Radio ratings: Syd – Smooth dominates Drive; Melb – audiences desert Hot Breakfast; Bris – Nova dominates Breakfast and Drive

You have the Perth numbers in the Melb slot

Why does no one talk about actual numbers of listeners? As an advertiser, 6.5% doesn’t mean anything unless I know what 100% equals, but the total number does. Are such figures available?

So true. 2GB Sydney ‘dominates’ the ratings yet their actual number of listeners is around half of that of the top FM stations. The time spent listening skews their rating figure because their audience tunes in for long periods.

Subscribers to the survey do get more complete data, including figures that indicate numbers of listeners, breakdowns of listenership every 15 mins, popularity among grocery buyers and so on. But, of course, the survey will remain flawed while they rely so heavily on the diary system that relies on people fillnig in a form saying hat they believe they were listening to. Only a system that records exactly what people are actually listening to — using technology already availabe (see: Shazam) — will tell them this. It will also tell them that, for example, many people switch stations during the ads and the talk breaks — which is exactly what the commercial stations don’t want their advertisers to know. Which is why you won’t be seeing that any time soon.

Hi there. Are you actually aware of the factual inaccuracies in this article? When you say Triple M “hold on the top spot in breakfast” in Melbourne, that doesn’t make any sense considering Ross and John on 3AW rate 19.8? I look forward to seeing your response.

I am not so sure about. There are millions of older people that have talkback on all day.
If anything talkback would have people listening longer.
100 consecutive survey number ones for Alan Jones. No music station will ever do that in Sydney.

BD if only what you say in the second part of your comments was true.

I’ll give you just a few examples. If you rely on streaming data first you are excluding broadcast radio. Second the streaming server has absolutely no idea the listening state of the device receiving the stream – the speakers could be muted. If could theoretically provide the maximum possible audience. On the flip-side the stream could be at a party with dozens of listeners.

If you rely on smartphone apps ‘listening’ to the speaker and then audio-matching you are excluding the c. 30% of people who use buds or headphones.

If you rely on bespoke ‘audio capture’ devices (portable meters, watch meters) specifically designed to perform the task you do get better data than server streams or smartphone apps. But they also have a flaw – we take them out of the laboratory and give them to people who are forgetful creatures. If they fail to carry/wear the device any listening done is lost for ever. If they rely on audio-matching they also have the same problems as smartphones. Bluetooth is also proving to be problematic.

What you do find with electronic measurement cf. diaries is that you get more stations listened to (i.e. lots more channel switching – which is correct) but much lower listening durations because such systems produce more false negatives than diaries (which in some cases produce false positives – e.g. I ALWAYS listen to …).

What on the surface appears an obvious and relatively simple solution is far from it. Having said that, in my opinion, electronic measurement does have a place alongside recall diaries – a hybrid system. We’ve just got to work out how to do it!