800.275.2840 MORE NEWS» insideradio.com THE MOST TRUSTED NEWS IN RADIO MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015 Eighteen months after merger, ‘Arbitron’ brand lives on. The company vanished in September 2013. But for tens of thousands of diarykeepers and PPM panelists, Arbitron lives on. Some 18 months after Nielsen closed its acquisition of the ratings company, virtually all of its solicitations, marketing materials and correspondence with radio survey participants continue to be branded as Arbitron. Research assistants and coaches identify themselves as being from Arbitron. Nielsen’s consumer-facing radio ratings website remains ArbitronRatings.com, which carries the outdated phrase: “Our only business is research and our only job is ratings.” And though the big Arbitron sign was removed within hours from the building shortly after the sale closed, the mailing address for materials to and from diarykeepers remains Arbitron’s former Columbia, MD headquarters. The Arbitron logo and the phrase “since 1949” are prominently displayed in consumer-facing materials. One reason why the branding hasn’t changed is logistics. Nielsen uses hundreds of different types of Arbitron-branded correspondence, from envelopes and boxed mailers to letters, email and the printed diaries themselves. For the PPM service alone, there are some 600 different marketing materials. Changing all of that takes time. And any change of that magnitude needs to be tested to determine what, if any, impact it has on things like participation rates. Nielsen Audio manager of PPM methods & analysis Kelly Dixon says the company is testing Nielsen-branded radio ratings materials and has a tentative date to make the switchover. To a limited degree, that’s has already begun. “Arbitron is now Nielsen,” declares a notice on the website for diarykeepers and PPM panelists, with a link to the press release about the merger. “While our name is changing, your important role in our ratings and research and the use and protection of your information will not.” NAB’s lobbying budget soared in 2014. There’s been no shortage of attacks on broadcasters in Washington during the past year, something that’s reflected in how much the National Association of Broadcasters spent on lobbying in 2014. The NAB’s lobbying budget jumped 28% to $18.44 million, according to a disclosure form, as the organization advocated for broadcasters in Congress and at federal agencies, including the FCC. That included $4.53 million spent during the fourth quarter alone on a wide range of issues, from potential changes to the ad tax deductibility and political advertising regulations to ongoing reviews of media ownership rules and a potential performance royalty on radio stations. And while the trade group doesn’t detail how the lobbying is divvied up, the looming TV incentive auctions likely ate up much of its efforts. Meanwhile, on-air and digital streaming royalties and other issues had the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) spending $4.14 million during 2014, a 10% decrease from a year earlier. It was the second consecutive year that the RIAA pared down its lobbying budget. And the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences spent $455,469, a 3% decrease. The NAB didn’t go it alone, however. Several radio groups also lobbied Washington on similar issues throughout 2014. The disclosures show CBS led the way, boosting its lobbying budget 1% to $4.97 million. IHeartMedia spent $4.4 million inside the Beltway, a 9% year-to-year decline. National Religious Broadcasters spent about $22,000. Christian broadcaster Educational Media Foundation spent roughly $20,000. The disclosure filings also reveal Nielsen showed its global footprint as it spent about $644,000 to lobby Congress on domestic issues but also on international trade. Chicago’s record-setting translator deal is called off. Translator history won’t be made in Chicago after all. Elroy Smith’s Integrity Radio Communications has scrapped a proposed $4.6 million record-setting deal to buy the Englewood, IL-licensed [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 1 NEWS insideradio.com MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015 W264BF at 100.7 FM. And Smith is heading to the Greenville-Spartanburg market to become operations manager of Summit Media’s cluster. Smith calls his move to South Carolina a “new chapter” in his radio career. He previously spent 15-years running iHeartMedia’s urban stations in Chicago. His head-turning deal was announced last July and Smith never released what he planned to do with the signal. Financing may’ve been the problem as the deal was first extended before being called off by both companies. The translator’s existing two-watt signal covers about 636,000 potential listeners with a 60dBu signal and a proposed five-fold power hike that would cover 1,410,000 people. But the change has run into