RAJAR Will Consider Electronic Measurement At Conference On Its Future
The Radio Joint Research Audience Research body (RAJAR) is to hold a one-day conference on 10 April at BAFTA to discuss the future of development of radio audience research, including electronic methods. Among the speakers scheduled to address the conference will be James Moir, controller of Radio 2, Kelvin MacKenzie, chairman and chief executive of the Wireless Group, David Mansfield, chief executive of Capital Radio and Lynne Robinson, research director at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
The radio industry spends a higher share of its income – some £4m per annum – on its audience measurement system than the TV industry, and invested £500,000 in January 1999 in new methodology. Despite this, the RAJAR system uses hand written diaries to record listening, unlike TV’s BARB, which uses set top boxes to send information via telephone lines. This has led to criticism from some, including, last year, Kelvin MacKenzie (see MacKenzie Attacks Rajar’s ‘Widely Discredited’ Research Methods), who claimed that an electronic system could be introduced to radio audience research and would lead to fairer results.
When MacKenzie made this attack in The Times, RAJAR responded that it continued to monitor the possibilities of electronic systems of research (see Rajar Defends Diary System Against MacKenzie’s Criticism). The introduction of this method may be coming closer to becoming reality, as at the April conference there will be presentations from Arbitron, Telecontrol and Ipsos-RSL on electronic measurement.
RAJAR’s managing director, Jane O’Hara, commented: “The conference is to provide a forum in which the various options for the future of radio audience research can be addressed and discussed. We have a great line up of speakers [and] we have also scheduled in plenty of time to hear and take on board the view of those delegates who attend.”
The event will be hosted by Jenny Abramsky, director of BBC Radio and Music and Paul Brown, chief executive of the Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA) and chaired by radio critic and broadcaster, Gillian Reynolds.
RAJAR: 020 7903 5350 www.rajar.co.uk
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