Other than the four companies participating in the announced new measurement service with Shazam, not many, if any, other radio companies knew about it. iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Entercom, and Cox say they will be a part of the service. According to BIA/Kelsey those four companies control about 1,500 stations across the country. We know for sure that Hubbard, Greater Media, Alpha Media, Beasley, Emmis, Connoisseur, and others, were not contacted about the new service and were caught off guard when they saw the announcement Thursday.
We were told that e-mails were flying around the industry on Thursday wondering how this new service would affect the Audio Measurement service Nielsen has been working on. Nielsen’s service, when it makes it to market, is expected to be able to measure both over-the-air and online listening so advertisers have a better picture of radio’s performance with consumers. The rollout of that service has been slow in coming to market.
There were many questions about the announcement that were left unanswered. When does this new service start? How will the technology work? What about the other radio companies?
How will they be able to record over-the-air listening? Will this be MRC accredited? Will stations have to pay for it? When we asked iHeartMedia (iHeart sent out the press release) for an interview to get more detail on the service, we were told if we had specific questions to e-mail them over. So, we did. iHeartMedia’s President of Research and Insights Radha Subramanyam provided the following answers to our questions:
Radio Ink: How does this impact the Nielsen digital measurement solution?
Subramanyam: It doesn’t. This is just a new measurement system, and the more measurement systems we have for radio the better for us.
Radio Ink: Are iHeart, Cumulus, Entercom, and Cox not part of the Nielsen solution?
Subramanyam: This has nothing to do with Nielsen, this is just an effort for us to continue to find additional ways to measure and present radio, both broadcast and digital.
Radio Ink: Were the other radio companies asked to participate in this one and declined?
Subramanyam: This is about companies looking for additional measurement systems and not about trying to recruit companies for this particular one. Anyone who is interested in this is welcome.
Radio Ink: Why muddy the waters if Nielsen is coming out with a product?
Subramanyam: We don’t think this has anything to do with Nielsen, this is about getting more companies that can measure radio, both broadcast and digital, and provide more data that makes radio even more competitive with the information the digital players like Facebook and Google provide.
Is it a shot at Nielson, or is this simply a case of the bigger players wanting to control measurement do they can manipulate the results for their own benefit? Can a company like iHeart, so far in debt, be trusted to report accurately on itself?