The Inside Story with Mike
Kinosian: Cellphone-only homes and Arbitron.
Cord Cutting Fallout
The love affair for the cellular phone is only escalating.
For
better or worse, each latest incarnation seems to permanently attach itself to
someone’s earlobe.
A growing trend with pronounced ratings-based
implications is cell phone-only households.
Fast-Pace World
The inability to reach a growing segment of the population as potential
Arbitron diary keepers has, quite understandably, thoroughly captured the
attention of industry figures like Detroit-based consultant Fred Jacobs, who
proclaims the situation has reached “crisis” proportions. “The real issue here
is that the world, in general, is moving faster than Arbitron can keep up with,”
the Jacobs Media President opines. “With all fairness to them, though, I also
think the world is moving faster than most of us can keep up with.”
The
first time Jacobs appreciated the magnitude of the cell phone-only issue was in
a conversation he and Edison Media Research President Larry Rosin had
immediately after the 2004 election. “[Larry] brought it to my attention that in
the exit polling they’d done, younger cell phone-only voters were unreachable by
so many pollsters. He thought it was something that could [also affect] radio.
In essence, that was the beginning of it.”
With that in mind, the
decision was made that when Jacobs Media did a New Media poll, questions
regarding cell phones and cell phone usage had to be included.
Surprising Data That stance was honored and the consultancy
subsequently waded through more than 19,000 surveys in its just-concluded web
poll, which focused on a variety of technology-oriented issues.
More
than 50 domestic radio stations were included, representing formats such as
Alternative; Active Rock; Mainstream Rock; Classic Rock; and Classic Hits.
When probed about home telephone status, 17% of that web sample
indicated, it was “cell phone-only”, with more than one of every four
Alternative listeners (28%) falling into that category. “If you asked me a
couple of months ago when we dreamed this whole thing up, what the outstanding
piece of data from the web poll would be, I wouldn’t have guessed the piece of
information we’re now discussing,” Jacobs states. “The entire study really does
tell a story. New technology is very much a part of just about every radio
listener’s life.”
Proper Measurement Younger people are more
apt to be involved with new media/new technology, but it’s not reserved
exclusively for that audience. “We had a startling percentage of people who are
[Instant Messaging] Online; listening to Internet radio; or actively playing
videogames,” Jacobs notes. “There was a whole litany of different activities we
talked about, but this piece of information that revolves around cell phone-only
people turned out to be a substantial number in our study.”
It becomes
an Arbitron issue, of course, since the ratings company doesn’t contact cell
phone-only households, and Jacobs maintains they comprise a sizeable portion of
the population at large. “Our numbers show that one-third of 18-29s are cell
phone-only people. There are many implications here, and how it relates to
proper measurement. Another thing we saw is that all 18-29s are not created
equally. If you’re 18-29 and an Alternative fan, you have an even higher
propensity to be a cell phone-only person.”
That particular format is
clearly under a lot of pressure at the moment. “Stations are bailing out of
Alternative for any number of reasons and here’s yet another problem impacting
the format,” Jacobs remarks.
Possible Solutions But it goes
beyond that. “We as an industry have been so totally fixated on the 25-54 Holy
Grail that it’s become difficult for broadcasters to see their way to think
about younger formats,” Jacobs maintains. “Yet we know younger radio listeners
are ultimately the lifeblood of what we do. If we can’t get people actively
listening to the radio in their Teens or early-20s, [you have to wonder if]
they’re ever really going to become core radio listeners like we were when we
were kids. Arbitron’s difficulty in trying to get its arms around this problem
really speaks to the larger issue of radio not targeting young listeners and the
survival of young formats in general.”
Hand-dialing and conducting some
level of face-to-face recruitment are two potential possibilities for the cell
phone-only situation, although Jacobs points out, “The problem Arbitron suffers
from is they tend to approach change at a very studied and methodical sort of
way. This is a dynamic problem that’s happening right now. It’s not that
Arbitron doesn’t get it. They’ve been talking about it for some time. I’m just
not sure that they have a plan in place that addresses this.”
