PPM: Time for More Duct Tape

So there I was, minding my own business, when I decided to read the daily news from Radio Ink. No problem, yet. But then I clicked on the article "Arbitron PPM Call Focuses On Sampling Incentives".

And I read this:

Another area involves in-tab rates, or the number of panelists who meet the minimum eight-hour carry time for adults and five-hour carry time for children. Charlebois said Arbitron is focused both on improving compliance and on "smoothing the variation that we're seeing in daily in-tab rates across key demographic groups."

I've been reading everything I can about PPM. But I missed any mention of this! Am I understanding correctly that people can participate in this thing, and all they have to do to be counted is carry around their meter for 8 hours? So, given 8 hours of sleep, they can simply not participate in the survey for half of their waking hours? And then you tell me that Arbitron is acknowledging a PROBLEM in this area?

Yikes!

All of you people who have so loudly criticized the diary, hello! Diaries only lose 15% of listening. And we could fix sample size problems in phases 2 and 3 of each survey. And people could record listening to any conceivable device.

Go ahead, add to this "carry around problem" the fact that meaningless background sounds are picked up, while anything involving using earphones is not. Add in the fact that sample sizes are so bad that roll-out of PPM has had to be delayed. Now, tell me, how exactly are things better? Please tell me soon. This duct tape is keeping my head from exploding, but it isn't very comfortable.