Birch Scarborough Research began in 1979 when Thomas Birch first started a radio ratings service called Radio Marketing Research. Birch had tested a system for measuring market shares and surveying music audiences by phone that met with success during test runs. Birch's research was first used to help determine programming, and his monthly service grew to include 18 markets by 1980. By March 1982 Birch was able to compete with Media Statistic, taking many Media trend subscribers from the other service. This gave him some major market subscribers and lent further credibility to his service. By 1984 Birch served 93 markets with the standard report format and he had hired two former Arbitron executives to work for his organization, making the service an even greater challenger in the radio research business. The executives were Richard Weinstein, who served as president and would later go on to become executive director of the Electronic Media Rating Council (now known as the Media Rating Council), and Will­ iam Livek, who served as vice president.

The Birch system relied on telephone interviews that asked respondents to report ("recall") their listening pattern during the past 24 hours. Only one designated person per household was used in the survey, with the phone interviewer asking to speak to the person with the last or most recent birthday, an approach commonly known as the "last birthday" method. The selected respondent was asked about stations heard on the radio during the previous 24 hours, the location(s) (such as at home, at work, or in the car) where the listening took place, and in which time periods the listening took place. (Time periods or "dayparts" included 6AM to 10A.M. that day, 10 A.M. to 3PM that day, 3 P.M. to 7 P.M. the previous day, and 7 P.M. to midnight the previous day.) The Birch system used pre-des­ignated households in its sample; households were randomly selected from the Total Telephone Frame listing developed by A.C. Nielsen for the Nielsen Station Index. Each household was called during the evening hours, with three attempts made to reach the household and the designated respondent.

Birch served as a major competitor to Arbitron in the radio research market for a number of reasons. Its service was fairly inexpensive; it provided monthly data that was delivered every two weeks; and its research included qualitative components. Data collection was done in interview centers that allowed for oversight of interviewers and presumably ensured the quality of responses. And finally, Birch Scarborough laid claim to a response rate of over 60 percent, higher than that of Arbitron. The basic Birch radio report was provided both monthly and quarterly. Monthly reports provided a combination of findings from the two most recent months of interviewing. Quarterly reports included average quarter-hour listening habits, daily listening habits, and weekly cumulative measures that were broken down by daypart, demographic group., and location of listening. Measures for ratings, shares, and cumulative audience were reported on an average quarter-hour and/or daypart basis.

Birch made efforts to weight its findings and thus balance the results obtained by compiling data from households of different sizes. Weighting was also used with data recorded for different days of the week, as not all respondents could be reached on the same day and their interviews often reflected listening on different days of the week (with different program schedules). Balancing methods were also used to account for disparities in ethnicity, age, sex, and county location factors.

Birch Scarborough conducted a number of studies on its own methodological research throughout the late 1980s and in 1990; for instance, in 1988 it conducted an analysis of those telephone calls placed via random digit dialing that resulted in no answer and busy signals. The results of this study were utilized by Birch to calculate response rates.

In 1989 the firm analyzed the number of attempts that were being made to reach specific demographic groups with its surveys. This analysis found no significant differences by gender or age group in the number of completed interviews. A separate study in 1989 examined the "seven day methods test." It compared the weekly cumulative numbers obtained via single­ day interviews that examined listening on the current day and previous day with cumulative numbers based on successive daily interviews throughout the week, finding no significant differences between the two groups of results.

In 1990 Birch Scarborough completed a case study of the Hispanic market to evaluate how Hispanic respondents viewed the Birch interview. Personal interviews were conducted in San Antonio, Texas, and Miami, Florida, to determine (1) how well the respondents understood the Birch interview; (2) how they recalled their listening habits from the previous day; (3) which language they preferred to use during the interview; and (4) how the language used affected their responses. This case study was also used to gather other comments about the Birch survey. Despite its status at the time as the nation's second-largest market research company, the Birch Radio Ratings Service was discontinued in 1992. Birch Scarborough attributed the move ​​to financial losses. Scarborough Consumer Media and Retail Services continued, and a marketing arrangement made Arbitron the exclusive provider of Scarborough's qualitative data to radio and television stations. This precluded any further competition between the two companies.