[grc] Help with finding 3rd party for station reach and audience demographic

[al davis]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2021 22:19:49 +0000
George Koster via grc <grc at maillist.peak.org> wrote:
> I'm hoping you can direct me to where I could find a third-party
> service to help us with developing a report on the reach and
> demographics of the listeners of our radio station KSFP.

You can get some info about the potential from RFree  ...

https://rfree.prometheusradio.org/

You need to log in to get the info you want, but you can get some
anonymously.  I used RFree to do the mods and exploring for you, along
with another web tool from Canada that is no longer available.

If you are looking for your FCC coverage, or the census demographics of
that coverage area, RFree will do that.

If you are looking for info about your actual listeners, there is no
reasonable way to get that with any reasonable accuracy.

Arbitron is only useful to the stations with the highest market share.
The sample size is too small to give meaningful results for any station
not near the top.  Beside that, the ratings are based on counting those
who happen to hear the station.  The people-meter does not distinguish
between serious listeners vs. those who happen to be where it is
playing.  This might be what potential advertisers for a commercial
station might care about, but it more often leads astray in community
radio.

Thinking about the sample size, suppose there are 50 stations in the
market.  The average share would be 2%.  If you figure there are 10000
people participating in the sample (ha), each listening about 1% of the
time, that's really 100 samples.  The data would be at best +/- 1% .
So, if your share is indicated at 2%, it's really probably between 1%
and 3%.  That's really all you can know from that data.  So, it does a
great job at showing the big boy with the 30% share, but for those with
shares of about 3% or less, it's just noise.

If you are looking for info about your actual listeners, all you can do
is ask them, and you should, in every way you can.  There is no 3rd
party that can do this for you.  You need to do it yourself.