Growing
Trend Data from the Jacobs Media survey isn’t from a random sample of
all people across the country, but rather a web poll of people who are partial
to certain formats. “You can say there are some limitations,” Jacobs concedes.
“But if you go out and talk to people in their Teens or early-20s about their
telephones and how they use them, many of them will tell you that they’ve
already dropped their landlines. If they haven’t, they’re thinking about doing
so. This is a problem that’s in full motion right now and really does require
some sort of action.”
That’s why Jacobs has urged owners/operators –
especially those with younger-oriented stations – to contact Arbitron and let
them know how they feel. “Every radio station, whether it’s a youth-targeted
station or not, should include this kind of question in every survey it does to
understand the difficulty [and depth] of this problem,” he emphasizes. “Like so
many [other things] that are technology-based, it starts young, but ultimately
makes its way into older groups.”
In the Jacobs study, for example, 19%
of 30-34s are cell phone-only and 9% of 35-44s are also in that group.
“Consumers having both cell phones and landline home phones are asking
themselves why they need both,” he notes. “This ongoing problem will ultimately
transcend youth formats and Alternative, specifically.”
Rapid
Reaction While undeniably an activist on this subject, Jacobs at the
same time jokes, “We’re not really positioning ourselves as campaign
headquarters for this movement. We have other things going on. Our sense is
we’ve identified the problem to the degree that we’ve quantified it. The ball is
really in the court of broadcasters.”
Within an hour after the Jacobs
Media web poll data was sent out, Entercom President/CEO David Field contacted
Jacobs and asked what he could do. “He immediately dashed out a letter
expressing his concern about this situation to [Arbitron President/CEO] Steve
Morris, [Arbitron President/U.S. Media Services] Owen Charlebois and other
Arbitron brass,” Jacobs points out. “My guess is other broadcasters have made
some sort of contact with Arbitron that we’re unaware of. We didn’t ask our
clients or anyone else in the industry to check back and let us know what
they’re up to. I’d hope CEOs, GMs and PDs of youth-oriented stations would have
the initiative to contact Arbitron and be part of a larger voice.”
Good Timing As far as Jacobs’ contact with Arbitron is
concerned, it’s mainly been through the ratings company’s Advisory Council. “Our
data was still percolating in our place when I had a phone conversation with
[Saga Executive VP/Group PD] Steve Goldstein, who is Chairman of Arbitron’s
Advisory Council,” notes Jacobs. “I related some of this information to him and
he said the timing was perfect for me to put together some basic information
because the council was meeting that week.”
A January 2005
Arbitron-conducted “Web-Ex” conference call presentation was part of a larger
effort to explain what it’s doing on the youth problem. “It isn’t just cell
phones - their whole 18-34 situation has been problematic,” Jacobs contends.
“Their cooperation rate [among] young people has been challenged for some time.
In that January call, they talked about some of these cell phone studies they’d
already undertaken and ones they had planned for the future. The Advisory
Council is a sharp and competent group of broadcasters. They care, so I’ll put
the data in front of them and let them do their job.”
Getting Their
Feet Wet Although Arbitron VP/Domestic Radio Research Dr. Ed Cohen
acknowledges the cell phone-only situation is a growing problem and a “key
issue” for his company, he doesn’t share Jacobs’ view that it’s at a “crisis”
level. “I wouldn’t use that term because we don’t know enough about it,” Dr.
Cohen remarks. “It’s certainly something we’ve been studying and working on for
a lot longer than anyone [else] in the entire survey/research business in the
United States. We did the first study ever that we know of in the United States
about it, two and a half years ago.”
