Los Angeles + Riverside-San Bernardino Radio Ratings: October 2014

[michael hagerty]

David, If a 4.9 = 4.2 because both are in the wobble, then everything the Arbitron/Nielsen critics have been saying is true. As someone who has a few statistics classes under my belt, I completely understand the concept of "wobble", but this was over three reporting periods on a straight downward slide - that's not a wobble, that is a trend. I don't believe for a minute that at this point in time you would tell your clients that this represents a "wobble" and you would stand pat until the next month comes in at a 4.0 or worse.

I also know you wouldn't be going with that stupid vacation possibility either. This book covers the period AFTER the Labor Day weekend through the beginning of October, a period when few people are actually on vacation and listening (and TV viewing patterns) tend to return to their norms coming off of their various summer vacations and activities.

ChannelFlipper:

What you're overlooking is that, under PPM, we're getting monthly books that used to comprise one-third of what we used to call the winter, spring, summer and fall books. August, September and October average out to a 4.5. I've lost the 6+ numbers for May and June, but they were, if I recall, lower than July's 4.7. So the three-month average there is likely a 4.5 or lower.

Additionally, I have never considered anything less than a full point to be cause for concern. Wobble is very real.

Finally, all this is over the meaningless 6+ numbers. 25-54 is what matters.

 

[michael hagerty]

They have slid and the music selection / presentation are usually primary reasons.

Really? And you would know....how, exactly?

They want to be #1? Gotta change the tune. Reduce the nonsense of playing songs 5 times a day, or supposedly 8 times in 36 hours. This isn't KIIS FM.

You're right. KIIS-FM plays its powers 18 times a day.

I'm convinced very few in L.A. (or any city for that matter) would "authorize" any station (except CHR's), let alone KRTH, to play any song 35 times a week, even if they heard it once or twice every week.

You're convinced of a great many things, as we've learned over the years. The fact is, most people....the vast majority....do not care what a radio station does when they are not listening to it. All that matters is that they get what they want when they tune in.

 

[davideduardo]

David, If a 4.9 = 4.2 because both are in the wobble, then everything the Arbitron/Nielsen critics have been saying is true. As someone who has a few statistics classes under my belt, I completely understand the concept of "wobble", but this was over three reporting periods on a straight downward slide - that's not a wobble, that is a trend. I don't believe for a minute that at this point in time you would tell your clients that this represents a "wobble" and you would stand pat until the next month comes in at a 4.0 or worse.

I also know you wouldn't be going with that stupid vacation possibility either. This book covers the period AFTER the Labor Day weekend through the beginning of October, a period when few people are actually on vacation and listening (and TV viewing patterns) tend to return to their norms coming off of their various summer vacations and activities.

I'm referring to staff vacations. I don't know if there were any staffers out, but that can affect PPM numbers much more than the diary as all panelists are active in every week of the survey, not just one week.

KRTH had in the may-june-july period a 3.9 > 4.7 > 4.0 in 25-54 so extreme wobbles are not uncommon. In the last 4 months they had a 4.0 > 4.5 > 4.1 > 3.6 so there has been volatility, particularly after coming off the high points that were all summer months.

I'm sure KRTH has far greater analytics and they are looking at the raw meter counts that you can see two weeks in advance via Media Monitors. They likely have looked at all the ZIP code analysis points and the other metrics in PD Advantage, and they will be looking at the panel turnover which is higher over summer, meaning that between May and September the panel may have turned as much as a third.

And then, sometimes a normal change in panel households brings in fewer P1s than those that left... leaving the station at a slightly lower level for a while.

The margin of error in the PPM (or diary survey) is inversely commensurate with the amount radio stations will pay for the survey and the degree of precision demanded by advertisers. Today, stations will not pay for greater sample and advertisers are satisfied with the degree of accuracy. Additionally, most agencies that use the data do multi-book averages... sometimes as long as a year so the minor ups and downs are minimized due to averaging.

Unless we see November off even more, there is no alarm sounding. And with December and Holiday being aberrant books, this won't play out till January or February.

 

[davideduardo]

They have slid and the music selection / presentation are usually primary reasons.

That is totally wrong. Most aberrations in the levels of major stations are caused by changes in the Nielsen PPM panel. If you consider that the average number of panelists tuned to KRTH in 25-54 at any given time is something in the 7 to 12 person range, just one less or one more panelist can change the numbers by 10% up or down... or more.

They want to be #1? Gotta change the tune.

They don't necessarily want to be #1. The cost of "taking the hill" is often greater than the benefit. They just have to be well situated within the group of stations that are considered for buys because they rank high enough.

Reduce the nonsense of playing songs 5 times a day, or supposedly 8 times in 36 hours. This isn't KIIS FM. Increase the playlist to showcase newly-added classics

KRTH, like all stations, is caught between wanting a lot of variety of titles and the harsh truth that there are not all that many consensus songs that can be played. So they research often in the larger markets and look at MScore trending and massage the music scheduling. But they can't pull any more consensus hits out of the hat like a Las Vegas magician.

