Arbitron Gets Accreditation For 11 More PPM Markets

Arbitron Inc. today announced that the Media Rating Council® (MRC) has accredited the monthly average-quarter-hour radio ratings data produced by the Portable People Meter™ radio ratings service in 11 additional markets: Atlanta; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Kansas City; Milwaukee-Racine; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo; St. Louis and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater.

These 11 markets join Houston-Galveston; Minneapolis-St. Paul and Riverside-San Bernardino as accredited markets for Arbitron's PPM ratings service, bringing the total number of MRC-accredited PPM markets to 14.

MRC accreditation has been denied in the other 34 PPM markets based on the findings of the 2010 audits. These markets along with the 14 accredited markets will be audited again in 2011. Arbitron submits each of the 48 markets to annual audits.

"Arbitron shares the MRC's commitment to improving the quality of audience measurement services," said Gregg Lindner, executive vice president, Service Innovation and chief research officer, Arbitron Inc. "Thanks to the impact of our continuous improvement initiatives on quality of our samples and services, 11 more PPM markets can now display the MRC 'double checkmark' symbol."

"The MRC played an important role in helping us develop a number of our quality initiatives. We will continue to work with the MRC with the goal of achieving accreditation for Portable People Meter radio ratings across all PPM markets," said Mr. Lindner.