Dick Broadcasting is ending its relationship with Nielsen Audio and subscribing with Eastlan Ratings to measure listenership in the Greensboro/Winston-Salem market.
Dick, which owns Classic Rock “Rock 92” 92.3 WKRR Asheboro and CHR “107.5 KZL” WKZL Winston-Salem, becomes the first company in a PPM measured market to subscribe to a competing ratings service.
In making the announcement Dick Broadcasting VP/GM Dick Harlow had some poignant comments towards Nielsen. “I was surprised to learn that we are the first to make this switch in a PPM market. The meter was supposed to be the savior and all it’s done is increase our annual payments to Nielsen. And now we find out to win in the PPM game you need a magic black box to job the system. At some point, enough is enough. We look forward to working with Eastlan Ratings to see who people in the Triad choose to listen to rather than who they are exposed to. Plus the sample size will be about triple the number of meters now in the market.”
Eastlan President/CEO Mike Gould added, “It’s funny how quickly things have changed in the past couple of years. After more than 16 years of providing radio ratings in markets coast-to coast, we’re finding broadcasters and media buyers who don’t know the Eastlan story are few and far between. Our methodological hybrid of telephone recall (landline and cellular) and e-surveys isn’t sexy but it’s fair and it’s reliable. We are thankful that Dick and his colleagues trust Eastlan as their preferred ratings vendor. We are going to help save them a lot of money by getting their ratings investment back in line with the realities of today’s radio revenue stream.”
The multi-year agreement begins with Eastlan’s Summer 2015 measurement period.
radioperson 
Eric Jon Magnuson 
radiophil
Great. Now we go back to phone calls and books. Come on.
The Nielsen PPM is the superior system, if Nielsen will just get off their high horse and include the Voltair processing tech. As has been mentioned many times, you are now processing TWO paths: The audio AND the watermark. Nielsen gives you a box with no processing. Include the processing, for God’s sake!
Unless something’s changed recently (which I doubt), Eastlan includes non-subscribing outlets in its publicly released data. Therefore, even though there will be some differences in terms of, e.g., survey periods and market geography, you should still be able to make some basic comparisons between how most outlets fare in Nielsen and how they fare in Eastlan.
I’ve been called by Eastlan before and when they asked what station I most often listened to I referred to Station A, and their slogan. The Eastlan rep then asked again in a different way specifically attempting to steer me to the station most similar to Station A that HIRED them. I believe that there is always room for competition, but it should be on the up and up. Eastlan is available to those who need to fabricate numbers and don’t mind spending a lot of money to do so… sometimes even more money than Nielsen costs.