SAN FRANCISCO ¡ª The Russian firm that invested more than $200 million in Facebook this year is making another bet on the United States Internet industry.

Digital Sky Technologies, or D.S.T., an investment firm with offices in Moscow and London, is leading a group that is buying a $180 million stake in Zynga, a fast-growing San Francisco company whose online games, like FarmVille, Caf¨¦ World and Mafia Wars, are extremely popular on Facebook.

An unusual investment structure, by an unorthodox foreign investor, might shake up many of Silicon Valley¡¯s traditional venture capital and private equity firms, which are losing out on another promising Internet opportunity.

The investment could also raise further questions about the pedigree of D.S.T., which lists a prominent Russian billionaire with a criminal record among its major shareholders.

As with Facebook, D.S.T. will invest directly in Zynga while also buying stock from shareholders, including the company¡¯s employees. The move is aimed at giving employees and shareholders of the prominent start-up a way to cash out before an initial public offering.

Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund, and the venture capital firms Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz also invested.

Zynga had previously raised $39 million.

The companies did not disclose Zynga¡¯s valuation as a result of the new capital, but the game company¡¯s annual revenue has been reported to be around $250 million and growing quickly.

Two experts in Internet company finance said it would be reasonable for Zynga to command a valuation of two and a half to six times its annual revenue. That could put the value of the two-year-old Zynga at $1.5 billion; one industry insider believes the value could be as much as $3 billion.

With the investment, D.S.T. is doubling down on its billion-dollar bet on social networks and online games, which draw people who do not normally play video games into virtual simulations that they can play with friends. Players might spend only a few minutes each day in  pearl beads  the game, and are persuaded to pay real money to buy virtual goods, like bales of hay and gasoline for their tractors in FarmVille, a game in which players run a farm.

D.S.T. began investing in 2005, mostly in Internet firms based in Russia and Eastern Europe, where, as in Asia, people have adopted social games and virtual goods marketplaces faster than in the United States.

¡°People did not believe that this Chinese model of micropayments and social games was real,¡± said Yuri Milner, D.S.T.¡¯s chief executive. ¡°I am pretty convinced this market will have tremendous pick-up on the Western side of the world.¡±

Part of D.S.T.¡¯s appeal to start-ups is that it has shown unusual patience in waiting for a return on its investment. Traditional venture capital firms invest money from limited partners, like university endowments, which expect a return on their capital every few years. But D.S.T. operates  jewelry boxes   more like a holding company and invests its own capital. It also does not require a seat on the company¡¯s board.

D.S.T. first came to people¡¯s attention in the United States in May, with its unusual investment in Facebook. As it did with Zynga, D.S.T. agreed to buy preferred shares at a high valuation, while also buying, at a lower valuation, the employee-owned common stock that traditional Silicon Valley investors typically shun.

In the past, company shareholders cashed out when the company was sold, either to a bigger company or to the public. Today, though, companies are increasingly figuring out how to offer shareholders liquidity much earlier by letting them sell shares when the company is still private. Though Zynga and Facebook are among the best-known examples, other venture capital firms have been making similar deals.

¡°I believe that many successful Internet companies just went public too early,¡± Mr. Milner said. ¡°We¡¯re almost like making them public companies for a short while.¡±

D.S.T.¡¯s investment in Facebook also brought it some added scrutiny. Alisher Usmanov, a Russian industrialist billionaire who spent six years in an Uzbek jail for fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s, owns 35 percent of D.S.T. Mr. Usmanov has said he was jailed for political reasons.

Responding to questions about Mr. Usmanov and his role at D.S.T., Mr. Milner said that he and his partner owned 40 percent of the firm and made all of its management decisions.

Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which previously invested in Zynga, said that Zynga¡¯s board did  opera or rope necklace   the customary due diligence on D.S.T. and that he was impressed by the firm.

Mr. Milner is a ¡°brilliant entrepreneur,¡± Mr. Gordon said. ¡°He saw within Russia the importance of social media and the new social Web, and he¡¯s got a global point of view, which is still rare even in Silicon Valley.¡±

For Zynga, which has 712 full- and part-time employees, the investment gives it extra capital with which to compete with newly enriched rivals.

¡°The opportunity every quarter is proving to be bigger than we imagined and we always thought it was prudent to keep adding to the capital of the company as we grow,¡± said Mark Pincus, Zynga¡¯s founder and chief executive, who has started three other companies.

