THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130626
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Few things are more valuable than privacy, but I just sold mine for a buck.
The dollar bill was crisp, with that new-money smell still clinging to it. It came in the mail a couple of days after I agreed to share my listening habits with Arbitron, a company that rates radio stations.
It didn't matter that a normal day for me includes eight hours of work; four hours of playing, feeding and tucking children into beds; two more hours of ironing, laundry and grocery shopping; and several more hours of various and sundry other tasks. And, oh yeah, sleeping.
Somehow the person on the other end of the line convinced me that I had plenty of time to keep a diary as well.
And not only that, she persuaded me to get my husband to keep one too. A little detail I forgot to mention until the diaries arrived.
My husband and I differ on the matter of surveys.
He sees them as an intrusion on our privacy. Big Brother gathering information bit by bit, collecting it all in some enormous file that will somehow, someday, be used against us. His motto? ``Don't tell anyone anything.''
He once threw away a U.S. Census questionnaire. Isn't that illegal?
I, on the other hand, view a survey as an opportunity to stand up and be counted. In a few short months I will count for something. I will be ``the demographics'' everyone talks about in conference rooms. I will be part of the formula upon which the fortunes of shock jocks and country-music stars turn. The idea made me giddy.
Tired of being a statistic extrapolated from someone else's opinion, I was ready to be the extrapolee.
If I had to drag my husband along, so be it. After all, he did deprive me of my once-in-a-decade chance to be counted by the Census.
A few days after the phone call from Arbitron, the diaries arrived along with a crisp dollar bill. And one for my husband as well. I waved the bills in the air like they were million-dollar lottery winnings. ``Isn't that nice of them?'' I told my husband.
He said the dollars were a bribe. Now we were beholden. Indentured. We had to fill out the darn diaries. We'd been paid!
So for the next week we dutifully filled out our booklets.
I soon realized that the only time I sit still long enough to listen to the radio is in the car, with the kids strapped in their seats. Still, keeping up with call letters that usually float in one ear and out the other turned out to be a hassle. Half the time I was so busy filling out the diary I forgot to turn on the radio.
Meanwhile, Arbitron seemed worried about the trustworthiness of my word. Midweek, a rep called just to make sure I was holding up my end of the deal.
And then, the next day, another letter. With another dollar. ``OK, OK, I'm filling them out,'' I said out loud, feeling that Arbitron had infiltrated the house. Maybe my husband was right.
I gave him the dollar, thinking he needed the incentive to get him through the week.
Thursday I dropped the completed diaries in the mail, unloading the weight of my listening responsibility.
I felt just a tad more powerful than I had the week before. I was gonna make a difference. G. Gordon Liddy? Hit the showers. Rush Limbaugh? Outta here. Public radio? You got nothing to worry about.
People who say you can't buy much with a buck anymore are wrong. by CNB