WBAI/Pacifica Death Throes

[K.M. Richards]

David, the 15 Nov ppm ratings I saw rated WKTU 3.9 in 8th place. #1 was WLTW at 6.8. It wasn't broken down by age demographic.

If you hang around and read other threads here, one thing you will learn is that the ratings that are made available by Nielsen free of charge are the all encompassing 6+ numbers, which ranks stations on total listening. Those numbers include those under 18 years of age and over 54 years of age, which are considered to be non-sellable demos but can skew a station's apparent success or lack of same.

You will see a lot of threads here where people go apesh*t over the 6+ numbers, making all kinds of proclamations and predictions based on them ... only to be proven wrong when those of us who have access to the demographic breakdowns in the markets where we work do real comparisons in-demo.

The so-called "hit" music stations are going to be concerned with their 18-34 age group ratings. Softer "hit" and Country formatted stations tend to look at 18-49 as "their" numbers. Gold-based stations use 25-54. A station's performance in demos other than the ones they sell to tends to be dismissed as incidental.

David used the 25-54 numbers for NYC to make a point about how low ratings can be in-demo for a station to be viable, because -- as you point out -- WLTW has a 6.8 in the 6+ numbers. But they only have a 0.6 in 25-54, which pretty much proves that you should ignore the 6+ ratings.

Hope this explanation widens your knowledge base a bit more.

 

[davideduardo]

David, the 15 Nov ppm ratings I saw rated WKTU 3.9 in 8th place. #1 was WLTW at 6.8. It wasn't broken down by age demographic.

You are looking at share numbers in 6+. Agencies generally buy based on rating.

Rating: percent of the total population listening.
SHare: percent of those listening to the radio who are listening to one station.

In NYC, a station's rating tends to be about 10% of its share.

Share, rating and AQH persons are all forms of expressing the same thing.

 

[k Stacy]

If you hang around and read other threads here, one thing you will learn is that the ratings that are made available by Nielsen free of charge are the all encompassing 6+ numbers, which ranks stations on total listening. Those numbers include those under 18 years of age and over 54 years of age, which are considered to be non-sellable demos but can skew a station's apparent success or lack of same.

You will see a lot of threads here where people go apesh*t over the 6+ numbers, making all kinds of proclamations and predictions based on them ... only to be proven wrong when those of us who have access to the demographic breakdowns in the markets where we work do real comparisons in-demo.

The so-called "hit" music stations are going to be concerned with their 18-34 age group ratings. Softer "hit" and Country formatted stations tend to look at 18-49 as "their" numbers. Gold-based stations use 25-54. A station's performance in demos other than the ones they sell to tends to be dismissed as incidental.

David used the 25-54 numbers for NYC to make a point about how low ratings can be in-demo for a station to be viable, because -- as you point out -- WLTW has a 6.8 in the 6+ numbers. But they only have a 0.6 in 25-54, which pretty much proves that you should ignore the 6+ ratings.

Hope this explanation widens your knowledge base a bit more.

Yes, thanks KM & David. They were the free ratings inTom Taylor's newsletter I was looking at. So out of 15 million people in NYC area, WLTW has 0.6% or about 900,000 people in their 25-54 demographic listening.

 

[k Stacy]

Yes, thanks KM & David. They were the free ratings inTom Taylor's newsletter I was looking at. So out of 15 million people in NYC area, WLTW has 0.6% or about 900,000 people in their 25-54 demographic listening.

Sorry math error. So WLTW 0.6 (0.6% x 15,000,000) means they have 90,000 people listening in demo.

 

[davideduardo]

Yes, thanks KM & David. They were the free ratings inTom Taylor's newsletter I was looking at. So out of 15 million people in NYC area, WLTW has 0.6% or about 900,000 people in their 25-54 demographic listening.

Rating and share measure the average audience in a time period. The Tom Taylor newsletter gives 6+, and I was quoting 25-54.

In 25-54 in a recent book, WLTW had a 6.3 share, a rating of 0.6, and average persons of 35,600. That is on a cume of 2,500,000 in that demo, or 34% of all 25-54's in the market.

 

[TVCOOL]

Why WBAI is surviving despite these problems?

 

[davideduardo]

Why WBAI is surviving despite these problems?

Their motivations are not money and ratings. They are based on beliefs, convictions and ideology.

 

[TheBigA]

And at one point, they built a nice endowment that bails them out from time to time.

 

[k Stacy]

Rating and share measure the average audience in a time period. The Tom Taylor newsletter gives 6+, and I was quoting 25-54.

In 25-54 in a recent book, WLTW had a 6.3 share, a rating of 0.6, and average persons of 35,600. That is on a cume of 2,500,000 in that demo, or 34% of all 25-54's in the market.

David, how you got 35,600 average listeners or 34% in 25-54 age demo. I looked up Nielsen Audio terms and they are confusing. Even Wikipedia didn't have a good example.

 

[davideduardo]

David, how you got 35,600 average listeners or 34% in 25-54 age demo. I looked up Nielsen Audio terms and they are confusing. Even Wikipedia didn't have a good example.

In got it out of the report itself.

There are about 7.5 million persons 25-54 in the New York Nielsen MSA. WLTW reaches 34% of them for at least 15 minutes each week. Thus, with a cume rating of 34 (average of several books) the total cume is 2.5 million persons.

Not all of those persons is listening at the same time. That is why the cume (the total reach at all hours) is greater than the average audience size at any given moment.

Cume: total people reached weekly.
Cume rating: people reached by a station as a percentage of all persons in a particular demo.