Playfish, which competes with Zynga but has a smaller user base, was recently sold to the video game giant Electronic Arts for $300 million in cash and stock, and shareholders could receive an additional $100 million if it performs well. Slide and Playdom, other Bay Area start-ups in the social games and virtual goods arena, are also well financed.

The capital infusion also indicates that Zynga survived relatively unscathed after recent criticism from bloggers. They said that Zynga and other social gaming companies were deceiving users by selling them offers from advertisers, some of which were deceptive. Zynga has since suspended all such offer advertising.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that the Shinnecock Indians on Long Island meet the criteria for federal recognition, signaling the end of a 30-year court battle and clearing a path for the tribe to pursue its plans for a casino in New York City or its suburbs.

The announcement all but assures that the 1,066-member Shinnecock Indian Nation will receive formal federal recognition, though a public-comment period of up to six months must be held before the final order is issued.

The news could mean significant changes for the relatively poor tribe, most of whose members live on 800 acres in Southampton, N.Y., not far from some of Long Island¡¯s wealthiest communities and expansive celebrity-owned estates.

Shinnecock leaders have long argued that a casino could turn around the tribe¡¯s fortunes.

¡°This recognition comes after years of anguish and frustration for many members of our Nation, living and deceased,¡± Randy King, chairman of the Shinnecock trustees, said in a statement, adding, ¡°Perhaps this recognition will help some of our neighbors better understand us and foster a new mutual respect.¡±

Once it is federally recognized, the tribe would be entitled to build a ¡°Class II¡± casino on its land that could have thousands of video slot machines but no table games. That has worried some local officials because of the implications that such a casino would have for traffic and tourism in the wealthy resort areas.

Tribal leaders have said they would prefer to negotiate with the state and federal government to build a or Class III casino on land elsewhere that would have table games and could be more lucrative both for the state and the tribe.

Tribal officials have expressed interest in a variety of sites for a casino, including other locations on Long Island or at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens or Belmont, in Nassau.

The state would get none of the proceeds from a Class II casino built on the tribe¡¯s reservation, but would almost certainly insist on a percentage of any proceeds if it permitted construction elsewhere of a bigger casino ¡ª which could generate billions of dollars in revenue.

Gov. David A. Paterson had supported the tribe¡¯s bid and urged the Obama administration to recognize it.

¡°As Governor Paterson has said, federal acknowledgment of the Shinnecock Indian Nation was long overdue,¡± said Morgan Hook, a spokesman for the governor. ¡°This is a proud day for the Shinnecock. Governor akoya pearl pendant   Paterson looks forward to continued government-to-government relations with the Nation, and will continue to support their efforts to achieve full federal recognition.¡±

The difficult fiscal situation may bring new urgency to casino discussions.

State Senator Craig Johnson, a Long Island Democrat whose district encompasses Belmont, said the state should immediately begin serious talks about the issue.

¡°The first topic I want to discuss is how Belmont fits into this,¡± he said.

Gordell Wright, a tribal trustee, said in a statement that ¡°there is no reason to wait for the recognition process to end, and every reason to act now so we can resolve these matters sooner than later.¡±

Tuesday¡¯s announcement capped an arduous effort by the tribe, which had to meet seven criteria for approval. According to the Interior Department, the Shinnecock tribe needed to  shell pearl jewelry   demonstrate that it was ¡°continuously identified as an American Indian entity since 1900¡± and able to trace its origins back much further than that.

It was also required to establish that it was a viable political entity and that its current members are not members of another federally recognized tribe.

¡°I think their case was very strong,¡± said George T. Skibine, the acting principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian affairs. ¡°This was not difficult,¡± he added. ¡°They met those pretty straightforwardly, fairly and squarely. I don¡¯t think there is much room, based on the evidence, for concluding otherwise.¡±

Mr. Skibine made the decision after Larry Echo Hawk, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, recused himself from the matter because his brother had a role in representing the Shinnecock tribe.

The tribe¡¯s history goes back hundreds of years; both the Dutch and English skirmished over the area in the 1600s, but the loose freshwater pearl    tribe remained there and was granted a 1,000-year lease by British colonists in the town of Southampton in 1703 ¡ª a deal that was later renegotiated.

In 1792, partly as a means of settling land disputes with the town farmers, the Shinnecock Indians began their current practice of annually electing three tribal trustees, according to John A. Strong, a retired Long Island University professor who has written three books about the Indians of Long Island.

