Philly and Houston ditch diaries for people meters. First results mixed.

They’ve been trialing it since 1992. Now,15 years later, electronic audience measurement has finally replaced diaries in Philadelphia and Houston in the U.S. The new system is scheduled to be rolled out to New York later this year and LA and Chicago early next.

The first results are in and they can be best described as “different” to expectations with some good news and some bad for radio.

The good news is, according to Arbitron’s electronic gizmos, that more people are tuning into radio, but the bad news is that they seem to be listening for shorter periods. Some formats also fared better than others under the new system, contributing to several stations switching to higher-rated genres like rock.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Breakfast is not quite the all dominating shift that it’s been cracked up to be with larger than expected audiences detected in other dayparts.