Two years ago, Arbitron – the bull-goose radio ratings service – started replacing its paper diaries to track radio listening with Portable People Meters, a pagerlike device carried around all day by roughly 57,000 Arbitron-niks.

Yesterday, the People Meter story hit the front page of the New York Times.

The bottom line:

“[C]lassical radio’s market share fell 10.7 percent . . . talk radio’s market share declined 2.6 percent . . . at Univision’s KLVE in Los Angeles, ratings fell 54 percent in the first quarter of 2009.”

(Your discrimination lawsuit goes here.)

Meanwhile . . .

Question #1: Is there a shift in ratings because the people who are willing to fill out diaries are not the same as the people willing to wear a People Meter gizmo all day long?

Question #2: See Question #1.

As the Times piece noted about the Arbitron paper diaries:

“People tended to look at it almost like an election — they would vote for the things they liked,” said Jaye Albright, an industry consultant with Albright & O’Malley, a radio consultancy.

So is the “discriminatory” new Arbitron technology actually indiscriminating (as in, lacking in discrimination)?

Your conclusion goes here.