Not to mention most of the day is VT'd. No incentive to flip at all.
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October Nielsens
- Thread starter ckg279
- Start date
Yeah, I wasn't being absolutely literal in my "copy/paste" comment. Fact is that the new guys and the legacy guys playlist impression to a general listener are highly similar. Yes, I'm confident that a vertical lookup of the two will provide some minor failed matches. Most of those will, I believe, center around the lack of 'from-the-past' (i.e. early 2000-early 2010's) hits being heard on the new guys.
So, yep, I agree, it's competition. That's awesome for folks like me, IMO. Thing is the core of the competition at this point in time is not - to my perception - in the playlist. Heck, if I have a hankering for Eric Church's latest tune, either one will do the trick. Same goes for most of the "name brands." Competition seems to be more in the actual amount of music offered. Though I haven't done - and have no interest/motivation in doing - an actual time study, I believe that the new guys would win that battle... probably by a coupla songs+/- per hour. When I turn the new guys on, it;s clearly less likely that I'm gonna be immediately smacked in the face with commercials. On a personal note for the mornings, with the new guys I am less likely to have to suffer through all the personal ramblings of an obvious Lancaster resident or be regaled repeatedly about being the father to three boys under 6 years old (or whatever age).
I haven't a clue how to correlate any of this to cold hard cash generation or ratings, but I'm sure some of the so-called wizards of radio/media believe they can.
Anyhow, I think your comment(s) and mine are going toward the same thing, maybe(?).
This should be easy for you to understand. WYRK currently has an 8 share. The Wolf has a 1.3. WYRK wins in a ratings blowout. Given the state of Radio, ratings no longer guarantee revenue. WYRK would still be the better option for an advertiser looking to reach an audience. If The Wolf is playing few commercials, that answers your revenue question. When 107.7 was Alternative, they played almost no commercials and still couldn't get ratings.
Sales reps for Audacy can't sell The Wolf using ratings. They will get laughed at. The station is a "throw in". Buy time on STAR or WGR, and get one free on The Wolf. Alternative failed on 107.7 and Country will fare no better...
Nobody would give spots away. That's bad business. But you can charge a lower price for the same audience. Or you can promise a spot price won't go up if the ratings increase in 6 months. Lock them in for a 6 month deal at the lower price.
They got rid of roger and they found nobody to replace him.
They never did. The format, advertiser preferences, the sales staff, results... all are part of the sales formula.
On the other had, if the price is commensurate with the ratings and the station's limited coverage match a client's sales territory, the station can make money.
Yes they can. They just price accordingly. And they focus on direct accounts in the coverage area of the station.
That is wrong, too. You have gotten every point you made wrong on this post. BigA is correct that they will price accordingly and may have special offers, such as a "Pioneer Package" with guaranteed rates.
In my supermarket... and I bet it will be in yours... the big container of laundry detergent costs more than the little one. But the product is still just as good, just less of it. I don't want to spend on a big bottle as it gets old and sticky before it is used up. An advertiser may like the idea of a "smaller bottle" where they can buy more spots and get frequency that is vastly higher than on the big. station. I trust you understand "reach and frequency", don't you?
Not exactly true. They took his shift and split it between Rob & Sue.
That's an absurd analogy. The smaller package of toilet paper is more accurate.
Your statements are "Impression Management". Why didn't "Frequency & Reach" work for Alternative Buffalo? The format promised the hip young demographics that need to "buy now"...
I'm in. Who can resist a discussion of laundry detergent!? Interesting analogy. Maybe a better example is having the choice to buy the less expensive New! Improved! store brand that's "comparable to Tide" rather than buying the name/legacy brand that's proven and better known, even when both are the same size/wight/content, but the store brand is priced at discount.
I'll hang up and listen to your answer.
I'll hang up and listen to your answer.
Size matters. Bigger audience, higher rate. Higher rate, and some accounts can't afford to buy enough weekly spots to be effective. Buy the little station at low rates, buy 30 spots a week, get good reach of the station's cume and enough frequency to be noticed.
You are apparently not familiar with Reach & Frequency or you would not have inverted an industry-standard term. This explains why you don't understand quite a few of the things that professionals like Buddy and the in-market veterans that are here on this group have explained to you.
R&F work. But if the audience is not right for many accounts, the station does not sell no matter how many spots are bought. As I said, there are multiple variables, the first being whether there is a match for the advertiser and the listeners of a station. Second is if the station's listeners are located in proximity to the advertiser's service zone. And so on... there is a whole set of variables that also include the creative, the quality of merchandise or service at the advertiser's business, competitive businesses having a greater share of voice and so on.
Also valid. But in the case of the "New! Improved!" you have a different brand. In this case, two stations in the same format, one with fewer listeners, and lower rates. Smaller businesses can get good reach and frequency with the lesser station and stay within a budget, while on the big station few spots would be lost and not have enough repetition to have impact.
Sure, an advertiser can buy spots dirt cheap on The Wolf. They still will expect a return on their investment. A client will need to feel that they are not wasting money. The Sales Rep will have to deliver the "Impression Management" spiel to convince them it's working. It didn't work for Alternative Buffalo.
Another poster here said he hears very few commercials on The Wolf. Not much Reach, Frequency, or Revenue...
