George -
Interesting to hear the WIVK promo that it was No. 1 in the Pulse ratings.
Pulse, Hooper, and Arbitron have all gone to their graves. As far as I know, Nielsen is the only game in town. I’m not sure what their methodology is, but it has to be better than its predecessors. Hooper was a telephone survey and - while it strove to reach a cross section of race, age, and gender - it only measured in-home listening. Most radio listening, even back then, was done in cars. Arbitron was a diary that started on a Thursday. I read hundreds of completed diaries on trips to Beltsville, MD. They would start out strong on Thursday, show good listenership on Friday, then people would be out of routine on the weekend so they would check “didn’t listen today” for Saturday and Sunday. By Monday, they had forgotten about the diary, so there were (probably belated) “didn’t listen” checks for Monday-Wednesday. That drove down the numbers for total listenership. In 1972, I was programming a station in Buffalo that aimed for 35-49s. The book came back and showed us gangbusters with 18-24 males. I went to Beltsville and read every diary for that sweep. I found two - TWO - diaries that had been filled out by young oldies fans. Both claimed they listened to us 24 hours a day for seven days. Yep, both of those diaries were tabulated.
...thanks for hangin’ with the Possum