A row between the boss of TalkSport and the radio ratings company RAJAR rumbled on throughout 2003. Kelvin MacKenzie reckons that the research firm (jointly owned by the BBC and the commercial radio groups) are costing his company money because of their refusal to move over to a technology based measurement system instead of the existing hand written diary system. MacKenzie argues the diary system is inaccurate and that as a result TalkSport's ratings come out much lower than they should - affecting how much the station can charge for ad-time.
After RAJAR dropped its plans to introduce a technology based system, TalkSport hired private research firm GfK to do their own radio ratings using wrist watches that track their owners radio listening habits. GfK's figures showed that TalkSport - and talk radio across the board - had more listeners than the RAJARS said. This encouraged MacKenzie to go legal to force RAJAR to introduce a technical system, and to compensate his station for past (allegedly misleading) listening figures.
As both sides prepare for court, perhaps more worrying for RAJAR is the news that two key radio advertisers (Transport for London and the government's Office of Communication) are investigating the legitimacy of GfK's research. If they start to choose which station to advertise on based on GfK's figures the whole future of RAJAR may be called into question.
Other stuff? The BBC launched their youth channel BBC 3, and reassured commercial players that they wouldn't compete with their youth output by filling it with rubbish. More digital radio stations were launched, and them in the know assured us everyone was buying digital radios (though mainly to listen to BBC7 as far as I can see). Top of the Pops revamped. Sky launched three music channels to compete with MTV and EMAP. Zoe Ball quit her Xfm drive time show. Smash Hits forewent their annual poll winners party. Justin Timberlake appeared on the cover of everything, and their still playing Eminem on the radio every day even though he didn't release anything this year.