[cma-l] RAJAR

[Tony Bailey]

Hello,

Having increasing difficulty in following this thread I thought it worth 
trying to make a point or two about RAJAR.  As it's name suggests it was 
conceived as joint radio industry audience research in 1992.  The 
research is used by commercial radio to sell advertising.  Prior to 1992 
the BBC used their own audience research.  Joint research was needed to 
rationalise the national picture.  Whatever the BBC do with the data, 
commercial radio has it for sales purposes.  There are alternatives 
sources of audience research and some broadcasters use them instead.

It is important to bear in mind that audience research asks questions 
relevant to the demands of the business paying the bill, not the answer 
to the universe and everything!

Tony Bailey



On 09/09/15 15:00, James Cridland wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 10:05 AM Alan Coote <alan.coote at 5digital.co.uk 
> <mailto:alan.coote at 5digital.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>     And RAJAR excludes half of all UK broadcast stations and all
>     online only stations. It's methodology was conceived before the
>     birth of the Internet, Smartphones and Community Radio. It relies
>     on the human memory for it's accuracy, and to be on the survey you
>     have to pay!
>     Just thinking... there must be a better solution?
>
>
> Actually, RAJAR doesn't exclude anyone - you appear under "Other 
> Radio", which includes online-only radio as well as non-RAJAR 
> stations. I doubt it's half; I could run that stat for you if you'd be 
> interested.
>
> It is a memory test. And to run the survey it costs lots of money - 
> they interview around 100,000 people a year. (BARB, for telly, have 
> 8,000 households, for comparison).
>
> A better solution? Yep, there must be.
> - There's the PPM, which is in use in some markets in the US and 
> Canada, as well as Norway and Switzerland. It's much more expensive, 
> and because of that the sample size is significantly cut down. It has 
> had a lot of issues over the past year - my newsletter has talked 
> about Voltair a lot, and you should google that term.
> - There's telephone research, which is in use in other markets, and 
> mainly relies on people being at home and answering the landline. It's 
> really bad at getting under 30s participating, because they don't 
> answer the landline phone.
> - There's street corner research, which is also really bad at a 
> self-selecting demographic. I never talk to those people.
> - Then, there's server stats. Those aren't accurate either: at least, 
> they measure devices, not people, and wildly over-estimate actual 
> *people* listening. Or wildly under-estimate them. There's a paper on 
> the RAJAR website about this - 
> http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/Diffs_btwn_audio_stream_and_RAJAR_listeners.pdf - 
> and before you scoff, it's quite a balanced paper, and worth reading. 
> (Disclaimer: I would say that, because I wrote it).
>
> There must be a better way. But actually... there isn't. Ask almost 
> any US radio professional, and they look wistfully at the UK system. 
> But any proposals you have would be really splendid! :)
>
> //j
>
> -- 
>
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>
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