Who Lives Here?

Detailed demographic profiles for all U.S. cities and recognized census areas can be found online, but it takes a little work. Go to www.census.gov, click on the entry titled "Demographic Profiles: 100-Percent and Sample Data."

Demographic Profiles: 100-Percent and Sample Data is the latest release

Scroll down and click on your state, then on "Demographic Profile Data Search." When the search page appears, select your state, type in the geographic area of interest -- city, county or place name -- and click "Go." The highlighted name will appear, and clicking the name yields tabular data.

Take a close look at demographic and lifestyle changes in your hot zip areas from the last book and compare to hot zips from the Winter and Spring 2002 data in ARB PD Advantage and Maximiser.

Know your Hot Zips!

Have your hot zips changed on you? Are you still targeting the correct geographic and lifestyle groups?

The kind of questions we're asking right now, and it will take a few books based on the 2000 census based ARB sample composition to really know the answers:

• Is the fact that the country stations ranked higher in the Winter 2002 ARB books in some 'higher unemployment, old economy' cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Hartford and Pittsburgh than in 'new economy, lower unemployment' nearby metros a trend? Or, just a blip on the radar?
• Is the fact that country did very well in cities like Dallas and Las Vegas where the 1990 census failed to accurately represent dynamic growth in Hispanic populations and 2000-based weighting actually helped stabilize the sample for some non-ethnic targeted stations? Whereas other places like Los Angeles, Houston and Phoenix where Hispanic growth was more accurately shown in the 1990 data, making the transition to 2000-based weighting less jarring but also less helpful to the country stations?

Arbitron Won't Do Everything For You

Arbitron doesn't trend sample composition from book to book, so YOU need to. Create a spreadsheet and then make running the "Sample Report" from your Arbitrends software (or on page four of the printed book) the first thing you do before even looking at the share trends.

If the sample composition changes in a specific age group or ethnic cell from book to book with no reality-based reason, your going to want to look skeptically at any station audience estimate changes which also happen in those same demos.

It's a new decade, the 2000 census just shuffled the deck, and it is going to take at least three or four survey periods to really understand with any certainty what impact the new population info is going to have on all of us.

One thing is already obvious: it will.