Other chapters of the tribe¡¯s lore are tragic. In the 1870s, a number of the tribe¡¯s young men died when they were part of a salvage operation of a ship called the Circassian, which sank before they could return to shore.

The tribe¡¯s court fight for federal recognition dates to 1978, when the tribe filed a petition for recognition.

In 2006, when it still had no answer, the tribe sued the Interior Department, saying that the agency had failed to process its request in a reasonable amount of time. Earlier this year, it entered into a settlement with the Interior Department that required a preliminary ruling by the end of this year.

The tribe is also hoping to resolve more than $1 billion worth of land disputes in the Hamptons, including its claim to the site of the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, which has played host to the U.S. Open several times.

The tribe paid at least $1.74 million to seven different lobbying firms since 2005 as part of its recognition effort, according to public records.

As part of that lobbying and public relations campaign, the tribe hired Michael McKeon, Gov. George E. Pataki¡¯s former communications director, and Alan Wheat, a former Missouri congressman, as well as Fleishman-Hillard, a Washington public relations firm. 

Recently, researchers in the mountainous Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland, an area fabled for its snow sports, set out to discover why some people get hurt skiing and others don¡¯t. They presented questionnaires to 782 skiers who had been treated at three local trauma centers and a comparable group of 496 skiers who hadn¡¯t. What was it about the injured skiers that led to their accidents, the researchers wondered.

The answers, published last month in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, were, like familiar ski runs at dusk, both predictable and surprising. A majority of the injured skiers (57 percent of them) were men; their average age was 40. Many had been skiing slowly when they tumbled. But generally, their chance of injury increased when they had a high ¡°readiness for risk,¡± or, in the words of Dr. Lorin Michael Benneker, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Bern and one of the study¡¯s authors, an eagerness to head for ¡°jumps, moguls,¡± instead of ¡°the easy slopes.¡± New ski equipment or old snow also significantly increased injury risk. Insobriety, however, did not. There was more  wholesale pearl necklace  self-admitted drinking among the control group of uninjured skiers. Drug use, on the other hand, contributed materially to injury risk. (A related, unpublished survey of injured snowboarders produced ¡°similar risk factors¡± for accidents, Dr. Benneker says, including the finding that ¡°smoking dope while boarding is a bad idea.¡±)

With the winter holidays rapidly approaching, and millions of skiers preparing to invade the nation¡¯s slopes, it seems an opportune time to look at the demonstrable risks involved in the sport, and whether it¡¯s possible to decrease your particular chances of exiting the slopes in an ambulance.

¡°There are a lot of misconceptions¡± about the dangers involved in skiing, says Jasper Shealy, professor emeritus of industrial and systems engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, and one of the leaders of a team of researchers that has studied skiing injuries at a resort in Vermont for almost 40 years.

The risks of dying on the ski slopes, for instance, are slight, Mr. Shealy says, despite the well-publicized deaths of Sonny Bono, Michael Kennedy and, last spring, the actress Natasha Richardson. About 40 skiers die on the slopes during an average ski season, he says. The cultured pearl jewelry   number is even smaller for snowboarders.

The chances of incurring a nonfatal skiing injury are higher, of course. ¡°We measure risk in terms of days between injuries,¡± says Carl Ettlinger, the president of Vermont Ski Safety Equipment, and one of Shealy¡¯s collaborators. ¡°Today, there are about 516 days between injuries,¡± or, ¡°about two injuries per every 1,000 skier visits.¡± These numbers represent an enormous decrease from 35 years ago, when injury rates were more than twice as high, Mr. Ettlinger says.

What changed? Mostly the equipment, both Mr. Ettlinger and Mr. Shealy say. Improved binding-release settings, together with the widespread adoption of hourglass-shaped, parabolic skis have notably affected both the incidence and the types of skiing injuries, they say. The number of lower-leg injuries, especially shinbone fractures, once the signature injury of skiers, has dwindled to almost nothing. But the percentage of skiing injuries that involve sprained knees has grown (although the total number of knee injuries is falling). That may be, Mr. Ettlinger says, partly because of the introduction of those shapely modern skis. The early versions, by promoting sweeping, deeply carved turns, also could place heavy loads on the anterior cruciate ligament within the knee if a skier was not accustomed to them.

