To get this data, NPR had prepared a PHP script that would parse the server log files and translate the results into a form that could be digested by Adobe's Omniture, a Web analytic tool. Getting information back, however, could take up to 24 hours, and Russell still didn't trust that the results provided an accurate count.

In the cases of streaming usage, many users might start a stream, then pause it, and restart it. Or perhaps a user would restart a stream after a failed Internet connection. In the server log files, all these events were logged as separate events, not a linear sequence of actions by a single user. As a result, there was no way of determining how many connections were from different listeners, and how many were multiple streams to a single user.

"With our PHP scripts, we could not get that level of sophistication. So our numbers could be off," Russell said."It was hard to make rational decisions based on this."

By working with Splunk, NPR could derive listener numbers and information directly from its servers' log files. The software allows users to script search results and then graph the results, or show them on a dashboard.

In NPR's case, for instance, it provided the exact number of listeners for each program that was streamed or downloaded. "With Splunk you can wrap multiple [log entries] into a single distinct visit, so I feel my numbers are actually accurate," she said.