April 2022 Bay Area Radio PPM Ratings

[Radiomusik]

Here are the April 2022 San Francisco Radio PPM Ratings:

https://ratings.****************/content/arb009

And the April 2022 San Jose Radio PPM Ratings:

https://ratings.****************/content/arb215

Any thoughts or observations

 

[Street Novelist]

They really need to get rid of LatinoMix. No one is listening to that shit. But I'm sure they won't make any changes. It's crazy how KRTY is #1 in San Jose, and it's not even close. I wouldn't imagine country would be that big in the Bay.

 

[KilowattKat]

They really need to get rid of LatinoMix. No one is listening to that crap. But I'm sure they won't make any changes. It's crazy how KRTY is #1 in San Jose, and it's not even close. I wouldn't imagine country would be that big in the Bay.

KRTY may be the only station in radio history to be sold and change format while being #1 in a large market with their best ratings ever. At least they went out while on top.

And what's the deal with "Dave"? Something needs to be done there, perhaps a retooling of the playlist.

 

[K.M. Richards]

They really need to get rid of LatinoMix. No one is listening to that crap. But I'm sure they won't make any changes. It's crazy how KRTY is #1 in San Jose, and it's not even close. I wouldn't imagine country would be that big in the Bay.

I wonder, if we were to see the rankings of both in their respective target demos, how well that "no one is listening" argument would hold up.

 

[davideduardo]

KRTY may be the only station in radio history to be sold and change format while being #1 in a large market with their best ratings ever. At least they went out while on top.

The problem is that, for major advertisers and ad agencies, San Jose is not bought separately. It is as if the market does not exist for some of them, in fact.

Because "San Jose" is, in any case, just a break-out of a piece of the San Francisco market, advertisers buy off the SF book, where KRTY did not have a good showing because of its very limited signal.

All during 2021, KRTY averaged around 25th in 25-54 in the SF book. That won't get you on a buy.

 

[david]

KBAY shows big slides since flipping to country ...and sister KEZR 106.5 did not pick up all of that drop, so early signs for BAY Country are not promising. I theorize its intended audience wants to relish KRTY for as long as it remains in existence, to get the final flavor of a long familiar friend; and then will shift over to 94.5 after its demise... so if were Alpha Media I would await to see what happens once 95.3 goes away.

 

[michael hagerty]

KBAY shows big slides since flipping to country ...and sister KEZR 106.5 did not pick up all of that drop, so early signs for BAY Country are not promising. I theorize its intended audience wants to relish KRTY for as long as it remains in existence, to get the final flavor of a long familiar friend; and then will shift over to 94.5 after its demise... so if were Alpha Media I would await to see what happens once 95.3 goes away.

You've just hit it. KBAY is in a period of competing with KRTY at the same time that it has blown off the portion of its previous audience that doesn't want to listen to a country station. None of that is any gauge of how KBAY will perform 90 days after KRTY flips.

 

[Alan Smithee]

Dave FM still near the bottom, how much longer will that go on?

 

[michael hagerty]

Dave FM still near the bottom, how much longer will that go on?

What are they doing to promote?

Look---6+ numbers are worthless, but since they're the only ones we have:

There are nine radio stations in SF that do a 3.0 or better. One of them is a 7.7, one's a 6.6 and another's a 6.1.

Of the six remaining, only three are in the fours, leaving the others in the threes.

There are probably stations making some money below a 2.9, but the real winners are 3.0 and up. So what does it take to get a station out of a 1.4 and into at least the threes?

 

[CassChopper96]

Is it just me or has KLLC dropped a lot in the ratings in recent months

 

[MarkW]

I see a lot of probable sampling issues in the data.

 

[davideduardo]

I see a lot of probable sampling issues in the data.

No more than any other PPM market right now. The main issue is the lack of replacement meters due to the chip shortage and shipping logistics. This means that many of the supposedly proportional demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, language, income, etc) are weighted due to lack of participants in the proper number.

 

[K.M. Richards]

David's answer reminds me that there are many possible external factors involved in the sampling and calculating of the ratins and perhaps before jumping to conclusions we need to consider those ... especially the ones that are pandemic-related, as David points out.

Of course, in diary markets there is a much higher probability of "sampling" issues, as there always has been. Unlike the PPM which logs actual exposure to a station, the diary remains subject to people having to "remember" when they listened and whether there were gaps in that listening. I am reasonably certain that the historic error creation of people who have the radio on all day either at home or in the office logging a continuous listening period, when PPM has proven that is incredibly unlikely.