I'm convinced very few in L.A. (or any city for that matter) would "authorize" any station (except CHR's), let alone KRTH, to play any song 35 times a week, even if they heard it once or twice every week. To myself and many others, that's overkill.

I did a classic rock station with about the same library size and rotations as KRTH's in a market about 50% larger than LA and we were #1 for 5 years... with shares ranging from a 15 to a 22 in a market with over 200 stations vs. LA's 87. The station only declined when new owners 1. fired me and 2. expanded the playlist to over 1200 songs, 700 of which were stiffs.

Being monotone, stagnant or doing the same thing over and over daily 'til your are blue in the face, invites trouble and lower ratings. It happens.

Consistency, predictability, promotion and stability are the most important factors. If you doubt this, just ask Jerry Lee whose station is probably the greatest example of long term success and format evolution in the entire country.

 

[oldies76]

Really? And you would know....how, exactly?

Granted, it might be a bit early, but looking at trends today (tight playlist and excessive play), KRTH has declined a bit. Similar trends also happened before Jhani Kaye, over a longer period of time and that was due to tight rotations with excessive play of same 60's tunes. (My Girl, Unchained Melody, Pretty Woman, Lover's Concerto...etc..)

So we're seeing some similarities. We'll have to wait through the next year to conclude exact reasons, but "gut instinct" tells me that tight playlists and repeated play over the long term can do damage, as listeners tire of hearing the same ole song.

I don't need to listen to the station to base my conclusions, I just look at the song lists. It's not how I would program a station. Maybe in the short term it works, but not year after year.

 

[K.M. Richards]

We'll have to wait through the next year to conclude exact reasons, but "gut instinct" tells me that tight playlists and repeated play over the long term can do damage, as listeners tire of hearing the same ole song.

"Gut instinct" is not how successful radio stations are programmed. A good programmer's instincts are used to draw conclusions from research.

This, of course, has been explained over and over again ... Michael did it quite well in post #22 ... but my "gut instinct" after reading all of your repetitive drivel is that unless someone agrees with you, their words are not to be believed. Here's a reality check for you: The only people agreeing with you are the ones who do not program radio stations, which means your philosophy falls on deaf ears with those who actually do this for a living.

Please, do what you said you would in an earlier post, and move on. You're going to give yourself an ulcer continuing this meaningless battle.

 

[CTListener]

"Gut instinct" is not how successful radio stations are programmed. A good programmer's instincts are used to draw conclusions from research.

This, of course, has been explained over and over again ... Michael did it quite well in post #22 ... but my "gut instinct" after reading all of your repetitive drivel is that unless someone agrees with you, their words are not to be believed. Here's a reality check for you: The only people agreeing with you are the ones who do not program radio stations, which means your philosophy falls on deaf ears with those who actually do this for a living.

Please, do what you said you would in an earlier post, and move on. You're going to give yourself an ulcer continuing this meaningless battle.

He can console himself with the knowledge that he is superior to the "average" listener, whose musical palate is so limited that hearing his 400 favorite songs over and over every time he turns on his radio keeps his mood positive at work or in the car. Not everyone who listened to top 40 radio in the '60s (or any other decade) was obsessive about the music. Sure, a certain song might have come on the radio for a few weeks in 1966 or 1968 and either failed to climb the chart or was memorable only to a few listeners once it dropped from the playlist. But the average listener isn't obsessing over songs like that nearly 50 years later. I do, but I know why radio doesn't. It's a mass medium and people like me and oldies76 don't make up much of that mass -- in fact, we now make up none of it, for the entire saleable mass is under 55. For now, the Internet has plenty of streams that cater to oldies-obsessives. The performers and labels, abetted by business-friendly courts, may bring an end to that eventually, or force us to pay for access. There's also satellite radio, a pay service, and some adventurous subchannels on the floundering HD Radio platform. But I accepted the reality of why commercial radio sounds the way it does long ago, and it puzzles me why that reality is taking so long to be accepted by others in the face of all the evidence.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

Please, do what you said you would in an earlier post, and move on. You're going to give yourself an ulcer continuing this meaningless battle.

If it is such a meaningless battle, why must you continually engage him in it?

 

[TheBigA]

I don't need to listen to the station to base my conclusions, I just look at the song lists.

But if you don't listen to the station, why do you care? What are trying to prove by forcing your personal taste on a station you no longer listen to, in a market where you no longer live? Listen to what you like, in your own market, and let everyone else enjoy what they have.

 

[TheBigA]

Doing what they are doing now DID get them a 4.9, but NOW has them at 4.2. That is a major slide in anyone's book and they will have to adjust. Since they are always playing the same songs, burnout is the most likely reason for the decline.

How do you know? Have you contacted the PPM reporters? You're making an assumption, and that's not how radio programmers work.

 

[Gregg.]

For the record, according to the Research Director column in All Access, here are the demographic highlights of the recent LA ratings...

