kowchmedia wrote:

If you're looking to find Spring 2018 diary rating results for Kingston, Windsor, Regina, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George and St John - don't bother! Numeris had difficultty to find enough participants to fill out its diaries, so it cancelled the Spring 2018 diary ratings in those 10 radio markets.



 

Way to go Numeris, that's like a meteorologist saying "Today's weather report has been called off on account of bad weather."

Irvine wrote:

@radioactive
They'll allow dead AM signals to continue broadcasting as long as they can use them as a tax write off. 

Possible. But really, the TSN format requires live hosts, (often more than one at a time,) a producer, a screener and more. I'd hate to see anyone laid off, but that's a lot of salary to spend on a radio restaurant where there are almost no diners.

kowchmedia wrote:

Numeris had difficultty to find enough participants to fill out its diaries, so it cancelled the Spring 2018 diary ratings in those 10 radio markets. 

I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. After all, how does Numeris find those participants? They cold-call, expect people to actually answer and agree! When we still had a landline, 99% of all inbound calls were spam. So, if a person sees yet answer unknown number on their display, they won't actually answer. And, that's only half the battle: even if they answer, BBM has to convince them to participate. Given all the alerts of phone scams out there, the public is getting more and more skeptical each day.
 

Radiowiz wrote:

Anyone know if Numeris is still paying that same pathetic $2 it's been for decades for all the time and effort put into doing a  PPM or diary?

Yes, they are.
 

Moneris

CONFESSIONS OF A DIARY FILLER
 
I’m not sure if I ever mentioned this before, but a few years ago, when I was – as some who worked for Bell this week can now attest – between gigs, I received a radio diary from Numeris. It contained pages that covered every single hour of every single day for two weeks, divided into quarter hour increments from 6 AM to 1 AM. (They had zero interest in what was on my radio overnights.)
 
The envelope came with a crisp $5 bill (not a twonie) to encourage/guilt you into participating. They actually called my house just before it was supposed to start to make sure I was aware of it, pleading with me to fill it out.
 
Being the broadcast and radio geek I am, I didn’t need their incentives. Of course I would give it all my attention. Having lived by ratings for so long (and never completely believing in the system that governed whether any of us had a job or not) this was my chance to finally be on the other side.
 
And so the week came, with yet another call from Numeris reminding me that this was it! But when it started, I was immediately aggravated by the form. I admit I’m not your normal ratings-diary-filler-outer-type, having worked in either TV or radio for decades by that point. Like many here, I’m also an inveterate dial changer, rarely lingering long on just one station.
 
But the diary insisted I had to fill out the one station I listened to in each 15 minute increment. The problem: in 15 minutes, I often tuned in 3 stations or more. Yet they gave no place to indicate that. So I phoned their info line to ask them about this. Considering the ratings stakes, their answer was stunning: "Just put in the one you heard the longest."
 
So let me get this straight – you want me to favour one station over another simply because I may have been tuned in for 30 secs. longer than the second place I monitored? This was how they determined who gets the best numbers, gets to keep their jobs or gets rewarded with pay boosts? Man, what a flawed system.
 
In the end, I refused to do it that way and being your basic OCD-type, I logged every single minute I listened to every single outlet. So if I listened to CFRB for seven minutes, then tuned into say, AM 640 for six and heard CKTB for one minute, I put that in, even though there was no room for any of it. (I’ve always wondered how that went over at Numeris.)
 
Another issue with this system that really annoyed me: I consume a lot of radio when I’m out walking my dog, several times a day. How were you supposed to keep track of the stations when you’re out for an hour? And what about when you’re in the car, where if anything, I change stations even more often? Talk about distracted driving if you’re supposed to keep a running list of every place you tuned in and when. (In my case, I actually armed myself with a pen and a pad and made notes, even while my pooch was smelling the nearest pole.)
 
Near the end of the two weeks, I got yet a third call from Numeris, reminding me to send my diary back to them ASAP. I told them I would, but first I had to add to it. And then, just for the fun of it, I painstakingly organized my notes and typed up every single station I heard over those two weeks – and there were a ton of them – along with the exact times I tuned in and out.
 
The pre-paid envelope I sent back barely had room for all the paper I squeezed in.
 
So that’s what happened in my case. As a result of my experience, I can honestly say I still doubt that this method produces any kind of legit rating, even knowing that they aggregate all those numbers and returned diaries together.
 
I doubt Numeris will ever send me another one, since I probably gave them way too much data. But it sure was fun while it lasted. And it taught me one other thing: be skeptical about those numbers. I simply don’t believe most people will take the time or the trouble in an otherwise busy life to fill out a diary correctly, even part of the time. I’m willing to wager many in the general public don’t even know what station they’re actually hearing a great part of the day. It’s “I like this song,” and then onto somewhere else when the next tune isn’t as good.
 
Equally troubling is it’s been that way for years and years and years. Maybe PPMs are better. But I wasn’t asked to do that. And yet on the results of this very loose and hard-to-trust system, hundreds of jobs could potentially be on the line.
 
So Dear “Diary”: Of all the stations I listened to during those 14 days, that may be the most frightening thing I heard.

Radiowiz wrote:

cGrant wrote:

Radiowiz wrote:

Anyone know if Numeris is still paying that same pathetic $2 it's been for decades for all the time and effort put into doing a  PPM or diary?

Yes, they are.
 

Are you sure? How do you know that?
Someone else out there with very good credibility is trying to tell me it's $5 now.

All I can tell you is from my own experience. And in my case, I found a $5 bill.  

cGrant wrote:

Radiowiz wrote:

cGrant wrote:

Yes, they are.
 

Are you sure? How do you know that?
Someone else out there with very good credibility is trying to tell me it's $5 now.

Dear friends of mine were recently canvassed and they received a toonie. Thanks for the insult, Madam.
 

Who are you talking to?

Your incentive depends on what demographic you're in.

Last edited by Don (May 25, 2018 6:54 pm)

There's one more "confession" I should make about my diary experience and I admit it's not my finest hour. Unlike many who might have gotten the book to fill out, I was well aware that I could easily punish on air people I'm not fond of by completely ignoring them (and therefore denying them even a small rating boost) or deliberately listening to someone I might otherwise not tune into, just to give them a little Numeris "love."

On the latter point, I recall tuning out Jerry Agar on RB (who I quite enjoy normally) even though he was talking about a subject I was interested in and going over to Mike Stafford (he was still in his old time slot then.) I purposely spent at least 10-15 minutes on 640 just to give Stafford the slightest boost. It probably didn't amount to anything in the long run, but I hoped that my choice might have even a minute impact.

So in that sense, I was well aware of the tiny bit of faux "power" I held during those two weeks.