A paper diary system to measure radio audiences would seem a step back in these days of electronic devices like Nielsen’s people meter and Arbitron’s portable people meter.

But in a month or so, Nielsen is launching just that, a new system to measure radio that relies on sample listeners logging what stations they listened to and when. It will roll out in 51 small to midsize markets.

By and large media people are welcoming the new system, despite a long history of distrusting paper diaries as a means of measuring media usage.

Buyers say Nielsen’s system promises to be a low-cost and effective way to measure radio in small to midsize markets like Bridgeport, Conn., and Lexington, Ky., where stations are often too small to afford vastly more expensive electronic systems, such as Arbitron's portable people meter, which is now rolling out in major radio markets.

“In markets that size, it’s not likely we’ll get there soon with the PPM,” says Janice Finkel-Greene, executive vice president of broadcast strategy at Initiative. “This is another way to look at radio markets.”

Buyers also like the new Nielsen system because it’s an alternative to Arbitron, the only radio ratings system in most large and midsize markets. Another ratings company, Eastlan, measures radio in about 100 small markets.

“Any time one ratings company has a monopoly it’s not good for their customers, in this case that being radio stations,” says Nancy Haynes, a principal at Collins, Haynes & Lully in Charlotte, N.C.

The Nielsen rollout will pit the two measuring services in direction competition. Arbitron offers ratings in 50 of the 51 markets Nielsen is entering, and in those markets it provides ratings twice a year.

But Nielsen contends its new system is superior to Arbitron’s paper diary system, which is in use in most markets.

Nielsen’s diaries will include stickers with radio station call letters and frequencies on them. These stickers can be placed in the diaries, so respondents don’t have to write down each station they listen to each time they listen to it, as they do with Arbitron's diaries.

The longstanding complaint about diaries is that people tend to forget the stations they tuned into and write down the more popular stations in a market. But that complaint really applies to television viewing, where people may flip through a dozen or more channels.

With radio, people tend to listen to only a handful of stations, more commonly one or two, observes Lorraine Hadfield, managing director of global radio audience measurement at Nielsen. And here paper diaries are perfectly adequate for the job, she says.

Nielsen will issue its ratings once a year in each of its markets. It says in smaller markets there's not enough change in listening habits to warrant more frequent ratings.

Hadfield notes that Nielsen is going deeper than Arbitron in finding respondents who will reflect the overall population--more than 85,000 in 51 markets.

“We sample people based on where they live, their addresses, which is very different from other methodologies,” says Hadfield. “The benefit of that is that we’ll pick out people who have been excluded in the past because they were cell-phone-only households or had unlisted landline phones.”

The new Nielsen system was announced last November in response to a request for proposals from the Cumulus group of stations for a new radio audience measurement system, and in the time since a few other companies have signed on, including Clear Channel.

Nielsen hasn’t released any ratings yet and hasn’t announced a specific date for its first release, saying only it’ll be in mid-August. Arbitron has declined to discuss the new system.

Not everyone is a fan of Nielsen’s radio system.

Ed Levine, CEO of radio station group Galaxy Communications, faults the new system because ratings are set to come out just once a year, and he says the stickers that Nielsen is using may prompt respondents to report they listen to stations that they don’t listen to.

Still, he says, “Digital technology is better when possible. But when you’re going through the biggest economic meltdown in recent history, this is not the time to introduce 60 percent, 70 percent and 80 percent [price] increases to companies,” referring to the costs of switching to Arbitron’s PPM.