I watch the political discourse and get pains in my stomach within thirty seconds. It's a lethal, toxic mix of bile, lies, and manhood envy (including Michele Bachmann). It's got nothing to do with advancing any cause; it's all about winning-- personally. And to win, someone has to lose, right? Sad.

So amid all this furor over online audio measurement, I'd like to put down the broad brush and offer up a, dare I say, more measured response.

I worked with Arbitron products for nearly twenty years. My perception was that they had limitations, but what product and who among us doesn't? I also met and worked with various levels of Arbitron people over that same time and found them unfailingly pleasant and brighter-than-average.

They measure terrestrial radio by using a relatively small sample of Americans and projecting that panel out to draw some inferences if not conclusions about how the larger general population behaves vis a vis terrestrial radio consumption.

Honestly, it's by no means a silly methodology. I honestly don't know how to measure terrestrial radio better.

But I do know how to measure online audio better. Webcast Metrics, the only MRC-accredited product for online audio, doesn't run calculations where one panelist becomes thousands of "listeners". This isn't the wedding at Cana.  In Webcast Metrics, one means one. No panels or surveys, just analysis of how many Internet enabled devices connected with a stream, anywhere, any time. We don't have any PhDs because we don't need them. Our technology does the calculation. We may know less qualitative data on listening motivations and such, but we know a hell of a lot more about quantitative-- and we continue to know more and more every day as registration becomes the norm, not the exception.

So, it's nothing personal. We think ours is a better mousetrap-- despite what the hate-filled, envious, biased, left-wing media might say to the contrary.