They tended, too, to make people feel more confident on the slopes than might be warranted, Mr. Ettlinger says. ¡°It¡¯s like getting in a fancy sports car with slop in the steering and brakes you don¡¯t understand,¡± he says. ¡°People can find themselves going faster than they can handle.¡± Even at slow twisted pearl necklace   speeds, the back ends of the skis can twist during a fall, straining the knees, especially if the skier ¡°gets in the back seat¡± or sits back before tumbling, as inexperienced or panicked skiers usually do, Mr. Ettlinger says. (The newest models now have shorter back ends and tend to be safer for that reason.)

Age brings no wisdom in this context, by the way. A.C.L. sprains are more common among skiers older than 30. The rapid increase in the number of snowboarders on the slopes also has changed skiers¡¯ injuries. It has given them something new to hit.

¡°Most people think that snowboarders whack into skiers,¡± Mr. Shealy says. ¡°But it¡¯s completely the other way around,¡± a phenomenon related to how each group falls. ¡°Snowboarders stop abruptly,¡± Shealy says, their boards biting into the snow. ¡°Skiers slide,¡± he says, often into a downed snowboarder.

What, then, can skiers do to lessen their chances of an injury?

¡°First, have your equipment checked by a technician¡± at a ski shop before your first trip to the slopes, Mr. Ettlinger says. Bindings, even the most advanced, are only as good as their settings; if they release too easily or too late, you risk injury, he says. Similarly, outfit your child with equipment that fits. ¡°I know a lot people want boots the kids can grow into,¡± Mr. Ettlinger says. ¡°But if the child¡¯s foot slops around inside the boot, the bindings won¡¯t work correctly. This is one of the main mechanisms for injury in kids.¡± Ask at your favorite ski shop, he says, about season-long equipment rentals for children.

Perhaps most important, he continues, learn to fall. ¡°It¡¯s probably going to happen,¡± he points out, ¡°so do it right.¡± Don¡¯t, despite a strong instinctual urge, throw out your hand to stop yourself. You risk dislocating your thumb and, by landing propped on your arm, creating an acute angle with your leg that does unspeakable things to your knee. Next, ¡°when you¡¯re down, stay down,¡± Mr. Ettlinger says emphatically. ¡°Do not try to stand up while you¡¯re still sliding. That¡¯s an A.C.L. tear waiting to happen.¡±

And don¡¯t expect either lessons or a helmet to protect you too much from injury. ¡°There is absolutely no evidence¡± that dutifully completing ski lessons ¡°has any effect on an individual¡¯s safety,¡± Mr. Shealy says. ¡°The current emphasis¡± in most ski schools, he says, ¡°is on rapid skill acquisition¡± with little instruction in preventive techniques like how to fall. ¡°Classes can sometime make people think they¡¯re more ready¡± for moguls or steeps than they are.

Similarly, while helmets have reduced the total number of skiing-related head injuries by 30 to 50 percent, Mr. Shealy says, ¡°when you look at the really serious head injuries, helmets aren¡¯t much help.¡± If you hit a tree at ¡°speeds common in skiing¡± ¡ª 30 miles per hour or more on steep slopes ¡ª ¡°you will exceed the capacity of the helmet to save you.¡± Helmets also ¡°may promote reckless behavior,¡± Mr. Shealy says. ¡°It¡¯s just human nature.¡± Skiers still should wear helmets, he adds, but should also practice restraint and common sense on the slopes, the primary means of reducing your risk of injury anyway. ¡°The message,¡± he concludes ¡°is not: Don¡¯t wear a helmet. It is: Don¡¯t hit a tree.¡±

CHICAGO ¡ª On a frigid Wednesday night in December 1959, a revolution in comedy began here, almost unobserved. In a partly refurbished Chinese laundry in a bohemian neighborhood, a small improvisational troupe calling itself the Second City took to the stage for the first time to satirize the foibles of the Eisenhower era for an audience of barely 100, with a few bentwood chairs the only props.

 Since that initial Dec. 16, millions have attended Second City shows or watched the troupe¡¯s scores of alumni on television or in films. Second City is often likened variously to a comedy factory, farm team, finishing school or ¡°Harvard of humor,¡± and its graduates include Alan Arkin and Joan Rivers from the early years, Bill Murray, Chris Farley and Mike Myers from later eras and Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert more recently.

