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Latest Chicago Ratings 3-16-20

Nothing like a crisis to drive all news ratings. I suspect news stations in most markets will see a large uptick in the coming ratings reports.
 
I'd expect sports stations' ratings to drop even more in the next few months, with some stations even flipping away to talk or a music-based format (especially if they're on FM)
 
ftballfan said:
I'd expect sports stations' ratings to drop even more in the next few months, with some stations even flipping away to talk or a music-based format (especially if they're on FM)
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It could happen, through I am sure sports talkers are trying to found stuff to talk about on their shows, even through a lot of a lot of them are talking about what is going on in the NFL since we are now going to be a day away from free agent signings. The two big sports stations in the Chicago are WSCR 670 the Score and WMVP ESPN Radio 1000, that beginning at 9 AM until the evening hours will have Chicago sports talk, so I will imagine that they will be focusing on who the Chicago Bears have and will sign.
 
Big 95.5's ratings are a disgrace!!!

It's an example of iHM not deploying its terrestrial FM assets in a "highest and best use" fashion.

This station cannot possibly be billing even $5 million a year. Wouldn't surprise me if it isn't even billing $4 million a year.

iHM should've kept 93.9 positioned closely to 101.9 and went Soft AC with 95.5. Such a move would've created great pressure on Hubbard, and it would've provided iHM the same type of successful station spread in enjoys in San Francisco, Dallas and Los Angeles (i.e. one CHR + one Hot AC + one traditional AC or soft AC).

Now, iHM is pretty much stuck with Country unless they want to give a white male-skewing format such as classic rock, mainstream rock, or Sports a shot.
 
MarkW said:
It's an example of iHM not deploying its terrestrial FM assets in a "highest and best use" fashion.
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Depends on what you think that is. The company has a very organized and profitable national strategy built around country music and Bobby Bones. To do that, they need stations in Top 10 markets for national sales. Chicago and Boston are key to that strategy.
 
Getting a clear in Chicago with perhaps 350,000 weekly listeners in morning drive is *maybe* worth $1 million in national & local ad revenue annually.

True, other than a local board-op/producer, most of that is pure profit.

Could iHM do better with a different format? Possibly. Yes, there'd be substantially greater expense. That's true. But one would think the potential revenue upside would make such a move worthy of consideration.

The Boston station, at least ratings wise, is in considerably better shape than Tiny 95.5. Bobby Bones will be fine regardless of whether or not his show has clearance on a very low rated Chicago station. Is there any morning show on a Top 30 market Country station - with full market coverage - whose ratings are worse? I doubt it!
 
MarkW said:
Is there any morning show on a Top 30 market Country station - with full market coverage - whose ratings are worse? I doubt it!
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As I said, the ratings aren't always the goal. They do national promotions, national sales, and of course the annual national country awards. So there are lots of ways to make money regardless of the ratings. iHeart has other stations in the market that are aiming for ratings. This isn't one of them.
 
TheBigA said:
As I said, the ratings aren't always the goal. They do national promotions, national sales, and of course the annual national country awards. So there are lots of ways to make money regardless of the ratings. iHeart has other stations in the market that are aiming for ratings. This isn't one of them.
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It's hard for people not in the industry (myself included) to wrap our heads around the idea that attracting a large audience might not be an important objective of a radio station. Yes, advertising revenue is always No. 1, but it seems counterintuitive to think that a station would put a product on the air that is just "there" with no thought given to making it stand out to attract more listeners, and that would actually be part of its parent company's strategy.

It also stretches credibility that national advertisers who back syndicated programming like Bobby Bones (or various talk shows) would be happy with simply "clearing" some major market, whether the station the program "clears" the market on has a substantial number of actual listeners or not. But this is the way radio apparently works these days, and if the people running it buy into all that, that's all that matters.
 
CTListener said:
It's hard for people not in the industry (myself included) to wrap our heads around the idea that attracting a large audience might not be an important objective of a radio station.
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Keep in mind this entire discussion is based solely on the 6+ figures we can see. We don't know how the station compares to WUSN in terms of demos or AQH. From what I've seen in other markets, Bobby Bones attracts a passionate & younger audience that tends to listen longer than other morning shows. We don't see that in the 6+. Bobby is the face of iHeart's country brand. Plus the relationship with CMT & Cody Alan at night is also core to iHeart's strategy.
 
MarkW said:
True, other than a local board-op/producer, most of that is pure profit.
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That is over-simplified.

A station still has a manager, has (whether local or shared) a traffic department, billing, accounting, engineering, sales, promotion and other staff positions. They pay insurance, employee benefits, utilities, property taxes and all the other radio and business expenses. All of this can be thought of as being part of the cost of every revenue-producing hour in the day and week. So there is no "pure profit" at all once the total station overhead is taken into account.
 
CTListener said:
It's hard for people not in the industry (myself included) to wrap our heads around the idea that attracting a large audience might not be an important objective of a radio station. Yes, advertising revenue is always No. 1, but it seems counterintuitive to think that a station would put a product on the air that is just "there" with no thought given to making it stand out to attract more listeners, and that would actually be part of its parent company's strategy.

It also stretches credibility that national advertisers who back syndicated programming like Bobby Bones (or various talk shows) would be happy with simply "clearing" some major market, whether the station the program "clears" the market on has a substantial number of actual listeners or not. But this is the way radio apparently works these days, and if the people running it buy into all that, that's all that matters.
Click to expand...

Many if not most ad campaigns are quite specific, such as "25 to 44 Men" of "English dominant Hispanics Females 18-49" or even "luxury car owners 35-54" (using qualitative data). So stations that may not look very "big" in the 12+ numbers may be very strong in a "nugget" that advertisers often seek.

The best example of that would be all-sports stations. They generally don't rank in the top spots in the 12+ numbers, but they very effectively deliver adult men in the most sought demographics. So we frequently see a low-rated station in 12+ being one of its market's highest billers because it delivers very effectively the adult male audience and, thus, is bought by the beers, cars, auto parts and all other accounts that focus on adult males in a very productive environment.

As to the syndicated shows, remember that most accounts don't buy just one show or one station or, even, one ad medium. The combination of a national ad buy's shows, stations and other media will "level out" and give the advertiser a broad and effective media buy.
 
That is over-simplified.

A station still has a manager, has (whether local or shared) a traffic department, billing, accounting, engineering, sales, promotion and other staff positions. They pay insurance, employee benefits, utilities, property taxes and all the other radio and business expenses. All of this can be thought of as being part of the cost of every revenue-producing hour in the day and week. So there is no "pure profit" at all once the total station overhead is taken into account.
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No, not oversimplified.

I was referring to the daypart specifically.

Everything you just mentioned relates to the station or cluster as a whole and doesn't change regardless of what's being programmed in one daypart on one station.

Don't like the term "pure profit" ? Maybe I should've used contribution margin instead, but that's a relatively obscure term used by bankers and accountants. I was being mindful of the readership when I used "pure profit."
 
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