From Radio Ink
July 17, 2008

Arbitron has released preliminary Portable People Meter results for Los Angeles — one of eight markets due to go live with the PPM in September — and it’s reporting that cume across various “format groups” is up substantially from what’s been shown in the diary ratings.

The four-station AC group had a PPM cume of 1.7 million in the May 29-June 25 survey period, up more than a million from diary cume of 619,900 as of spring 2007. The Alternative group, also four stations, got 1.2 million with the PPM, compared to 534,400, while Country’s two stations picked up cume of 655,900, an advantage of 331,700 from spring ’07’s 324,200. The 10 stations in the News/Talk category saw a less marked gain, with cume moving to 547,210 in June from 487,390 in the spring ‘07 diary.

The 11-station Spanish-language group saw cume of 1 million in June, nearly doubling from 588,573, and Arbitron reports that the early PPM numbers show that 12+ Spanish-dominant Hispanics spend more time listening to radio — 14 hours, 45 minutes a week — than all other demographic segments in the L.A. market. English-dominant Hispanics 12 and up listen to 11 hours and 45 minutes of radio each week. That’s compared to 12 hours, 45 minutes for all persons 12+, 11 hours for black persons 12+, and 12 hours, 15 minutes for other 12+ persons.

The L.A. numbers also show an increase in the number of 18+ listeners who work full-time, especially among African Americans. For persons 18+, 58.5 percent of the PPM AQH was employed full-time, vs. 55.7 percent in the winter 2008 diary. Among African American listeners, the PPM shows 66.5 percent are employed full-time, compared to 54.6 percent with the diary, and for Hispanics, 57.5 percent of the PPM audience is employed full-time, compared to 55.6 percent in the winter 2008 diary ratings.

“Just as we have seen in our previous PPM markets, the Los Angeles June 2008 ratings show significant growth in the total audience reach of individual radio stations,” said Arbitron President/Sales & Marketing Pierre Bouvard. “That means advertisers can now turn to radio for something that they prize: the ability to deliver reach against a specific target audience. We also see that, even as individual station cume audiences have increased due to PPM’s unique ability to track every station that a person can hear, radio still maintains its targetability.”

Posted under PPM