IS THE SHOW COMING BACK?

I get asked this almost every day. A D&D guy named Tim who does landscaping came up to me at Target yesterday asking me. I was with my impatient little 3 yr. old girl or I would have talked longer. Gave the short answer of I hope so and yes Detroit would be nice, but I honestly have no idea. Had I had more time, this is the longer answer I would have given.

Shows like ours were rare to begin with. A show that was all talk to NOT talk exclusively about politics or to be a sleaze show are rare. We were fortunate to have worked for two stations in 15 years that trusted us to draw in our unique way. We could do a serious even controversial, sometimes political, issue one segment, and move on and do something stupid, light and funny the next. And it worked. A little something called ppm happened in the world of radio ratings in the biggest of markets about a year and a few months ago. PPM stands for personal people meter.

First, the old system. The old system was a 'recall' system and involved people taking part in the ratings survey filling out a diary for one week. For one week of their lives, they would have a diary supplied by Arbitron (the ratings survey company) and they would in theory fill out as they listened what they were listening to. Among the complaints about this were that if people really liked a show, they might write down that they listened to the entire thing, all 4 hours say, when in reality they maybe only listened an hour and a half. I think the upside of the old diary system was that under a recall system (recall here meaning simply you remember and write down what you're listening to) the more loyal a listener, the more involved a listener, the more you have an impact on that listeners life, the more passionate the listener, the more they'll remember you and write you down. Yes, the exact times of listening may have been somewhat flawed. But the level of involvement for the listener is, in my opinion, certainly represented when they're being asked basically what radio shows mean the most to you. Another upside of the diary system is that the sample size was much, much larger. Still based on only a fraction of the actual population, but far greater than the fraction of a fraction that is the sampling size with ppm.

Now then, the news system of the personal people meter. In the biggest markets they no longer have people fill out a diary and they don't have nearly as many people taking part in the survey and those they DO have are kept for very long periods of time. So much so that Arbitron has no longer even been forthright with much of this information. The personal people meter is a little electronic device about the size of those old fashioned pagers. You can clip it on a belt if you're a guy. One reason formats that favor women tend to not do as well in ratings now is that females have fewer options of actually wearing the people meter on their clothing. They don't wear things that are very 'clippable' like belts, and even when they might ladies tend to care what they look like throughout the day and are less likely to want to have this ugly little box on them. Seriously, it comes down to things like this. So male formats they say do somewhat better because the compliance rate for men is higher. This box you wear or at least keep with you at all times, it picks up a secret signal now embedded within the broadcast signal of each station, each station having its own unique signal. So this box will record whatever signal is being put out by whatever audible radio it is near. There's good and bad to this. Good is in theory it should be much more accurate. What's bad is if you even just walk into a store and are in there for 5 minutes, and the radio they're playing behind the counter is loud enough your box will record whatever that store is listening to as your choice. What stations do so many retailers play and do so many offices allow? The ones that are largely background filled with 'safe' music that no one's really listening much to, but the box doesn't record interest levels or impact levels. It only records what's in front of it. As a result, many more stations in reaction to this new ppm system (which by the way has even been called into question for inaccuracies by congress) are offering a lot more music. Many other stations are scared off by talk.

This is the result. Dick Purtan said it best after announcing his retirement. You're left with either pure talk (and that's almost always the traditional serious minded news/talk programming where it's politics and issues) or all music. You're not getting as much variety. Where I'm going with this long explanation of how it's all happening is that there are fewer places for shows like ours to exist. It's been happening to true entertaining talk personalities all over the country. What's left is sports talk, which we're not, traditional news/talk which is part of what we can do, and music shows that MAY allow some fun personality to get through. It's looking more like our choices both involve change. Either stick to our lighter more fun side but accept it in smaller doses mixed with music. Or tap more full time into our serious side and go the more traditional news/talk route.

Now that's a LOT of explanation, but I kinda feel I owe it to people who've been following us for ten years here in Detroit, and other folks back in New Jersey for 15. None of this should be taken as griping or grousing. We were a top 5 show adults 25-54 several times in 2009 and once even number 2. I believe both ratings systems have flaws, and I believe both have good points too.

Now had I tried to say all this to poor Tim the landscaper at Target A) security would tell me to shut up and get out and B) poor Tim's eyes would've probably glazed over.

So back to the short answer, not sure yet what will happen with us, but thank you everyone for asking.