Radio — People Meter Strategies

Radio program directors will readily admit that Arbitron's diary recall system for audience ratings was imperfect if not inferior.

We always knew that respondents were not carrying diaries around all day to accurately record their radio listening.

We all knew to pull every trick we could to get diary keepers to write down more listening than they actually did.

In fact, we programmers were very comfortable with that fallible system because to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,