So - there's another, contradictory, study out there about the preference of Arbitron over Nielsen. It's from Media Life, an online publication for media buyers, planners and researchers. Here's a verbatim response from a participant:
This survey suffers from the same lack of methodological documentation as the Harker survey; as such, both can only be construed as interesting, yet inconsequential expressions of opinion. Here's a link to the Media Life survey.
"Nielsen would seem to have made a horrendously expensive, monopolistic mess of TV measurement. Now radio? Nielsen's entry into radio measurement may illustrate what journalist Naomi Klein has called the 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.' In short, for media buyers Nielsen's entry could mean chaos and confusion at the worst possible time. It could become a perfect example of 'disaster capitalism.'"
This survey suffers from the same lack of methodological documentation as the Harker survey; as such, both can only be construed as interesting, yet inconsequential expressions of opinion. Here's a link to the Media Life survey.