Program consultant Richard Harker says Nielsen’s PPM system affects stations transmitting an HD Radio signal.
Nielsen says it does not.
Harker writes in his latest blog that “an HD station airing identical content to a traditional analog station is unlikely to encode as well as the analog station.”
And that the situation translates to lower ratings for the HD station.
Harker believes this occurs for both AMs and FMs on their main and multicast channels.
RBR+TVBR reached out to both Nielsen and iBiquity for comment.
A Nielsen spokesperson tells RBR+TVBR that “PPM is a patented system that inserts codes (or watermarks) into an audio signal in real time without introducing any appreciable delay. This encoded content is then aired or transmitted to its destination.”
Nielsen continues: “The watermark was designed and extensively tested to ensure that it is not audible and survives various forms of compression and transmission techniques, including HD.”
RBR+TVBR observation: I remember that testing on stations in the Washington-Baltimore region when PPM was introduced. The idea was to ensure that PPM encoding did not affect both the analog and HD Radio signal. Nielsen predecessor Arbitron, as well as iBiquity and the stations combined their test efforts.
