there's an "paradigm shift" happening, and all my old lecture notes, have to be completely thrown in the dustbin. But take a look these two announcements from the homepage of Broadcasting and Cable magazine:

Beginning February 1, ESPN ("the worldwide leader in sports!") Will launch a new service called mobile ESPN. This will piggyback on Sprint cellular phones to deliver what ESPN calls one touch real-time access to personalize content. Could it be that the days of the programmer having to deliver a large enough audience to satisfy advertisers are over? Now, if a sports enthusiast out there is interested in the national logrolling competitions enough to pay for it over mobile ESPN, then perhaps ESPN programmers need to consider it as content. Maybe not content for SportsCenter -- but it may not be justifiable to ignore it totally anymore. Logrolling of course is just an example here. Insert your own of obscure sports programming topic. Then consider mobile CNN, mobile E!, mobile Comedy Central.

CBS has continued to embrace the pod casting future. Last week they announced that they would offer each edition of 60 Minutes is a pod cast. And now they are offering three selections from their radio network to listeners who want to download it and listen have their own convenience. Today. I'm continuing a lecture on primetime scheduling strategies. The idea being scheduling shows at days and times to increase the likelihood of an audience being there. Now that the audience can choose to "be there" whenever they want... times are certainly changing

Gone are the days of the programmer having to balance delivering programming that attracts a large enough audience to satisfy advertisers Beginning fib or he first make less and less In this

Bid 4 Spots

Thanks to the Radio Marketing Nexus blog, information on a new way for radio stations to clear out a bunch of last minute ad inventory. Because "the plan takes off whether there's someone in the seat or not" the pressure to fill up all your avails is high.

Introducing Bid 4 Spots.

A very interesting idea, which is explained in more detail at this link.

Hey, it's Monday, and I've found time to blog

But, mainly it's because I'm exhausted from working on this manuscript I'm writing. The darn thing has taken so long to get finished. It's a revise and resubmit--and I'm just about done with it. For those of you who are not academics, R&R is part of the process that we go through called "peer review." Most academic research is sent to "peer-reviewed journals" where an editor sends it out to between 2-4 reviewers without the authors name attached. The reviewers, who are also "blind' meaning I don't know who they are, will critique the ariticle and either a) reject it [gasp], b) accept it pending minor revisions [rarely happens], c) as for major revisions and for the newly-revised manuscript to be re-submitted for another round of review.

I remember when I was a grad student, hearing with utter disbelief when I heard how it would take years for profs to get their research through the publishing pipeline. Now, granted, with this particular study that I'm trying to wrap up--there were delays because all 4 of the authors involved had major moves to different universities during the process. And, I'm pretty sure that 3 of us had babies along the way as well. But, all told, this process has taken 3 years!! Yuck.

Still, the process of peer-review and R&R is a good one. My reaction is always initially the same: "These reviewers are SO STUPID! Why are they asking for these changes." But, I have yet to revise a paper that was later accepted for publication which was not MARKEDLY better than the version I submitted. Hard for the ego to admit, but true nevertheless.

So, I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to get this thing done and sent off today, but after waking up at 5am to work on it and then going full steam with teaching today, I just ran out of steam around 3:45. Now, I'm afraid I can't bear to approach it tnight, either. Which---is why I'm blogging!!

Tomorrow morning, perhaps, it will get done.

Indy the home for Marconi Winners

Since 1989, The Marconi Awards have been the NAB's way of recognizing the best radio stations and personalities across the country. I always scan the announced nominees for stations that I either know about or are in the cities where I live.

And then, yesterday, the winners were announced at the NAB Radio Show.

Congratulations to Indianapolis-based winners:

WIBC--An Emmis-owned news-talker who won both the Legendary Station of the Year and the N/T/S Station of the Year Award!

WFBQ--Q-95, A Clear Channel-Owned AOR that is usually battling out the Indy country station for the top of the ratings in town.

Great to be in a great radio market and be the audio prof.

PPM data shows big changes

Arbitron is currently testing the Portable People Meter in Houston.
For years the radio industry has been rated using a paper diary system to figure out who was listening. A bad estimate system that has so much against it, there is very little good to report.

The PPM, however, is something that seems to make so much sense to me. Stations encode an inaudible signal that then a pager-sized unit "listens" for. There is still the problem that the sample from the public is likely a poor representation of the population. But, in terms of actual monitoring of what people are exposed to, the PPM is a HUGE step ahead.

