Editorial: Another Unsolved Problem.

THE LEAD ARTICLE in this issue (Lynch and Stipp) touches an important area in media selection. Media people have always known that the selection of a medium or a program is a complex issue. Yet, because of the crude instruments available to them, selection was usually based on region, age, gender. (This, of course, was less true of print media.) Now more sophisticated demographics are available. However, the "qualitative factors," as Lynch and Stipp call them, have been essentially either unavailable or not used. We hope that this article opens the media field even more.

Even though Lynch and Stipp have opened the door, a vast area in media selection remains in question. That is the problem of cross-media comparison. We remember a press release a good number of years ago from the Radio Advertising Bureau; it claimed that the impact of a "good" radio commercial was about two-thirds that of a similar TV commercial. There has been some other work, mostly not too helpful.

Several key questions remain unanswered. Beyond reach and frequency, what is the impact of a commercial in one medium with an advertisement in another? What do we mean by "impact"? What are the real ...