Canadian "Ban" on Voltair May Not Be Permanent

In a posting Monday, we headlined "Voltair Hot Box Banned In Canada". (Click Here for Posting)

“Banned is too strong of a word,” Numeris CEO Jim MacLeod has told Inside Radio.  “We asked stations to remove it temporarily while we do a full test of encoding.”

Numeris hopes to complete its lab tests within 60-90 days.

MacLeod said there was no pressure by Nielsen, which licenses PPM technology to Numeris, and is independently testing Voltair in the U.S.  Although the PPM hardware used in the U.S. and Canada are the same, Numeris employs fundamentally different methodology for its ratings, which rely on average minute as the currency rather than the average quarter hour metric used in the U.S.

Jim LacLeod

Based on preliminary testing, MacLeod said that there appears to be “a significantly bigger effect on the minute data than on the AQH data.”

Canadian broadcasters  are pressing pause on Voltair before its use becomes widespread like it has in the U.S.  Only about a dozen stations were using the box north of the border, according to Numeris.

 “We may have 11 or 12 today but if there’s any change in the data, you’re going to have 112 of them tomorrow,” MacLeod said.

In the U.S, Telos Alliance has created a battle between the haves and have-nots: stations that have shelled out $15,000 for the unit purported to improve PPM encoding and those that go without it.  The company won't divulge who has purchased the unit.  At least one company has committed to buying the units for its AM and FM stations in PPM Markets.

Should Numeris determine that Voltair improves PPM encoding, MacLeod said one option is for the ratings company to buy them for individual  member stations to deploy as part of the encoding system. Another option would be to require stations that use Voltair  to publicly declare it.

McLeod defends Canada’s existing ratings system, claiming that editing rules ensure all stations receive proper listening credit.  He worries that while attempting to improve encoding for all formats, Voltair may introduce a new bias in some other direction.  For instance, there is the matter of how high individual stations adjust the unit’s settings to maximize the robustness of embedded codes that were never intended to be audible.