Of course, when you change the way you record listening, things change. Check out this article (with special thanks to my friend Sam Bradley at Ohio State---click to his blog--Comm and Cognition)

It is also interesting to wait and see how Arbitron's PPM move will play out in the future. Of course, with Hurican Rita appropriately interrupting the business concerns of the test, Arbitron may need to do even more testing before rolling this out nationwide. Plus, they are still claiming publicly to be interested in joining forces with Nielsen because of how expensive the technology is. But, the PPM technology does not really seem to need Nielsen's blessing to record television signals as well. If Nielsen doesn't agree to come on board permanently soon, could it be that we'll have some actual COMPETITION in the audience measurement system?

Sometimes, you just wanna find your desk

There are days whenno matter how much I've tried to schedule things, they end up being extremely hectic.
It's kind of how it has been today.
I know, I know I owe you clutter data.
And I promise to get to it as soon as I can.
But for the past two or three day is -- heck, it's probably been a longer than that -- I've been trying to clean up the pile of shown that appeared on my desktop. I don't mean computer desktop, I mean literally the wooden thing that's in my office.
Now, even though it's five o'clock, and I should be heading home, I am NOT leaving until a file everything off the top of my desk.

One cool thing though, is that I have learned that I can use the NaturallySpeaking program to blog for you while I'm cleaning my desk. Of course, I have no idea really what I'm saying while I blog. So forgive me if I've said something completely inappropriate in the lines above.

One of the reasons why it has seemed like a particularly hectic day is that I've had undergraduate students coming by to talk about their exams. They haven't even taken the exams yet the first one is tomorrow. But as always, I give the essay questions ahead of time -- a longer list from which I choose the actual questions, and ask them to prepare answers, which I will go over if they want me to. And, unlike most semesters, I must've stressed it quite a bit. The first week of school, because I had about five students take me up on. Five out of 75.

HEY, THERE IT IS!
THE TOP OF MY DESK.

IU is 3 and Oh! [And some more clutter data]

What a great game!
For the first time in more than a decade, Indiana University's football team has gone 3-0!
Yesterday we crushed Kentucky 38-14 and the team looked really good. I watched it on tv--still not able to devote the time to GO to the game (however, coach Hep has certainly done a great job of firing up the campus and getting us behind the team. Maybe more on Hep's corny/gimmicky/and SUCCESSFUL marketing job later). Just can't give up watching football via TiVO! Or, anything via TiVo for that matter.

Still, congrats IU--keep defending The Rock.

Now, more from the double the units, clutter study. If you double the units in any given stop set, what will happen to the attitudes listeners have toward the stations that play them? That's one of the things we looked at in this study. Recall from yesterday, subjects were invited to the lab and told they were going to evaluate two radio stations from different cities. In a within-subjects design (where each subject listened to both stations), subjects gave their attitudes toward one station that had a commercial break with 10, 30-second ads and another that had 5, 60-second ads. After they heard each station, they told us about their attitudes toward the stations. Attitudes were collected on a lot of different attributes (i.e., music choice, slogan, and several questions about the commercial breaks) so that the subjects did not know we were mainly interested in attitudes toward ad breaks.

And, we hypothesized that the attitudes would suffer when the 5-minutes of ads were filled with the 10 30s than the 5 60s. And, we found just that. check it out!

More on the clutter data

Remember a week or so ago I gave a "brownbag" colloquium talk to the telecommunications faculty, which was the latest experiment done in the ICR about the cognitive and emotional effects of commercial clutter in radio. I realize that I had promised to post some results for you audio prof blog cruisers.

So rather than overwhelm you all dribble a little bit of this out over the next couple of days. I'll start out for basic description of what we did, and then maybe tomorrow I'll even share some data with you -- something I've promised,like I said, over a week ago! Oh, and by the way, two graduate students in the ICR have been really helpful and instrumental in this study: Brian Wilson and Ashley Sanders-Jackson.

Of course, the initial impetus of this goes back almost 5 years ago now, long before Clear Channel announced their interest in "less is more". It's just that since this large corporate owner has started reducing the amount of advertising time per hour on their stations -- my work is somewhat in vogue. Unfortunately, the latest set of results from an experiment I've called "double the units" has not been as positive toward Clear Channel strategic moves as earlier work.

Besides eliminating the total minutes of commercials per hour, Clear Channel has tried to single-handedly pushed the advertising world, kicking and screaming away from using 60 -- second commercials toward using 30-second spots. Along with this move, it seemed to us, came the temptation to perhaps leave the duration of your stops at consistent and nearly double the number of units.. so that's what we did in this experiment, using CHR songs that were systematically ordered into four different orders.

Well, rather than try and spelled this all out, when I just go here and see some slides from the presentation.

