How do radio stations track how many people are tuned in to the station?
Well, there’s actually no way for a broadcast radio station to ever know exactly how many people are listening at any given time. Broadcasting (in its traditional, over-the-air sense) is a one-way medium. The broadcast signal goes out from the antenna, to your radio or TV, but nothing is sent back. Your radio or TV is merely a receiver; it is not a transmitter. So a radio station has absolutely no way of knowing how many radios are tuned-in at any given time, where those radios are, or how many people are listening to each radio.
The best you can do is try to come up with estimated audience sizes. In the United Kingdom, RAJAR produce reports for the BBC and commercial radio groups by surveying random samples of people in each radio market. RAJAR measures all listening seamlessly via a single source. The data capture is through the continuous placement of diaries across 50 weeks of the year (100,000 p.a.), in which respondents record their live radio listening for one week. The weekly data is aggregated and published quarterly.
That being said, the internet has created an over-reliance on listening figures. Any station that offers a live stream online (whether it’s a broadcast station or an internet-only station) can detect exactly how many devices are connected to the stream at any given time. However, even that isn’t as accurate as it may seem at first. Just because a device is connected to your stream, doesn’t mean anyone is listening. Someone could have started the stream, then walked away or fallen asleep. On the other hand, maybe there are actually 10 or 20 people listening together, but your streaming server only sees the one device that’s connected. A department store could be piping a music stream to it’s PA system, with 500 shoppers hearing it, but you don’t see 500 connections on your server, you just see one.
Ultimately, the most tangible measure of listening is audience engagement with the radio station or the response to advertising campaigns.
Well, there’s actually no way for a broadcast radio station to ever know exactly how many people are listening at any given time. Broadcasting (in its traditional, over-the-air sense) is a one-way medium. The broadcast signal goes out from the antenna, to your radio or TV, but nothing is sent back. Your radio or TV is merely a receiver; it is not a transmitter. So a radio station has absolutely no way of knowing how many radios are tuned-in at any given time, where those radios are, or how many people are listening to each radio.
The best you can do is try to come up with estimated audience sizes. In the United Kingdom, RAJAR produce reports for the BBC and commercial radio groups by surveying random samples of people in each radio market. RAJAR measures all listening seamlessly via a single source. The data capture is through the continuous placement of diaries across 50 weeks of the year (100,000 p.a.), in which respondents record their live radio listening for one week. The weekly data is aggregated and published quarterly.
That being said, the internet has created an over-reliance on listening figures. Any station that offers a live stream online (whether it’s a broadcast station or an internet-only station) can detect exactly how many devices are connected to the stream at any given time. However, even that isn’t as accurate as it may seem at first. Just because a device is connected to your stream, doesn’t mean anyone is listening. Someone could have started the stream, then walked away or fallen asleep. On the other hand, maybe there are actually 10 or 20 people listening together, but your streaming server only sees the one device that’s connected. A department store could be piping a music stream to it’s PA system, with 500 shoppers hearing it, but you don’t see 500 connections on your server, you just see one.
Ultimately, the most tangible measure of listening is audience engagement with the radio station or the response to advertising campaigns.