Buyer Beware|

RESPONSE TO BUYER BEWARE ON RADIO AIRPLAY OFFERS

Really, who is misleading who?

I had never heard of the station before but I think what they are trying to say by “reaching 1.5 million” is that 1.5 million COULD tune in the station on an FM radio if they so desired. Looking at their coverage map, in Brooklyn that seems reasonable even with only 10 watts:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WKRB&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

It’s like when the Knitting Network announces “we are in 50 million homes”. Are they claiming that means 50 million people are watching at any given time? Of course not, they are saying that 50 million people can find it on their cable box, still a useful number. It’s ridiculous to compare this number of 1.5 million potential FM listeners for WKRB to the Arbitron AQH (Average Quarter Hour) ratings for big commercial radio stations. Not even apples and oranges, more like apples and rocks.

There’s a lot more wrong with this email, like a total misrepresentation of streaming as it applies to ratings… (short version: most streaming would be outside the market and therefore would not impact the local ratings). And you point people to SUBSCRIBER ONLY Arbitron ratings when you have to know that little college stations can’t afford to subscribe and therefore would not show up in the publicly released ratings whether they had 10 listeners or 10,000.

(Original article is listed below).

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