"Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal but the tiger always eats last." Maureen Dowd

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Mark Twain

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." George Bernard Shaw

Today's image: Enter Night by Celine C. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Radio: Doing exactly the right thing, precisely the wrong way

Two examples of radio getting in its own way, again.

Posting. The topic typically begins as a discussion concerning accountability however the real issue here is transparency. We are beyond the "to post or not to post" argument, it's now a matter of how and when. Radio should be leading the revolution, developing leading-edge tools that make it easier to buy and evaluate. It's been said recently that posting is "counter-intuitive." What's intuitive here is accountability and transparency are not fads, far from it, they are part and parcel to conducting the business of advertising in a new era.

PPM. The Cox and ICBC trade ad seems to be an ignoble attempt to foment a subscriber rebellion. This represents nothing more than a return to the good old fashioned sport of Arbitron bashing. Incongruous manners writ large. The ad's writers would have us believe that Steve Morris is somehow tone deaf on the serious issues and stakes involved in PPM roll out. Accordingly, they direct that Steve be dealt the proper and needed wakeup call. The ad evokes a kind of odd Howard Beale vibe. Clearly, the ad writers are mad as hell but it seems fair to ask - what does the ad actually accomplish besides being an embarrassment?

Posting and PPM will be what we make of them, both are works in progress. Each are opportunities rich with potential. What's needed now is the serious stuff and hard work of creative collaboration.

Buzz: Radio programming ace Jim Smith

Congrats & cheers: Uber-mensch Bruce Reese honored with the NAB National Radio Award. Radio Mercury Awards. Up against the Lakers v Celtics they pulled it off way good in Beverly Hills last night. The big $100k winner - Broken Heart ("What your mom would feed you, if your mom was a man") TBWA\Chiat\Day New York. Big ups to "voice of God" George Hyde, Jeff Haley, Rick Cummings, Perez Hilton, Big Boy, Rick Dees, Erica Farber, Mary Beth Garber. Doug and Justin did an outstanding job hosting the live stream, including the cool after set w/Big Boy All the winners here.

"A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original." Louis Armstrong

"A good composer does not imitate; he steals." Igor Stravinsky

"I have devoted my life to poeting and paintry." Kurt Schwitters

Today's image: Spruced Up by thorinside. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Tom Asacker makes an excellent point via his comment on yesterday's post...

"Writing is closer to thinking than speaking." I love that insight. Thinking is conscious and considered. However, pay attention to peoples' speaking - especially to each other - if you're interested in gaining marketplace insights. :)

Thanks Tom! Tom's blog, highly recommended, here. Check out Tom's latest book, A Clear Eye for Branding, Amazon info, a must-read and a wonderful gift for the leaders on your list.

The latest Arbitron PPM chatter: Discounting the testosterone-laden bravado of recent weeks (and with kudos and cheers to Steve Goldstein for rebooting the discussion), I invite your attention to some writing that actually matters. Fred Jacobs and Kurt Hanson have each written thoughtful pieces to advance the conversation. Read Fred here and here. Read Kurt here
and here (page down, no pl available). Closed circuit to Arbitron: Keep the transparency dialed up to eleven.

"The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it." John Ruskin

"The world isn't interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship." Raul Armesto

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." Dwight D. Eisenhower

True or false? If you build it they will come.

That line from the film Field of Dreams reminds almost everyone of another line.

Emerson most often gets the credit for it - "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door."

Scott Berkun brings this up in his cool little book The Myths of Marketing. Scott writes "More than 4000 mousetrap patents exist, yet only around 20 ever became profitable products." Scott goes on to reference the work of historian John H. Lienhard...

"Rarely, if ever are the networks that surround an innovation in its
earliest stages given the credit they are due...a better mousetrap,
like anything else, will succeed only when those who envision
the idea convince others to join in their new venture - as
investors, suppliers, employees, retailers, customers, and
even competitors."

Berkun then tells us "When we bemoan our favorite restaurant going out of business ('but they make the best cannelloni!') or why our favorite band can't sell albums ('they have the best lyrics!'), we're focusing on the small part of the picture that effects us personally, which is only one factor in the environment determining its fate. These environmental, or secondary, factors have as much influence as the quality of the idea, the talent, or the innovation itself." (ibid)

We are living in times of significant and wonderful change. In the media business the object of the exercise is to reach out, to get into the places where people happen to be, to be a part of their moment. To earn and therefore deserve the big prize, the honor of repeated invitation. The privilege of being in the evoked set of daily media. My sense is this is complex and subtle, calculus rather than arithmetic. Perhaps the best metaphor is fashion, in fact, fashion retail.

