The monthly PPM top line monthly numbers came out today for the biggest markets. My rule of thumb is if you fall below a 1.0% market share, you have a nonviable radio station if you rely on advertising for your revenue.
Three month trend
WABC (New York) -> 2.7 2.6 2.5
KABC (LA – no Rush) -> 0.9 0.7 0.7
WLS (Chicago) -> 2.5 2.1 1.8
(Don Wade and Roma are gone, Jake Hartford is dead, veteran newscaster retired, traffic outsourced)
KGO (San Francisco – former libs) -> 2.4 2.6 2.8
KSFO (San Francisco) -> 2.0 1.8 2.1
WBAP (Dallas/FT Worth) -> 3.6 3.2 3.0
KLIF (Dallas/FT Worth) -> 0.4 0.4 0.3
The highest share reported today for a news talk station?
WKXW-FM (Trenton NJ) -> 7.8 8.3 8.2
FM, small owners, live local programming from 6 AM to 3 AM
As an FYI, WKXW is an interesting animal. It is about 30 minutes to northern Philadelphia and about 50 minutes to southern NYC. It gives the traffic from NJ across the Hudson into NYC and across the Delaware into Philadelphia and Wilmington DE (about 50 mins away). Calling it its own market is a bit deceptive, but how the radio biz works.
If memory serves, WKXW had/has a sister station in Atlantic City (70 miles southeast) that simulcasts.
FYI, WKXW is an interesting animal, and in “SandyLand” aka home a da Christa (throw Romney Overboard Fame) Christie. My, my my….what an interesting name, Chris Christie.
In other news, no ‘validated’ sightings have been confirmed regarding the ‘Christo’ in almost 2,000 years.
There is a good Sandyland… here from London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ314hldal4
Aye, there you point out something really important – Arbitron has to do some serious number juggling. Share is a very mischievous measure. Firstly, it doesn’t reflect that the total size of the audience is constantly changing.
While a market has a total population, many of the stations don’t have a signal that covers the entire market. You might have a 15% share within your protected contour but have a 2% share in the metro area. The other people outside your service area are probably not even interested in the local sponsors. Trying to calculate a “share of possible audience” might be an interesting metric, but impossible to calculate. How do you count a person who lives in Philadelphia but works in New York? What about the time while they’re stuck in traffic on the NJ Tutnpike?
For the last 40 years, this has been a problem in Central Florida where the advertising reach exceeds the number of people that live there. At times, the number of people in the are can be 50% higher than the number of residents due to the huge number of hotel rooms and visitors staying with family members that are residents.
As an extreme example, back in the 1980s, several Florida radio stations used to air live Canadian radio news during the winter months to attract listeners from Canada that did not stay in Florida long enough to be considered residents.
The highest share reported today for a news talk station? WKXW-FM (Trenton NJ) -> 7.8 8.3 8.2
Oh yeah, all local hosts…..they do love to keep things inside da house in Jersey….
No Christa Christie sightings were posted, wonder well da guy is hidin’ these daze???
Trenton is the only state capital where if you walk across the city border, you can find yourself in an entirely different state. In fact, many state government employees are not even residents of the state.
Day 2
WMAL-AM (Wahington DC) -> 3.0 2.6 2.4
WJR-AM (Detroit) -> 4.4 4.4 4.4
Tom Leykis is talking about this today. If you aren’t offended by harsh language, it’s definitely worth listening to.
Single copy magazine sales are falling faster, especially O. Fewer newsstands and bookstores to pick them up?
http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/single-copy-magazine-sales-fall-10-percent-first-half-2013
I wonder if the Washington Post will become the USA Today of the Amazon Kindle
The Washington Post will become the Pandora of news and opinion. It will observe how you like to intimately interact with the news, and learn news genome – not only will you consume only the news you like to consume, but the version sent to you will be different than the version sent to others in much the same way, but on a much more personal and intimate way that listeners of progressive talk have a different memory of events than listeners of conservative talk.
Kindle/Splintle – The population will Splintle (sic) into smaller and smaller homogenous groups until there is spontaneous combustion.
Wow, you just alarmed me.
History is about to become what your psychological profile says you want history to be. If you think Emmit Till is the same as Trayvon Martin – it’s a fact.
