FTFY
Later Note: Rob, please do not edit posts that are not your own. It's OK to use extracts in the "quote" portion, but it is not OK to change the meaning or intent of another poster.
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WBLK and WYRK Rule the Roost... Again
- Thread starter Element9
- Start date
FTFY
Later Note: Rob, please do not edit posts that are not your own. It's OK to use extracts in the "quote" portion, but it is not OK to change the meaning or intent of another poster.
These are indeed different times. It's not my intent to be contentious, but having a "nearly 30" share at night certainly contributes to the overall well being of the radio station, Mon-Fri, 6 a.m. - midnight.
With regard to revenue, I'm merely a listener, not privy to billing or revenue, but upon listening and observation, WBLK does in fact air a substantial number of bar-concert-special event commercials in late PM drive and evening. How those are sold and to what effect they're valued is unknown to me, but the revenue, even if less than, say 18-25 per cent of the net, certainly contributes to the fiscal health of the station.
That WBLK has consistently put up numbers in the 20 share range at night is a great testimonial, perhaps going as far back to the days when the legendary George "Hound Dog" Lorenz, who also owned the station, did nights. It should be noted that Drake, on his latest CD/release/drop, pays homage to WBLK, the station he most listened to growing up in Toronto. Clearly the station is a legacy, every bit as much as, say WBEN, WGR or 97 Rock.
A 50% share increase at night may not be as monumental as in midday, AM or PM drive. No argument.... but it is laudable. Which led to the OP. In these times when listeners have an array of choices, credit is due the personalities, in this case DJ Wire. He's engaging his listeners by what he's playing, saying and doing (mixing). Whether old school or new era metrics are used to gauge the work, a lot of things are being done right. Yes, including scheduling the right music and rotation patterns, programming and promotion. It's a wholistic effort.
As to radio's "starting point," there's no argument that in these times, more often than not it starts in the car, however, there remains "in home" listening, certainly to a smaller degree but engaged, nonetheless. That it is no longer 1974 is understood. But "doing good radio" certainly doesn't hurt the carryover, using the reasoning that if the listener turns the radio off in the car, that's where it starts the next morning. This isn't a debate. Repeat. It's not 1974. I've observed how people use radio in their cars, including me, and I'm outside the business. If you're in the business, it must be eye-popping and hair-graying. Attention spans and endurance levels are staggeringly small... another reason WBLK's endurance at night is be impressive, given the alternatives. No doubt, more than a few operators who'd like to have that "nearly 30." And yes, if you're making a living selling and running a radio station, you deserve ample credit.
Radio has long faced challenges, and may be in deeper straits as in-car radio choices increase as a result of advances and development of further options. It seems having a 50 gallon FM or five translators may not make much of a difference. Most operators would rather have the translators than a stand alone AM, and to that end, they'd likely prefer A 50 gallon FM than a slew of 250 watt translators. That statement BTW isn't directed at any particular station and should not be construed as such.
And yes. It's a trend. I'm told that constitutes about 250 diary respondents. And it's summer... and there are multiple variables. So there's that. Which applies to whatever ratings rant or send-up may be posted here.
With regard to revenue, I'm merely a listener, not privy to billing or revenue, but upon listening and observation, WBLK does in fact air a substantial number of bar-concert-special event commercials in late PM drive and evening. How those are sold and to what effect they're valued is unknown to me, but the revenue, even if less than, say 18-25 per cent of the net, certainly contributes to the fiscal health of the station.
That WBLK has consistently put up numbers in the 20 share range at night is a great testimonial, perhaps going as far back to the days when the legendary George "Hound Dog" Lorenz, who also owned the station, did nights. It should be noted that Drake, on his latest CD/release/drop, pays homage to WBLK, the station he most listened to growing up in Toronto. Clearly the station is a legacy, every bit as much as, say WBEN, WGR or 97 Rock.
A 50% share increase at night may not be as monumental as in midday, AM or PM drive. No argument.... but it is laudable. Which led to the OP. In these times when listeners have an array of choices, credit is due the personalities, in this case DJ Wire. He's engaging his listeners by what he's playing, saying and doing (mixing). Whether old school or new era metrics are used to gauge the work, a lot of things are being done right. Yes, including scheduling the right music and rotation patterns, programming and promotion. It's a wholistic effort.
As to radio's "starting point," there's no argument that in these times, more often than not it starts in the car, however, there remains "in home" listening, certainly to a smaller degree but engaged, nonetheless. That it is no longer 1974 is understood. But "doing good radio" certainly doesn't hurt the carryover, using the reasoning that if the listener turns the radio off in the car, that's where it starts the next morning. This isn't a debate. Repeat. It's not 1974. I've observed how people use radio in their cars, including me, and I'm outside the business. If you're in the business, it must be eye-popping and hair-graying. Attention spans and endurance levels are staggeringly small... another reason WBLK's endurance at night is be impressive, given the alternatives. No doubt, more than a few operators who'd like to have that "nearly 30." And yes, if you're making a living selling and running a radio station, you deserve ample credit.