The opportunity strikes me here to clarify my comment(s) to which I believe you are referring. I did not mean to suggest that the new guys play "very few commercials." As 'Joe Listener' I wish that were the case. But no. My comments were meant to indicate that, whatever the music/mix strategy is, it seems to me that there is more music and less commercial intrusion. I don't listen with a stopwatch, so I cannot tell you how quantitatively accurate my sense is. Sure, it could simply be how the various aspects are spaced out.
And I have to suspect that the folks at Audacy(?) are well aware of all of that, no? Unless of course they're doing this Wolf thing for nothing more than a scientific experiment just to see what happens. If the Wolf sales folks are trying to sell presumably fewer listeners at a premium price, I'd be shocked - simply from a business perspective. It would seem to me that all parties recognize the strengths & weaknesses of utilizing a lesser listened to station.
All of this discussion is about a station that's been in the format for one complete book and is still advertising for air talent to co-host mornings. How about giving them a few more books before we start shoveling dirt onto them? Maybe they'll be a hit in the hinterlands east of Buffalo and make a lot more money than they were making with alternative. That might not even show up in the book, but the revenue will show up.
Some people blather and complain but don't offer any viable options or alternatives.
Some people blather and complain but don't offer any viable options or alternatives.
In the heyday of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, those three were at different levels of circulation, Each made money for decades, and each priced based on circulation.
As I said, a limited budget advertiser does not get much for 6 spots a week on the big station. But for the same budget, maybe they get 30 spots on The Wolf. They get frequency, and that gets results; it probably gets better results than those 6 spots nobody hears often enough to remember.
And, with the 30 spots on The Wolf, the client will have a large if not dominant share of voice.
What Is Share of Voice (SOV)? | Sprout Social if you are not familiar with this concept. Lots of lower rated stations use this concept to sell large schedules in a "clean" environment. "On that other station, all your competitors are outspending you. Here, you will own the station if you buy now!"
I thought someone posted that they promised uninterrupted music at the launch. Of course, there are no commercials then.
Share of Voice is an interesting concept. I'd read and heard about this many years ago, but it was then described by a sales manager as Real Estate. He'd tell clients, "You'll own more real estate on our station than our competitors because the neighborhood isn't as crowded." This worked quite well ... for about six months. Because a good number of clients bought time on his station, the "neighborhood" became more crowded. Commercial breaks went from three commercials (and back to music) to six commercials per break. Rather than increase the rate, sales asked programming created another break in the hour to bring the number of spots per break down to a maximum of four, which again made it appear that the "neighborhood" wasn't as crowded. There's that old conundrum, "increase the rate." A lot of the early buyers were locked in at a special introductory offer ("Pioneer Package") and their rates held.
The spot surge was understandable. Sales people work on commission; sales managers (at least back then) received an override. If their sales reps did well, they did well. Smart sales managers did everything they could to help their reps do well. But these days, one wonders. Two breaks per hour seems to be the standard of the industry in most music formats. News-talk and sports-talk have more breaks per hour to accommodate a business surge. But if business on The Wolf picks up and the commercial load goes from four units per break to six or eight units (or more) per break, the validity of Share of Voice or Real Estate diminishes, especially because most music stations are wedded to only two breaks per hour.
Those comments, to me, are fascinating... and seems to confirm what I perceived. So, relative to ratings and revenue (whether believed to have a high correlation to each other, or not), how/why did the two (typically longer) breaks per hour come about? For me, when I'm hit with what I expect to be one of these awful lengthy breaks, I'm gone. And if it's the first thing I hear when turning the set on, I'm gone even more quickly. I'd have to guess that is not the case with most listeners(???)... otherwise, it'd be foolish, no? I am far more likely to suffer two 30 second commercials every three or four sings, than five minutes worth a coupla times an hour. Assuming the radio brain trust believes that longer & less frequent commercials translate into more money in the long run(?).
Any commercials are a turn-off. Shorter, more frequent breaks leaves people with the impression that every time they tune in, they're hearing commercials. There is no good solution. Would you be less likely to leave if there were five or six breaks an hour? Research says the people who switch away for commercials do so at the first one. So they try to limit the number of interruptions in programming to two or three.
Ahhh. OK. Makes sense to me.
Interesting that apparently most folks would jump ship due to even a brief break. That suggests that those folks must not feel there's anything really worthy for which to stick around. The product truly is a commodity. Anything else is better than a coupla commercials. I'd think that'd be the failing of the given station(?). Shouldn't one feel like whatever is coming up is worth staying put?
For me, if I felt confident that there'd be only one or two commercials at any given time (say, up to 60 seconds+/- aggregate), I'd likely stick it out as a rule... even if it was 3, 4, 5 times an hour. But, for example in the case of WYRK, I know with reasonable certainty, that once the big hand starts approaching the top or bottom of the hour and a commercial comes on, I'm destined for seemingly 5 - 10 minutes of blabber. I'm gone as quickly as I am able to move the tuner (if I'm in a car, it's pretty lightning fast - almost Pavlovian, I suppose). My return is very inconsistent.
Again, I don't know how this (my) type of behavior results in rating and/or revenue +/-.
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