Looking at Des Moines' latest ratings and I've noticed KGGO is not appearing in the last book.
Did they get de listed etc.?
Did they get de listed etc.?
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KGGO's low or not ratings?
- Thread starter Lester_the_NightFly
- Start date
Word from inside the building is that the new method that uses a count of a certain number of devices, specifically cars, found that KGGO had very low listening numbers. Even lower than 98-3 The Vibe. This new method uses AI to sense who/what is listening. I think it's got a cap of something like 2000 devices at a time.
What is probably being referenced is DTS AutoStage, which utilizes in-car HD radios to show real-time listening, though without demographic data. It is being trialed by many companies including Cumulus. AutoStage does not utilize AI.
That would likely be it. My mistake on the AI part.
The new system referenced above is apparently what they are going to try to use to see who's listening and to what. They will use it to try to use as ratings data. Or make program changes from according to what I have heard.
The new system referenced above is apparently what they are going to try to use to see who's listening and to what. They will use it to try to use as ratings data. Or make program changes from according to what I have heard.
The sample size of HD-equipped car radios in PPM markets is typically 30-40x the number of in-tab meters. Nationwide, there are currently about six million vehicles equipped with DTS AutoStage. I'm not sure many statisticians would classify that as a "shit sample." Is it the be-all, end-all? No. Are there biases inherent in the methodology? Sure. It is still a nascent technology and it is not accredited research by any stretch of the imagine, but it is serving as another valuable piece of research to those utilizing it.
The vast majority of cars are available with HD Radio, at least as an option. Not like you have to buy a Lincoln Navigator for $90,000 to have it.
I had a rental spec Hyundai Sonata last month with HD Radio. I believe all US-market Hyundai cars have had HD radio for over a decade, and Hyundai is not a rich people brand. Many of those cars will have made it down to used car buyers by now. (I don't know if Hyundai has the particular AutoStage feature Huff mentions).
One of the issues here is "how many 12-year-old and older cars have working HD radio?"
12 years is roungly the median age of US vehicles.
People at the lower socioeconomic levels are likely to have older cars and also ones that did not have HD as standard going back before about 2013. That means that a disproportionate number of Blacks and Hispanics will not have HD radios and will, thus, not be measured.
Unless we can build an index sample that allows for weighting for older cars and the demographics of those that have them, we are going to have a large but highly biased sample.
But, as I just mentioned, half of U.S. cars are 12 years old or older.
And, as Huff mentions, there are about 6 million DTS AutoStage cars. That is out of bout 290 million registered vehicles in the country. I doubt that those cars and trucks are a representative sample of the vehicle universe.
And, unless you use "Rent-a-Wreck" most rental cars are very recent.
It will be interesting to see how Cumulus is able to make this work. I worry they may actually have to pivot in unexpected ways as/if they realize what people are really listening to and I don't know that as a company they are really ready for it. (At least in Des Moines) There's certain broadcasting styles and formats that they do -and- don't specialize in. The listener and the advertiser seem to be very disconnected in this City. Maybe some things will stay the same (97-3 KHKI) but I think they may be shocked at what people are listening to and for how long people are tuning into their own properties. And if they cant find the numbers to sell KGGO, for example, but aren't willing to pivot to something else....do they just sell the station to someone else?
It kinda reinforces my theory that there is an effort to divest from terrestrial radio and move into digital/streaming, by design and on purpose.
It kinda reinforces my theory that there is an effort to divest from terrestrial radio and move into digital/streaming, by design and on purpose.
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The only cars I have ever driven that were equipped with HD Radios were rentals.
Exactly what I mean by "shit sample".
The other possibility here is that Cumulus is rethinking the way they sell stuff and as a result, demographics as have been traditionally sold, will be approached differently. For example, they aren't going to sell demos the traditional targeted way and instead will sell based on the market and the product with more generic targeting. "X business is in this market, this gets this many listens/hits...we can connect you to X many people" It seems weird and counter intuitive but maybe this is where Cumulus just is now with their style of broadcasting. Seems like it still wouldn't work well.
In the 90's, an experimental system called "Actual Radio Measurement" was tried in a few markets. Seemed like it would set up monitoring in certain high traffic locations and would be able to tell what, if anything, those who drove by were listening to. I don't know if or how well it worked, but the fact that it only referenced in-car listening was a problem at the time, which was only about 1/3 of total listening. I understand radio depends more on automobile listening than it did in the past, but any monitoring based on HD listening will be heavily confined to vehicles.
From what I have heard, Cumulus has been experimenting with several different methodologies to measure listening. Don't be surprised if that's not the only way it measures listening in most of its markets.
If there's a conflict between the listener and the advertiser, the advertiser will win every time. The advertiser is the one who pays for the station. I don't know how KGGO does these days, but it seems to be a pretty hit-heavy classic rock station. Des Moines shouldn't be different enough from the average market for that not to work, though I suppose The Bus could be eating its lunch. As for what Cumulus does next, your guess is as good as mine. For the right price, I've been told you could have almost any Cumulus station or market, but the key words are "almost any" and "for the right price." Nobody's giving Cumulus $1 for KGGO and assuming operations.
You ride in the direction the horse is going. Digital has reached critical mass, and that's not likely to change. The listeners want it. The advertisers want it, too. Those who don't have viable digital strategies will be the first to either leave or be forced out. I've said it before: I'm not convinced terrestrial radio is in a death spiral, but anyone who thinks radio usage will go back to the level it was in 2010 is fooling themselves. If (or when) a death spiral happens, it will happen slowly, then suddenly. AM was still a viable way to make money in most markets 20 years ago. It's generally not today. Des Moines is actually a lot better off than most markets with greater than 10% of listening coming from AM. It's less than half that in most large and major markets. When the most powerful AM in Indianapolis signed off the air a few years ago, most nobody even noticed. Almost all of its listeners were tuned to FM translators that rebroadcast the programming, and those translators just switched to rebroadcasting HD multicast channels.
The original system, back in the later 90's, could only detect FM listening. Today, of course, not as big an issue. In the test markets of LA and Phoenix, they did not sell the service to any station, but a number of retailers bought to know what stations the people driving by their locations were listening to.
The newer system uses a circuit in some newer car radios to identify the in-car listening. The data is collected "on line" so the listener does not have to participate in any way.
Neither system identifies who or how many are listening. It does have the ability to have sample sizes of several million nationally, but no qualitative data at all.
In some cases, they will go to Eastlan. That already exists, and is less expensive and recognized by some but not all agencies. The issue here is that we buy ratings to sell to agencies, and any system must be acceptable to them in a very high percentage.
Yet many of the digital options are ad-free or have ad-free option, so they don't benefit advertisers at all. The biggest ad "sponge" would be podcasts, in fact.
It is on the air, with a low power temporary operation... nobody noticed as they had added FM.