Arbitron Inc. is attempting to resume radio measurement surveys in the hurricane-devastated New Orleans and Gulf Coast markets.
If it is successfully able to measure current audiences in a study conducted between April and June, by mid-July it will release listener demographics that will encourage the channel’s use by direct marketers and other advertisers.
“Advertisers have to know how to invest their dollars in New Orleans now,” said Thom Mocarsky, vice president of communications for Arbitron Inc. “We think from a business perspective that doing radio reports says that radio is coming back to normal in these markets.”
Arbitron did not issue winter 2006 reports for the affected areas. The company is working with Claritas to determine how much of the population has returned.
Figuring out how many people it will need to survey is only part of the problem. Arbitron initially solicits participants through random telephone dialing, and landline telephone service in Orleans parish is patchwork.
While phone service is largely up and running in the French Quarter and Central Business District, it is sporadic closer to Lake Pontchartrain, as the standing water left after the 17th Street levee breech destroyed the buried phone cables.
“We’re going to be chewing through a lot more numbers” in order to get the required amount of participants, Mocarsky said.
Then there’s the matter of getting the radio diaries to those being surveyed. First class mail service, which Arbitron uses to send its diaries to participants, has been problematic in New Orleans. Some mail gets delivered within a few days: Other pieces can take up to several weeks.
For an area the size of pre-Katrina New Orleans, Arbitron would seek to receive 2,810 diaries back from its panel – about half the number it would send out. Mocarsky wouldn’t hazard a guess as to whether Arbitron would increase its mail-out quantity from the 5,670 it used to send to the city. But he did say that the company would evaluate the survey as it is conducted, and would at least consider allowing extra time for respondents to return their diaries.
After all this, there is no guarantee that the information Arbitron collects will be usable. “We won’t publish the report if it doesn’t meet quality standards,” Mocarsky said. However, the company is open to issuing a condensed report, with more limited breakouts.
Even abbreviated data would be welcome in the New Orleans market. “Radio will be the first medium surveyed post Katrina,” said Holly McCollum, vice president of media services for Keating Magee, a New Orleans-based advertising agency.
McCollum continued, “Radio as a medium has the tremendous opportunity to take a leading role as a mass medium in the post-Katrina statistical model for advertisers. Arbitron is allowing New Orleans a national platform upon which to shine a spotlight on where we have come since the floodwaters ravaged our city. [Arbitron’s] data will not answer all of the questions raised about the change in demographics within our city, but it is a great starting point.”