Enjoyed a really good conversation about widgets last evening. The take away is we need to stop expecting people to come to us, that is, expect 100% of our traffic to end up dead ending at a specific destination, some single url. We must begin to imagine/invent ways for us to get present, be present, stay present, to play a part in the world of others. Widgets are an attempt to do just that (so is TiVo, VOD, the iPod, et al). It's becoming more about export and the trend in media consumption seem to be less about import (a complete reverse of the traditional producers' perspective).

Marshall Field got it right - "Give the lady what she wants" - the only update needed to that wise counsel is "Provide it when and where she wants." Utility. We should be focused on exporting valuable stuff rather than simply and only importing people. What is value to the user? How can we make it simple and easy for them to get value from a sustained relationship with us? Loyalty and engagement are the first products, the second and third effects, of trust. Trust is earned. Get into the export business, time to focus less (even prepare to someday abandon) the aging import model. Arbitron PPM is about getting into places, it's about penetration of personal and public spaces; you need to be played to be exposed and to be played you're going to need to be invited. Getting invited requires you to be known and "findable." Export vs. import.

Reach

It will become critical to dominate the commons of your target demo.
The winners will be those who discover ways to play some persistent role on a much bigger stage, that of the commons at large.

Imputed: an added importance in the dimension of occasions, that being sense of place. The skill set required is an acuity, a sensitivity to space. The player with the greatest and most consistent measure of reach, that is, the player that is most cognizant of place, the one able to be present, without regard to elected usage (or preference), becomes the player most likely to succeed.

This starts with an understanding of where they are, where they happen to be and it takes you to everywhere they want to be. Therefore, the only standard of pure excellence becomes nothing less than ubiquity. Places are properly defined by they. And, now, after an entire career of learning about what they say and what they want, you need to discover and study where they are (and in real time). May I please show you something in geo-parsing? Place, the next important frontier. Be there.

Building the better mousetrap, creating engaging content, offering the best programming is certainly important, yet, it's not really enough to ensure sustained success. It is becoming the start, the first big step whereas, once upon a time, the very same work product was considered to be the finished art. It would seem that the best used by date on that traditional approach is drawing near. Welcome to the 21st century. Game on!

Thank you very much: Programming ace Lester St. James for the ping and kind words.

Congrats & cheers: Hey!Nielsen getting ready to go public, days away now. My thanks to Steve Ciabattoni for the very cool HeyNielsen sneak preview. Powerset Labs is set to swing their doors open, standby for launch! (Thanks to Mark Johnson for keeping me dialed-in). Michael Rosenblum on the occasion of Current's Emmy win. We can all learn something from Michael Rosenblum (and he's just getting started).

Have an amazing weekend. Back next week with a brand new show.

Photo by Ron Fell. Very cool, thank you, Ron!

"The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns." Emerson

"Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your experience helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind." Henri Fabre

"When a great man has some object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads." Burke

A bunch of chatter this week about Arbitron's new Portable People Meter (PPM), the device being rolled out to replace the paper diaries used to capture radio listening behaviors. The subject is of great interest to radio broadcasters as it should be. Arbitron is hosting one of their consultant fly-in events at the Columbia, MD campus today. A meeting I'm sorry to miss due to other work. Congrats and kudos to Steve Morris, Pierre Bouvard, Gary Marince, Ron Rodrigues, Dr Ed Cohen, Bob Patchen and the Arbitron team for keeping the conversation alive, the parties engaged and doing so with transparency.

Some thoughts on PPM.

I began going to school on PPM over a decade ago when I was introduced to Dr. Roberta McConochie. She was then director of strategic research for Arbitron, leading the Pathfinder program and working in the area of new media. What impressed me most about Dr McConochie was not her measured speech, nor her gracious manner in making the complex simple. It was her curiosity. She had done her homework, she was asking great questions. My thought was she needed to be heard, she deserved an audience with industry. We were fortunate to have her accept our invitation to speak at The Conclave. The first session at an industry conference dedicated to PPM happened in Minneapolis one summer day many years ago. I moderated the session which was attended by a small group of about twenty-five programmers. We were too far ahead of the curve, not one trade pub made mention of the ground breaking event.

