TNS Wins Danish Radio Contract with PPM

TNS has announced that the Arbitron Portable People Meter system (PPM), for which it is the licensee, has been adopted as the electronic audience measurement currency system by the radio industry in Denmark.

The five-year contract was awarded to TNS Gallup, a TNS subsidiary in Denmark, and starts in January 2008 with a national panel of 750 Danish consumers - broadcasters will analyze data collected via the PPM overnight, on a minute-by-minute basis. As in Norway, the national PPM panel will be supplemented with regional telephone-based collection.

Leif Lønsmann, Managing Radio Director for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and Chairman of the listener study steering group, comments: 'We have been working on this for almost ten years, and it becomes increasingly relevant to have an agreement in place as more and more channels are appearing that cover the entire country. Danish Radio will now have more specific information on the types and numbers of people who are listening to the various programs.'

Jens Rohde, General Manager for TV 2 Radio, said the contract meant 'an historical breakthrough in making Danish radio more professional.' Henrik Jørgen Hansen, General Manager for TNS Gallup in Denmark, described the deal as 'an expression of a quantum technological leap that opens up new opportunities to the Danish radio industry in the form of programme and campaign evaluations that are similar to those used in TV.'

The PPM encoding system will also be used by the Danish television industry, beginning in the autumn, to identify programming sources for the set-top push-button people meters operated by TNS in Denmark.

PPM was first used in a commercial audience measurement panel for VRT in Belgium, and has been tracking TV and radio since 2003. It has been used for TV currency ratings in Montreal and Quebec since 2004, and in 2006 won contracts for radio currency in Norway, TV currency in Kazakhstan and a trial research and development panel in London for RAJAR and BARB. This year, the system is being adopted as TV and radio currency in Iceland, and is beginning its roll-out as radio currency in the USA with Philadelphia joined this month by Houston, Texas and later in the year by New York.

TNS and Arbitron have been working together to promote PPM internationally since 2000. TNS currently has over 65,000 PeopleMeters in operation in almost 40,000 households globally via its iTRAM (internet, Television & Radio Audience Measurement) sector.

Web sites: www.tns-gallup.dk , www.tns-global.com and www.arbitron.com .