The truth is discriminatory (in California, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida & New York)
 

So apparently you can be sued (and forced into a settlement) for telling the truth.


A little background: Radio ratings, compiled in the US by a company called Arbitron, have historically been quite inaccurate. Essentially, a combination of surveyors calling you on the phone to ask you about your listening habits, and mailing randomly selected people little "diaries" in which you're supposed to log every time you listen to the radio.

Well, there were some problems with that system. For one, people lie. For two, people are lazy. And for three, lazy people tend to forget about their diaries until it's time to send them back in, and then just scribble a bunch of BS into them.

Several years ago, Arbitron fixed this. They came out with a product called the PPM (Portable People Meter) which is a little pager-like device you wear on your belt. It hears everything you hear, and when it detects that you're listening to a radio station, it keeps track of that. The underlying technology is indistinguishable from magic (a bunch of stuff about psychoacoustic masking of embedded recognition tones), but the fact is that the system works pretty well. A lot better than diaries and phone surveys.

As the system has been rolled out across the country one market at a time, an interesting trend has taken shape. In urban areas in particular, radio stations which play formats that might be considered to appeal primarily to brown people (Hip hop, R&B, etc), which had previously ranked very highly in the local ratings, have suffered a sharp drop in measured listenership. A lot. Like, of the 18 stations serving minority audiences in Los Angeles, 16 experienced ratings decreases in excess of 30% under the initial PPM system while three of those fell by over 70%. One station serving a mostly African-American audience was rated zero for a significant portion of the day.

Meanwhile stations broadcasting other formats (talk radio, news, etc) have risen correspondingly.

What changed? Absolutely nothing, of course. The ratings are just reflecting reality a lot more closely than they used to, by removing most of the sampling error due to, say, people falsifying their diaries. One possible inference we might draw is that people of one group might be more likely to do than people of another.

Sadly, that just won't do for many city attorneys.

Recent settlements have included $260,000 in NY, $130,000 in NJ, $400,000 in CA. All because they improved their counting skills.



Can't be bothered to cite sources. Do your own research.

You do realize that the allegation is not claiming that the ppm system itself is inaccurate but that the way they marketed it and obtained a sample population was discriminatory towards minorities therefore skewing the results with a sample that was not representative of the actual population. The point is you can have a great product to record data but you data is only as good as your population. When you use flawed methods to data mine and then release a report with faulty data that results in lost revenue for the stations you misrepresented you can bet your ass they will come after you for it.

Wow.

On a tangent, when was this? If it is recent, then it's good news to me, because it means there will be fewer of the hip hop crap that litter the airwaves. No wait, you said news and talk rose? Not jazz, rock, trip hop, classical? Ugh.

The system has been rolling out for the past 5 years or so, starting with the biggest markets and moving downward. I don't know the exact order in which cities are being transitioned, but I can tell you, as an anecdotal example, that it's made it at least as far down the foodchain as Orlando and West Palm Beach, as I've recently visited stations there which were equipped with the encoders.


I just pulled some examples. In general, formats which tend to serve, shall we say, people who have jobs, tended to rise. One nontrivial factor in this was what's called incidental exposure- eg, hearing a co-worker's radio at the office, or being in a restaurant where the radio is on.

In general, it amazes me how robust this technology is. I don't know if a PPM receiver would work in a Miata with the top down, but they're able to recover a signal out of amazingly noisy environments (hardtop cars traveling on the freeway, shopping malls and similar crowded environments, etc.)

Thinking more about this, follow the money. Qui bono?

The hip hop industry. The survey results would make them sh-t their pants.
They have a financial incentive to discredit the results. How would you do that? This is one way.

As the technology gets cheaper and the systems/methods are improved.

So I'm counted as a "listener" if I'm at the gym and grit my teeth as they play hip hop, until I can't stand it anymore and ask them to change the station? :) (They use satellite radio btw)

Probably the same algos used for that program that ID's a song when you let your cellphone listen to it. I predicted such software would be invented, about 10 years ago ;) Some guy or some small company probably figured it out and patented it. It's heavy duty ----, but he's probably not rolling in money as a result, because it's not as sexy as creating a copycat of Friendster. :)

I'd be interested in a white paper of how it works, as I have some interest in psychoacoustics (esp as applied to sound reproduction / hifi)

At some point, you'll be able to whistle into a "Name that Tune" phone app, and voila!

Yes you would be counted as a listener at the gym. The ratings are measuring exposure for the purposes of advertising. They don't care whether you like what you are hearing just that you are hearing it and therefore any ads that would play on the station aswell.

