TOWARD A NEW APPROACH WITH ARBITRON A unified strategy for acquiring public radio audience data was the central focus for a meeting of some 30 public radio leaders who met October 11 to review emerging issues in the field’s relationship with Arbitron. The group gave broad and emphatic endorsement to key objectives: • A collective public radio arrangement with Arbitron rather than station-by- station negotiations. • Affordable access to station data for public radio stations of all sizes and in all markets. • Access to data and analyses that inform programming decisions and program investments within public radio’s public service perspective. • Access to data and analyses that strengthen key revenue streams – listener support and underwriting – within public radio’s nonprofit business model. • Access to data and analyses that aggregate performance across stations and support our understanding of the full public radio system. The meeting, convened by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Station Resource Group, included managers, programmers, and underwriting and corporate support staff from public radio stations, audience research firms, and public radio’s networks, regional organizations, and national membership organizations. The group was briefed about and discussed both current arrangements for public radio audience data and Arbitron’s proposals for doing business in the emerging Personal People Meter (PPM) environment. Participants agreed that the new Arbitron methodology presented both important opportunities and serious challenges for public radio. Core issues to address include the price associated with the new approach, the data stations and others will receive, and how public radio will be allowed to use the data it buys. Participants focused on outcomes that are most important for public radio and approaches that are most likely to achieve these results. The meeting concluded with a “station caucus” that included only station representatives and their membership organizations. This group called for a Public Radio Bargaining Team that will refine the key objectives outlined above and seek discussions with Arbitron about how to achieve them. Eight station representatives were asked to take the lead in forming such a team: * Dave Edwards, General Manager, WUWM, Milwaukee (and board member of the Radio Research Consortium and National Public Radio) * Jennifer Ferro, Assistant General Manager, KCRW, Santa Monica (and board member of the Development Exchange) * Debra Fraser, Station Manager, KUHF, Houston * Vince Gardino, Executive Director of Corporate Underwriting, WNYC, New York * Cory Lewis, Station Manager, WBUR, Boston * Tim Roesler, Senior VP, Sales, Marketing and Distribution, MPR|APM, St. Paul * Kimberly Sparrow, Director of Corporate Support, KQED, San Francisco * Scott Williams, Program Director, KJZZ/KBAQ, Phoenix This “get it started” group may comprise the bargaining team or add to or subtract from its number. Also to be addressed by this group and/or the Bargaining Team are such issues as: • How to shape a working relationship between this group and the Radio Research Consortium (RRC) that addresses the overlapping goals of a public radio system contract, arrangements for PPM-based data, and arrangements for diary-based data that will remain in place for many stations for years to come. • Who should actually interact, discuss, or negotiate with Arbitron in pursuit of public radio’s shared goals. • A timeline that addresses the urgency felt by public radio stations in early PPM markets while proceeding in a fashion that produces the best results for public radio as a whole. • How to involve and tap the expertise of the several public-radio-focused audience research firms and others who might bring important knowledge, experience, and perspective to the process. • How to involve public radio’s networks, all of which currently have their own, separate contracts with Arbitron. • Which entity would execute and implement any group station contract that may result, the role currently played by the RRC. • How to coordinate with regional and national membership organizations to share information and collect views throughout the system. • The appropriate role for CPB. Both members of the “get it started” group and others at the meeting emphasized the need to look beyond the larger markets and larger stations that are taking the lead in this effort. It is essential to reflect and protect the interests of smaller stations in the larger markets and stations in smaller markets that are still several years away from Arbitron’s planned technology change. Station representatives and others also urged the cultivation of a better understanding inside Arbitron – especially at higher levels – of public radio’s interests, services, and business models. There is much work to do. Some of it is within public radio, such as addressing the points above and resolving different views about the capacities and limits of current and proposed analytical tools with respect to programming, sales, membership, and promotion. Some of the work is external, beginning with Toward a New Approach with Arbitron – 2 persuading Arbitron to continue dealing with public radio as an industry and to move away from its concept of dealing only with individual public radio stations. This endeavor has varied professional and organizational interests in the mix, technical complexity, significant financial and operational resources at stake, and some strong differences of opinion. Some participants have great confidence in the ways public radio now manages audience data and builds its analyses; some want to explore other options. One participant took vigorous exception to a “station caucus” setting the course for acquisition of stations’ Arbitron data, arguing that such a group is without sufficient understanding of the complexities of the pending negotiation and needs broader industry representation. The strong sentiment among the station participants was to move forward briskly – to protect the stations in the early PPM markets, to resolve uncertainties Arbitron has brought to its continued relationship with the Radio Research Consortium, and to afford everyone maximum lead time in a period of certain change. BACKGROUND Emergence of Personal People Meters evokes mixed reactions within public radio. This new technology offers a more accurate picture of how listeners use our service and Arbitron is developing software tools that will enable stations to slice and dice audience behavior in new ways. Separately, Arbitron has also begun to publish public radio’s audience data “in the book” alongside commercial radio stations, a move that creates significant opportunities for a number of stations to increase underwriting revenues. At the same time, Arbitron is looking for opportunities to finance its new measurement tools and software development – and looking to its station clients to pay many of those increased costs. Concurrently, Arbitron is “squeezing out” other vendors that make use of its data – in some cases buying them, in others tightening access to its data. This is a general direction that would displace or limit public-radio-focused companies like the Radio Research Consortium, Audience Research Analysis, and AudiGraphics, among others. Over the past several months Arbitron has taken several steps that could dramatically change both the character and the cost of public radio audience estimates. Some of the changes are directly tied to the introduction of Personal People Meters. Others are more a matter of Arbitron seeking to alter long- standing business arrangements with non-commercial stations. Station and National Organization Deals. Arbitron hopes to make direct agreements with individual public radio stations for audience data, offering “unrestricted” licenses for fees that would be calculated, as is done for commercial stations, on the basis of market size and audience share, and then Toward a New Approach with Arbitron – 3 discounted for public radio. Arbitron has begun to pursue this approach with public stations in Houston, Philadelphia, and New york, the first markets slated for conversion to PPM measurement. Several stations in the early PPM roll-out markets have been approached by Arbitron, although it appears that no public radio station has been offered a contract at this time. Several public radio stations in Houston and Philadelphia have participated in tests of the PPM measurement system and have shared some of the results. None have committed to regular use of the new system. Public radio’s three national networks – NPR, PRI, and APM – currently have separate deals with Arbitron for data on their national programs and some access to station data. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting obtains audience data through the RRC and other audience research vendors. In early September, SRG urged all public stations not to sign any station-specific deals with Arbitron until the station community had a chance to fully explore options for a collective public radio arrangement. The RRC Contract. The Radio Research Consortium, which has coordinated “group buys” of station audience data for 25 years, has a contract with Arbitron that extends through the end of 2007. Arbitron has not committed to renew its arrangements with the RRC when the contract expires. Arbitron also informed the RRC that it considers the contract to cover only diary- based data, and that it intends to provide Portable People Meter (PPM) data to stations only