Radio has long faced challenges, and may be in deeper straits as in-car radio choices increase as a result of advances and development of further options. It seems having a 50 gallon FM or five translators may not make much of a difference. Most operators would rather have the translators than a stand alone AM, and to that end, they'd likely prefer A 50 gallon FM than a slew of 250 watt translators. That statement BTW isn't directed at any particular station and should not be construed as such.
And yes. It's a trend. I'm told that constitutes about 250 diary respondents. And it's summer... and there are multiple variables. So there's that. Which applies to whatever ratings rant or send-up may be posted here.
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Buddy Shula
Guest
This operator is perfectly fine with AM as opposed to translators. Buffalo is an AM market thanks to Entercom. They do a great job making the AM band huge with the content they provide. A station like mine feeds off that. I look at our 2 FM metro translators as icing on the cake. An added bonus to advertisers and listeners. Don't get me wrong. The FM's help WECK, big time. But I consider WECK a great AM metro signal with 2 FM's as a bonus. I am very lucky to have 2 FM's in a metro market. That is very rare. I was very fortunate. The WECK ratings that I posted were June-July-August. They were incredibly impressive. June was before our format change, and the higher ratings were July and August. August in particular has us getting a 4.2 share 12 plus mid-days. 3.5 share 12 plus overall. Beating many big stations. Ratings are made up of how many listeners the station has, and how long to they listen for. In the case of WBLK, they have a about 15,000 more listeners than WECK. That's it. But their time spent listening is thru the roof. Since there is little competition, people listen to them a lot longer. WECK has great time spend listening. #4 in the entire market. But BLK is better. BLK is indeed a heritage station. The problem with BLK is that given their ratings, they do not bill a lot of revenue. The revenue should be MUCH higher with the ratings they have. This goes for a station like HTT as well. Great ratings, not great revenue. That boils down to a sales issue. Programming is doing their job, while the sales department is not. At a company like Townsquare, they bank on YRK for the entire company revenue. Apparently, that is good enough for them. It would not be good enough for me. Townsquare in the latest Miller-Kaplan moved up a little in market revenue share. Entercom is #1, and they should be with seven stations! Cumulus does not good a good job of revenue at all. They have stations with great ratings, but their revenues suck. Radio is a business first. Heads should be rolling over there, but they are too busy getting thru a bankruptcy. It is a shame to me that big signals are going to waste from a ratings and revenue standpoint. I am gunning for one of these stations, and if I get it, it will change, quickly. It's the difference between local owner and corporate ownership.
In regards to a 30 share at night - it's incredible. It helps BLK overall of course, but like David said, it may not do much for sales. Would I like to have a 30 share at night? Of course. It's really astonishing. But it will not help the already dismal sales efforts at BLK. For the ratings they have, they should be a top biller in the market. They are not. YRK is. WBEN is. WGR is. WECK and it's 1KW AM, probably bills more than WLKK, WWKB, WWWS, and perhaps WBUF combined! The stations I just mentioned probably have a worth of 15 million!
It's all about people. Your team. Are they passionate? Do they care? Are they hunters or gatherers? Are they empathetic? If you have good people, that's what matters. You have to have the "who" before the "what".
Another great post from Buddy! Regarding Cumulus, prior to its bankruptcy, there was a corporate focus on improving ratings and programming at its stations. They did that by returning programming decisions to the local markets, and using corporate strictly as a resource. As you point out, it was a success in Buffalo, where they improved ratings, but have been unable to translate it to revenue. That isn't unusual.
Great ratings don't always lead to great revenues, and a lot of that goes back to your last paragraph. Sales is a partnership between radio and advertisers. It needs to be viewed that way. WYRK and WBLK understand the fan bases who listen to their stations, and they create communities built around serving those fan bases. Then you bring advertisers into that community, and the result is great revenues. Entercom does the same thing with its sports and talk franchises. That's why they're #1. Townsquare doesn't have major sports franchises like the Bills or Sabres. But they have nationally known music brands like Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean. They have made Buffalo an important market for touring, and have also super-served their listeners and advertisers with their annual Taste Of Country Festival.
I know a station just like WECK that has diversified its product base by offering weekly dance parties. The purpose is to build a community and diversify the revenue base. So listeners can gather somewhere, socialize, and enjoy their favorite music, and the sponsors get another way to reach potential customers. It's building a community. As you say, are they hunters or gatherers? The way to make money is to be a gatherer.