Now that PPM is no longer a science project but a practical reality, whenever two or more are gathered in the name of radio PPM is a hot topic of discussion. Overnight we have scores of PPM experts offering station and group folks assistance. Some of these same experts would have us believe they are qualified to confront Arbitron and take the lead in what amounts to an ongoing ratings police action. My opinion is most of these so-called experts are not qualified to discuss the subject matter at any serious depth. Suggesting one knows how to game the new system seems premature (to be polite about it). These same know-it-alls would not likely finish a basic undergrad course in statistics with honors much less be able to hold their own in any graduate level survey research lab. However, as Buzz Bennett famously said "Everyone has the right to program." It's radio where everyone actually does enjoy that right to program. Moreover, every programmer can claim, with little if any objection, to be a research and ratings expert. Seems to me too many are doing just that. Bottom line: the job of the program director is to deliver numbers to the sales department. If a PD is not able to do that they need to find other work.

Reading all of the rants about PPM over the last few weeks reminds me that some working in the programming trade should think before they opine. A sidebar: in my experience a good third of radio programmers are at home in the camp of grassy knoll theorists. Their particular brand of skepticism tainted with unwarranted notions of conspiracy. Like all fanatics they are vocal. Theirs is a repertoire rich with old programmer's tales, of finding black magic at work in Beltsville. About the single household that made a competitor #1, how they caught the arbiter red-handed and saved the day. They hold the belief that Arbitron's flawed methodology is the real and only reason why their station (or their format) has failed to move the needle. The station's not sick, it's sample size and methodology that's to blame, again! They are convinced beyond all empirical evidence to the contrary that their station, their format is in reality a winner and simply not getting proper listening credit. Further, some few of this group are convinced Arbitron is out to undo them, an evil enterprise dedicated to passing off slipshod research as good. Arbitron as the wily fox that must be watched.

A friend who works at Arbitron once said "When the phone rings it's never good news. No one ever calls us to say 'you guys rock' this book got it right, my station is #1 and we thank you." Seems to me the industry conversation is too frequently moved by the losers, those deprived of the higher ranker positions needed to generate the instant rainfall of "push print and buy" orders, the related waves of cash and the adulation of an industry and its trade pubs. These ratings starved folks are often unwilling to admit their own role in the poor showing, they tend to be talented makers of original excuses and, sometimes, it is even within their power to elevate rationalizing failure into persuasive dramatic art. While the experienced few may understand the true nature of estimates (i.e., one data point is high, another low and a third perhaps closest to the reality of the measured moment) too many others seek absolute truth at a discount when no such solution is possible nor practical.

Research is expensive, it's hard work and yet it remains an estimate. And that's the reality of survey research - it produces estimates. Chance error, sample bias, and the vagaries of any new method of capture, collection and data architecture are all baked in to that effort. We must accept and at some point trust that the arbiter will do their best, do what they must to produce a credible and reliable product and in doing so get and keep our business. Good research is never cheap and cheap research is never good.

PPM is a good idea but we've all got a lot of learning to do to make the best of it. Like any attempt to capture human behavior it is complex, a major challenge of multivariate proportions. It requires and deserves the ongoing attention of the research and user communities. Let's keep the conversation candid, the analysis serious and studied, and the debate informed. We must demand the rigor of intellectual honesty above all else. Now that we do have the first working meter, let's all agree to keep our discussions and initiatives to improve this new technology dialed up to eleven.

Closed circuit to Arbitron: don't let the hacks get you down.

LATER: A bunch of email response to this post. About 50% favorable, 40% unfavorable and 10% saying it is too early to tell how good or bad PPM will be for radio in contrast to how radio has done with diary capture. The majority of comments submitted have been negative. Because comments are moderated here I have deleted over fifty for one of three reasons 1) profanity - I would edit the language but then these comments would look like redacted FOIA documents, almost every fourth word being an expletive - I'm taking a pass. Bring on the conspiracy comments. 2) incoherent 3) off topic (e.g., "hey cheesehead your packers lost last night, who's crying now big fella"). My thanks to those that have joined the conversation. More next week.

Have a great weekend.

OK - so we'll start up another blog, one dedicated to PPM. Your suggestions, comments, and contributions are invited. Let's put it right here.