RAJAR Surveys UK Industry: Reports Consensus

Michael Hedges January 21, 2005

UK radio broadcasters reported satisfaction with RAJAR, its surveys and the march toward portable measurement.

Surveying customers, any customers, often reveals a few surprises and, occasionally, unexpected truth. RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited) surveys radio listening for UK broadcasters. Commercial broadcasters and the BBC pay RAJAR to conduct these surveys. Ad agencies and media buyers use the surveys, at the behest of commercial broadcasters, to place and price the 10, 20, 30 and 60 second interruptions that pay salaries of DJs and their managers.

Releasing (January 21) a summary of its consultation with broadcasters and other stakeholders, RAJAR confirmed that everybody likes surveys. Too, there is general agreement that radio audiences should be measured by a single, credible survey system, radio audiences and radio listening are changing and, “at some point,” portable electronic devices will do the measuring.

Those with a vested interest in counting listeners – the broadcasters – want RAJAR surveys to count listeners. The current method of asking people to recall what they listened to and enter that information in a diary only counts a listener as a listener if they say they listen for 5 minutes.  A personal radio surveillance device might count each and every nanosecond. The definition of “listening” could change to one or two minutes.

Ad agencies and media buyers care not a twit about “listening” and all that warm, fuzzy stuff about stations’ “engagement” with audiences. They want radio surveys to report exposure, just like exposure to billboards. And they want it on a minute-by-minute scale. And – for commercial broadcasters - the ad agencies and media buyers are paying the bills.

Commercial broadcasters and the BBC, in a rare moment of agreement, expressed concerns about cost. Based on estimates provided by electronic measurement device providers the cost of radio surveys could increase by as much as a factor of five. In general, all UK broadcasters are uneasy about any change, including a change to electronic measurement.

The strongest argument for electronic measurement relates directly to the changing nature of the media landscape. More and newer and better and bigger radio channels on the UK airwaves could challenge the memory of even the heartiest soul. The Wireless Group (TWG) chairman Kelvin McKenzie has made this point countless times as his station, TalkSport, receives consistently lower ratings in the diary-based RAJAR surveys than in the electronically measured GfK surveys. Perhaps he should be asking the research people to figure out the reason his station is far less memorable.

In addition to spending fortunes on marketing their channels to make them memorable, the biggest UK broadcasters have also invested tidy sums in digital radio (DAB) and with more than a million receivers sold it might be nice to know if people are hearing a channel on FM or DAB. An individual listener might not recall on which platform they heard which station: the kitchen table radio, the Walkman™, the radio in the automobile, the iMac or the mobile phone. The BBC has also invested in its Radio Player, allowing people to access programs at times of their own choosing. 

Smaller, local FM-only broadcasters are less concerned about platform and more concerned about the tricky subject of market definition. Current practice allows each station to define their coverage area though true, signal-strength coverage varies, overlaps and, often, disappears. RAJAR’s customers called for further “assessment.”

RAJAR is currently test electronic measurement devices from three suppliers. Results of that round of testing will be released in the spring when one supplier will be chosen to proceed along RAJAR’s road map to implementation announced last October.

The survey of UK radio industry stakeholders was conducted over six months by Mark Cross of mc².