But getting back to my prior comment; just because you like the station or it shows up in an occasional book, doesn't mean it could be considered financially successful. Some on this discussion board see ratings, in particular 6+, as some sort of success scoreboard. It doesn't work that way. What 6+ ratings don't reveal, is whether the station is consistently serving a particular audience in the demographic that potential advertisers want to reach. In other words; if the 6+ audience being counted is too old or young, then there's just as much a problem as having low 6+ ratings. Also as David mentioned; success is determined by having consistent in-demo ratings over several books. An occasional ratings bounce doesn't translate into some ratioed amount of money through the door.
Several years ago, when radio was the only thing around, a colleague purchased a couple of FM rimshots. They spent a pretty substantial amount of capital on rebuilding the technical infrastructure, had a solid programming strategy, plus spent quite a bit on outside promotion. When coming online with the new format, they definitely saw what amounts to a 'sample pop', settling out over a couple of books to a much lower share. Following up with focus groups, it was determined that their commuting in-car audience lost interest because the station coverage wasn't predictable, so many commuters essentially gave up.
Now of course you have streaming, so if a rimshot station streams, the full market signal is less important, provided there's programming that listeners of the correct demo will seek out via a stream.
