What's New
Your Broadcast Market Now Included In The 2008 Salary Survey!
By TDGA Traffic Digest Staff
Dec 13, 2007, 10:09

TDGA Online Salary Survey Now Includes All ARB and Nielsen Markets. Only Two Ways To Obtain Final Overview Reports In Mid-January.

(San Juan Capistrano CA – December 1, 2007) – With at least two major surveys underway (Software Satisfaction id the other one.) TDGA expanded the scope of its TDGA Annual Salary Survey of Traffic, Continuity, Office Managers and Business Manager personnel by expanding it to report any or all individual Arbitron Radio Markets or Nielsen DMA TV Markets, should they achieve the minimum reporting criteria to maintain participant's confidentiality. Now you can decide if San Francisco, San Diego or Seattle meets your needs, rather than lump it all together as "averages" on the West Coast. 

It's a Member Benefit- period. We make no exceptions in providing access to the valuable data. Managers who once feared these reports now eagerly turn to them for guidance. They need to remain competitive and it helps overcome the most costly budget item- "turnover training and lost productivity costs." The lone exception to obtaining your own copy of the initial Overview Report is that we offer that one release to all persons that participate by completing the online survey. (Let's stress the word completing.)

We've erred on the side of caution in this expansion of data release for 2008. If there is anyway to pinpoint anyone's identity, salary details, etc- the market will be blocked. The same is true if the "returns" from any market fail to provide enough data to accurately project credible numbers.

For example- if you're the Traffic person for 6 stations in a 6-station market called "Traffic-town,"even though we can reliably report the data for Traffictown - we would not! But if we have data on 5 of 10 different clusters in Traffic-ville- that data would be reported as representative of the market and released. It's all a matter of honoring confidentiality. In the Traffic-ville example, you wouldn't know which 5 of the 10 clusters were involved. But in Traffic-town- you would know exactly the stations involved. It's a lot of extra work- and it wuill only apply if you participate. No market participation and we'll obviously not report it.

But, (there's that wonderful word), The incredibe success of participation by thousands of stations each year (Radio and TV) is due to the importance our survey reflects. It's more than dollars! We cover satisfaction, workload, side benefits and percs like 401(k), medical, traffic staff sizes and more.

Yu might not want to use the report for re-applying for a mortgage- but to track the trends in your profession- there's nothing as in-depth or credible out there.

 “It’s one of our three major projects,” said Larry Keene, CEO of the non-union membership association, now with 5,000 members in Radio, TV, Commercial, Public, Stations and Networks. The full report including breakouts by market sizes or DMAs (for TV) is restricted to members- but all participants in the online survey receive the Initial General Report, usually released close to January 15^th. “As you might imagine, TDGA receives large numbers of inquiries about average salary scales in various markets of geographical areas of the country,” said Keene. “The only way to ascertain the type of answers to the questions we receive regularly is to take the pulse of our unique profession. Since we’ve gone online with the survey and made it quick, easy and fully confidential- we’ve been able to provide quality data for most markets.”

The data covers the bulk of interests from job satisfaction, workload by staff size, logs produced, even job recognition by management. In our 5^th year and over 10,000 (collective) participating responses makes it far more reliable than the infinitesimal sampling sizes for similar surveys of a non-traffic nature. TDGA will not release specific markets until a significant sampling has been accumulated.

No identities are ever made available. In fact, after verifying completeness of responses, the ID factors are separated from the results making tracing impossible. We only ask the initial contact information so we can insure participants can be sent their complimentary initial report and for follow-up if any data raises questions or red flags.

We’ve also learned over the years, Traffic personnel will give reasonable “ballpark ranges,” but prefer no to give exact dollars-and-cents. Consequently, we provide salary range choices in $2,500 per year segments. This sharply increases numerical response rates and when you factor in hundreds or thousands of responses, it comes surprisingly close to exact figures.

To Participate In This Year's Online Survey And Receive Your Own Complimentary Initial Report,

Please Click Here.