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The Sound continues to make noise....
- Thread starter Roddybob
- Start date
HUGE jump! Wow! That's their second 3rd-place finish so far since the flip. If the Sound keeps it up, I wonder if they'll take over second.
KRWM not too far behind but whatever. A couple months from now, we'll be hearing the 'C' word and they will be back on top again.
Nice boost for KOMO-1000. Lol on the 2.3 of KUBE 93.
KRWM not too far behind but whatever. A couple months from now, we'll be hearing the 'C' word and they will be back on top again.
Nice boost for KOMO-1000. Lol on the 2.3 of KUBE 93.
Someone at iHeart Media needs to ask which contemporary music brand they want to keep and blow up the other. It seems when KUBE is up, Kiss is down, and when Kiss is down KUBE is up. Question is what would they flip the other station to? I would go for either Alt or Country. In other news, ouch. I've never seen KCMS that low.
Logical points, and I agree about the country format. I'm not sure if I'd be so quick to discount Alt Rock, as they're still running Alt on 96.5 HD2. Now, would it be a harder alternative like what was on 102.9 or a more current based pop-leaning format such as what they're doing in Philidelphia or on 96.5 HD2 now? I'm pretty sure that's just plugged in from Premium Choice.
I would think if iHeart wanted to run alt rock, they would have done it by now. They're sticking with two different flavors of pop for possibly the same reason mutual funds buy wide -- one goes up, the other comes down, you still might have a net gain. Unless they're actually losing money on a station, which I'm not sure is the case with either KUBE or KBKS.
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AQH
Guest
AGAIN? That's the last thing either of those two stations need right now.
Today there's no reason for any of those stations to change. The Jet is doing okay in ratings, Jack is a balance sheet dream and IHM has been doing stout work of stripping KZOK of salary, its identity and having Portland do their music logs.
Give it a year or two as the IHRT shares drop further in price and New York will want more money. Since the expensive programmers are gone and Bender's contract will be fully paid out in Spring 2020, it will be the current morning show contracts being subject to the guillotine.
What do you mean Jack is a balance sheet? That they’re breaking even? Honest question.
EDIT: I didn’t see dream. I’m guessing Jack making money without paid on air staff. Correct?
EDIT: I didn’t see dream. I’m guessing Jack making money without paid on air staff. Correct?
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Guest
That's correct.
Consider this for a moment: Jack has better 25-54 ratings than The Bull and has saved a ton of money in management and air staff costs. The difference is exacerbated by The Bull, despite not even being two years old having to eat some morning show contracts and hiring some not inexpensive people (Mahalick, Fitz).
Throw on top how Hubbard has spent some decent money on marketing and promotion for The Bull, whereas Jack's promotional budget is roughly the same as the cost of a medium Slurpee.
Hubbard did IHM a huge favor by flipping to the Bull faster than IHM could flip Jack to Country. Small, temporary victory for IHM there.
If the salaries of a few live talents and a couple of voice trackers were a high percentage of operating costs, that might be an important observation.
However, the costs for sales and commissions, engineering, music licensing, management, insurance, rent, utilities, legal and all the other G&A costs are much more than those costs. And the Jack licensing fees reduce those small talent savings considerably.
Nice try. Those costs are shared amongst the entire cluster. Jack-specific operating costs are a computer, software licenses, the processing, the STL and the transmitter.
No, Jack costs are allocated portions of the overall expense. If there are five stations, each pays 20% of accounting, traffic, production, management, and all other overhead items. They also have cluster corporate management expenses, similarly allocated by market and by station.
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Guest
What you blissfully truncated in your important observation were the points about the direct comparison to the two radio stations.
Since you do not know what is going on here in Seattle, let me educate you.
The Bull has a five-person morning show, live midday and live afternoon shows. On top of that, they're paying off the three morning show contracts of the people who they had on the air for about one year (though one salary may have been pushed off to another Hubbard station). That's more than "a few."
Jack: no shows, live or tracked.
The Bull markets and promotes itself. That's additional operation costs.
Jack doesn't.
The Bull has three other stations in the same building. Jack has seven other stations in the same building to defray common costs.
And Jack does better 25-54 than The Bull.
The huge missing here is revenue. When it comes to average rating these days 25-54 a couple stations are on top, then about 10 stations between a 0.2 and 0.4. and then a bunch under a 0.2. Programmers get caught up in shares, sales are done on average rating and Seattle is very compressed.
Advertisers tend to buy stations to break that tie by focusing on demo- content-talent-promotions. This is why KIRO-FM and KOMO are top ten in revenue while being in the 0.2-0.4 block. This is why KBKS, KPLZ, remain in the top ten in revenue while in the 0.2-0.4 block. Sports stations like KIRO-AM way out perform their rating. Highly Automated sounding stations like JACK are usually not in the top ten in revenue.
Advertisers tend to buy stations to break that tie by focusing on demo- content-talent-promotions. This is why KIRO-FM and KOMO are top ten in revenue while being in the 0.2-0.4 block. This is why KBKS, KPLZ, remain in the top ten in revenue while in the 0.2-0.4 block. Sports stations like KIRO-AM way out perform their rating. Highly Automated sounding stations like JACK are usually not in the top ten in revenue.
This is absolutely true. Those of you who focus on this forum on 12+ numbers as indicators of a horse race, should take note. I can't count how many time some of us have tried to explain to this forum that ratings (especially 12+) don't reflect revenue. A common misconception is about Sports Stations. Agencies wanting to reach a 18-54 male demo, will automatically buy a contract on the local sports station. Doesn't matter whether the station pulls a .5 share.
There are so many other factors being considered, such as groups that sell based on demographic spread among all their stations in that group.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm sure I would provide more in-depth analysis if I had access to the information David, Kelly, or any of the other industry insiders do. It's not as big of an issue in this market as it is in some, but my issue with sports stations is you have so many of them that don't pull many listeners. For instance in Portland in a book I looked at back in April, the four sports stations combined for a four share, while the #1 station held something like an 8.3. Then again, from a discussion a couple months ago here, the rock stations are closer to the bottom rather than the top in revenue, yet nobody is worrying about them flipping any time soon.
The thing with sports stations is that they look much better in 25-54 or 18-49 men than the 12+ or 6+ numbers would indicate.
And there are sports-only budgets, often called “sports marketing” which deepen the revenue pool for sports stations.
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