Listen to the radio in your car? Of course you do. Did you know that with the right equipment, others can determine which station you’re listening to? Check out this link: Radio Radar. It’s from the L.A. Weekly.
A company called Mobiltrak is doing it to tell stations just how well they’re doing with the listening-while-they-drive public. (And people who carry portables while they walk, as well, I presume.) And while they’ve not really kept it secret, they haven’t advertised that they do this, either.
And this article makes it clear how this info could be mis-used.
Similar, albeit more primitive, technology has been in use in Europe for many years.
In England (and probably other European countries), all radio receivers have to be licensed. They enforce this by going around with some kind of radio detector that can tell if a receiver is in operation. A music history professor of mine brought a portable TV with him into England, and turned it on and watched it in the privacy of his hotel room. An hour or two later, the “radio detector” police knocked on his door and told he had to pay the license fee. (The license fee was only $8, so it wasn’t a big deal.)
While this older technology can’t tell what station you’re tuned to, it can tell if your tuner is turned on.
Count me in with our new Pounder friend. As long as the can’t (or don’t) track it to the individual car, I’m not worried. The example in the link seemed to be a stretch. The ever-ominous “They” already know, for example, what newspapers and TV stations are most popular in an area.
It’s not like they’re going to catch you listening to pornography on the radio!
(Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What a great idea! I could make millions as the pioneer of radio porn! Where’s my list of venture capitalists? Gee, I’d hate for someone else to steal this idea. I’d better hit the “Clear Fields” button. You know the one right next to the “Submit Reply” button?)
I’m rich! I’m a happy meiser!
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
This link takes you to a section of the UK TV Licensing Authority’s website describing how their detector vans sniff you out.
They’re currently running a very big and very simple advertising campaign in London, based on enormous billboard posters in black and white with messages such as…
“Three houses in Lambeth Walk SE1 do not have a TV license”
The article implies that the more detailed info of what stations are being listened to in various parts of a city could be used to pull the plug on certain stations in times of unrest. I find that to be a bit of a stretch.
Even back during the days when the FCC played a non-comatose regulatory role, it was essentially impossible for a station to lose its license. Nowadays, you can pull the ‘essentially’ from that sentence.
And even assuming the FCC became an arm of a police state overnight (yeah, suuure), licenses nowadays are granted for periods of ten years, IIRC, so by the time they could ‘pull the plug’ on a troublesome radio station, it would have long since switched to another format with another demographic, which would make the whole thing irrelevant anyway.
What you see in that news story is the lastest twist in some old technology. Radios have always produced a signal when they are “on.” Read an old Time magazine published during WWII and you’ll run across a notice reminding passengers of ships to not listen to radio–they’re afraid U-Boats can trace the location of the signal.
Now, down to business. Mobiltrak is just one of a long line of companies who have been trying to make money off many broadcasters dislike of Arbitron sampling. The sales pitch is you’re getting numbers of what’s actually being listened to.
At the beginning of this decade there was a Baton Rouge company that put two people by the roadway with what looked like a radar gun. One person would aim the gun at a car while the other person would scribble down info–1985 Ford pickup truck, 2 males, corner of x-- & x–, listening to 690 kc.
In this early example you can see they were trying to get data about listeners as well as what they were listening to. Broadcasters thought it was an interesting idea, but advertising agencies never bought into the lack of specific listener information.
Mobiltrak is just going for sheer numbers. They’re not a secret organization. If they seem new to you it’s probably because you don’t read the trade publications they advertise in. Please notice that reference to their numbers always seem to be made by broadcasters. Again, advertising agencies are not interested in numbers that don’t have qualified people figures with them (Male 25-34).
