“No one listens to the radio anymore. Radio is dead.”When someone says that to me, I beat them unconscious with a Portable People Meter.“Wait a minute. When you say, ‘beat them unconscious with a Portable People Meter,’ what do you mean by that?”Okay let’s role play this. Say to me, “No one listens to the radio anymore.”“No one listens to the radio anymore.”How well do you understand the science of statistical measurement?“I understand the basics, I think.”You’ve heard of the Gallup Poll, right?“Sure.”The Gallup Poll measures the opinions of the 260 million adults in America with 95% confidence and only a 3 percent margin of error. Do you know the sample size required to do that?“Tell me.”One thousand and sixty-seven people.“That doesn’t sound right.”Statistical scientists know their measurements are reliable because of the Law of Large Numbers. Are you familiar with the Law of Large Numbers?“No.”The Law of Large Numbers guarantees stable long-term results for the averages of random events. While a casino might lose money on a single spin of the roulette wheel, its earnings will return to a predictable percentage over a large number of spins. Any winning streak by a player will eventually be overcome by the parameters of the game. The margin of error depends inversely on the square root of the sample size. In other words, the smaller the universe, the larger the percentage that has to be queried to get an accurate result. But the larger the universe, the smaller the percentage.“What are you saying, exactly?”In a universe of just 100 people, you have to ask nearly all of them to get an accurate measurement. But in a universe of 1 million people, you need only 600 people in your survey. To measure the entire United States of America, you need just 1,067 randomly chosen adults.“So how many people participate in a radio survey in the average city?”Name a city.“San Francisco. It’s a tech city. Silicon Valley. There’s no way radio is reaching San Francisco.”The Nielsen sample size in San Francisco is three times the number of people required to measure the whole United States. And Nielsen doesn’t measure just once per quarter. Nielsen measures San Francisco 365 days a year.“How?”What do you mean?“How are they measuring it? What’s the mechanism?”It’s a digital device worn by thousands of randomly selected people. Nielsen’s Portable People Meter knows precisely which station you’re listening to, when you started listening, when you changed channels, and when you quit listening. It doesn’t rely on human recall, and you can’t lie to it. Nielsen’s Portable People Meter is as reliable as anything offered by Facebook or Google. Nielsen isn’t guessing when they tell you how many people are listening to the radio. They’re measuring it 24/7/365.“You still haven’t told me how many people listen to the radio in San Francisco.”41.6% of the people in San Francisco – 2,565,817 persons – spend enough time listening to the radio that we can efficiently reach each of them an average of 3 times a week, 52 weeks in a row. This means 41.6% of San Francisco will hear your new, surprising, and different radio ad 156 times this year.“Yeah. But is it working? Radio, I mean.”Radio is delivering better results for less money than it has ever delivered. I can say that because my 70 partners and I have been using radio to grow owner-operated businesses for more than 40 years.“Okay, but isn’t attribution a problem? Sure, maybe your clients are growing, but how do you know that radio is what’s driving that growth?”We don’t use a media mix when our client can’t afford to swing that hammer.“What do you mean?”We believe in doing one thing wholeheartedly instead of two things halfheartedly. A focused budget...