With the lack of any firm data, it
was Arbitron’s opinion a few years ago that “a pretty small percentage” of
people would abandon landline phones in favor of cellular ones. “[But] you could
see something was going to happen, so we wanted to be ahead of the curve and
wanted to see what the problems would be,” Dr. Cohen comments. “We knew the
legal restrictions involved, so it wasn’t something we could throw a few dollars
at and try it out.”
The first involvement was very much of a
toe-in-the-water affair. There were 200 “completes” in three states via cell
phones with Arbitron offering $10 to each participant in the three-minute
survey. “We just wanted to see what would happen, [but] weren’t really concerned
so much about radio listening,” Dr. Cohen explains. “While the questions we
asked were interesting - with 200 people - we also didn’t want to draw very many
conclusions. What you did want to conclude from it was that we could, in fact,
do this. The first study found that it was possible to make phone calls to
cellular phones and actually get people to respond to a survey. We said that was
great, but didn’t push that fast.”
Beefing Up The Sample It
took exactly two years to get to the second study, which was done last October
(2004).
This time, though, Arbitron more than quadrupled the number of
completes to 850. “It was a longer study and, at the end of it, we `sort of’
tried to place diaries,” Dr. Cohen recalls. “I say `sort of,’ because it wasn’t
one of the Arbitron field services, either our own or one of our contract
vendors. It was a different one that was hired specifically to do this study. We
got a very high number on cell phone-only. That wasn’t surprising, but you have
to think about the kind of people you get. If you have a cell phone as your only
phone, the odds are that it’s on all the time and if someone calls, they’ll get
an answer.”
False Assumption Many older cell phone users tend
to leave the device on for only a few minutes every month, utilizing it more as
an emergency device. “The odds of ever getting [people like that] to respond to
a survey via cell phone are about zero,” Dr. Cohen remarks. “What you end up
with is a bias toward people who are cell phone-only, so we had some pretty high
numbers. But again, we wanted to know more about these people. We didn’t get
into their radio listening. We wanted to see that, even if we don’t follow all
the rules, we could place diaries.”
That led to the company’s third
study, which was done this winter. “We had our own field service and our own
people [in Columbia, MD] actually placing diaries by cell phone,” Dr. Cohen
explains. “We’ve also been looking internally at how we would implement this
thing. We don’t tell everyone everything we’re doing and had done some briefings
for many industry groups, including the Advisory Council and Media Rating
Council. We don’t know how quickly we can do this, because there are so many
twists and turns. There’s an assumption in the business that all you have to do
is add some cell phone numbers into the frame and the whole thing is done. It’s
not that simple. There are many other methodological issues involved. Because of
that, we haven’t been able to move as fast as some people would like us to - or
as fast as we’d like to.”
Cellular Summit The best estimate
Dr. Cohen has for cell phone-only households is somewhere around 7%, with that
approximation coming from the Bureau Of Labor Statistics. “That’s overall and
not by demo,” he stresses. “One really good study was done in February 2004 as
part of the current population survey. In 2002, [Nielsen Media Research public
opinion researcher] Paul Lavrakas and I were chatting at a response rate summit
put on by the Census Bureau for one of their studies. I said there was going to
be a real problem with the cell phone situation and it might be something that
Nielsen and Arbitron could work together on. He thought it was interesting, but
nothing much happened.”
About one year later, however, Dr. Cohen
received an out-of-the-blue invitation to a cell phone summit that Nielsen was
putting on. “The germ of it was from that dinner,” he contends. “They brought
together many good survey research people, mostly from outside the industry.
When they presented [results] at the second cell phone summit [in February
2005], we said it made some sense, but it even confused us and we’re survey
researchers. That’s when they said the figure is about 7%.”
Not About
To Disappear In and of itself, 7% might not appear to be huge, but it
may mask some more significant percentages. “It might be 1% or 2% among those
65+ but it’s far higher among 18-24s,” Dr. Cohen notes. “My best guess is it’s
up around 20% or more.”
