It’s interesting how myths spread; and how myths, when repeated, become facts.

Since I was in San Francisco, it was probably time to do a Mythbusters of my own – looking at a device which has got rather a lot of press recently.

Pierre Bouvard from Arbitron hands me the small plastic unit. It looks, frankly, a little ugly. It’s a small pager-like thing, with a belt clip on it. Two silver dots each side of it suggest a battery charging dock. There’s a small hole at the top. A solid green light on one side looks reassuring.

This is the Portable People Meter. And it’s this little device which is changing the way radio is measured, and has the capability of changing how radio’s bought too.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way. RAJAR, the UK’s radio measurement system, is pretty good. It runs off a very large sample; its methodology is solid. Unlike many places in the world, the UK has followed the “agree on technology, compete on content” mantra when it comes to audience measurement. Everyone quotes RAJAR; and, to a point, everyone backs RAJAR. Not to do so would be foolish; and RAJAR isn’t flawed. If you want solid quarterly audience figures, RAJAR delivers.

Arbitron’s Portable People Meter is, for its fashion clunkiness, quite a clever device. It records what you’re listening to, all day, and sends it back to Arbitron. Have enough people in the panel, and you have a good understanding of actual radio listening. No longer do people need to remember their listening habits and fill it into a paper diary; the PPM does that for them. And stations benefit from much faster and more granular research into their audience habits. (This is good and bad, of course.)

I’ve heard – and repeated – a lot of reasons why the PPM isn’t the right thing for the UK. And I suspect I owe some people an apology; because it would seem I’ve been repeating some myths.

Myth 1: “the PPM only records when it’s being worn, so it completely loses breakfast listening”. Busted. The PPM is always recording (in the charging dock or not). Your ‘listen for 20 minutes until you get out of bed’ figures can be captured – and are. It records 24 hours a day, irrespective of whether it’s being moved or not. (The capture of movement data tells the company whether it’s being worn – and they will tell you off if you don’t wear it; but you don’t have to be moving to be measuring what you’re listening to).

Myth 2: “an entire country needs to completely switch to PPM”. Busted. Canada has switched to PPM, but for major metropolitan markets only. They’re merging older diary-type research in the more rural areas (and trust me, Canada has many of those). The same happens in Norway and Denmark. This keeps the cost down, and ensures the markets where the real money is – London/Manchester/Birmingham/Glasgow/Edinburgh ? – is covered electronically.

And, of course, the US is similarly split; Arbitron measures over 300 cities, and by this time next year, 49 of them will be PPM (two-thirds have already converted). Even at the end of their rollout, they’ll still have some markets which are still diary-based.

Myth 3: “the panel isn’t weighted correctly”. Well, that might be true. Just like RAJAR, any monitoring has difficulty finding enough people – particularly 25-35 year-old men – to take part. The PPM doesn’t change that. But then, that’s acknowledged as being an issue with the current diary methodology.

In 2007, I wrote about Norway’s experiences with the PPM; and repeated some of the myths about PPMs I’d heard from elsewhere. I regret that I repeated the myths without checking the facts.

And it would appear that the benefits of PPMs are greater than I wrote about in my original blog post; minute-by-minute figures mean that presenters and management can understand which features work, and don’t work, by simply monitoring the figures; and advertisers can now pay for actual delivery, rather than a guesstimate based on a three-month average. It’s great news for stations who cover big events, like the Isle of Wight Festival; and great news for stations that do interesting things with side-channels, like christmas music.

So, while RAJAR isn’t ‘wrong’, it’s clear that PPMs could offer more detailed measurement that the radio industry has at this time, in its key money-making areas of London and other large cities. And, to combat the growth in internet advertising, more detailed measurement is the one thing that the industry needs.

So – is it time to reopen the question about electronic measurement?

Isn’t the best bet to get PPMs into large cities, get a representative amount of PPMs elsewhere in the country for national broadcasters; and to keep diaries going for the other markets? (This is the model in use in the USA for television, incidentally: enough PPMs across the US, but diaries still in use for some local markets).

What do you think?

Disclaimer: Arbitron bought me supper. I use the ‘supper’ word lightly, since it was a restaurant which delighted in ultra-small plates of posh complicated dishes, but nevertheless, it was supper, and for that I was grateful.

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