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The problem with RAJAR
The audience measurement system in the UK has often been criticised; here are some of the arguments for and against the current method.
The current diary system operated by Rajar is not without its critics. Many people feel that getting respondents to fill in a diary by hand often leads to inaccurate information - people forget which station they listened to, or for how long, and the awareness of having to listen to a radio changes their habits.
I have personal experience of this - aged about 11 I had to fill in a Rajar diary (although I don't actually remember it being as such back then). I dutifully tuned into several stations I'd never even contemplated listening too before because I didn't want to be seen as simply listening to one station. Rajar say that they have methods in place which can detect this, but can they truly know what someone listened to throughout the week and would they have had that listening pattern if they weren't filling in a diary?
The second problem is that it relies on recall and knowing what the name of the station you were listening to was. For example, if you hear football commentary - would a listener know which station they were listening too, and then be able to remember that fact when they fill in the diary? Another problem with the current system is it doesn't take into account people going outside their TSA. For example, a station with a busy motorway passing through their patch may get a lot of listeners tuning in whilst driving, but these drivers won't record that as it is not within the TSA of their home patch.
Incidentally it's worth noting that Rajar only issues diaries to people at their permanent residence; so students living in halls of residence are not measured.
So what is the alternatives? Well one proposal is that a sample of people carry a pager or similar device that automatically notes what station the individual is listening too. It would either do this by listening out for inaudible tones broadcast on the station, or by recording snippets of the sound and comparing these to what was broadcast on the radio station at exactly the same time. The advantage of this system is that it doesn't require any input from the user, all the data is collected automatically. As a result it would also help get a more accurate reflection of what someone actually listened to because they had no influence in the results.
This system, however, isn't perfect. Would a pager truly be able to tell whether someone was actually listening to the station? For example, many people have a radio alarm in the morning - would they remember to switch the deviser on first thing in the morning, or remember to turn it off when they pull the covers back over and go back to sleep. Would a pager be able to tell if someone left their radio on whilst they went for a shower, or increasingly would it be able to monitor the output of their shower radio?
The second problem is the "hearing" v. "listening" argument. If you go into a shop or taxi and the radio is on, you might hear it but would you notice what was on. Advertisers don't want a system that monitors whether someone simply happened to be near the output of the radio, they want to know they were actually listening. Therefore, could a pager differentiate between simply hearing and active listening?
Rajar maintain that they are interested in investigating alternative ways of measuring radio audience figures, but they feel the present diary system is still currently the most accurate.