Reducing Time Required to Listen
- Nielsen is proposing to reduce the amount of time that is required for a listener to be listening to a radio station (in conjunction with streaming audio listenership for a station) in order to be picked up as listenership in the determination of ratings/impressions. This would be down from the current 5-minute requirement and instead only requiring 3 minutes to qualify for ratings.
- Currently, a person must be listening at least 5 minutes out of any quarter-hour time period in order to be counted as a listener for ratings compilation. No implementation date is set at this point. Nielsen said, “The reason for the change boils down to shorter listener attention spans and a growing variety of content formats. Nielsen showed nearly half of all radio listening sessions previously fell short of the five-minute threshold.”
- The change does not bode well for radio. This could appear to be hyping radio listenership that continues to suffer a decline in Impressions delivered in some cases. We will have to see more of the details to come. At the moment, there is not an implementation date announced. The announcement could also be a trial balloon to see how the market reacts before definitely deciding to implement the change.
More information can be found by clicking this link from RadioInk here.