Now ensconced in larger quarters just down the street in Old Town, but with the same style of chairs still onstage, Second City commemorated its 50th anniversary over the weekend with shows, parties and panel discussions that, more than one performer said, ¡°felt like a high school reunion.¡± Highlights will be broadcast as a TBS special next June and will soon be posted at the troupe¡¯s Web site, secondcity.com. But with the entertainment industry struggling to adapt to shifting tastes and new modes of expression, the gathering also served another purpose: to underline how the conception and execution of what is considered funny has changed, thanks to Second City.

At the time of the company¡¯s birth, the dominant style in American comedy was stand-up, often with a strong dollop of borscht-belt shtick. From the start, Second City stood in contrast to that approach: it emphasized an ensemble, not the individual performer; improvisation rather than a written routine; sketches instead of jokes; and intellectual rather than slapstick humor.

¡°We came from the theater, and that affects the way you act, construct your scenes and think about your audience,¡± Bernard Sahlins, the only surviving founder of Second City, said in an interview on Friday. In those early years, he added, when he auditioned performers, ¡°I would sometimes ask, ¡®Have you read Dostoyevsky? Who is the secretary of agriculture?,¡¯ because I wanted us always to be playing at the top of our intelligence.¡±

Today few Second City sketches run as long as the 10 to 12 minutes that were not uncommon a half-century ago (audiences weaned on television are less patient), and there are more likely to be curse words and references to television than to 19th-century Russian literature. But the environment in which the troupe operates has changed even more drastically, which affects the expectations of the performers.

In those early years ¡°comedy was not the economic commodity that it is now, and you weren¡¯t practicing it for that reason,¡± said David Steinberg, who was part of a mid-1960s cast that also included Robert Klein  turquoise jewelry   and Fred Willard, went on to a successful stand-up career and today directs television shows. ¡°It was a different kind of commitment then. We were all misfits, outsiders, University of Chicago dropouts, connecting as a group, a community. There was no plan, no other goal, no thought of getting a show or a series or doing anything other than this.¡±

Nowadays a stint with Second City is often just a stage in a larger career strategy whose trajectory has been established by the example of all those successful alumni. A Second City credential can confer so much credibility that ¡°some people lie about it¡± at auditions, said Tami Sagher, an alumna who has written for ¡°30 Rock¡± on NBC and ¡°Psych¡± on USA and appeared in ¡°Curb Your Enthusiasm¡± on HBO and the film ¡°Knocked Up.¡± What transformed Second City into an institution with national reach was ¡°Saturday Night Live.¡± The original cast included three Second City alumni ¡ª John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner ¡ª and ever since then, the company has been such a permanent pipeline for that NBC show, supplying about two dozen performers and even more writers, that staff members here recall Mr. Sahlins growing glum or irritated every time Lorne Michaels, executive producer of ¡°Saturday Night Live,¡± came to see a revue.

But in retrospect, several of those who trod the path to ¡°SNL,¡± as the show is often called, seemed to prefer the work they did at Second City. At a panel discussion Rachel Dratch, who left the show in 2006, said that she ¡°felt freer here¡± in Chicago; Tim Kazurinsky, an early-¡¯80s cast member, said ¡°SNL¡± seemed ¡°a little bit toothless¡± by comparison; and Horatio Sanz (on the air from 1998 to 2007) lamented that ¡°at ¡®SNL¡¯ you have to multi strand pearl necklace   have the joke on the first page¡± of a script, whereas Second City allowed the performer-writer to ¡°do what you wanted to do, to put in a 30-year-old reference and say, ¡®Deal with it.¡¯ ¡±

Second City¡¯s 50th anniversary occurs at a moment when the company¡¯s influence and prestige may be at a peak, even as television itself seems desperate to find new forms and approaches. Alumni of the troupe represent three of the most highly praised shows on the air right now: Steve Carell in ¡°The Office,¡± Mr. Colbert on ¡°The Colbert Report¡± and Ms. Fey on ¡°30 Rock.¡±

Ms. Fey was not part of the weekend¡¯s events, though several other ¡°30 Rock¡± actors and writers who also trained at Second City were, including Scott Adsit and Jack McBrayer. But an alumni reunion show on Saturday night included Mr. Colbert and Mr. Carell, who revived a surreal sketch in which they return to Mr. Colbert¡¯s Southern hometown only to find themselves transformed into elderly black women named Shirley and Sarah.

The television show that probably most reflects a Second City sensibility, however, is ¡°Curb Your Enthusiasm,¡± the Larry David series that has been nominated for 30 Emmys since 2000. Jeff Garlin and Shelley Berman, who play Mr. David¡¯s manager and father, are products of the Second City system, just like Mr. Steinberg, who has directed several episodes, and various guest stars.

