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February 2015 Nielsen Audio ratings

T

Thomps2525

Guest
KIIS and KOST tied for first place in the February 2015 Nielsen Audio ratings for Los Angeles. KJLH's audience share is up by 0.3, likely a response to the end of the r&b oldies format at 92.3. The ratings of The Beast 980 are beastly; KFWB is tied for 40th with a 0.1 share, the lowest in the station's 90-year history.

The top ten:

1. KIIS, 5.2
1. KOST, 5.2
3. KRTH, 5.1
4. KBIG, 5.0
5. KAMP, 4.3
6. KLVE, 3.9
7. KCBS-FM, 3.8
8. KSWD, 3.7
9. KPWR, 3.6
10. KFI, 3.4

http://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb003
 
After a year the Patriot, KEIB, has established itself as the #2 talk station in Los Angeles after its "live and local" big brother, KFI,. The latter hasn't been hurt at all by the reshuffle of January, 2014. and continues to edge out KNX. However, all the second tier AM talk stations(KABC, KEIB and KRLA) lag far behind the two FM public radio outlets - KPCC and KCRW.

Among the music stations this board's favorite target, KRTH, continues to hang in among the iHeart trio of KiIs, KOST and KBIG. Apparently they're doing something listeners like.
 
KRTH with a 5.1 (only .2 away from sole possession of first!) Wow!

I guess the average listener can put up with the same 300 songs a week in L.A. Good for them......enjoy!
 
oldies76 said:
KRTH with a 5.1 (only .2 away from sole possession of first!) Wow!

I guess the average listener can put up with the same 300 songs a week in L.A. Good for them......enjoy!
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I am sure they are still livin' it up at the Hotel three times a day even now.

Actually I tuned in the other day for the first time in a while and sure enough it was playing again. Amazing.

Then I tuned in to hear Ladd on Deep Tracks (Sirius XM 27) and of course he had the Doors going. I swear, the more things change the more they stay the same.
 
Wow, KSWD Up to a 3.7! I guess Mark is bringing the listeners back with him; Brian, not so much.

A question to the pros. Why can't they better monetize the ratings success they have had over the last year? I know the audience skews a bit old, but at least they have one. Also, is there a way to see if key advertisers have moved from KLOS other than sitting for hours and monitoring the commercial load?

In any case, the Cumulus suits on La Cienega must be pressing the panic button hard right about now. They are about to get left behind even in demo.
 
Mister oldies76, may I remind you that you and I are no longer making negative comments about KRTH. We state the facts and try to remain objective. Yes, KRTH is now the third-most-listened-to station in Los Angeles. Anyone who listened to KRTH between 1 pm and 5 pm today would have heard Hotel California, Satisfaction, I Melt With You, Bennie & The Jets, Play That Funky Music, Unchained Melody, Living On A Prayer, Old Time Rock & Roll (twice) and Don't You Forget About Me (twice). With a 5.1 audience share, KRTH will likely not make any further "adjustments" to the playlist, at least not until the audience share starts to decline.

92.3 dropped from a 2.6 to a 2.5, so overall the audience share for KRRL's first month was little changed from KHHT's final month as an r&b oldies station. Can anyone make a reasonable to guess as to what percentage of KHHT's listeners are still listening to Real 92.3? And did KRRL pick up most (or all) of the listeners that KPWR lost?
 
No big surprises. KABC is still doing poorly. The new mid day shows aren't helping,obviously. Yes, I know ratings don't matter when it comes to Sports formats, but KFWB can;t be very happy with their miniscule rating. Yeah, like LA really needed a fourth sports stations. Too bad the station couldn't do oldies or standards,but of course that would be 60 plus, but really, is being the lowest rated commercial station in LA any better? With music, they might even get listeners.
 
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I'm surprised by the 4.0-3.6 drop from KPWR but at the same time they saw a increase in its cumes. As for whether KRRL played a factor, it didn't looked like it did but with Big Boy and new staffers now in place we could see how this battle will play out after the March 2015 book comes out.

At the same time KTWV and KJLH seem to be benefitting from the loss of KHHT, which may explain where the listeners went.
 
In his syndicated radio column today, Richard Wagoner did some arithmetic. He added up the audience shares of the four sports stations---KLAA, KLAC, KFWB, KSPN---and got a combined share of 1.8. A single station with that share would be in 24th place. Who wants to make a guess as to how long the CBS Sports format will last at the 0.1-share KFWB?
 
LARadioRewind said:
In his syndicated radio column today, Richard Wagoner did some arithmetic. He added up the audience shares of the four sports stations---KLAA, KLAC, KFWB, KSPN---and got a combined share of 1.8. A single station with that share would be in 24th place. Who wants to make a guess as to how long the CBS Sports format will last at the 0.1-share KFWB?
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I would have thought both you and Wagoner understood by now that the ratings do not matter when the format is Sports. Heaven knows it's been explained in numerous threads enough times.

Let's try it again.

Sports radio attracts a demographic which is not measured by age or gender but by intensity of listening. These listeners are far from passive. They choose a station based on what games, what teams, what specific sports are likely to be the topics of discussion. Their P1 choices are the stations that carry "their" teams' contests. And they listen more intently than a rabid Rush Limbaugh devotee does to him.

Those audiences are gold to certain advertisers. Spots on sports-formatted stations are far more likely to be listened to than is the case for practically any other format (except, perhaps for certain ethnic groups whose mindset is such that they consider it polite to listen to the businesses that sponsor "their" language's programming, and their obligation to patronize those business as much as possible). Because the ratings are low, the cost per spot is low ... but both the stations and the agencies know the value of these listeners and so the CPM is calculated differently, resulting in a spot rate that is higher than would be the case if it were only ratings-based.