It’s creepy and its kooky- if you watched any media coverage of the Zimmerman trial, you know that the media covered it like a sporting event. There was the media for the Travon Martin home team and the media for the Zimmerman home team. The Travon Martin home team tried to make you think the deceased Travon Martin himself was on trial.
Expect that kind of news tailorings and facts filtering but on a more personal level based on facts that make you feel good to see verses facts you don’t want to see. Not a conservative spin and a liberal spin, but a personalize spin just for you and a personalized spin just for me.
I’m so dizzy, my head it is spinning…. like a whirlpool, it never ends…
No no no…. the turntable has RCA connectors, but they are not from Whirlpool… in fact, they are not even from RCA.
Back to the new Pandora of Print – I was painting a dark picture but it is not all dark. By moving the news from pure blobs of free form text to templates with a data structure, it will be really good for consumers.
How many times do you see a new news URL to find that there is no new information in it, or very little, much of it is background that you personally already know? You would not mind a tweet sized update of new information but you don’t want to read another 5 page article to see if it has anything new to you.
Also, using the Zimmerman trial as an example, if you are a lawyer, perhaps you want to read anything new that CNN’s Tobin says on the trial, or that the Fox News TV lawyers have to say. If you are more oriented toward People magazine, perhaps you don’t want to ever see the lawyerspeak but want to read every interview with ever former high school classmate.
If you are a StreamingRadioguide.com, perhaps you want to know what kind of audio streams or music he listened to. What political party was he registered with?
The Don Imus show on Fox News each morning usually shows the guest’s all time five favorite songs.
Whatever you detailed interests are, you can get them reflected in your news, and not have to see the subject’s favorite football or baseball team or astrological sign, while you spouse may wish to.
Its really not a bad thing.
You know, when I pick up a copy of O! magazine, it looks exactly like Popular Mechanics to me
I used to be an avid listener to KLIF in Dallas until the took off C2C and the Daily Wrap. I go back once in while for Savage but mostly listen to him thru this website. Wheels with Ed Wallace on Saturday morning is really the only thing worth listening to on KLIF anymore.
I like how KLIF runs the John Batchelor show when the rest of the country is running C2C.
BTW – Here is a story that can fit into Noory’s political theme, or Art Bell’s ghost theme (once his new show starts on Sirius).
If you can’t see anyone doing it, it could be a ghost. Need to stake out the toilet with a hidden camera and see if you can capture an aura – be sure to use a video camera so that you can play the audio backwards to and try to hear the ghosts whispering. lol
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23575249
FWIW, the Daily Wrap stopped production – it went away because it no longer exists
The third group of PPM ratings came out today. Who would like to take a shot at explaining how a country music station could be #1 in Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Portland Oregon, San Diego, Denver, tied for #1 in Baltimore, Kansas City… and in the top 3 in most other markets?
Martket fragmentation with only one country station per market.
Maybe in a couple markets – but the change is the share % for the country station is zooming up, not that the CHR/MOR/Classic Rock market is spreading over more stations
In Indiannapolis, the #1 and #2 stations are both Country.
Perhaps good ole boys in their pickemup trucks enjoy carrying their Arbitron PPM device to the monster truck rallies – that’s what crackas do, you know
Don’t forget the gun shows and Nascar. 😉
Big news, slightly off topic but I wanted to pass it on. The sale of WWIQ (FM) Camden/Philadelphia from Merlin Media to Educational Media Foundation, a religious broadcaster, has been confirmed. Not long ago (SRG still lists WWIQ as “Glenn Beck’s new Philly home”) Merlin bought the former WKDN-FM from Family Stations (remember the guy who was certain the world was ending?) Merlin returned Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Beck to the Philly market but the station never gained traction in the ratings.
Is there any other more uptodate info? This is off their website,
“November 29, 2012 – Merlin Media apparently is working some magic in the city of Brotherly Love. It’s talker WWIQ 106.9 FM has moved 1.6 – 2.7 – 3.6 (Total Persons 6+) during the last three months, according to the latest Arbitron PPM’s. That’s good for 10th place. Rush’s former Philly home WPHT 1210 AM is apparently weathering the loss of Rush okay, so far. The station is steady 2.2 – 2.1 – 2.2 for the past 3-months.
