I'm not in the radio business like David so perhaps I can present a different perspective. I live in a top 50 market where there most of the audience is "owned" by two large national groups. Both groups have essentially the same portfolio of formats, a urban skewing kid's station, a pickem' up truck country, a soccer mom softee, and the station that still thinks "Boston" is the most important music ever produced.
I'm sure the turnstile sales staff is "trained" to sell "run of stations" because the same clients are represented on all stations. It sounds like the 80/20 rule is in full force, 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the client base. The indentity of the individual stations is not important. One group has the dominant country, while the other has the dominant softee. So 25-49 women's cume and TSL per group is probably a wash. I'm sure there's a lot of button mashing, because my wife, a typical terrestrial listener, looks for songs she likes on the six buttons in "FM preset layer one" of the in dash. She could NOT tell you what stations are actually programmed to those buttons, other than maybe 101 or 94.7. She will never actually hear a commercial. If it's on at work, it's background clutter.
Stations with high TSL make more sense to me because there actually is some attention paid to the non music part of the presentation. There may not be as many "impressions", but the impressions that are made are valid. I still believe in stations like KPIG that build a commitee of loyal listeners. These listeners are much more likely to visit an advertiser, because they are part of that community. It would be VERY interesting to see some real research on the effectiveness of advertising dollars spent, in other words, real "return on investment". Radio seems to be so focused on big raw numbers that the true value of those numbers is lost in the background noise.
The point is this....there is "audience", and then there are "listeners", and they are NOT the same thing. Radio needs to realize that, because they can more effectively serve their client base by delivering what the cleint REALLY wants, qualified BUYERS.
"The Sound" will reach listeners that no other station reaches, and while it will never be a ratings juggernaut still has a valid place on the dial. But the egomania that dictates decision making in the radio industry will never allow it to survive. KFOG and WXRT could not be launched in today's world. They would have a two year run at best before the "flippers" got a hold of them. Same thing will happen with "The Sound". Too bad.
Just my cynical rant
