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93.3 Sports Share now Cut in Half

I don’t think most KJR listeners are going to stop listening based on relatively poor performance by Seattle’s brand new hockey team. KJR is very much a personality driven sports radio station, and people are tuning in to hear the personalities they are used to. Much of the time, the hosts on KJR aren’t even talking about sports, but rather topics that relate to men.
 
It must be hard to be a sports talk station in a town where the sports teams are all at low points. I'm watching the Mariners pitch away a game they were winning to Boston. They appear to have no bull pen. It's one thing when your pitchers give up runs. But it's another thing where pitchers can't find the strike zone and walk in runs. Terrible. Then they hit a batter and walk in another run. So the Mariners are in trouble, the Kraken didn't make the playoffs, and the Seahawks just traded away their star quarterback. As I said, not much to talk about. I guess they had fun today with Nick Saban & Jimbo Fisher. But that's about it.
The Mariners seem perpetually to be on the verge of being a really good team. Season after season.

I remember there was some baseball movie during the 1990's (?) or possibly the very early 2000's where it showed the Seattle Mariners being in the World Series or something like that. I think the previous season the Mariners made the playoffs, so perhaps the movie writers thought the idea was realistic enough to put in a movie. ....Er... Nope.
 
The Mariners seem perpetually to be on the verge of being a really good team. Season after season.

I remember there was some baseball movie during the 1990's (?) or possibly the very early 2000's where it showed the Seattle Mariners being in the World Series or something like that. I think the previous season the Mariners made the playoffs, so perhaps the movie writers thought the idea was realistic enough to put in a movie. ....Er... Nope.
I’m a Mariners fan, but even I can admit that it’s a bit comical to extend longest playoff drought in modern sports history. It’s very unlikely that any other team will miss the playoffs as many consecutive years in a row as the Mariners. It will also make a decent playoff run (at some point in the future) all the more sweet.
 
No question. But if you're a sports radio station, and the only pro team you've got is that expansion hockey team that missed the playoffs, it shouldn't be a surprise when the ratings are weak.
This, and one has to take into account that it takes a while to build a new team fan-base that would listen to a PBP radio broadcast. I'd imagine the same goes with older listeners who've been in the habit of listening to sports-talk on 950kHz. You're potentially rebuilding an audience on 93.3MHz. It took years for Sports Radio to build a listener base that might be carrying a PPM around. To expect the ratings to jump up overnight, is unrealistic.
 
"Demographic" is simply a single vital or social statistic of a human population, as the number of births or deaths. "12+" is a demographic, just as "Spanish dominant suburban women 25-44" is a demographic.
I stand by my statement: I hate to think of 18 year olds and 54 year olds in the same demographic. Clarification: ...in the same target demographic. (Yeah, I get it - technically true...but from a practicality standpoint, seldom claimed as any advertiser's "target" demographic.)
 
I don’t think most KJR listeners are going to stop listening based on relatively poor performance by Seattle’s brand new hockey team. KJR is very much a personality driven sports radio station, and people are tuning in to hear the personalities they are used to. Much of the time, the hosts on KJR aren’t even talking about sports, but rather topics that relate to men.
Agree... I mean, the Seahawks are always a big subject for sports talk in Seattle, regardless of the station. Same thing with the Mariners. When Russell Wilson went to Denver, I'm certain it was big talk on KJR-AM as well as KIRO-AM. I wasn't listening to the stations at the time... Most of my Sports talk is national shows.
 
I stand by my statement: I hate to think of 18 year olds and 54 year olds in the same demographic. Clarification: ...in the same target demographic. (Yeah, I get it - technically true...but from a practicality standpoint, seldom claimed as any advertiser's "target" demographic.)
18-54 Males are the one's who listen most to sport radio the most and (as BigA said) is the audience whom products or services trying to reach that demographic range want to reach. Beer companies might skew in the lower band of the range, wanting to become the preferred beer for new beer drinkers, where car dealers might be shooting for the upper end of the demo.
 
18-54 Males are the one's who listen most to sport radio the most and (as BigA said) is the audience whom products or services trying to reach that demographic range want to reach. Beer companies might skew in the lower band of the range, wanting to become the preferred beer for new beer drinkers, where car dealers might be shooting for the upper end of the demo.
There's a difference between a demographic - to which I'm referring, and tends to be more focused - and a demographic range - which can be defined by whatever terms.

18-54 is a range...

But I'm thinking we've all made our points here, and this is now beating a long-dead horse. Moving on...
 
