We already know that these ratings are more or less "beauty contest" numbers, so I would argue that the big jump for KING-FM is really not as significant as it may appear. Classical music radio is the type of format that has a very dedicated listener base, which is probably not likely to fluctuate rapidly, even in a pandemic (much like AAA). Additionally, it seems like a bit of a stretch that a younger audience is suddenly tuning in. Seems like there is a wide margin for error, but we already were aware of that.
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March Ratings
- Thread starter Roddybob
- Start date
Remember, ratings exist principally for advertisers to know who hears their ads. They do not care if you tuned the station in, your mom did it or your kids did it. Or whether you heard it at work or at a store.
The sole issue is how many pairs of ears heard their ad.
A station with lots of public location or office listening may be a great buy, as it reaches people away from home and where they might soon be on their way to purchase something.
Someone compared KOMO-AM to some eastern stations that do well on the AM band. I firmly believe that you need to be "authoritative" when doing an all-news format, and KOMO tends to lack that. They are still too "NW nice" in my opinion. I think they could step it up a bit and be more newsworthy than conversational. Just my opinion. I may be wrong, but the stations that do well in this format have a strict, disciplined news format that means business. KOMO just seems to be an AC version of the news format.
This is the poster I was referring too. I agree. KOMO is under performing, especially since they do have a remote FM frequency, too.
You think people in Seattle are exactly the same as people in DC? Sort of makes any kind of localism useless then.
No, I think there are indeed differences within markets. But Seattle tends to be too "laid back" in my mind. I think the city today is capable of handling "in your face" type of reporting. Actually, it always has. But the producers have been too wimpy to let it roll. An aggressive approach may actually be warranted in Seattle today. Just IMO.
I think that's why a lot of people like living in Seattle. They find easterners obnoxious and pushy.
Look at KUOW. They're very popular. Are they "in your face?"
No I agree with you overall, but I think there is a market or listenership that would grasp on to a more aggressive approach. The city has changed in the past decade and perhaps the audience is changing as well.
What we see in the eastern markets is that the audience for the hard news approach is old. The recent arrivals to Seattle are young. Why do you think those younger people would prefer the more aggressive approach that typically attracts older listeners? What are you basing this on?
Could the numbers be affected by classical listeners who are still part of the workforce even if they're over 55 but have been laid off or furloughed? These people now are spending more weekday hours at home. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that a good number of them are listening to KING more until they can go back to work or find a new job? There may not be significantly more listeners total, but larger numbers of them would likely be listening at any one time, especially during the day.
That is a viable theory.
Remember that total listening in the last few weeks leans old. The 18-34 use of radio has dropped by about 50% in a variety of markets I have checked, while the 35-54 and 55+ are more stable or even up a little in the senior demos.
Since what we see is share in the public data it is not so obvious that total listening is way off, and the closest to stable group is seniors.
Seniors are listening nearly the same as before, while younger listeners are off by half. That means the 6+ or 12+ shares are going to be driven by seniors since "share" is a percentage of radio listening, not a percentage of what the total universe does.
In my opinion, the only problem with KOMO is consistency. When it comes to newsradio, people want to be able to tune in at a specific time, any time of the day, and hear the information that they are looking for. This philosophy works well on other newsradio stations around the country. While KOMO does keep a pretty consistent format most of the time, they do break away for other programming, particularly on the weekend.
WCBS runs infomercials on weekends. Same with KNX. WBZ does talk programming at night.
Big A, how many hours a weekend is WCBS out of news programming? The thing that is nnoying me about KOMO is that the talk programming on weekends only seems to be increasing. The one thing that's really annoying is ow many times do they really need to run Our Auto Expert? I first caught it at 9 Sunday nights, then found that it ran Sundays at noon, then couldn't sleep one day so flipped on KOMO just before 6 in the morning to find it just getting over, having started at 4. Now they've added an additional airing at 10 on Saturday nights.
Two hours Saturday and two hours Sunday. It will be increasing, and yes the audience hates it.
They also air Yankees baseball (when in season) so that means a lot of nights are pre-empted. They do it because it makes more money than news.
They know their prime news audience is daily drive time, so you won't hear infomercials then. But weekends is low listening for the format, and infomercials pay much better than :30 spots.
The programming people understand that the audience hates it, but they all want to get paid too. So that's the compromise.
WABC and WOR are almost totally infomercial on the weekends. It's getting to be very common among news/talkers.
The money has to come from somewhere.
You also have to consider that there is no younger generation of Cisco Morris, Mike Darcy (PDX) etc. 3 hours of lawn and garden commercials wrapped around some folksy humor and tips... Genius!! Those guys actually had the weekend money making machine down pat. Follow with a 3 hour home improvement show and you have another new set of potential clients/listeners...
Possibly the advent of the Saturday morning info-mercial coincided with the retirement/decline of those established weekend shows that generated a ton of revenue in the day.
Possibly the advent of the Saturday morning info-mercial coincided with the retirement/decline of those established weekend shows that generated a ton of revenue in the day.
WABC and WOR are talk stations during the week though, as are KIRO and KXL. Both of those run similar programming on weekends as far as I am aware. Meanwhile WCBS and WTOP may have one paid program on Saturday and another on Sunday, while on KOMO a large portion of those two days is devoted to paid programming. I wouldn't be opposed to KOMO adding a few talk shows during the week, thereby transitioning into a news/talk station.
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