Good find. Here is the latest I could find:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/gizmo/218755212.html
From Tom Taylor’s newsletter thingy
WWIQ-FM News Talk Info. 2.8 2.1 2.1
It’s probably less about ratings than ad revenue – originally it was going to be an mostly news station to compete with KYW but the NY and Chicago experiments fell apart, so it became 24 hr/day syndicated talk – there is no local content at all.
The depressed revenue from national advertising is one thing, but when you don’t have any local revenue and you just started, how do you survive? If you go to the Contact Us page, there isn’t even a person listed to contact about buying ads.
If you want to know who in the radio business has deep pockets, it’s EMF. They seem to have a bottomless wallet to buy up stations for $millions without even blinking one of God’s eyelashes. They would have been logical to have bought it in the first place.
Merlin paid a staggering $22.5 million for a station that was little more than an FM transmitter with a lease to sit on an Catholic owned AM tower next to a small church.
View Larger Map
I thought it was a church next door – maybe they sold the land to a shopping center 🙂
I see at the FCC they did have a construction permit to create a backup transmitter in downtown Philadelphia.
My cousin from Boston has been to Philadelphia a number of times – he would like to have a home there so he can go to New York City from the south side – but he can’t find any suitable housing (money is not a constraint)… there just is no decent place to live after 30 years of decay and opposition to any new housing construction
When I lived in Florida and Texas, it was called “growth” and “new jobs”…. when I moved to the northeast, I found it was called “sprawl” and no one wanted it any where near them.
Philadelphia had a long standing policy not allowing any building to be above the top if GE statue of William Penn on city hall. What that meant was a lot of office buildings only a few stories tall consuming the land.
Looking around on Zillow, many of the old buildings are being repurposed as condos, something they are poorly suited for. My cousin considers them unsuitable as they don’t have any meaningful fire suppression systems.
Not sure how to search for a building by fire suppression system. There are many newer tall buildings and that may be the way to go. If he plans to go to NYC often and money is not an object, look near 30th Street Station- from there you can hope and Amtack and be in downtown DC’s Union Station in 95 minutes or Penn Station NYC in as few as 71 minutes (not bad for a few stops and over 100 miles)
http://tickets.amtrak.com/itd/amtrak#
My cousin recently discovered the RiverRail diesel LRV that goes from Camden to Trenton, then you can take NJ Transit from Trenton to Penn Station for $7 as a senior. He’s currently in Cleveland riding subways and stuff 🙂
That LRV riverrail is new. They built it recently for a fortune and it not only moves slower than cars, but it blocks traffic and slows down the cars that need to get out of the way. Funded mainly by diverting the gasoline tax paid by motorists away from maintenace of decaying bridges.
The $7 rides don’t pay for the operational costs or even the interest on the long term bonds… but they create a lot of new conductor jobs with big pensions.
Ding! Ding!
And since it is powered by a Diesel engine, it isn’t even cutting down pollution
I found a utube video from before it was built, and the hype was it would be twice as fast as a bus.
For most of the light rail projects, it would be less costly to shut them down completely – even if they are already built, and use the annual taxpayer subsidy to pay for free taxi rides for the people that used the service.
That could put a lot of unemployed citizens back to work.
Tell me again why most cities limit the number of taxi licenses to a fixed number?…
Hmm. The reason most cities limit the number of taxi licenses could be related to why the FCC gave CBS digital spectrum for free but charged the cellular phone companies for similar spectrum – protecting the established players that give campaign contributions.
Here is a similar question for you – where can you invest $100k and get a return of $35 million over 10 years? Hint the $100k goes somewhere other than where $35 million comes from. Give up? Answer here: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cuomo-100k-developer-signing-tax-break-law-article-1.1422003
Perhaps EMF is able to buy up stations for $millions without even blinking one of Allah’s eyelashes.
http://educationalmediafoundation.org/projects/view/10
Excerpt from “American Jihadist”, “In the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, sales of the Koran soared, classes on Islam swelled at colleges and universities, and public school students began memorizing Koranic verses and giving reports on Islamic history. Even Oprah Winfrey devoted a special program “Islam 101,” introducing the religion to viewers.”
Heads-up folks!
