The Four Things

December 12, 2025

Photo by m. on Unsplash

Coaches and athletes always talk about what it takes to perform at your best. Ability, heart, desire—these are all traits that lead to winning. But the one thing you hear them stress over and over is mastering the fundamentals. Things like footwork, spatial awareness, arm slot—these techniques lead to successful outcomes.

With that in mind, we thought we’d go back to basics in this column. We have talked about this before but there are four things that can (and will) have an impact on your station’s ratings. Here they are:

Something you have done—What has changed on your air during the most recent ratings period? Did something change with the music? Did you run a huge promotion? What about your content? Was it punchier than usual? Did you add a new feature or personality?  None of these changes will affect your cume, but they can impact your TSL/AWTE.

Something the competition has done—Apply all the questions from the above paragraph to your market. However, add a wrinkle. Our listeners are no longer subject to what is happening on the radio dial. Did something major occur that drove listening to a streaming platform? The Taylor Swift album release comes to mind. While this rarely happens anymore, is anyone marketing?

Something happened in your market—The biggest “change” in every market is happening right now. A station or two are playing wall-to-wall Christmas music. This generally does not attract fresh cume to terrestrial radio, but it does dramatically rearrange where it goes. We saw how listening levels were affected by the pandemic. We have also seen how a Super Bowl run can affect what people want to hear. Elections, weather, natural disasters—these real-world events can significantly affect your ratings.

Finally, something Nielsen has done—We always tell our clients that you do not pay Nielsen for ratings, you pay them for sample. Nielsen is trying to balance their sample by geography (sampling units, not zip codes), ethnicity, age, and gender. The goal in all those categories is to hit an index of 100. This is impossible. There are two markers that can define the health of your sample:

Preferable: Any sample that falls into the 90-110 index range.

Acceptable: Any sample that falls into the 80-120 index range.

Any sample that is below 80 or above 120 is problematic. This is not us just saying this. These are Nielsen’s standards.

An index that is too high will cause the sample to be weighted down. The reverse is true for a low index. We would prefer oversampling as it increases the odds of finding a heavier listener to your station.

Make sure you track your sample every single survey. Bring any red flags to Nielsen’s attention and ask them what their plan is to fix it.

This is something we do for our clients on a continual basis. We’re their “Nielsen whisperer.”  And we’re kinda good at it.

-Steve Allan, Programming Research Consultant

• Tweet