<Running, screaming> Aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!

This is seriously bad news considering my gym always has Katy Perry going.

Smells like BS to me. It's in Arbitron's financial interest to produce accurate results. (Unless they unsuccessfully tried to blackmail the hip hop industry with skewed results ;) )

The lawsuit sounds like it has no merit at all. The supposed whole idea of the law, and this lawsuit is that they are RACISTS and thus knowingly under-represented brown and black people because Arbitron's owners and execs don't like them.

As such the lawsuit is EXTORTION, or something for some DA or someone, to look good, especially to minorities.


----------------

A good friend of mine works at a tech startup, is employee #5. They got rid of an under-performing older black woman in tech support. 1 of like 3 they fired over the years. 2 months later, lawsuit. "YOU ARE RACIST THAT'S WHY YOU FIRED HER!"

Umm, there's a black guy in the same position as her, that performs well so they kept him.

"Uh, YOU FIRED HER BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN"

Um, employee #4 is a woman and she wasn't fired.

"Uh, YOU FIRED HER BECAUSE SHE'S OLD!"

Um, employee #2 is even older.

"YOU FIRED HER BECAUSE SHE'S AN OLD BLACK WOMAN!"

The company settled for a half year's salary to make the lawyer go away.


This is LEGALIZED EXTORTION.

Don't pretend like you don't like it. I mean cmon you drive a miata lol.

In before Joe gets sued by Orlando and West Palm Beach for pointing out that they are lower on the food chain than other cities.

Ok, maybe a little. Wait, no I don't. Well, who's asking?

It is pretty ------- annoying to have more than double my weight on deads and think, "who listens to this ----"?

I agree that things like this happen all the time and it sickens me. However, I'm not so sure thats the case here. The prosecutors were not claiming that Arbitron was purposfully discriminatory but that they were negligent in the rollout of the system. Certain methods they used to pick a population such as reliance on land line calls have been proven to yield a less then representative population as it relates to minorities. I am not an expert in this by any means but after doing a google search and reading a handful of articles the facts of the case lead me to believe that there may be some merit to the claims.

And why would a company that fucks up its statistical methods be obligated to pay restitution to a group of people that have never heard of them under a law that's supposedly designed to protect them from "RACISM"?

In the words of Penn and Teller,
Bullshit!

I can understand fully if the lawsuit were from Arbitron's customers, alleging a breach of contract, with a clause that says "Arbitron will do due diligence to ensure accuracy in the sampling", and said customers refuse to pay for the bad data.

Capiche?

If I open a bar after doing market research which tells me showtunes-listening fags are the biggest market, and I fucked up and missed the fact that I should be playing hip hop in said bar, why do I owe the minority community money? In what way did I injure my brown brethren?

I know, it makes you wilt, huh? (As I one-leg dead lift a 30 lb dumbell on the bad-knee side of my body)
Unless they turn the sound off and show her tits on the TV.

You'll definately not find one from Arbitron. Along with Ibiquity, they're more secretive about the inner workings of their technology than Los Alamos.

Hehe.

Actually, I just checked the numbers and both Orlando and West Palm scored higher than I thought- it's market #34. WPB is market #48.

Here's the market data: http://www.arbitron.com/home/mm001050.asp (Is it just me, or is it kind of interesting that, according to Arbitron, Puerto Rico is the only place in the entire US where there are no hispanics whatsoever?)

The idea behind the lawsuit is that the market relies on the data to determine advertising rates. Customers trust that Arbitron is an expert and should know how to effectively gather data. The fact that the data was faulty for reason's arbitron should have known is the case for negligence and discrimination. You act as if the money is going to minorities. It is not. It is going to the state as a penalty much like settlements from the stock rating agencies went to the feds after the financial crisis because of grossly negligent ratings

Because saying so would open them up to a lawsuit!!!

Neither does the money in any number of class action lawsuits. The beneficiaries are the lawyers.

And why is their supposed f-ckup discriminatory worthy of punishment under a law that's supposed to protect minorities from racism?

Negligence no, breach of contract, maybe, discrimination, Bullshit!


You keep arguing like a lawyer and you know it.

The constant harping about discrimination is something that I think will, in the future, be looked on the same way we view segregation today. How could they think that discrimination was bad?

Everyone discriminates every single day. You reject stupid/ugly partners as potential mates. You dicriminate against the place that shorts the meat in tacos, or has higher prices but no better products. Discrimination in and of istelf is how we make decisions.

