RAJAR To Pilot Online Diary
RAJAR is to pilot a new online system of recording radio listening and abandon its trial of electronic device alternatives to its diary-based system.
The two-year trial of portable people meters as due to continue until the beginning of 2009 but will now end in June.
The new survey is intended to give the radio industry more flexibility and a wider scope, with the option of greater analysis.
Nunwood Research is designing the online diary, which is to be field tested in July. If it proves successful, it could eventually be incorporated in to the main RAJAR survey.
Sally de la Bedoyere, RAJAR managing director, said that the decision to withdraw from the portable people meter (PPM) trial was a “rational and pragmatic one”.
“Over the past year the pilot has delivered a wealth of data but it has continued to highlight serious concerns with respondent compliance, particularly at breakfast time,” de la Bedoyere added.
RAJAR is today launching an industry wide review of the future direction of radio audience research, which will be headed by former PHD Media chief executive Morag Blazey.
Blazey has been tasked with getting feedback on how the RAJAR survey should move forward in the coming years.
She will also address the issues and concerns of the radio and advertising industries on a raft of topics from the scope and content of the current survey, to reporting and trading turn-around times and proposed innovations including the value of bigger samples, the introduction of an online diary and future requirements for podcasting, programming information, time-shifted listening and event response.
Blazey is to consult with a range of key radio and advertising industry stake holders and her findings, coupled with the results of the online survey, will feed into RAJAR’s new three year strategy which is to be announced later this year.
Blazey said: “The pace of change in the radio market is dizzying, and quite rightly RAJAR feels it is necessary to keep pace in order to serve its users as effectively as possible.
“The project I have been asked to undertake is really interesting, far reaching and genuinely democratic in its intent. I am really excited to be part of it.”
RAJAR: 0207 292 9040 www.rajar.co.uk