How long will KFWB last in its current format? As long as the numbers (and I do not mean Nielsen's) hold up.
 
Yes, I've read the explanations of how a sports station with low ratings can still be considered successful. I also know that a station needs advertising to be successful. If I were an advertiser, I would be more inclined to advertise on the higher-rated KLAC or KSPN than on KFWB. I don't know if any advertisers target fans of a specific team. Perhaps a company might want to attract Clippers fans or Galaxy fans and would therefore advertise on KFWB. But if an advertiser wants to go after sports fans in general---which I assume most do---I would think he'd prefer a station with more listeners than KFWB.

And if ratings don't matter, then why are Sports Radio 710 and Sporting News Radio 1540 no longer around?
 
LARadioRewind said:
I also know that a station needs advertising to be successful. If I were an advertiser, I would be more inclined to advertise on the higher-rated KLAC or KSPN than on KFWB.
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You have read David explaining the margin of error in ratings calculation, have you not?

Taking that "wobble" into account, all of the sports-formatted stations have approximately the same rating, and the agencies know this, and the agencies don't care, because ... (let's all say it together, kids):

The ratings do not matter when the format is Sports.

And if ratings don't matter, then why are Sports Radio 710 and Sporting News Radio 1540 no longer around?
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710 was poorly done and did not properly leverage the Golden West sports package of Angels/Rams/Bruins.

1540 was the victim of financial problems at its network and was sold off along with the two other O&O stations. It also scraped the bottom of the barrel, for the most part, in terms of live sports coverage: At various points in its history, it had San Diego Chargers football, Westwood One sports programming not cleared by other stations in the market (NCAA basketball, PGA Tour golf tournaments, the Masters Tournament, selected NFL games, and Notre Dame football), USC basketball and football (the loss of which to KSPN in 2006 apparently being the reason the station was sold to Radio Korea a year later), and NASCAR.

Although you don't ask, 107.1 "Sports To The Max" was trying to do sports talk without a significant amount of live sports programming. They also carried Notre Dame for a while, plus the two NFL teams from the Bay Area (!) -- the 49ers and the Raiders -- and the Ice Dogs of the International Hockey League. Of course, they came and went by 1992, before either KMPC/710 or KCTD/1540 made their attempts.

There is one other factor which comes into play when you ask about those early attempts, and that is the fact that since then major 24/7 networks have come into existence (ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC) and there are economies in station operation from carrying network programming, especially on weekends.

Now please stop trying to come up with questions you think I can't answer, Steve. There isn't some magic "trap" you're going to get me to fall into by attempts such as the above.
 
LARadioRewind said:
Who wants to make a guess as to how long the CBS Sports format will last at the 0.1-share KFWB?
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My guess is until CBS is finally forced to divest their trust and sell the station off to some ambitious Jesuscaster or ethnic broker.

Question for the pros: How long can companies keep these excess stations in these trusts? You'd think if the FCC was so concerned about ownership limits, they would've forced CBS to sell to the highest bidder long ago.
 
K.M., I'm not trying to "trap" anyone. I often post questions and I do so assuming that someone will have an answer. Often you are the one who responds. I always appreciate your detailed replies but I certainly don't aim my questions at any specific person.

So, okay, KFWB does not need a high Nielsen Audio rating in order to be successful with the sports format. I'll be checking tomorrow morning to see how many sports fans are listening to KFWB's hard-hitting sports programs Wynn Financial, Purity Products, Mortgage Makeover and Smart Money Fundamentals.
 
LARadioRewind said:
I'll be checking tomorrow morning to see how many sports fans are listening to KFWB's hard-hitting sports programs Wynn Financial, Purity Products, Mortgage Makeover and Smart Money Fundamentals.
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Weekends, especially early mornings, are the lowest listenership periods for any station, regardless of format. If someone wants to buy half-hours to hawk their crap, I don't blame KFWB for cashing the checks. It's not going to hurt them since 99% of their core audience isn't going to be tuned in at those hours anyway.

But ... how, pray tell, are you going to be "checking"? Have you invented a new version of the PPM that can tell what people are listening to without an external monitor? :rolleyes:
 
I'll be listening to Mortgage Makeover to see if Jeff from Long Beach or Dave from Mission Hills calls in to talk about the Arizona home that Matt Kemp just put on the market. :)
 
K.M. Richards said:
Weekends, especially early mornings, are the lowest listenership periods for any station, regardless of format. If someone wants to buy half-hours to hawk their crap, I don't blame KFWB for cashing the checks. It's not going to hurt them since 99% of their core audience isn't going to be tuned in at those hours anyway.

But ... how, pray tell, are you going to be "checking"? Have you invented a new version of the PPM that can tell what people are listening to without an external monitor? :rolleyes:
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Now, that gives me pause for thought: 99% of one tenth of 1% isn't listening but you said "CORE audience", making it a small percentage of even that!
 
I'm trying to track down the one percent of that one tenth of 1% that makes up KFWB's Sunday-morning core audience and just as soon as I can find out who he is, I'll let you know. :)
 
I can't imagine anybody actually listens to those paid programs and.or infomercials, but they exist on almost every talk station in the country, so even if three people are listening and they respond to what is being aired, I guess that's all that matters. I rarely listen to talk radio on Saturday and Sunday, but if I happen to catch the words...the following is a paid.... I'm gone within seconds.

With a .1 share overall, I'm curious as to how many people listen to KFWB?
 
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