This story from today's Radio Business Reports becomes all the more interesting in light of the pending PPM roll-out in Philadelphia and beyond.
In Houston, Arbitron is using the address based sample frame that was jointly implemented with their prospective partner, Nielsen Media Research. Nielsen uses the address based sample frame for their TV audience research.
In Philadelphia and beyond, Arbitron will abandon the address based sample frame in favor of a telephone sample frame that is modified to include cell only households. Their thinking is that the address approach is just too costly of a methodology for radio alone to support.
Midwesterners cutting the cord fastest
More and more U.S. households are dropping their landlines and opting to go completely wireless. According to Telephia, households in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul have the highest rate of wireless substitution among the 20 largest cities in the country. Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul posted household wireless substitution rates of 19 and 15.2%, respectively. The Tampa metropolitan area secured a 15.1% rate, representing nearly 177,000 households. Nearly 219,000 (14.3%) households in Atlanta and 220,000 (13.6%) households in Washington D.C. cut the cord. Rounding out the top 10 were Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Boston and Los Angeles.
“Several factors influence the rate of wireless substitution across different metropolitan markets including income levels, ethnic mix, and average age,” said Kanishka Agarwal, Telephia’s VP of New Products. “Telephia provides wired and wireless service providers with the research they need to understand and track this important change in consumer behavior at the market level.”
San Francisco, which generally leads the nation in the adoption of many new technology products, landed at the bottom of the list. According to Telephia, the San Francisco metropolitan area posted just a 5.5% wireless substitution rate, which works out to be a little over 105,000 households.
“San Franciscans have traditionally been early adopters of advanced technologies. It is a bit of a surprise to see this metro much lower on the list, but this could be driven by the area’s high income level or its relatively low level of mobile network quality,” added Agarwal. “For topology and zoning reasons, mobile networks in San Francisco are not as reliable as compared to other top cities and it’s a less attractive substitute.”
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