Great ratings don't always lead to great revenues, and a lot of that goes back to your last paragraph. Sales is a partnership between radio and advertisers. It needs to be viewed that way. WYRK and WBLK understand the fan bases who listen to their stations, and they create communities built around serving those fan bases. Then you bring advertisers into that community, and the result is great revenues. Entercom does the same thing with its sports and talk franchises. That's why they're #1. Townsquare doesn't have major sports franchises like the Bills or Sabres. But they have nationally known music brands like Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean. They have made Buffalo an important market for touring, and have also super-served their listeners and advertisers with their annual Taste Of Country Festival.
I know a station just like WECK that has diversified its product base by offering weekly dance parties. The purpose is to build a community and diversify the revenue base. So listeners can gather somewhere, socialize, and enjoy their favorite music, and the sponsors get another way to reach potential customers. It's building a community. As you say, are they hunters or gatherers? The way to make money is to be a gatherer.
The point is that advertisers principally look at 6 AM to 7 PM, particularly agencies. Buddy can tell us if 6 AM-Midnight Monday to Sunday is locally of use for sales, whether the 6 AM to Midnight numbers are more like the 12+ numbers... nice, but not what is used for actual selling.
I already mentioned that nights have a limited client appeal, and much, much lower rates. Club business is difficult, as it requires constant changes, and lots of time is spent servicing such accounts. So the rates are low and the cost to keep the revenue is high. And it's generally "no credit" and "no net 30" cash business, which requires more time for collections.
Yes, it's nice extra money and it does leave some money for the bottom line. But no, it is not a lot of money and it's not the difference between profit and loss.
I'll give you an example of a slightly larger market... top 15... where I managed sales for a decade and consulted for another 12 years. We were overall #1 with about twice the share of the #2 station. In AM Drive, we were getting $400 to $600 a spot. The format was such that we got nearly all the club business, but the rates were in the $30 to $50 range, with the average being in the high $30 dollar range. We were able to get the clubs to bring cash or cashier checks to the station when they made each buy, so we cut down the servicing cost. But there were many times we discussed raising the rates to drive the business away, as it was just not that profitable; we kept it because we thought the spots helped listeners know what bands and groups were at each venue.
It's an unweighted trend, and the numbers at night for that (and all stations) have always wobbled by numbers like that. And that is true in other markets, too.
As mentioned, the night results for WBLK are based on huge TSL. That means fewer diaries. Fewer diaries means lots of wobble. Luck of the draw.
When we look at PUR (Persons Using Radio) the figures today in many markets go as low as 6 to 7, where they had been in the 17 range before the Internet / Smart Phone / Smart Speaker tsunami broke on our beach. In home listening, once about a third of all listening, is now well below 20% and in some markets as low as around 10%.
All this is why we can't count on traditional recycling of listeners into different locations... and if we do get them that way, it will likely be via a different platform such as smart speakers. And that brings up issues of how that kind of listening will be eventually incorporated by Nielsen into local radio ratings, given the strict rules on simulcasting that don't allow total station numbers if different ads are run on streams and OTA products.
I have no idea where you got the "200" number. Maybe you are thinking of the number of diary in-tab quota for each week of the 12 week survey period. But that weekly data is not issued; Nielsen only issues 12-week books or rolling averages.
A trend is not a single month report. It's the same approximate sample size as the "book" but it is weighted only to the extent of being sample-based without weighting to make every stratification variable proportional to the market composition.
There is software (or formulas) to get a "monthly" number from trends, but the confidence level is quite low. Part of the instability is that throughout the 12-week survey period Nielsen is constantly raising or lowering the recruit quotas for following weeks based on overages or undersampling of specific demos and cells in the weeks already in-tab. (And that is why trends are so volatile... the balancing act from a preceding book may not match the compensation done weekly at the recruit period for the new book)
The Buffalo sample target is 2,400 for each 3 month survey period. Since a "trend" is just a 3-month rolling average, then there is a target of 2,400 in-tab diaries for each trend.
Here is the scary math:
There are 12 weeks to a survey (or trend) period. Each week will have about 200 diaries (a number that can wobble a lot). If the PUR in Diary Markets is at the high end, perhaps 10 or 11, that means that on average 6 AM to Midnight, there are only 20 people actually listening to the radio and putting it in the diary at any given time. If we go to dayparts, it's perhaps 30 in drive times and 25 in middays and perhaps 9 or 10 at any given moment at night. So a 30 share at night comes from, at any given moment, two to three diaries. That's why the night numbers wobble so greatly.
