Hear 2.0

The Arbitron page just got more crowded

Nothing says "competition" more than a couple hundred new "stations" with their own listening lines in an Arbitron report.

And Satellite Radio will now host several listening lines, depending on listenership to various Satellite channels by market. XM will be listed, followed by the channel number. And Sirius will be listed as "XS," which you just know has to burn them up.

That means, for one thing, you'll be able to see how Howard Stern's channel(s) perform relative to yours.

And the shares being removed by Satellite Radio (or not) will be painfully tangible.

Your station's Internet listenership will be listed as well.

All of this leads to two questions:

1. What are the specific changes to the diaries that enable Arbitron to capture this information? As a radio marketer, I'd like to know what kind of audience I'm playing to.

2. And, once again, what about Podcasting? Arbitron calls its diary revisions "delivery-neutral," but surely they are not "time-shift-neutral." What has Arbitron done to capture Podcasting listenership? What is it doing to capture this in the future? I'm going to keep asking until it's answered.

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