Reminds me of how much we miss Bob Smith of WXXI.
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Fall 2016 Ratings
- Thread starter tbolt909
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Reminds me of how much we miss Bob Smith of WXXI.
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dand5780
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One other thing to consider is the potential for up to 10 hours a week of listeners lost, between midnight and 2am, Monday-Thursday. I think the show they put there, Beyond Reality, was a mistake.
Not that advertisers give even half a crap about that time slot. That's why most stations plug cheap syndicated fare or infomercials into midnight-to-5.
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dand5780
Guest
Doesn't matter. A lot of people listen to the two programs that were shortened. And if they aren't listening now, it explains some of the decline.
That's the truth!
And Bob Savage, too.
It's a game we play. Humor us.
See #19 and consider your point rebutted.
If memory serves, Bob Savage is still around at WYSL in the Rochester area.
Strong showing for WBFO and they most likely had solid
25-54 numbers. Public Radio obviously reaches a substantial
audience. Other trite formats (ALT 107.7 & JACK) not so much...
Then you must be especially sad over the loss of George Michael.
I'll be here all week....
I'd guess 35-64, but still a strong showing. Perhaps reporting with actual depth is having an effect.
While I don't have the Fall data, in the summer book WBFO is:
8th in 35-64
10th in 35-44
12th in 25-54, 25-34 and 18-49
16th in 18-24.
So, like quite a few of the well performing NPR affiliates, it does quite well even down to the upper twenty-somethings.
Of course, the numbers are subject to the normal skepticism/caution that should apply to any ratings "estimates".
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Twelfth, 25-54? That's really not too impressive, especially in a market like Buffalo. Friends in the business tell me it's all about being in the top five. Maybe it's different for non-coms, but you'd expect the station to crack the top ten considering the size of its local news department and the quality of its mostly syndicated programming. Extrapolating and comparing the 35-64 to 25-54 rankings, WBFO appears to capture 45+ and 50+ listeners. In this regard, it's much like many NPR affiliates. How does WBEN compare in the same demos in the same book?
The reason "dand" rails against WBFO is that they share audience with WBEN. I wouldn't be surprised if WBEN's demos were similar, or perhaps a little older than WBFO's.
For all of their new staff, WBFO leans very hard on syndicated content. It would be nice to see more local programming beyond the Blues show.
For all of their new staff, WBFO leans very hard on syndicated content. It would be nice to see more local programming beyond the Blues show.
The ratings for the Edge, Mix, Jack and 107.7 look pretty grim. For a while, I thought the Edge was a dominant radio station, but the last few years it's pretty much the Shredd and Ragan morning show and little more. It's hard to understand why or how 97 Rock keeps going. By its ratings strength it seems there are a lot of baby boomers who can't hear enough of the same 30 or 40 year year old Doors, Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones songs played over and over. Not that the bands weren't great, it's just that they had more than five good songs. You'd think the boomers' kids would have clued them into Spotify or Pandora, or owned music possibilities. Jack is like the Edge. At one time it was a interesting mix of disconnected songs from different eras that worked. Maybe the company that owns Jack should call it Mix. It's hard to figure out what the station that calls itself Mix is trying to do. The station isn't for 48 year old guys like me, but it sounds like Kiss for ten minutes, then it sounds like Star, then it sounds like a whitebread clone of WBLK, which is owned by the same company.
Alt 107.7 is a complete nothing radio station. I occasionally listen to it because I want to hear new bands and music. The problem is, a lot of the music is unimpressive. Most of the bands are one hit winders whose members will be playing bars or opening for the next flavor-of-the-day band five years from now. I used this board's search engine and went back to read previous posts about 107.7, even to the days of the Lake, when this board had a lot more posters, many of whom defended the Lake to an extreme. At least the station had what seemed like a devoted audience as the Lake. A few posters here have noted that this board doesn't seem as popular or busy as it once was. It's probably because radio is pretty bland these days, and there are more alternatives for music and information, whether you want to hear more than five Doors songs or hear about the news on the latest domestic mass shooting.
Alt 107.7 is a complete nothing radio station. I occasionally listen to it because I want to hear new bands and music. The problem is, a lot of the music is unimpressive. Most of the bands are one hit winders whose members will be playing bars or opening for the next flavor-of-the-day band five years from now. I used this board's search engine and went back to read previous posts about 107.7, even to the days of the Lake, when this board had a lot more posters, many of whom defended the Lake to an extreme. At least the station had what seemed like a devoted audience as the Lake. A few posters here have noted that this board doesn't seem as popular or busy as it once was. It's probably because radio is pretty bland these days, and there are more alternatives for music and information, whether you want to hear more than five Doors songs or hear about the news on the latest domestic mass shooting.
The numbers David posted weren't from Fall 2016.
It's possible that WBFO placed higher in those demos this time.
Average WBEN listener is 64, so WBFO is likely 10-12 years younger.
Rock Radio is a wasteland. The ALT 107.7 format is sitting at 1.2.
Lake format did triple that. Many potential listeners have moved
on. They can find other options...
It's possible that WBFO placed higher in those demos this time.
Average WBEN listener is 64, so WBFO is likely 10-12 years younger.
Rock Radio is a wasteland. The ALT 107.7 format is sitting at 1.2.
Lake format did triple that. Many potential listeners have moved
on. They can find other options...
The four books from Fall 2015 to Summer 2016 have had WBFO at between 3.8 and 4.0, which is well inside the margin of error of the diary survey. So we have a very stable station there... in fact one that has had a constant, multi-book uptrend going back the the 1.9 it had in Fall of 2010.
While the time spent listening may vary to some extent due to the news cycle, the cume is even more stable.
Of course, stations like WBFO don't program to the sales demos that commercial stations cater to. They look at audience more from a user and donor perspective than "what will the advertiser buy".
To get this away from WBEN fanboys, I looked at a market where the NPR station and the local news/talk station have nearly identical 12+ audiences.
The market is San Diego and the stations are KPBS and KOGO, both of which have 12+ shares in the high 4 range, often in a tie.
KOGO, owned by iHeart, has about a 2 share in 25-54 but KPBS has a 4.7. KPBS shares about 10% of its cume with KOGO, so there is little cross-tuning between the two.
Conservative talk would seem to be anathema to listeners of an NPR station, but that is just my opinion.
I think it's a situation like Atlanta, where WABE relies on syndication, and gets similar ratings to WBFO. Meanwhile, the market leader is WSB-AM/FM, which is almost entirely local. If they were to do local programming, it might be something similar to what Bob Smith did at WXXI.
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