¡° ¡®Curb Your Enthusiasm¡¯ could not exist without Second City,¡± Mr. Garlin said at a panel discussion on Sunday. That comedy series works from an outline, not a detailed script, to encourage improvisation. ¡°It was always planned that way from the beginning, and that¡¯s Second City,¡± he added.

Over the years Second City has also become a commercial brand ¡ª a notion that would probably have been fodder for the beatnik and hippie types who flocked to the troupe in its early years. It has national and international touring casts, has opened branches in places like Las Vegas and Detroit, has signed a deal a few years ago to provide comic troupes on Norwegian  wish pearl gift set  Cruise Line vessels, and organizes workshops for businesses on team building and communication skills.

In addition, thousands of people have enrolled in its courses that teach improvisation, and there is even a program in which college students receive credit for comedy studies. At one such class last week, undergraduates analyzed sketches on YouTube that ranged from Ernie Kovacs to the sitcom ¡°It¡¯s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.¡±

Second City¡¯s newest venture is a unit that will specialize in short-form video, with offices in Chicago and Los Angeles and an eye to developing material that can be made into series. In the 1970s and ¡¯80s the Emmy-winning television show ¡°SCTV,¡± with Martin Short, Catherine O¡¯Hara, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy and others largely from the Toronto branch, was an underground hit of sorts, and ¡°finding the brass ring a second time is where my head is at,¡± said Andrew Alexander, Second City¡¯s chief executive.

¡°For me, the growth now is in trying to get more on TV, which is a great way of promoting yourself,¡± he added. ¡°We¡¯ve gone the traditional road in developing TV shows and done pilots for everybody, but the stars never aligned, and now we are trying it a different way.¡±

Onstage here, however, the original Second City ethos and approach continue strong. The current revue, the troupe¡¯s 97th, is called ¡°Taming of the Flu¡± and pokes fun at political figures like Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy; includes a pointed skit on race and class; and has a third act that is totally improvised.

¡°What drew me here in the first place was a renegade, anti-establishment attitude that I connected with,¡± said Brad Morris, a member of that cast. ¡°This is still a place where you can do whatever the hell you want, and if you do it right, when you leave here, you can write, act and even direct. Nobody here is ever a one-trick pony.¡± 

American men have a naughty little secret. Sometimes, they like to relax with a little C¨¦line Dion. Professed classical music fans have one, too: as it turns out, they don¡¯t tune into classical radio nearly as much as they claim.

These are two of many findings shaking up the radio industry as it converts from measuring ratings through surveys to monitoring listeners electronically using so-called Portable People Meters.

As radio executives are discovering, what people say they do and what they actually do is different ¡ª especially where ¡°My Heart Will Go On¡± is concerned.

That more men are mellowing out to Air Supply than are willing to admit it is a curious discovery, but the new system has serious repercussions, especially for classical radio. When 12 major areas, including New York and Los Angeles, switched to the system last year, classical radio¡¯s market share fell 10.7 percent in those areas, a significant drop, according to a study by Research Director, a ratings consultancy.

The numbers are part of what an industry consultant, Marc Hand, calls ¡°a smorgasbord of issues¡± facing commercial classical music stations. In the last year, major commercial stations including WCRB in Boston and WQXR in New York were sold to public radio operators, while KFUO in St. Louis was sold to a Christian broadcaster. (WQXR was owned by The New York Times Company.) There are now only about 20 commercial classical stations in the country, said Mr. Hand, the managing director of Public Radio Capital, which advises nonprofit stations on acquisitions.

The decline has concerned classical fans, who see radio as an important civilizing force.

¡°It¡¯s education but also expanding horizons, understanding the existence of a whole host of art forms that are extremely related and important to our cultural history,¡± Joseph W. Polisi, president of the Juilliard School, said.

Talk radio, a largely conservative format, turns out to have fewer fans than previously thought. Talk radio¡¯s market share declined 2.6 percent in the study of areas where the meters were used. Talk radio (excluding sports and news) is about 80 percent conservative, says Michael Harrison, publisher of the trade magazine Talkers. He cautioned that the sample size in markets using meters was relatively small.

The new ratings have contributed to other shifts. Mainstream formats like oldies, news and country have fared better.