static, so to speak. Digity Media’s co-channel classic rock “Q Rock 100.7” WRXQ has filed an objection with the FCC arguing the plan would “cause harmful interference to thousands of listeners” in its suburban Chicago coverage area. The FCC hasn’t made a decision whether to green-light Calvary’s upgrade. While Smith’s translator deal didn’t set a national record, Chicago did set a new in-market record last year when John Bridge’s Windy City Broadcasting closed on a $1 million deal for the translator W280EM at 103.9 FM. It’s now on the air as jazz “The Groove.” But in a crowded market, it too has run into interference complaints and plans to make changes to its facilities are in limbo at the FCC. Nielsen integrates with jacapps as it begins rolling out a digital audio service. Nielsen begins digital audio measurement service rollout with jacapps. Jacapps has become the latest company to embed Nielsen’s digital audio measurement software into its own products, a move that will allow stations to get a better read on how listeners are consuming streaming audio. Using a Nielsen-provided Software Development Kit (SDK), jacapps will install a meter into its mobile audio player. The meter will feed listening data to Nielsen, which will crunch the numbers and report them to any subscribing station, giving its subscribers a way to sell streaming advertising based on Nielsen ratings. “Until today, program directors have been reluctant to heavily promote their mobile app for fear of losing listening credit,” jacapps president Paul Jacobs says. “Now mobile streaming data will be additive for broadcasters and will help them showcase expanded reach.” Nielsen announced last month that Wide Orbit would also offer a similar integration for stations using its streaming products. While a step forward, the integrations are however a far cry from a complete set of streaming ratings from Nielsen. The ratings company is still trying to clear a roadblock with its broadcast customers over how webcast numbers should be reported to the marketplace. In the meantime, Nielsen EVP Matt O’Grady says integrations like the one which jacapps will offer helps stations more effectively quantify the size and nature of their listening audience across broadcast and digital platforms. “That’s a great benefit for their clients who will now have a fully integrated picture of the audio marketplace,” he says. It also sets Nielsen up for an eventual squaring off with Triton Digital, whose Media Rating Council-accredited Webcast Metrics are currently the standard for streaming audio measurement. One advantage Nielsen will likely play up is it will be able to combine streaming data with a broadcaster’s over-the-air audience. Wheeler backs multilingual EAS. FCC chair Tom Wheeler worries that, in a time of crisis, emergency alert messages may get lost in translation. “We have an EAS that hasn’t been updated since the Cold War,” he told Congress last week. So he’s throwing his support behind multilingual EAS. “We have to fix it to represent new technology but also increased diversity,” Wheeler testified before the House Telecommunications Subcommittee. The chairman didn’t offer any specifics of how he’d like to see that goal achieved, but said he met with the agency’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) this week to discuss ways to improve EAS. Rep. Yvette Clark (D-NY) told him multilingual alerts can’t come soon enough. “I hope you will make that a priority because we’re facing 21st century challenges of climate change, flooding, and terrorist attacks — it’s become more of a pressuring, current-day need,” she said. During testimony before Congress, the FCC commissioners also weighed in on several other topics of concern to broadcasters. With no indication of when steps to help AM owners may finally be Ajit Pai taken at the agency, commissioner Ajit Pai told lawmakers “the record is complete and [it has] [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 2 NEWS insideradio.com MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015 unanimous support from public.” He also weighed in on the long-delayed media ownership review process. “We need to put the ‘quad’ back in quadrennial,” Pai said, noting the last time the FCC took action on media ownership rules was in December 2007. Wheeler didn’t weigh in on the ownership rules topic. He’s previously said he expects the FCC to vote on the 2014 proceeding in mid-2016. The FCC’s testifying marathon continues this week. When it’s over, the commissioners will have appeared before five congressional committees in eight days. Hit-predicting tools come with caveats. Programmers have an ever-expanding toolkit to help them pick the hits. A six- month analysis of Billboard chart data from Coleman offers some clues about which ones are valuable popularity barometers. The research firm found digital download sales follow a different pattern than listening behavior.