The Miami Herald du lieu suivant : Miami, Florida • 257

the share 22 per cent A little mystery there for Barnaby but no fun for WCKT The same surveys gave Ch 6 pm news either a 19 per cent share (just a couple points behind Ch 10) or a 15 (fully 10 points behind the competition) is one thing Ch 7 news another The news is Ch locally produced high-profile programming it is the identity And the ratings services agree on just how effective that identity was in reaching viewers says Bob Leider WCKT vice president the only system we There are people who would like to change that Arbitron for instance is expanding rapidly and offering metered service to local stations willing to pay the freight And this is an attractive option for an independent station WCIX (Ch 6) for instance like to depend on the occasional diary surveys Programming on Ch 6 is aimed at and popular with the 18-to-25 age group Younger viewers presumably because they are too busy going out working or watching those reruns dependable at filling out diaries And Ch 6 like all independent stations is ignored by the national metered surveys which measure only network shows Ted Adams WCIX general manager has a favorite reply to ratings questions: love to dance on their Adams have much confidence in the accuracy though his station is successful as independents go Bernie Ziegler the director of marketing adds: ratings are overpriced and they have the interests at heart" Just the same Ch 6 has decided to contract for the new Arbitron sen are only part of the ratings service The meter for instance only tells Nielsen when the set Is on and what channel tuned to It tell who is watching if anyone And since that who is a vital factor in demographics the breakdown by gender age group and socio-economic status that advertisers use to their commercials Nielsen maintains a second service using 3200 families This group fills out telling who watches what Diaries are far more vulnerable to bias than electronic meters but they help humanize the anonymous sample of the 1200 There also are the sweeps in November February May and July when Nielsen polls 100000 families by diary These are the only times of the year in which the ratings measure all 200 of the major broadcasting markets in the country (In major areas such as South Florida Nielsen may check on local viewing for another two months) By late December after the results of the November sweeps are in the local stations will know hofr they rated against one another a service those weekly national ratings do not provide And then usually comes the wailing and gnashing of teeth No one wants to believe the ratings when low Since Nielsen results hit town around the same time as the rival rating service (the smaller but fastgrowing Arbitron) there is often trouble For example when executives at WCKT (Ch 7) got the July ratings from the two services they noticed a little between the numbers According to Nielsen Ch reruns rated a 12 with a 31 per cent (12 per cent of all South Florida television households and 31 per cent of all households whose sets were in use were tuned to 7) But Arbitron said the rating was only an 8 and The MIAMI HERALD.