Computer woes slowing me down

Again Saturday seems to be the day for blog.
I suppose that's because the week itself is so busy.
This week was particularly that way -- because after months of putting off the computer tech guys from College -- I finally let them take my laptop away to "rebuild" it. What this actually entails on their end I have no idea, but on my end it meant racking my brain trying to figure out what I needed backed up before I sent my laptop off to them.

I get to a point just weren't think I had everything back to -- then realized that I probably needed to grab such and such a file from within whatever folder. PalmPilot schedules backed up? Check. Data sets that I can't afford to lose backed up? Check. What about the NaturallySpeaking user profile, and I've been training for the last two weeks? Is that backed up? Oh for the love of God, don't lose that!

My thanks to Mike at CITO for doing such a great job getting the laptop back to me. There was a time this afternoon, when I had thought that I in fact didn't successfully backed up the NaturallySpeaking user profile. So, I had be grudgingly begun to train the darn thing again. But a luckily I found my user files, and don't have spend the next couple of weeks read teaching it what I had already taught it.

Terrible, Terrible Timing for an ad promotion

As is probably the case with many who are reading this, Sunday mornings are accompanied by reading the Sunday paper. My wife and I particularly enjoy what we call "the ad slicks." Okay, it's mainly my wife who likes them all (I tend to focus on the electronics and office supply slicks). And so, it was no surprise that it was she who spotted this and brought it to my attention.

Zatarain's is a company that makes New Orleans rice and pasta mixes. Their icon is a silhouetted New Orleans clarinet player, their slogan "A New Orleans Tradition Since 1889." The idea is, of course, to bring to mind the wonderful food associated with this culinary city--gumbo, jambalya, crawfish, etc. These days, in light of recent events, you think of something much different than a crawfish boil when you think of New Orleans. You think of nature's distructive power, of human suffering amidst what is at best a logistical nightmare and at worst a red-tape induced bungle.

So, what do you do if you are Zatarain's? Well, being a conservative marketer, I would have pulled all my campaign plans for now, until all the negative associations with New Orleans had disappeared and any hint of me using the city as a marketing ploy had passed.

And, what did my wife find in the paper today? A coupon slick for 50-cents off any two of their mixes (or, if 35-cents off of any one box of their Ready-to-Serve dishes). To me, that would be bad enough. But what gets even more play on the layout, but a picture of some Mardi Gras celebrant (or. . .is it one of those large parade float giant heads? I can't quite be sure. Check it out here) and a information on how I can win a trip for 2 to Mardi Gras! It's the Jazzmatazz Sweepstakes, everybody!

Now, granted, print ads are notoriously difficult to retract once they go into production. But, come one! With everyone making life altering adjustments these days to help out in whatever way we can--I would hope that Zatarain's, their ad agency, and/or the printer could have gone the extra mile to make some sort of concession.

In defense of Zatarain's--whose marketing hands may have been tied by any of the players here (agency, printer, papers, etc.)--they have made all the right language appear on their website. Still, it's hard to forget that in order to get to the website, I had to be exposed to a print ad that seemed so inappropriate that it made my jaw drop.

Listen to Ted Castronova on On the Media

Three posts in one day!
One morning, even!
Luckily, I'm not still trying to warm up for my academic writing--I actually did some of that this morning. One of my favorite radio shows has been NPR's On the Media. The hosts do a good job of taking a watchdog role in this wacky business while also keeping the fact that it is a business firmly in mind as they even occassionally defend media practices from unworthy criticism. Unfortunately, I have not been able to fit it into my schedule recently. . .lucky for the word of podcasting, which I just pieced together with my scheduling conflicts.

You can now download OTM from their website and listen to it at your convenience.

May I suggest that you start with this episode where you not only can you find an interesting history on the world of fantasy sports leagues (wouldn't that whole phenomenon make a great topic for a class? After all, it's dependent on media to such a huge extent!) but you can also hear an interview with my colleague Ted Castronova.

Ted is a great guy, the Director of Graduate Studies in the Dept. of Telecomm., but also a researcher in a fantastic and interesting area. An economist by training, he has applied classic economic theory to the fact that people are creating value in online worlds--creating characters, playing the game so that they have more experience, gold pieces, armor, whatever. . . I don't play these things! But, then these characters can be (and are) sold for actual $$, mostly on Ebay.

Seriously, check out the interview that Brooke Gladstone conducts with Ted. It's the last interview in that episode.

Blog Spam

As you can tell, it takes me some time to"warmup" to writing. This is especially true this early in the morning.

