Actually, Buffalo is a dairy market and he’s right.
I never said it was not a diary market.
The ratings, even for storms, really are affected by the political philosophy of talk shows. Ask anyone in Rochester (also a diary market) about WHAM or in Buffalo about WBEN and they will say they are “conservative talk radio,” “right wing,” “pro Trump” and sometimes exaggerations like “Nazi talk,”
“Angry White Men,” or they will say “good talk,” “fair,” “talk radio,” “talk shows” or often the hosts’ names and put entries into the reporting section.
As someone who did his first diary review in 1970 and has even gotten five books reissued, I can say that what you describe is a) very normal and common in every era with every political and social position and, b) not terribly common... more "usual" than "frequent".
You will see people literally writing in the comments section of Nielsen Diaries that a respondent listens to WBEN for news, but that they refuse to listen to WBEN for talk shows. Then in the listening reporting section, the very same listener will not write any listening to WBEN or WHAM. You see it every book. Even though these stations are listened to every day, some diary keepers will mention they listen but record no listening in the entry section!
And such comments are, as I just said, common in every market. And it is not rare for people to not include stations they switch to for news or traffic for brief interludes, while they include all the "primary" (P1, P2) station listening in adequate detail.
You are not describing anything we don't see in every diary market and in every PPM market before it became metered. The call letters change, but that type of comment is, as I said, "usual but not common".
We have Bob Lonsberry in Rochester and WBEN has Tom Bauerle over in Buffalo. Some hate them and some love them. And for all the good and bad, these two kind of define the whole image of the stations and overshadow whatever else the stations do for better and worse.
Your point? Every conservative talk station... no, every talk station of any kind as well as mostly talk morning shows... are defined that way. In every market.
Unlike in a PPM market, listeners can vote against you with diaries. It is very common in our polarizing times.
Yet "voting against" is not evident in diaries, based on having viewed millions of them over many decades. Yes, people don't write in occasional light listening, but that goes for tertiary music stations, too. We used to call it "phantom cume" and it was made up of lighter listening, whether to a news station for traffic and headlines or a music station only used occasionally.
In the diary system, the average listener mentioned 2 to 3 station. In the diary, it is 5 to 6 in 7 days going up to several more in total over a two to three week period. That has nothing to do with ideology or partisanship. It's just that diarykeepers just never seem to register minor llistening very well.
The poster above calls them “ridiculous right wing shows,” but to just be unbiased and keep it to facts, we do know that in diary markets, talk actually does connect to the other parts of a station including news and weather. He’s right about it even though I wouldn’t state it that way.
That is a question of attitude and a person's partiality, and as I said, has affected the diary methodology since 1965. We have even seen it in Puerto Rico since 1999 and even, in fact, in Mexico during the several years that Arbitron tried to "break into" that market in the early 2000's and where non-literate households were surveyed in person verbally.
