Our Lives, Our Careers

Do you know Nate Silver?

He's not a radio guy. He developed a system built on statistical data that could predict individual performance for baseball players and was sometimes featured on ESPN TV.

He correctly predicted the outcomes in 49 or the 50 US states in the 2008 Presidential election, after which TIME named him one of The World's 100 Most Influential People.

So you might be interested in his take on Nielsen, PPM, and Voltair: Did Nielsen Kill The Radio Star?

Here’s the headline: “Industry pros are asking if Nielsen botched radio ratings — and inadvertently forced stations off the air.”

Take a minute and read his article…

I'm not sure how we got here, but I think we need to move. Any place would be better than here, I think.

Facebook or Google wouldn't sit politely if an outside measurement organization, which charged them a fortune, underrepresented user numbers and impact. Not if it negatively impacted their revenue!

Nielsen should work for us, not the other way around.

Nielsen should make selling spots on your station easier, not harder.

It should add credibility to your audience data, not weaken those efforts.

It should add to market stability and improve confidence in your station's story to advertisers, not the opposite.

And it should be affordable enough so that it doesn't cause cut-backs in staffing, marketing and promotion within stations.

Look, I’ve been banging this drum for a couple of decades now.

We have got to fix this, and soon, because lives have already been ruined and revenues damaged.

It's already too late for too many.