Cuomo Sue Arbitron

[rapking]

Claiming False advertising and poor business practices, N.Y. attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo has announced that his office has filed a lawsuit in N.Y. County Supreme Court against Arbitron.

[qskyradio]

Talk about an absolutely asinine lawsuit.  While any ratings methodology will have flaws, the paper diary was an inherently flawed tool - one permitting false listening and in turn, falsely advertising its own acuracy to agencies.  Where was Mr. Cuomo's investigation on that?  The fact is, PPM methodology takes away the "voting system" allowed by diary methodology.  No longer can panelists draw a line through the day, as was the case under the diary system.  Actual listening is actually recorded.  No, the PPM is not perfect.  But the archaic pencil-and-paper recall system unearths so many flaws, it's not even funny.  At the root of this lawsuit is the performance of black and hispanic stations in the PPM world.  Would this suit be happening if these stations saw audience growth in the PPM world?  Of course not.  Sour grapes from these stations.  If ever there was a politically-motivated lawsuit, this is it.  Cuomo should be ashamed.  And the stations nudging this suit along should be ashamed too.  Instead of focusing on ways to adapt programming to a PPM world, they have instead shouted "racism" as a convenient excuse for the accurate audience measurements they're finally seeing. 

[Tibbs2]

Claiming False advertising and poor business practices, N.Y. attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo has announced that his office has filed a lawsuit in N.Y. County Supreme Court against Arbitron.

Can we the people turn around and sue Cuomo for the same damn practice. Does this moron not have anything more pending to worry about?

[rapking]

N.J. has join in on the Sueing parade .

[Alan McCall]

Amen to what qskyradio and Tibbs2 have posted.

This is absolutely pathetic. Instead of using the numbers to try and discover weak spots
in programming, these broadcasters and now the A-G are suing Arbitron because they don't like
the results.

I'm sure PPM has flaws. I know the diary system, which is still used in my market, has been abused
in some places to skew the numbers. Probably has been abused in my market..who knows?

If people really knew how to sell radio time, heck we wouldn't even need ratings. I sold successfully
on an AM station, a daytimer, with no ratings. This station was not a good fit for some advertisers, in which case I'd advise them that there best bet was (a different station, newspaper, whatever) if I didn't believe
the station could deliver for them. That bought some credibility, which the business people respected.
the advertisers we did have, got enough results, or liked the station's format/audience enough to place buys.
During my 8 years, this station made money, paid off the mortgage..while the owner pocketed every penny, investing nothing back into his station.

I think the ratings wars have gone overboard. Arbitron should countersue for damages.

If your on air product is good you'll have the numbers you need without resorting to what
amounts to no more than bullying to get your own way.

[Inventor989]

Leave it to a socialist. Another example of big government attempting to destroy American business. Guess they can't handle the truth. How does a true representation of listening hurt anyone? If anything, the diary system needs to be sued. If any other business' performance was measured by diary, they'd be laughed out of the room.

And using racism as a premise? Despicable.