Local broadcasters will soon find out whether the ratings system that helps determine how hundreds of millions of dollars worth of radio advertising in Los Angeles gets spent each year is all wrong.
Although Arbitron Co. downplays changes it plans to make to its L.A. sampling technique as little more than cosmetic, they probably represent the company’s most important shift in methodology since it started hiring people who speak Spanish to interview Spanish-speaking radio listeners.
Starting with the fall 1998 survey, Arbitron will split L.A. County into five zones, each of which will be treated as though it were a county unto itself. Each “county” will have its own weights and balances meaning researchers will make sure the sample contains respondents of the correct age, sex and ethnicity to match the actual proportions of the segment as a whole.
Why does this matter? Because for many years, broadcasters have been complaining that L.A. is simply too big to be accurately surveyed using Arbitron’s former methods, resulting in many geographic areas that are completely uncounted and wild swings in the ratings for certain stations between one survey period and the next.
Further, they charge that Arbitron’s efforts to target African American and Latino survey respondents have resulted in an undercounting of the county’s white population, and of assimilated Latinos who are primarily English speakers which might partially explain the enormous ratings growth of Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles.
“The people at Arbitron believe you can drop 10,000 diaries anyplace and it will be the same,” said Mary Beth Garber, president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association. “We think L.A. is so geographically segmented that if you leave out one area, it really skews the book.”
One of the most outspoken Arbitron critics in L.A. is Roy Laughlin, general manager of KIIS-FM 102.7 and KXTA-AM 1150. Laughlin believes his stations attract a lot of English-speaking Latinos who are being ignored by Arbitron.
Laughlin’s argument is keyed on Arbitron’s technique of surveying people in so-called High Density Hispanic Areas (HDHAs). To get enough Latino respondents to match Census estimates of the actual Latino population of L.A. County, Arbitron focuses its surveying firepower on certain areas of the county known to have a high concentration of Latino residents, like the Eastside. It does the same thing with the African-American audience, concentrating on High Density Black Areas like South Central.
The problem with this method, according to Laughlin and other English-language broadcasters, is that it ignores more-assimilated Latinos living in wealthier areas like the Westside. These people, generally speaking, were born in the United States and tend to use English as a primary language making them very different from the Spanish-speaking immigrants living in the HDHAs. They are also more likely to listen to English-language radio than Spanish-language radio, Laughlin believes.
“All the English stations just went down 25 percent across the board (in market share in Arbitron’s spring 1998 survey),” Laughlin said. “Imagine if you ran a car lot and you suddenly had 25 percent less cars to sell. It’s a serious problem.”
“Cars” in the above metaphor, of course, is a reference to radio listeners, who are “sold” by the stations to advertisers.
Laughlin and others expect the problem to be solved by the new survey, which separates the Westside into a distinct segment and will count Latinos within that segment.
Radio analysts agree that some changes in the ratings are likely when Arbitron releases its fall 1998 book in January. No one is certain what those changes will be, but many expect stations like KIIS to benefit, in addition to stations with formats like classical music and news.
“We don’t want to call it reverse discrimination, but a lot of people feel that it is. There has always been an uncomfortable feeling with the way (Arbitron) treats Hispanics and blacks,” said Allen Klein, radio analyst with Media Research Graphics in Encino. “It’s absurd that on the Westside of L.A., the leading station is a Spanish-language station but that’s the way Arbitron has reported it in the past.”
There are two groups that disagree with the notion that Arbitron’s current methodology is faulty: Arbitron and the Spanish-language broadcasters.
Richard Heftel, president and general manager of Spanish-language KLVE-FM 107.5 the top-rated station in L.A. County believes Arbitron is actually undercounting Spanish-speaking Angelenos, rather than the other way around. That’s because “there is a reluctance on the part of Spanish-dominant people to talk to a research company at all, especially an Anglo research company,” Heftel said.
Arbitron officials, meanwhile, say their methodology is entirely accurate, and there will be no change this January. Arbitron spokesman Thom Mocarsky says that statistically speaking, it doesn’t matter whether you sample one big unit or five smaller ones if the correct weightings and balances are being used, the overall results will come out exactly the same.
“Is this important? Yes, it is. Is our survey better as a result? Yes. Will everything change? I’d be highly surprised if it did,” Mocarsky said.
So why go to the trouble and expense of changing the survey methodology at all?
“It’s a higher level of quality control,” he answers.
So quality and accuracy are completely different matters?
Of course, as Klein points out, Arbitron has powerful reasons for downplaying the effects of its change. If there is a big difference in the ratings, and that difference is confirmed by one or two more surveys, broadcasters in big cities around the country will be clamoring for Arbitron to split their cities up just as it has Los Angeles. And that could get very expensive for the New York-based research firm.
Plus, it would have to deal with complaints from L.A.’s Spanish-language broadcasters that would undoubtedly be as loud as those it has been hearing from the English-language ones in the past.
“Obviously, I’m not going to be happy if there’s a sudden change in the numbers,” said Heftel. “There shouldn’t be.”
News Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