In the overall picture of 6 AM to Midnight, a station with a 5 share in Buffalo is averaging just two to four daily diary entries in any given quarter hour. Even when we consider the whole sample, which is new every week, that 5 share in the 6:30 to 6:45 quarter hour (just to pick one as an example) is based on a total of perhaps 25 diaries that mention the station in that particular 15 minute period.
And that 30 night share... its based on a PUR of around 5 and means that in each separate week the average number of diary entries for any quarter hour is going to be about 3 to 4 diaries each day.
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A fine dissertation.
The "200 number" was in fact a weekly reference from one of the reps. I neglected to ad "per week" to the sentence. So then, the question then becomes, if WBLK's share is suspect in large measure due to the sample... so then is the August and monthly share for...
Let's see what the book reveals next month. Cheers!
The "200 number" was in fact a weekly reference from one of the reps. I neglected to ad "per week" to the sentence. So then, the question then becomes, if WBLK's share is suspect in large measure due to the sample... so then is the August and monthly share for...
Let's see what the book reveals next month. Cheers!
Without running the numbers, sounds like the system likely produces results that would be of statistical low reliability for any snapshot (i.e. what I think is referenced as "a book"?) Also sounds like any half weaselly salesperson could mangle the numbers to say anything to anyone. This data is actually a baseline for firms spending their advertising monies? Yikes!
I surely don't have an answer, but isn't there a better way?
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Buddy Shula
Guest
“ half weasly salesperson”?? Most radio salespersons are some of hardest working people out there. Not sure where your assumptions come from. Think of it, salespeople are the ONLY thing keeping the industry alive. It certainly isn’t brilliant programming. In fact, programming is to blame for letting other technologies in. Don’t blame the salespeople.
I agree it's not the salespeople, but do you REALLY think if programming was "better," people would throw away their phones? Be serious. They are not using other technologies because of better programming. All they get on Pandora or Spotify are un-hosted music channels. Not actual programming. The only "technology" doing actual programming is satellite, and they are subscription driven, not sales driven.
Dude, Chill. Do you really believe that there are no weaselly salespeople in radio sales? Do you really believe that? Really? There's no shot or blame attached to the entire profession. I'm merely saying that with statistics, anyone (sales or otherwise) that wants to spin a beneficial story can do so at their whim/bias. Do really think that no salesperson in radio does that? Do you really believe that every single radio salesperson is entirely above board and forthcoming with data? Do you really believe that? Seriously. Do you really think that there are no "half weaselly" (or fully weaselly, for that matter) radio salespersons currently in the industry? OMG!
Yes, but not at THAT high of a level.
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Buddy Shula
Guest
There are weaselly people, from sales to lawyers, to doctors and garbage men. But just because a rep skews things there way, as long as the facts are correct, they are not weaselly...just smart
Wow, really, David? You don't know a joke when you see it? Unbelievable. I have a lot of respect for you, but dude, lighten up a bit!!
I realize that you were attempting humor. However, you did it by editing someone else's words in the "Reply with Quotes" option here. That is not acceptable because you are changing something you did not post yourself; that is why users don't have the option to edit other people's posts.
"Skew" by it's very definition means that the message is inaccurate or misleading. You think that is "smart"? And you yourself say "...a rep skew
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Buddy Shula
Guest
AM signal with 2 FM metro translators targeted to 55 plus in which we reach 53,000 per week. That is fairly straightforward
Precisely. And speaking of being serious... Sirius/XM proposes to buy Pandora for $3.5 Billion (in stock) and has done due diligence to possibly consider buying buy iHeart. So while having personalities that engage listeners is certainly an advantage, the Sirius/XM offer for Pandora should be a wake-up call to every individual who's involved in the business. Listeners don't hang on every word a DJ, even the legacies that everybody knows and loves, says. Perhaps in talk radio. Listeners don't listen to every song, every DJ patter, every commercial in a ten unit commercial break. You can play the best Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruno Mars, Adele or Taylor Swift song in your library. There are more choices than ever. The days of "lock it in and rip the knobs off" have gone the way of the Selectric.
Not that I've been exposed to every DJ/announcer (of a music station) on the planet (or even in my area, for that matter), but I can say virtually every one to which I have been exposed in the last thirty-five to forty years adds no value for me whatsoever. There is but one local OTA guy that breaks that rule... and two on Sirius/XM.
Since this is a topic about ratings, is there any data to support the ratings-related importance of DJ's/announcers (exclusive of the music)? For example, is it reasonable to think WYRK's PM drive ratings might change since that announcer is gone? << just an example.
Stations in larger markets have confidential, proprietary research that sometimes evaluates the role of talent and of specific talents. But this data is not released to the public, just as the formula for Coca Cola is not published.
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