I stand by my statement: I hate to think of 18 year olds and 54 year olds in the same demographic. Clarification: ...in the same target demographic. (Yeah, I get it - technically true...but from a practicality standpoint, seldom claimed as any advertiser's "target" demographic.)
Many advertisers, through their agencies, target "Adults 25-54" with no further limitation. They know that that is a broad multi-generational, multi-racial, multic-cultural and even multi-ethnic group. They do that broad targeting because they have a product or service that sells to anyone and everyone within those age "borders".

"Adults 25-54" is the most common buy specification by agency accounts that use ratings and station rates as the principal criteria for selecting stations.

However, an agency buying 25-54 will try to cover the subsets by buying CHR (Women 25-44), AC (Women 35-54) country (adults 25-54), Urban (African Americans 25-39), Urban AC (African Americans 30-54), Regional Mexican (Spanish Dominant Hispanics 30-49), Spanish CHR (Adults 25-44), Classic Rock (men 35-54) and so on to cover all the subsets in a market.

Sometimes they will look at cume duplication between stations, and thus they might not buy two country stations even if both are highly rated, but they might add a lower rated Alt Rock station that duplicates less with the main stations on the buy... or maybe they add the Adult Hits station for the same reason.

This is why we see stations that have smaller share numbers but a less duplicated audience getting on buys while a higher rated station that duplicates with others on the buy getting left out. This tactic increases reach and frequency significantly if done strategically.

Accounts that have a more limited set of potential buyers will be more selective. A "modern" color makeup line will possibly only target 18-34 and within that, only non-ethnic targeted stations. A brand well known in Mexico will only target Spanish Dominant women 18-49 and only buy on formats they believe to have predominantly Mexican listeners and only in markets where the Hispanic population is mostly from Mexico.

This is also the reason why beer accounts only buy against males and then select all-sports first and then formats that have significant male composition like rock and country. Women don´t buy enough beer and when they do, it is predominantly for a male partner so female leaning stations are ignored usually... and they buy 25-54.

Oh, and both Black and Hispanic buys almost never target 25-54 as 18-49 is the main target for those groups. And in TV, 18-49 is the target for the overwhelming majority of buys on the traditional network system of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision and Telemundo. In those groups, there are some male-only or female-only buys, but nearly all are broad 25-54 targeted. And in those cases, we still have a target that is over 50 years wide.

Radio stations target specific age groups because they know that agency buyers "like" those groups. And that is why there are no teen or senior targeted successful stations.
 
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There's a difference between a demographic - to which I'm referring, and tends to be more focused - and a demographic range - which can be defined by whatever terms.

18-54 is a range...

But I'm thinking we've all made our points here, and this is now beating a long-dead horse. Moving on...
12+ is a demographic.

"Demography" is the study of the composition of populations including things like age, gender, income, education, race, ethnicity, and going as deep as propensity to baldness or as broadly as political party membership.

Wikipedia defines demography as "Demographic analysis can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion, and ethnicity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography

The demographic target of Nielsen in the PPM markets is "persons age 6 and over". They divide that broader scope into over 20 subsets that have precise weighting... not just age but even language preference among Hispanics as well as geographic areas within a market along with income and education to name a few.

It's not even always about age: "suburban homeowners" or "imported car owners" are demographic groups that have no real age limit per se but can be of vital interest to insurance companies or car makers.

The broadest demographic and, indeed, the demographic target of the U.S. Census, is "everyone".
 
They aren't. There are lots of subtargets within the bigger group. The 18-54 is just the sellable universe.
It is also the most common buy criteria for agency accounts, even though there are hundreds of subsets that agencies may be instructed to buy by their client.

If you look at buys for Spanish language radio and TV, they are overwhelmingly against 18-49. Not 18-24 or 25-44 or 35-49... just 18-49 or, sometimes, women or men in that age range.
 
Years ago I may have said this, and I probably will still say this...

At this rate, I will be a grandpa by the time the Mariners make it to the World Series. Or, they will have moved to Oklahoma City like our Sonics.
Like a broken record, they have potential in April, then they stink in May, June, July, August, September.
Maybe the spirit of Dave Niehaus should knock some sense into the bullpen and pitchers.
 
Agree that sports is a non-ratings sell, but why move it to what could be a viable FM stick in another format if you don't care about ratings? You can get a one share on an AM. It is nice to see KJEB do well, proof that a call letter change means nothing in the PPM world. Adding Bender in mornings was a smart move and is paying off. KNWN seems to be dropping a bit, wonder if they will consider moving it to 101.5 to better compete for ratings with KIRO FM and KUOW with a full market FM? That is of course if they care about ratings. Hubbard has to be thrilled with the performance of KRWM and KQMV, top two 25-54. I bet they care about ratings. When was the last time outside of Xmas that KRWM was this strong in demos that matter?
KNWN is already on 101.5 HD2
 
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