Equally as important, if not more so, is that
few people would argue that the number is flat or declining. “We wondered in the
late-1990s if we should do some weighting for multiple phones in households,”
Dr. Cohen recalls. “The number of landlines is dropping. Some of it is because
they were cutting off landline phones to go [cellular-only], but [many others]
are switching from dial-up Internet service to DSL or cable modems and they
don’t need the second [phone line]. You know this [particular situation] isn’t
going to go away tomorrow.”
It’s important to remember that the 7%
figure is a national number, so Dr. Cohen isn’t aware of the percentages of cell
phone-exclusive residences in any individual metro. “I don’t know the difference
between New York and Los Angeles or between State College, PA and Duluth, MN,”
he reveals. “I know it has to vary across markets, but I couldn’t say what those
numbers are. We have to make some reasonable estimate of what it should be in
each market, but we have nothing to base it on.”
It’s The Law
The first data about which formats are most adversely affected by cell
phone-only households will be seen in Arbitron’s fourth cell phone study, which
will be conducted this summer. “We’re going to do an offline test during the
first phase of the summer book,” Dr. Cohen notes. “Our projection – at least our
hope – is to have at least 1500 diaries across a number of markets. For the
first time, we’ll be able to see what [stations] cell phone-only persons listen
to.”
Rather than utilizing predictive dialers, all three previous
Arbitron tests have been conducted by hand. “That’s the law - we have no other
choice,” Dr. Cohen explains. “Our lawyers say the Telephone Consumer Protection
Act Of 1991 means that you dial by hand.”
Use of a “Power Dialer” is
said to be acceptable. “The interviewer is sitting in front of a screen and when
they want to make it happen, they actually hit the button that makes the phone
dial; they’re in control,” Dr. Cohen comments. “It doesn’t dial until they say
`go.’ That’s unlike a predictive dialer, which everyone agrees is off-limits.
That’s what we use in our syndicated service, because of the volume we do. We’re
going with the very conservative interpretation, so we don’t get into any
trouble. We’ve done all three tests dialing numbers by hand, and our planning is
based by dialing them [that way].”
Domino Effect Legislation
could help, but it’s completely unrealistic to think it would ever be enacted,
since there’d hardly be much support for legislation allowing survey companies
to call cell phones unsolicited. “Think about how popular the `Do Not Call’
legislation was,” Dr. Cohen remarks. “It was one of the few times Democrats and
Republicans joined arm-in-arm in support of something. It was like a resolution
that supported the American flag. We have no hopes that anything is going to
change in the foreseeable future and we’re operating under that assumption.”
Comparatively speaking, radio people are accustomed to things moving
pretty quickly and can, for example, execute a complete format change in a
relatively short period of time. In contrast, Dr. Cohen concedes, “Arbitron –
for any number of reasons - moves much more slowly. Everything has to work
right, so we’re very careful as to how we move. We have many systems and
whenever someone wants to change something, it affects far more systems than it
would appear. It’s a very complex operation.”
Significant
Ramifications While some others feel great frustration with the cell
phone-only situation, Dr. Cohen senses positive movement on several levels.
“There’s the progress of understanding the whole phenomenon and how you deal
with it,” he contends. “On that level, we’ve made a ton of progress. The second
part of progress is when it can be put into production and have it count.”
That’s proven to be much tougher, but Dr. Cohen maintains, “It’s
probably the No. 1 issue right now internally. If we could make it happen
overnight, we would. But if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with problems.
There’s a lot of scrutiny from our clients and the Media Rating Council.
Sometimes haste isn’t the best [solution]. What we do affects billions of
dollars, so we have to do it right. We’re doing our best and are trying to show
that we’ve done more than most anyone [else] out there. That’s all we can do.”
Last week’s “Inside Story with Mike Kinosian” focused on
WMJX/Boston’s “Exceptional Women” public affairs program; “Money Pit” co-host
Leslie Segrete was the subject of this week’s “Mike Kinosian Interview:
Personalities Inside Radio.”
Subscribers can find both features archived
on this website.