No process relying on outside data is ever going to be perfect, but the margin of error is still going to be better with a PPM sample that needs to be weighted due to a lack of participants than it will ever be for diary markets.

 

[davideduardo]

No process relying on outside data is ever going to be perfect, but the margin of error is still going to be better with a PPM sample that needs to be weighted due to a lack of participants than it will ever be for diary markets.

What a lot of people don't differentiate is the methodology of the PPM and that of the diary. The PPM is a panel, while the diary is a random probability sample.

A panel is semi-permanent... today a panelist can participate for over two years. The panel is set up to be a perfect mirror of the population. The diary is a targeted random sample that attempts to mirror the total population but uses considerable weighting to be proportional.

Today, due to the shortage of meters and pandemic issues, the PPM panel is not a mirror and has to be weighted, too. For that reason, the PPM results are somewhat erratic of recent.

 

[MarkW]

The crashing of KSAN's AQH share over the past year or two is stunning.

KUFX is now ahead (modestly) in the 6+ AQH share results in the San Fran survey.

 

[semoochie]

KRTY may be the only station in radio history to be sold and change format while being #1 in a large market with their best ratings ever. At least they went out while on top.

And what's the deal with "Dave"? Something needs to be done there, perhaps a retooling of the playlist.

I don't know about the "sold" part but I don't even have to leave my own market to find a station that posted its first #1 book and promptly changed formats. Beautiful Music KUPL did exactly that in 1984, changing to Country and 38 years later, they're still on format!

 

[michael hagerty]

I don't know about the "sold" part but I don't even have to leave my own market to find a station that posted its first #1 book and promptly changed formats. Beautiful Music KUPL did exactly that in 1984, changing to Country and 38 years later, they're still on format!

If I recall, KRIZ in Phoenix was #1 when Doubleday sold it in 1978 to Family Life Radio, which took it from Top 40 to religion.

 

[KilowattKat]

I don't know about the "sold" part but I don't even have to leave my own market to find a station that posted its first #1 book and promptly changed formats. Beautiful Music KUPL did exactly that in 1984, changing to Country and 38 years later, they're still on format!

If we don't include the "sold" part, we can probably come up with a list of #1 Beautiful Music FM's in the 80's that were flipped. KCTC in Sacramento was #1 with B/EZ when they became Mix KYMX in 1989.

That had to be tough to kill off your market leading #1 FM, flipping it to a format hat might not succeed. They had no choice though, with revenue dwindling, and advertisers leaving for the younger demo.

 

[KilowattKat]

If I recall, KRIZ in Phoenix was #1 when Doubleday sold it in 1978 to Family Life Radio, which took it from Top 40 to religion.

I was in grade school in Phoenix, 7th grade to be exact when that happened. As a kid, KRIZ was my favorite. The last song they played at midnight was "Goodnight Sweetheart" by Sha Na Na.

If they were still #1, were they sold because Doubleday knew FM would take over, and get out while on top?

 

[michael hagerty]

I was in grade school in Phoenix, 7th grade to be exact when that happened. As a kid, KRIZ was my favorite. The last song they played at midnight was "Goodnight Sweetheart" by Sha Na Na.

If they were still #1, were they sold because Doubleday knew FM would take over, and get out while on top?

I'm surprised at how little there is online in the R&R and Billboard archives about this.

First, from what I can tell looking at the ratings summaries, KRIZ was #1 in teens, but #11 with a 3.0 12+ in its final book (April/May 1978). However, that was after the announcement had been made that the station was being sold and was going religion.

While the legend was that they changed while they were #1, the Oct/Nov '77 book shows KRIZ with a 3.9 12+ and being beaten in teens by KUPD AM/FM. KRIZ's best book that I can find was April/May '77, with a 6.1, but that was only good enough to make #5 12+ (behind Beautiful KRFM, AC KOY, Rock KUPD-FM, and Beautiful KMEO)---and they were still #2 in teens behind KUPD AM/FM.

So, I was wrong. I repeated what I'd been told decades ago. Sorry.

As to Doubleday's motives, I believe Doubleday did not own an FM in the market, which made KRIZ a bit of an odd fit. Gary Stevens, Doubleday's president, was a big believer in FM. And KRIZ, although it had dominated the market for a long time, was a 1kw daytime/250 watt nighttime AM at 1230 on the dial. A logical one to ditch.