Meanwhile, smooth jazz has hit a low note. Clear Channel jettisoned such programming from eight of its stations after dismal ratings. Some Spanish-language stations¡¯ ratings declined sharply ¡ª at Univision¡¯s KLVE in Los Angeles, for example, ratings fell 54 percent in the first quarter freshwater pearl earrings   of 2009 from the same period the year before, leading it and other broadcasters to testify before Congress on Dec. 2 that the new system is discriminatory.

The television industry had switched from diary entries to metered ratings in 1987 and had seen similarly surprising changes ¡ª young men, for instance, watched cartoons much more heavily than they had reported doing, said Gary Holmes, a spokesman for Nielsen. But it took the radio industry almost two decades to catch up.

Since the 1960s Arbitron, the main radio ratings company, has relied on paper diaries. It currently asks about 800,000 people annually to log a week of listening habits. Problems have been numerous: people¡¯s recollection was imperfect, if they listened to a station briefly they shell pearl   could forget it, and they might overstate listening to stations that they felt reflected better taste.

¡°People tended to look at it almost like an election ¡ª they would vote for the things they liked,¡± said Jaye Albright, an industry consultant with Albright & O¡¯Malley, a radio consultancy.

In 2007, Arbitron formally introduced the Portable People Meter, a pagerlike device that about 57,000 survey participants carried around all day. After introducing the device in 2007 in two cities, Philadelphia and Houston, last year Arbitron moved it to 12 major areas including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, added 19 more this year and expects most major markets to be measured by the end of 2010.

¡°Advertisers were demanding it,¡± said Alton L. Adams, Arbitron¡¯s chief marketing officer.

Now, with a year of data from the early converts, researchers are finding intriguing patterns. Men had been thought to make up 34.7 percent of the soft-rock audience, according to Arbitron Radio Today 2008, based  coral jewelry   largely on paper entries. This month, Research Director and the publication Inside Radio released their analysis of meter-only cities from July through October, showing men make up 40.1 percent of the total light-rock audience, a jump of 16 percent. ¡°It caught people by surprise,¡± said Charlie Sislen, president of Research Director.

¡°It may be a case where men didn¡¯t want to admit they were listening to a light A.C.,¡± said Greg Ashlock, president and market manager for Los Angeles at Clear Channel, using industry shorthand for adult contemporary, or soft rock. ¡° ¡®No, I don¡¯t listen to C¨¦line Dion. I¡¯m a sports guy.¡¯ ¡±

Some male soft-rock listeners say they simply like the music.

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to KOIT, a soft-rock station, on his commute. ¡°One in 10 songs on soft-rock radio resonates, but it really resonates,¡± he said.

Then there are the unwilling listeners, like Reece Carter, 40, an architectural designer in Roswell, Ga. Mr. Carter dreads driving with his wife in the evening, when she tunes into the love-laden Delilah show on B98.5 ¡°My wife gives me my recommended daily allowance,¡± he said.

The surprising gender makeup of soft-rock listeners has already shifted some advertising dollars.

¡°I see it gaining traction with Pontiac, GMC, Dodges,¡± said Joe Puglise, president and market manager of Clear Channel Radio New York, which owns Lite-FM. However, he said, it was a subtle change. ¡°It¡¯s not like all of a sudden on Lite-FM we¡¯re getting biker bars and Harley-Davidson dealerships,¡± Mr. Puglise said.

The makeup and size of Arbitron¡¯s sample is an issue for some Hispanic and urban broadcasters, who say metered readings undercount minority audiences and hurt their stations disproportionately. Mr. Adams of Arbitron said the company was responding to concerns by adding more panelists who had cellphones rather than landlines, and investing in in-person coaching to make sure all panel members use the devices correctly.

Whatever the problems with the new system, it is becoming the standard for ratings among advertisers. Researchers say that, in general, niche stations suffer under the meter. Mass stations do well because they have a broad signal and because they are played at businesses and in malls. Niche stations¡¯ fans may not appear as frequently in the metered ratings because of the smaller sample size.

¡°The meter is sort of making radio more homogenous, because the stations that do best are the mass appeal stations,¡± Ms. Albright said. That may be another explanation for why men are listening to soft rock.

¡°There¡¯s no good radio,¡± said Jason Pontius, 39, a technology executive in Oakland, Calif. ¡°Soft rock radio is like, ¡®Am I really listening to this?¡¯ But it¡¯s the best thing that¡¯s on.¡±