Fixing the Ratings

[CG6468]

s 'fix' in to sink ratings for Rush, Savage, other conservatives?
'By falsifying numbers this way, liberals can kill talk radio'
Posted: July 24, 2011
5:00 pm Eastern

By Kathy Shaidle
© 2011 WND

At the beginning of this year, a rash of stories popped up in liberal media, promising that the death of conservative talk radio was imminent – and this time, the critics of hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage insisted, they had the hard numbers to prove it.

The critics had latched onto a story that appeared in Crain's New York Business (a subscription-only newsletter), which announced: "A new Arbitron report shows Rush Limbaugh's ratings down 33 percent from a year ago and Sean Hannity down 28 percent over the same time period."

"Is right-wing talk dying?" John Avlon asked hopefully at The Daily Beast.

"Are we sick of Rush Limbaugh yet"? Alex Pareene asked at Salon.com, adding gleefully, "We might be!"

But how exactly did Rush Limbaugh lose one-third of his audience over 12 months?

According to Pareene and others, the answer was a 2008 change in how ratings-tracker Arbitron determines listenership, away from the survey system to the Portable People Meter.

The fix is in. Arbitron is a pocket piece for libs.

Arbitron SUCKS

[DumbAss Tanker]

The fix is in. Arbitron is a pocket piece for libs.

Arbitron SUCKS

I think the real point is not that Arbitron sucks, but that Leftist scum gleefully seized on noncomparable stats from entirely-different measuring methods to craft a big fat lie, with no more factual foundation than their own fantasies.

[CG6468]

Then Arbitron should announce that.

[DumbAss Tanker]

While I don't subscribe to it, I doubt if Arbitron wrote the article in Crain's which gave rise to the whole thing.  The misuse of the information they generate by partisans is hardly their responsibility.

[CG6468]

They're not responsible the MISUSE of their material, but they have the responsibility to announce that the data has been fudged.