Radio One Late To The Voltair Party

Alfred Liggins may be the first CEO of a major radio company to talk publicly about Voltair, the hot-button audio processor that is said to increase the likelihood of encoded broadcast signals being detected by Nielsen’s ratings meters.

InsideRadio reports the Radio One CEO told investors yesterday that his company “missed that curve,” meaning it wasn’t among those broadcasters that have installed some 700 Voltair units in their radio station audio chains in markets measured by Nielsen’s PPM service.

“Most of our competitors, to our knowledge, have these boxes installed in their signals in the big markets,” Liggins said, calling it a “big controversy” in the industry.

But now Radio One is getting its “V” on.

“We have started to catch up on that and have gotten involved in the Voltair game,” Liggins said, without elaborating on which stations or markets have fired the thing up. He went into some detail explaining the intricacies to shareholders of how the device works; said shareholders, however, were probably more interested in EBITDA numbers than audio watermarks.

“Most people in the industry believe that PPM has been undercounting radio listenership,” Liggins said, adding that some believe Voltair can not only increase a station’s ratings but also grow the overall level of persons using measured media in the entire market and in turn lift industry revenue.