One pattern that shows up in radio ratings is the wide variation in how much people listen to the radio for news and talk. News\/talk is huge in Chicago and New York.<\/p>\n
But don’t try it in Columbus Ohio. A year ago, the owners of WMNI AM\/FM went to all news on both stations that had been music stations. Probably they were hoping to grab political advertising dollars in a battleground state in the 2012 election – but they didn’t build a large local news operation – they just ran TRN’s national newscast all day, then Jim Bohannon and Redeye Radio overnight. The result? A 0.2% rating for the simulcast. Compare that to the 5.9% of WGN-AM in Chicago and 4.5% for WBBM-AM.<\/p>\n
The AM station is going back to playing nostalgia music – but that format is a dead end as its fans are dying off or getting to the age where they don’t buy anything. Nostalgia is the step before you give away your AM station to a religious broadcaster for the tax write off.<\/p>\n
For those of you who paid attention in school, you know that Columbus is the capital city of Ohio – you might think cities that depend on government and politics would have a thirst for news – not so.<\/p>\n
There is growing evidence that the plunge in news\/talk ratings around the country indicate that high information voters are leaving Rush Limbaugh and winding up on Public Radio stations. Public Radio stations tend not to subscribe to Arbitron which is expensive – and public radio measures its success by contributions, not ad revenue. Arbitron gathers ratings for public radio – but you only see those numbers if you pay Arbitron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One pattern that shows up in radio ratings is the wide variation in how much people listen to the radio for news and talk. News\/talk is huge in Chicago and New York. But don’t try it in Columbus Ohio. A … Continue reading