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New York Ratings August 2024 - WCBS 880 Goes Out With A Whimper

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

"In what will be its final full monthly, News 880 WCBS dips 1.7 to 1.5 (stream 0.2) to tie the all-time station record low share set in May and June."

radioinsight.com

August 2024 (7/18 – 8/14) Nielsen Audio PPM Ratings Day 1: KERA-FM Surges To Record Highs

Nielsen begins its monthly release of PPM ratings with today’s Day 1 update including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Long Island, Riverside/San Bernardino, San Jose, and Middlesex/Somerset/Union. All the numbers can be found at...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
The Block WXBK 94.7 trending down over the past 3 months from 1.8 to 1.5 overall. Tied with the final number for WCBS AM 880.
 
And WPLK-Love is breathing down their necks with a 1.4. Lowest-rated FM in the city.
 
DToTheJ said:
"In what will be its final full monthly, News 880 WCBS dips 1.7 to 1.5 (stream 0.2) to tie the all-time station record low share set in May and June."
Click to expand...

Audacy did everything they could to kill WCBS before they shut it down completely and clearly they succeeded. It would be interesting to know how the morning show was doing at the end, though.
 
www.insideradio.com

Listeners Mourn Loss Of WCBS-AM, A ‘Once Indispensable Part Of New York.’

In the wake of Audacy’s announcement that “Newsradio 880” WCBS-AM will end its 57-year all-news format Aug. 26 — when Good Karma Brands will move the programming of “ESPN New
www.insideradio.com www.insideradio.com

---For the past five years, WCBS-AM has run a distant second to Audacy’s all-news sister 1010 WINS, according to Nielsen. That became a far more distant second when WINS began its simulcast on 92.3 FM in October 2022, with WCBS-AM currently averaging a 0.6 share during AM drive among adults 25-54 and 0.4 for adults 18-49 for 2024-to-date, vs. WINS’ 4.1 and 3.8 in those demos, respectively.

Since 2019, WCBS-AM was its most competitive with WINS during the height of COVID, hitting a 2.4 share high with 18-49s weekdays 6-10am in April 2020, while WINS, still on just AM at the time, delivered a 6.8. For 25-54s, CBS-AM’s highest point in the daypart was 1.9 in June 2020.---
 
What station should have been saved WCBS or WINS. In the history of AM radio what one was more important.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Audacy did everything they could to kill WCBS before they shut it down completely and clearly they succeeded. It would be interesting to know how the morning show was doing at the end, though.
Click to expand...

They didn't do anything. The owners of WCBS held on to the concept of two competing all-news stations for 25 years!!! Where else has that ever happened? They stuck with it because the audience stuck with it. But the audience was aging and shrinking. After 25 years, there was only enough audience to support one station. The company didn't kill WCBS, time itself killed it. But the company hung on longer than it had to.

What critics ignore is that if Audacy really wanted to kill WCBS, they would have replaced news in middays and nights with conservative talk. That's what they did to KRLD in Dallas. It took what was once a top biller to a 1 share station, and helped the NPR station in town get its best ratings ever. Has they done that to WCBS, I would agree with you. But they didn't.
 
TheBigA said:
They didn't do anything. The owners of WCBS held on to the concept of two competing all-news stations for 25 years!!! Where else has that ever happened? They stuck with it because the audience stuck with it. But the audience was aging and shrinking. After 25 years, there was only enough audience to support one station. The company didn't kill WCBS, time itself killed it. But the company hung on longer than it had to.

What critics ignore is that if Audacy really wanted to kill WCBS, they would have replaced news in middays and nights with conservative talk. That's what they did to KRLD in Dallas. It took what was once a top biller to a 1 share station, and helped the NPR station in town get its best ratings ever. Has they done that to WCBS, I would agree with you. But they didn't.
Click to expand...
Could Audacy have saved WCBS and tanked WINS. Or was WINS always in a better position.
 
Don CT said:
Could Audacy have saved WCBS and tanked WINS. Or was WINS always in a better position.
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The answer is in the demos. The approach used by WINS attracts a relatively younger audience than WCBS. So they could have saved WCBS by speeding up their delivery and doing shorter stories.

People keep focusing on WCBS and WINS. But no one is mentioning WNYC. Fans of the WCBS style will find it at WNYC. I wonder if this change will help WNYC the way changes in Dallas benefited KERA.
 
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pjc1961 said:
---WCBS-AM...became a far more distant second when WINS began its simulcast on 92.3 FM in October 2022.
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Exactly. Audacy gave a fabulous FM signal to WINS and left WCBS to wither on the dying AM band. Then they started running the same local field reports on both stations after conning the union into giving them the opportunity to do that. Then Audacy killed live news reports all evening and overnights on WCBS and they continued to run infomercials on the weekend.

So yes, they one hundred percent did everything to kill it with the usual corporate cost cutting plans in mind.

That probably would not have happened if there were real competition between Audacy and another operator running the two news stations that both ranked among the nation's top-10 billers. It was a desperation move from a financially and ethically bankrupt corporation and another example of how consolidation has hurt media and the public in America.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Exactly. Audacy gave a fabulous FM signal to WINS and left WCBS to wither on the dying AM band.
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The main thing is THEY LEFT IT ALONE. They didn't force anyone who loved the station to change their settings on their radios. They didn't change the style of the writing or the delivery. They didn't hurt the station in any way. They didn't replace news in middays with conservative talk the way they did in Dallas. There are lots of things they COULD have done, and didn't. The cost cutting that hit WCBS equally hit WINS, but for some reason the audience still preferred WINS.

Theater of My Mind said:
That probably would not have happened if there were real competition between Audacy and another operator running the two news stations that both ranked among the nation's top-10 billers.
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Both stations were faced with direct competition on FM by another operator ten years ago, and they won the battle. Stop making this about Audacy. They stuck with an aging and obsolete format for 25 years. They did everything they could do to keep both stations alive. But they can't stop time. There has been no new all-news station in any major market in the last ten years that has succeeded. Audacy has done more than ANY owner to keep it alive.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Then Audacy killed live news reports all evening and overnights on WCBS and they continued to run infomercials on the weekend.
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Wait a minute! I was told by someone here that they DIDN'T run infomercials on the weekend. Which is it?

KMan said:
KMan said:
There were very few infomercials on weekends. Less than what KNX had before they were banished to the AM only.
Click to expand...

There wasn't that much of it though obviously there is variance if you are referring to two weeks ago, two years ago, or a decade ago.

Tanya Hansen did a full newsblock from 6AM-11AM ET both Saturdays and Sunday. Maybe there was a brokered hour after she wrapped up (usually on Saturdays), maybe there wasn't.

Until the recent changes about a year ago to replace the live news programming weekend late afternoons and evenings with WCBS Magazine, another anchor would follow after Tanya and anchor live mid-days.

Yes, there was some brokered programming. But it wasn't much. An hour or two on Saturdays.
Click to expand...
 
TheBigA said:
Wait a minute! I was told by someone here that they DIDN'T run infomercials on the weekend. Which is it?
Click to expand...

They had been running them on weekend mornings. Faux call-in financial advisor infomercials from what I recall. If they did stop then the damage had already been done. I had already stopped tuning in to find out, that's the point.
 
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