Who knows this about Arbitron radio ratings?

For my 200th post, and in the wake of the Arbitron ratings announced the other day that show Air America Radio is doing well against right-wing radio, I keep wondering how many radio listeners there are out there who are like me?

From about 1995 until 2003, as a reaction of disgust and disdain against the proliferation and virtual monopoly of right-wing radio, I have listened to almost no radio at all. The rare exceptions are an occasional baseball or football game, and when in big cities I always spend some time going back and forth on the AM and FM dials TRYING to find some liberal talk radio, ALWAYS with no success. The not-so-rare exception is NPR stations for their classical music programming. The result is that I often drive for hours and hours without ever even turning the car radio on at all. I've even driven all the way from here (Columbia, Missouri) to visit my relatives in Leesburg, Florida (2200 miles round-trip) without ever turning on the radio at all.

The bottom line is that with the exception of classical music on NPR stations, during those eight years from 1995 to 2003, radio almost completely lost my listenership. And I keep wondering, does the Arbitron ratings measure that lost listenership in any way? I can't believe I'm the only person who never listens to those radio programs; there must be others out there who are like me.

I am going to write a letter to my local radio stations pointing out all of this to them, and trying to sell them on Air America, Ed Schultz, and ESPECIALLY the GREAT Thom Hartmann, on the argument that this is a VAST untapped and unserved market for them. (Al Gore won my city and county in 2000.) And one major selling point would be if Arbitron gives any indication that there are, indeed, a lot of potential radio listeners like me out there whom those stations DO NOT HAVE AT ALL as listeners because the only thing on those stations is right-wing blather.

So does anybody know anything about Arbitron or other radio ratings where I could get some persuasive information about this to include in my letter?

Ron

P.S. -- Oh, and I almost forgot to say, since June of 2003 I have been listening to liberal talk radio on Sirius satellite radio. Which would be another talking point for me to use in my letter, because now that I have Sirius, I literally NEVER listen to local radio stations. Even the exceptions don't apply any more because Sirius carries classical music, and I've given up on local radio completely.

i usually listen to sirius radio

It turned out that over a full week, nobody in our family listened to a single minute of radio -- not even overhearing someone else's in a store or on the street.

I wrote a comment in the back of the booklet saying that years ago I used to have the radio on as background most of the day, but that these days it was all crap.

I hope they noticed.

http://www.radioandrecords.com/Subscribers/ratings/homepage.htm

I looked for WLBI (AAR New York) and they still have it listed as "ethnic" - Radio & Records will only give 12+ numbers for free - the numbers AAR are interested in are 18-34 & 25-54. Not that the 12+ numbers aren't important - but in the eyes of advertisers, it's 25-54 group who has the money to spend

It is my opinion that any station that might be considering AAR will be waiting for a few books to come out - Arbitron comes out every three months, with trends coming out in-between.

Hold off on your letters - if positive numbers continue for AAR - you'll have more amunition. But these guys in radio are always looking at numbers and my guess is...if they have AM stations that aren't doing so well - they may be waiting and watching how AAR is doing.

Switching formats is a big decission - not to mention that a new ad campaign would have to accompany a format switch (do they have the budget to do that?)