But as I was surfing around the blogger page. I notice that they have the option for bloggers to require "word identification" for people who make comments to blogs.

I know there are some of you who are reading my blog like to leave comments, and I appreciate it very much! In fact, it makes my day when I hear back from you. (Even though most of you leave your comments anonymously -- I go about the day trying to figure out who leaves which comments :-).

However, lately I've been receiving comments that look authentic, the turnout be nothing but spam sent by an automated blogger comment bot of sorts. So those of you who like to leave comments -- keep 'em comin. But just know that now you'll have to do one extra step.

Early morning writing

Well the brown bag went well.

My thanks to an anonymous "The Audio Prof" blog reader who noticed that I have the room number wrong for the T600. If you want to drop by in the future, telecommunication brown bags are Fridays beginning at 12:30 in room 226 of the RTV building.

Later this weekend, I will share a little bit of the data that I presented. Right now I'm just basically writing a quick little posting, to see if my Dragon NaturallySpeaking works on my back porch. It's pretty early on a Saturday morning, and I've got some writing to do on paper that is in revise and resubmit mode of the Journal of Advertising. It's a paper I'm writing with Michael Latour of UNLV, and I'm only about a month late getting back to him. Make that almost 2 months!

So, I promise that I would get it to him Wednesday. And as a result, I'm up early on a Saturday morning, sitting on my back porch trying to see if my microphone works as well here as it does me office. So far, it seems to be pretty good. He gets a little less accurate with the neighbors air-conditioning and kicks on.

Don't try to get some work done before the kids get up, and I'll "talk" to you later on this weekend.

Oh, and if you'd care to drop by!

Here's the information about the T600 seminars this semester.
Everyone is welcome!
Fridays, 12:30-1:45 pm
In room 269 of the RTV building



Sept. 9
Rob Potter (that's me!)
Sept. 16
TBA
Sept. 23
Mark Deuze, IU Telecom
Sept. 30
Indeok Song, IU Telecom
Oct. 7
Matt Jackson, Penn State
Oct. 14
Andrew Bucksbarg, IU Telecom
Oct. 21
Ron Osgood, IU Telecom
Oct. 28
Julia Fox, IU Telecom
Nov. 4
Satoko Kurita, IU Telecom
Nov. 11
Norbert Herber, IU Telecom
Nov. 18
Zheng Wang, IU Telecom
Nov. 25
Thanksgiving
Dec. 2
Bryant Paul , IU Telecom

More clutter research coming tomorrow

In the Dept. we have what we call "brown bags"which are informal to semi-formal presentations of our creative and/or research activity. Technically, it's a class called the Colloquium (T600) that graduate students register for. It's worth 1 credit a semester, and PhD students must register and attend for 4 semesters. They must also present original work twice over the course of their studies.

Usually, for doctoral students, the first study is one they are involved in with a faculty member, and then the last one is related in some way to their dissertation.

Faculty present, too, as a way to introduce new ideas they are working on or present data.

Originally, I was slated to give the clutter presentation NEXT Friday, and INformatics Professor Jean Camp but apparently she had travel plans that got re-arranged and David Waterman (the T600 coordinator for the semester) was in a bind and asked for volunteers to move up to tomorrow.

What the heck.

So, there will be more tomorrow.

Sorry that it has been a while since I've blogged. Lotsa research going on and settling into the new semester.

Business as Usual?

I am just getting my mind around the devastation of hurricane Katrina, like many around the world seeing whole cities washed away and witnessing the awesome power nature can unleash makes me realize that the things I worry about on a daily basis, in the grand scheme of things, don't amount to much.

I'm teaching the research methods in audience analysis class, as some of you know. The first half of that class deals with the ratings industry, Nielsen and Arbitron primarily. One of the main themes that I'm trying to get across is that even though there are substantial problems in methodology used by these two companies, the overarching pressure is for business to continue. The sense you get from, the researchers, the advertisers, and the stations is often one of acceptance of the drawbacks to methodologies. In order for business to continue.

Usually, as someone who came from an industry background, I'm fine with "the business must continue" mantra. However, lately some of the headlines coming out of trade magazine web sites have really rubbed me the wrong way. For example, take a look at this.

To me lines like "we realize television ratings pale in comparison to massive loss of life" ring hollow. When you then continue with the story discussing how national clients may not get their cost per point levels to where they want them because some people meters have been washed out to sea.

Radio was not immune to this approach, as you can see here.

Don't get me wrong, the broadcasting industry does great humanitarian work and has already responded to the Katrina tragedy. But for some reason, these two stories have really gotten under my skin...