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PR Executive Deirdre Blackwood Joins Arbitron as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications

Posted on: Monday, 1 June 2009, 11:04 CDT

COLUMBIA, Md., June 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) announces today that Deirdre Blackwood has joined the Company as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, reporting to Alton Adams, the Company's Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.

Ms. Blackwood is charged with consolidating the Corporate Communications group, which includes Marketing Communications, Public Relations, and Investor Relations and will be driving enhanced communications initiatives between Arbitron and its key stakeholders.

Ms. Blackwood has worked extensively within the government and corporate sectors, and brings a substantial breadth and depth of communications expertise to this important role within Arbitron. Throughout her career, she has lead corporate brand development, financial transaction and repositioning initiatives and public affairs and issues management campaigns for corporations and governmental clients.

"As Arbitron moves in new directions, it was critical to combine these communications functions in order to better align strategic communications and message development around our key growth initiatives," said Adams. "Deirdre's expertise across the breadth of communications disciplines will help drive Arbitron's communications initiatives and help better address the need for timely, disciplined and unified external messaging to our key constituencies -- which is critical during this time of rapid change."

Ms. Blackwood most recently was Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations with TerraStar Networks, Inc., a satellite-terrestrial telecommunications company based in Reston, Va. Prior to TerraStar, Ms. Blackwood was a Director in the Washington, DC office of Burson-Marsteller advising such clients as JPMorgan Chase and Accenture, among others. Ms. Blackwood spent five years (1999-2004) heading corporate and financial communications for the enterprise supply-chain software company formerly known as Manugistics.

Additionally, Ms. Blackwood brings impressive government affairs credentials to Arbitron, having worked on Capitol Hill for two U.S. Senators as a political appointee. She served as Press Secretary for U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as well as a senior staffer for former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato and had communications roles at the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Transportation from 1990 to 1992.

Blackwood was also at MCI Communications Corp. and began her career in television production with ABC's "Good Morning America" and CNN's "Larry King Live." In 2002, Ms. Blackwood was honored as a finalist in the "Women in Technology: Heroines in Technology" Award for her commitment to community service in the Washington, D.C. area.

A native Washingtonian, Ms. Blackwood is a graduate of Hollins University in Virginia, and resides in suburban Maryland.

About Arbitron

Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is a media and marketing research firm serving the media - radio, television, cable, online radio and out-of-home - as well as advertisers and advertising agencies. Arbitron's core businesses are measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media and product patterns of local market consumers; and providing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data. The company has developed the Portable People Meter, a new technology for media and marketing research.

Arbitron's headquarters and its world-renowned research and technology organizations are located in Columbia, Maryland.

Portable People Meter(TM) and PPM(TM) are marks of Arbitron Inc.

Arbitron Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are not strictly historical, including the statements regarding expectations for 2009 and any other statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future, may be "forward-looking" statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those suggested or indicated by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, among other things, the current global economic recession and the upheaval in the credit markets and financial services industry, competition, our ability to develop and successfully market new products and technologies, our ability to successfully commercialize our Portable People Meter(TM) service, the growth rates and cyclicality of markets we serve, our ability to expand our business in new markets, our ability to successfully identify, consummate and integrate appropriate acquisitions, the impact of increased costs of data collection including a trend toward increasing incidence of cell phone-only households, litigation and other contingent liabilities including intellectual property matters, our compliance with applicable laws and regulations and changes in applicable laws and regulations, our ability to achieve projected efficiencies, cost reductions, sales growth and earnings, and international economic, political, legal and business factors. Additional information regarding the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements is available in our SEC filings, including our 2008 Annual Report on Form 10-K. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and the Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

SOURCE Arbitron Inc.

Source: PR Newswire

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