AQH persons: average people listening in a typical quarter hour across some period of time.
AQH share: AQH persons express as your station's percentage of all radio listeners tuned in at the time.
Rating: percent of all people in a demo, whether listening or not, who are listening on average across a time period.

Try reading this:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Arbitron/Purple Book 2012.pdf

This is the basic Nielsen description of how the PPM and diary surveys are done.

 

[semoochie]

In got it out of the report itself.

There are about 7.5 million persons 25-54 in the New York Nielsen MSA. WLTW reaches 34% of them for at least 15 minutes each week. Thus, with a cume rating of 34 (average of several books) the total cume is 2.5 million persons.

Not all of those persons is listening at the same time. That is why the cume (the total reach at all hours) is greater than the average audience size at any given moment.

Cume: total people reached weekly.
Cume rating: people reached by a station as a percentage of all persons in a particular demo.

AQH persons: average people listening in a typical quarter hour across some period of time.
AQH share: AQH persons express as your station's percentage of all radio listeners tuned in at the time.
Rating: percent of all people in a demo, whether listening or not, who are listening on average across a time period.

Try reading this:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Arbitron/Purple Book 2012.pdf

This is the basic Nielsen description of how the PPM and diary surveys are done.

No kidding? I thought a rating was a percentage of the total population within a demo. You're saying they have to actually be radio listeners at some point?

 

[davideduardo]

No kidding? I thought a rating was a percentage of the total population within a demo. You're saying they have to actually be radio listeners at some point?

Read it again: percent of all people in demo, listening or not.

 

[k Stacy]

In got it out of the report itself.

There are about 7.5 million persons 25-54 in the New York Nielsen MSA. WLTW reaches 34% of them for at least 15 minutes each week. Thus, with a cume rating of 34 (average of several books) the total cume is 2.5 million persons.

Not all of those persons is listening at the same time. That is why the cume (the total reach at all hours) is greater than the average audience size at any given moment.

Cume: total people reached weekly.
Cume rating: people reached by a station as a percentage of all persons in a particular demo.

AQH persons: average people listening in a typical quarter hour across some period of time.
AQH share: AQH persons express as your station's percentage of all radio listeners tuned in at the time.
Rating: percent of all people in a demo, whether listening or not, who are listening on average across a time period.

Try reading this:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Arbitron/Purple Book 2012.pdf

This is the basic Nielsen description of how the PPM and diary surveys are done.

Thanks for the explanation and the reference David!

 

[k Stacy]

And at one point, they built a nice endowment that bails them out from time to time.

If they have an endowment that bails them out then they aren't in financial trouble.

 

[TheBigA]

If they have an endowment that bails them out then they aren't in financial trouble.

Do you understand how endowments work?

 

[k Stacy]

Do you understand how endowments work?

They all have different rules. I was on an endowment committee at church. They eventually used up all money in endowment to build a building. Some foundations like the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation only use up 7%/year to stay in business a long time. There are many ways to run an endowment. It depends on rules the giver set up. What wete you getting at BigA?

 

[TheBigA]

What wete you getting at BigA?

IMHO, they're not in their death throes, as this thread might suggest. This could go on for years.

But the board isn't going to raid the endowment to pay the rent.

 

[semoochie]

Read it again: percent of all people in demo, listening or not.

Thank you, David. I do love the English language. Sometimes, you're not sure which side of the prepositional phrase your toast is buttered on.

 

[Radio-X]

IMHO, they're not in their death throes, as this thread might suggest. This could go on for years.

But the board isn't going to raid the endowment to pay the rent.

To quote Samuel L. Jackson:

"...Well, allow me to retort!"

The fact that they are looking to sell either WBAI or the Pacifica Building in Berkeley tells me that this may be more than them refusing to pay the rent...they can't pay the basic bills. That's not just at WBAI...KPFK is on the fritz as well. I'd dare say the two stations that could survive financially independent are KPFA/KPFB and WPFW in DC. Both could conceivably operate in the black if you look at the numbers.

According to FY 2012 audit, Pacifica National Office has two endowments totalling a bit over $500k. Health fund is $300k, KPFA has its own fund of about $150k, and KPFK has a small endowment of $25k.

The endowments are a trickle in the revenue stream for Pacifica. In order to operate, they need to be a way more cash-flush with an endowment at least 10 times its current size to be useful. Hence the recent discussion in the National Board meeting to potentially axe WBAI and/or the national office property. Get rid of either, potentially put in tens of millions of dollars in the endowment for perpetuity, which could allow the rest of the network to (almost) run self-sustaining.

Radio-X

 

[k Stacy]

To quote Samuel L. Jackson:

"...Well, allow me to retort!"

The fact that they are looking to sell either WBAI or the Pacifica Building in Berkeley tells me that this may be more than them refusing to pay the rent...they can't pay the basic bills. That's not just at WBAI...KPFK is on the fritz as well. I'd dare say the two stations that could survive financially independent are KPFA/KPFB and WPFW in DC. Both could conceivably operate in the black if you look at the numbers.

According to FY 2012 audit, Pacifica National Office has two endowments totalling a bit over $500k. Health fund is $300k, KPFA has its own fund of about $150k, and KPFK has a small endowment of $25k.

The endowments are a trickle in the revenue stream for Pacifica. In order to operate, they need to be a way more cash-flush with an endowment at least 10 times its current size to be useful. Hence the recent discussion in the National Board meeting to potentially axe WBAI and/or the national office property. Get rid of either, potentially put in tens of millions of dollars in the endowment for perpetuity, which could allow the rest of the network to (almost) run self-sustaining.

Radio-X

You hit the other piece of the puzzle Radio-X, how much money is in the endowments. You're right, those amounts aren't enough to make a difference. They will have to get money from somewhere.