Someone is cruising for a lawsuit ;). That’s a different EMF (Educational Media Foundation) with an identical name.
That being said, a few years ago I did a blurb on Klove, the main radio service – they also have Air1 which does Christian Rock, something I have trouble getting my brain around.
I listened to the lyrics of their songs for an hour, jotting down the theme of each song. There wasn’t a single word of any song that wouldn’t be just as motivational and seductive if it was Allah/Mohammed instead of God/Jesus. There was nothing in the lyrics tying them in to Christianity beyond saying that Jesus is love and I know I’m safe because Jesus loves me. Maybe I can dig that up
McChristianity and Obama from 2009
Damn, I used to write good
The less than specific lyrics that never actually mention Jesus and could have multiple interpretations offended many deeply religious people when it originally came out, yet many others praised it. Approaching half a century, this wonderful recording of a young Yvonne Elliman is still a wonderful listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1xrCXNmPSw
Good analysis in your blurb, and agree with your summary, “every bit of the music is incredibly narcissistic.” All physiologically healthy people are mildly narcissistic, but big problems can occur when certain people go beyond healthy behavior and it becomes a disorder. Sorta like the behavior we see in the POTUS, and it also crops-up in many different places, organized religions are no exception.
Here is a good short article on what became a very modern religion…. unfortunately it didn’t believe in adobe or youtube. 😉
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/how-jobs-turned-technology-and-media-into-religion/
McChristianity and Obama
from 2009
Art, that was really a great analysis of what has happened. Very good writing!
For reasons I don’t understand, your YouTube links won’t launch on the iPad. If you mentioned the song, maybe I could find it. I’m guessing it is from Jesus Christ Superstar. The 1960s had good drugs.
The college I went to played a role in another musical production that played off Broadway and toured – it was called Godspell
Android is more friendly toward youtube. 😉
Yes you guessed it right. I remember Godspell as well.
Those numbers aren’t bad but if you’re not billing off of them, they don’t mean much. A solid local morning show might have made it a big success but obviously Merlin didn’t want to invest, especially after the NY/Chi failures.
OK, the original topic about Cumulus and the AM market, and your post above with regard to EMF buying another floundering AM station and Art’s observation that EMF seemingly has a bottomless wallet, question is, “What is really going on?”
Consider the comments about WWIQ-FM News Talk having no local programing, no local revenue and there isn’t even a person listed to contact about buying ads.
Big corporate advertisers have pulled back, there is a proliferation of PSA’s on many stations and there seems to be less local advertising. Yet, EMF is buying these floundering stations, Are we witnessing a takeover of AM radio? If so, by whom and for what purpose?
“Are we witnessing a takeover of AM radio? ”
Perhaps we are witnessing a “resurrection” of AM radio. 😉
Actually, as CC would point out – WWIQ is an FM station 🙂
Here are their audited financial statements from 2011
http://www.klove.com/uploadedFiles/K-LOVE/Content/About_Us/2011Financials.pdf
They’re paying $19 million in cash for WWIQ
They had $38 million in physical plant, $251 million in FCC licenses, and $89 million in long term debt. The took in $124 million in contributions, and spent $82 million in expenses
The cynic in me wonders if some of this is 401(c)((3) money recycling – get a tax deduction, then pay the money back to yourself in some way that you come out ahead – and you buy and sell radio stations for long term investments
That Jerry guy from California says that CBS really wanted to buy the station and he was stringing them along for a year just to piss them off. He ties it in with this rumor that CBS and Cumulus are still talking about a merger or sale of some type. I tend to doubt it – time will tell.
How much of the 3 month drop off is normal seasonal drop off as summer hits the northern hemisphere? I noticed LA ratings were basically flat and their weather doesn’t change much during that period, but Chicago ratings dropped a lot as Chitown warmed up…. so did WWIQ ratings – not Cumulus but its weather over in NJ is more like Chicago than LA.
Baseball also used to be another factor, but I think that’s fading as a way people listen to baseball games – now they just turn on their “green” 57 inch widescreen TVs
Leykis said something I’ve suspected but don’t know if it’s true. He says these numbers are actually 3 month moving averages. If this is true, then the change in one month numbers are even more violent.
Summer is always slow in News Talk unless it’s a major election year.