People Metering.

The radio business is abuzz about electronic audience measurement. Arbitron's People Meter is testing in Houston. So, somehow we're supposed to get more accurate ratings when people carry gizmos instead of diaries? That's if you accept that a relatively small bunch of people (sometimes known as a statistical sample) reporting their radio listening to Arbitron produces data so sensitive that you can know what, say, men 18-24 do with their radios. Thin-sliced baloney, I say.

The market--radio stations and ad agencies--decided this math stunt was the best they could get decades ago. It sounded like science. We couldn't understand how it worked. It must be good. So, now, Arbitron's been doing this for a long time--they're the Microsoft of radio ratings--and they're going digital, which is always better, right. We've even accepted their acronym--PPM. It's in the trades' jargon book.

There's even a "study" commissioned by RAB that says the agencies will spend much more on radio if the ratings come from electronic data. How'd they do the study? Asked a bunch of ad people--ahem, excuse me, interviewed a scientific sample drawn from the target population. You can get the PowerPoint...on the Arbitron site, of course.

Only one radio guy--Bob Neil, CEO of Cox Radio--is willing to publicly say, No, thanks. Go, Bob. (Though Clear Channel has invited anybody with an electronic ratings idea to offer it. I grudgingly admit CC's throwing their weight in the right direction.) With satellite radios marching into cars, multimedia Ipods and cellphones slipping into more pockets, and Web stations gathering ears and ad buys, it's time for more radio guys to grow a spine and get it tingling.

You need alternatives to Arbitron, boys. Whatever happened to that dude with the truck, driving around, scanning car radio tuners? Used to sound goofy. Would it now?