News story about a response from the chairman of the UK commercial radio trade association (CRCA) to criticisms voiced by former commercial radio executive Kelvin MacKenzie about RAJAR methodology for measuring radio audiences, written by Grant Goddard in January 2006 for The Radio Magazine.

1. NEWS: COMMERCIAL RADIO
REBUFFS MACKENZIE'S
CRITICISMS OF RAJAR RATINGS
METHODOLOGY
by
GRANT GODDARD
www.grantgoddard.co.uk
January 2006

2. News: Commercial Radio Rebuffs MacKenzie's Criticisms Of RAJAR Ratings Methodology Page 2
©2006 Grant Goddard
David Elstein, chairman of the Commercial Radio Companies Association
[CRCA], has launched an attack on Kelvin MacKenzie, former chief executive
of The Wireless Group plc, for his long running campaign to modernise the
radio ratings system, RAJAR. Following last year’s acquisition of his company
by Ulster Television plc, MacKenzie is no longer active in the radio industry.
Speaking at the CRCA’s annual reception, Elstein said: "We want to
incorporate electronic measuring into our research process but, if we had tried
to do so at the time advocated by Kelvin, we would have inflicted disaster on
our industry. The new devices currently being tested are far more advanced
than those he sought to impose on us. Yet, even when we and the BBC have
chosen the best of them and persuaded the advertising industry of their
robustness and accuracy, we will still be the first radio industry in the world to
deploy widespread electronic measurement. We must hope that the historic
fate of pioneers – arrows in the back – will not be our reward: we have already
suffered more than our fair share of slings and arrows."
The radio ratings organisation RAJAR is currently evaluating the results of
further tests on a number of digital listening devices, one of which will
eventually replace the diary methodology that has been in use since the
beginning of commercial radio.
Elstein also used the opportunity to advocate that BBC radio could be financed
by a mixture of licence fees and advertising, a policy unlikely to be endorsed
by CRCA members. "Not until the BBC is rationally funded – by tax revenues
to support public service content and by consumer and advertising revenues to
pay for commercial content – will we cut through the Gordian knot of BBC
competition," he said.
[First published in 'The Radio Magazine' as 'CRCA Attacks MacKenzie', #721, 1 February 2006]
Grant Goddard is a media analyst / radio specialist / radio consultant with thirty years of
experience in the broadcasting industry, having held senior management and consultancy
roles within the commercial media sector in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. Details at
http://www.grantgoddard.co.uk