25-54
1. Kiss
Tie KBIG
3. KLVE
4. Power
5. KOST
6. KRTH

18-34
1. Power
2. Kiss
3. KBIG
4. Amp
5. KLVE
6. KRTH

18-49
1. Kiss
2. Power
3. KBIG
4. Amp
5. KLVE

Research Director only gives these stats, so we don't know about the runners-up in each demographic.

http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...rch-director-inc-presents-exclusive-oct-ppm-a

I've commented before how surprising it is that only one Spanish-language station makes these demographic ratings... KLVE. Even with LA's large Hispanic population, all the other Spanish-language stations are somewhere out of the top 5 (or 6) in these demographics.

It's also surprising how little variation there is between the 18-34 and 25-54 numbers. Once upon a time, Talk, News and softer music stations such as Easy Listening scored in the 25-54 demos. Today's adults seem to only want to listen to their kids' youthful music stations, and have little interest in news and talk. The exception is KRTH, which has the same ratings among 18-34 adults, who weren't out of diapers when these songs were hits, vs. 25-54 adults. How sad is it for more youthful stations to be behind KRTH in the 18-34 demo! Unless a lot of that listening is in offices where younger workers don't have control of the radio, but their people meters are recording it anyway.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I've commented before how surprising it is that only one Spanish-language station makes these demographic ratings... KLVE. Even with LA's large Hispanic population, all the other Spanish-language stations are somewhere out of the top 5 (or 6) in these demographics.

David can expand on this further, but one thing I know is that Hispanic does not automatically equal Spanish-dominant in language preference. A huge part of the population which identifies as Hispanic are second- and third-generation (probably even some fourth-generation by now) and consider English their primary language (or possibly English-dominant with Spanish spoken only inside the home) and the ratings reflect that.

Look at it this way: If you're high school age, even if your parents only speak Spanish, you're going to speak English at school out of necessity and you're going to end up listening to KIIS, KPWR or KAMP because that's what your classmates listen to. And the ratings are going to reflect that.

KLVE, on the other hand, has a format which even gets some adult English-speakers in its audience, and the ratings also reflect that.

This is a bit of a problem for the Spanish-language media companies -- Univision, SBS, Liberman, and Entravision -- as they have stuck to their guns, language-wise, basing that decision on the percentage of Hispanic population, when in reality only 25% of 18-34, 28% of 18-49 and 28% of 25-54 listening* is to their stations. That pie is cut into too many pieces, and that is why your observation of all but KLVE being out of the top five marketwide is correct.

Realistically, KXOL, KSSE, KWIZ, KWKW and KTNQ could all switch away from Spanish-language programming and they would only have a combined impact of between 3 and 4 ratings points in 18-49.

*-averaging across all dayparts

 

[K.M. Richards]

If it is such a meaningless battle, why must you continually engage him in it?

It's like driving past the scene of an auto accident. It's meaningless to your own commute, but you can't help but look anyway.

 

[michael hagerty]

It's like driving past the scene of an auto accident. It's meaningless to your own commute, but you can't help but look anyway.

That's K.M.'s answer.

Mine is that people learn things from sites like these...and mis-information simply has to be corrected every time it pops up...because not everyone will go back and read the history of a single thread, much less the board or site.

They don't know or care how many times the correction's been made. You know...kinda like not knowing how many times a record's been played while you're not listening.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

That's K.M.'s answer.

Mine is that people learn things from sites like these...and mis-information simply has to be corrected every time it pops up...because not everyone will go back and read the history of a single thread, much less the board or site.

They don't know or care how many times the correction's been made. You know...kinda like not knowing how many times a record's been played while you're not listening.

You both do know that it is an opinion board, and only a fool would use it as a basis for factual research. If you want to be fact-checkers, Wikipedia has lots of unpaid openings. The good news is the pay there is the same as it is here!

 

[michael hagerty]

You both do know that it is an opinion board, and only a fool would use it as a basis for factual research. If you want to be fact-checkers, Wikipedia has lots of unpaid openings. The good news is the pay there is the same as it is here!

What I know is that a surprising number of people read things on this board and others like it and a year or two later, it pops up as "I read somewhere that..."

It's not an opinion site. Not to the exclusion of facts, anyway.

 

[K.M. Richards]

only a fool would use it as a basis for factual research

Flip, you just managed, using only a dozen words, to explain why all the grousing about music research isn't going to change the industry. Bravo.

 

[oldies76]

It's like driving past the scene of an auto accident. It's meaningless to your own commute, but you can't help but look anyway.

Who are you kidding? It's very meaningful if it holds you and all the traffic around you for an extra hour, trying to get to work. Looki-loos and lane blockages are the biggest reasons why people are late on the freeways. Ever heard of sig-alerts? Of course you have, there ya go.

Seems like every hour, there's an accident on your freeways and forget about it when it rains.

 

[oldies76]

You both do know that it is an opinion board!

Music fans vs. the industry....Nobody wins. But we're both right and can be both wrong.

 

[oldies76]

Please, do what you said you would in an earlier post, and move on.

After you.....