Discrimination based solely on the color of someone's skin is bad. But stereotypes often have a degree of truth, and are perpetuated by the ones screaming the loudest. We've all heard the stories of some minority that is fired and sues, but how many of those are what most would consider "normal"? No, it's always the ones who think that they can get away with bending the rules because they have that minority shield to protect them.

My wife worked for Wegmans Food Markets. Consistantly in the top 10 of best places to work. Good pay, benefits, etc. They had a mentally disbled guy (we-TODD-ed) working there (prepared foods dept.) who was a diswasher. Terrible work ethic, and deliberately did things wrong, because he kenw they could never fire him. It took 6-8 months of written and photographic evidence to finally can him, because they were so scared of the lawsuits. More scared than failing health inspections due to improperly washed dishes. That's downright scary.

Wait, do they give a device to the radio stations to add in inaudible sekrit tones?

BTW is that your inference or did you hear this from some Arbitron insider?

City attorneys probably aren't privy to what goes on in a niche industry. Someone must have pissed in their ear (such as a hip hop exec, or a competitor that doesn't have access to Arbitron's technology).

If so, it would be an example of BS laws being used as a bludgeon by competitors or losers in business.

And as we fight amongst each other, the lawyers profit.

Considering that these are state lawyers as prosecution they do not benefit whether they win or lose, atleast not monetarily. if you had quoted the whole section you have also captured the MONEY GOES TO THE STATE portion of it.

Because that was the law that the DA felt most suited the case.

Negligence, yes! They are looked to as experts and as such have a lot of control over the market. Therefore any mistakes they make that they should have known better than to make will come under increased scrutiny. (i.e. auditors fall victim to this even though an audit does not guaranttee that there are no errors or fraud if they should have seen it they are prosecuted because many rely on their expert opinion to make FINANCIAL DECISIONS)



I agree but I am not the prosecutor of this case.


Yes I am. This is because I am part of the accounting community which deals with the backlash of this legal ---- all the time so I have a good understanding of the underlying argument. It is a valid one.

However, I never said that this case was cut and dry negligence. I merely stated that there was some merit to the claims and it wasn't completely bullshit as you stated in the OP.

Yes. Every participating station is given a PPM Encoder (actually two- main and backup) which are installed inline with the audio signal chain, usually as the last device in the path (after audio processing and delay). This box does some kind of secret manipulation of the audio to encode a unique identifying signal and timestamp into it without audibly altering the signal. It's not a tone per-se, more like a modulation of the audio itself. (It does not, for example, work when the station is silent. If you stop the audio, the alarm will sound after a minute or so, even though the transmitter is still on and the encoder is technically working.)

You also get a PPM decoder / monitor, which receives your own over-the-air signal and decodes it to look for the presence of the ID signal. If it is not found, then it sounds an alarm and gives a relay closure, which you can use to activate an automatic switchover to the backup encoder and alert the engineering department. In larger stations with full-time newsrooms, the relay closure from the decoder is usually also brought out to drive a huge strobe or police-car light in the newsroom. Stations take this seriously, as loss of PPM encoding is just as bad as actually being off the air, from a ratings perspective.

Here's a stack of encoders and decoders, I can't remember which station this is from:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1332955120

This services three different radio stations, grouped into clusters of two encoders and one decoder each. The top (main) encoder is enabled on all three stations (the keyswitch, which is an actual, physical key, is set to "enable" and the green "encoding" light is on), however the decoder at the bottom is indicating a fault condition, evidenced by the red light.

I knew the money didn't go to said minorities, but I WAS MAKING A POINT. The whole notion of "protecting" an "injured party or group", by a lawsuit wherein said party doesn't get the restitution, is WRONG.

Your are not using the word properly, but it's not important so I won't belabor the point.


And you are arguing within the constraints of the system we are subjected to. And that is fine.

I am pointing out that the SYSTEM is bullshit and it won't change unless awareness spreads.

Your arguments are valid wrt living in the system, but people should recognize it is F*CKED UP and makes our lives worse.

Joe - the degree of specialization as a result of the profit reward system of the market never ceases to amaze me. Some guy out there has spent the last >10 years of his life on this very narrow niche. And with what he earns he turbos his truck and posts kitten pictures on the internet or buys fat porn or something. Which in turn is provided by some other guy who spent 10 years or more of his life refining....

Reminds me of the coordination signal used by the aliens in Independence Day.

Everything I need to know I learned in Quantitative Methods. I can't wait to hear from the state on "perfect data collection". lol

Where do you think Arbitron got the technology from? Took a while to reverse-engineer (they never thought to have Jeff Goldblum just plug an unmodified Apple laptop into it) but it's working pretty well.