Our Market

Radio

Montgomery  is ranked by Arbitron as market 153.  The metro 12+ population is estimated at 298,400 people.  Arbitron delivers ratings books twice a year.  Arbitron develops ratings for stations in Montgomery through the use of diaries sent out to random samples of the population.

To see approximately when ratings will be gathered, visit Arbitron.com. Also to see the most recent ratings for the Montgomery markets, you would visit Arbitron.com.

In November 2008 Cumulus Media, owner of 7 local radio stations, made the decision to obtain ratings through Nielson Media.  Neilson has been reported to be more open on how they collect the data that is used to create ratings based on an address system versus phone system.  In theory this would help to reach more of the population that has stopped their use of landline telephones.  Clear Channel, owner of 3 local radio stations, has made the decision to join Cumulus in several markets though it is unknown which markets they have implemented this change in.

TV

Montgomery is ranked by Nielsen Media as market 118.  Selma is also included in the Montgomery DMA.  Nielsen estimates that there are 247,230 TV homes in the Montgomery-Selma viewing area.  TV ratings are gathered through set top meters placed in homes throughout the market to represent certain demographics.  There are 25,000 households metered daily, so in theory with Montgomery representing 0.216 of all TV’s in the United States there are approximately 54 families in our area that represent the entire viewing audience.

Nielsen also has sweeps periods where millions of diaries are sent all over the United States viewing area to supplement the set top Nielsen Families data. According to Nielsen, they send out approximately 1.6 million paper diaries around the country per sweeps period which is 4 times per year. If you use the .216% of households that the Montgomery DMA represents, then that would be approximately 3,456 families per sweeps period or 13,824 potential Nielsen families over the course of a 12 month period assuming that a household does not repeat in a year. Of course with the sample being random the possibility is certainly there that a family would repeat. And unfortunately paper diaries have a high non-return rate and also reflect some personal biases. And usually it is the head of the family filling out the forms as opposed to kids so the data can be somewhat skewed within that 18-49 year old coveted bracket. It also doesn’t take into consideration college students or those students living away from home.

Ratings data is not precise nor terribly efficient, but it is what we have right now. The biggest problem with TV ratings data is that it doesn’t account for online viewing or viewing away from home. Nielsen is working on this through integrating equipment within cable and satellite set-top-boxes, but they’re still a long way away.

Current as of Oct. 21, 2009

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