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April Ratings

Country may be declining but the fact is that WYRK continues to dominate in W.N.Y.
WADV, at 106.5 prior to WYRK, NEVER, EVER had the kind of ratings WYRK does.
WADV played some instrumentals, some popular vocals back then.
Living in W.N.Y. back then, I can't even remember if/what station played country in
Buffalo. I do recall Rochester having WNYR, "winner 68" at 680 am back then.
I think you could fit a dozen or more City of Buffalo within the city of Phoenix. Buffalo
has always been compact while Phoenix goes on for miles and miles. The City of
Buffalo is a very small component in total listeners. Buffalo suburbs like Amherst,
Orchard Park, West Seneca, etc, etc, etc, etc do not have a median age anywhere as
young as the City of Buffalo. The further out you go from Buffalo, the older the
population gets. Phoenix on the other hand, which goes on for miles, has Mesa and
Sun City with older population. The rest of Phoenix suburbs, especially Tempe, are
youthful, like Phoenix. Country music isn't my preference but when I visit Buffalo, I
listen to WYRK. They do country exceptionally. I don't listen to KNIX or KMLE in
Phoenix from home or when in the valley. They just aren't that good..........
 
Prescott Joe said:
The City of Buffalo is a very small component in total listeners. Buffalo suburbs like Amherst, Orchard Park, West Seneca, etc, etc, etc, etc do not have a median age anywhere as young as the City of Buffalo. The further out you go from Buffalo, the older the population gets. Phoenix on the other hand, which goes on for miles, has Mesa and Sun City with older population. The rest of Phoenix suburbs, especially Tempe, are youthful, like Phoenix. Country music isn't my preference but when I visit Buffalo, I listen to WYRK. They do country exceptionally. I don't listen to KNIX or KMLE in Phoenix from home or when in the valley. They just aren't that good..........
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that radio uses specific city names as "market names". But radio markets are based on at least one county (with only a couple of exceptions) and, usually, are multiple counties.

We don't look at the demographics of individual towns and cities in a market; those are political borders and irrelevant to radio signals.

Buffalo is two counties, but Phoenix is one huge, immense county that is almost identical in size to the whole state of Vermont at just over 9,000 square miles.

Moderator Note to Joe: you don't need to do carriage returns at the end of lines on this forum. The board software adjusts line width to each user's screen.
 
David, Buffalo/Niagara Falls Metro is comprised of two counties and the most recent statistics show the Median Age of the market at 40.8 years of age.
 
Tall Thin One said:
David, Buffalo/Niagara Falls Metro is comprised of two counties and the most recent statistics show the Median Age of the market at 40.8 years of age.
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You are using the OMB's Metropolitan Statistical Area, I believe. Nielsen has its own... and confusing... MSA which means Metro Survey Area. Nielsen MSAs are based on counties, not cities.
 
DavidEduardo said:
You are using the OMB's Metropolitan Statistical Area, I believe. Nielsen has its own... and confusing... MSA which means Metro Survey Area. Nielsen MSAs are based on counties, not cities.
Click to expand...
Smells suspiciously like fuzzy math concocted by Nielsen to give its paying customers (specifically ad agencies) age profiles they like to see. It boggles the mind to think that all of us -- and the OMB -- have been deceiving ourselves all these years and those older people who populate the declining cities of the Rust Belt never really existed. Instead, the worn-out Cheektowagas and Lackawannas of wintry Western New York have been full of trendy, energetic 30-somethings. Yeah, right.
 
CTListener said:
Smells suspiciously like fuzzy math concocted by Nielsen to give its paying customers (specifically ad agencies) age profiles they like to see. It boggles the mind to think that all of us -- and the OMB -- have been deceiving ourselves all these years and those older people who populate the declining cities of the Rust Belt never really existed. Instead, the worn-out Cheektowagas and Lackawannas of wintry Western New York have been full of trendy, energetic 30-somethings. Yeah, right.
Click to expand...
Arbitron, and now Nielsen, measure radio markets, not cities. In all but a few cases, markets are based on counties. Counties are included or excluded based on where the majority of radio listening originates and, to a lesser extent, commuting patterns.

It's been that way for over 50 years.

There are OMB / Census Metropolitan Statistical Areas that include areas outside the coverage of nearly all radio stations and where local station are actually dominant.

In many cases, the OMB MSA and the Nielsen MSA are the same. But most are not.

A good example: the Census Riverside-San-Bernardino-Ontario MSA includes all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In Nielsen, there are 3 separate markets of Palm Springs, Riverside/San Bernardino and Victor Valley. There are nearly no stations from one that cover another and none that cover all three. Of course, Riverside County is as big as the whole state of Vermont, so the Nielsen distinction is much closer to reality than the Census/OMB definition.

The Houston market is made up of 10 counties. Almost every year one is added or one drops off, based on listening levels to stations home to the market. The purpose of ratings is to show advertisers who and where they reach listeners with their ad buys, not to change demographics. In fact, if there is a 25-44 male buy, advertisers don't even look at population; they look at ratings points and buy to get the desired reach in the market.
 
Prescott Joe said:
Country may be declining but the fact is that WYRK continues to dominate in W.N.Y.
WADV, at 106.5 prior to WYRK, NEVER, EVER had the kind of ratings WYRK does.
WADV played some instrumentals, some popular vocals back then.
Living in W.N.Y. back then, I can't even remember if/what station played country in
Buffalo.
Click to expand...
I’m surprised you don’t remember WWOL at 1120AM and 104.1FM, which played country from the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, maybe even longer. Ramblin’ Lou Shriver and David R. Snow were popular country hosts at WWOL. Granted, its ratings never came close to what WYRK enjoys today. But WWOL was Buffalo’s country station during my younger years. Then, in the early ‘70s, Ramblin’ Lou bought the old WMMJ at 1300AM and rebranded it as WXRL with a country format. And WXRL to this day has a small but intensely loyal audience. So, country music was well established in our market well before WYRK arrived on the scene, though I will credit WYRK’s owners both then and now for making it a ratings success. I acknowledge that WADV didn’t have the ratings WYRK now has. But WADV was clearly the most unique radio station in the annals of Buffalo broadcasting history with its one-of-a-kind mix of standards, big bands and jazz and VERY talented program hosts. I doubt there was another radio station like WADV it in the US. It wasn’t a jazz station or an easy listening station or an MOR station. It was WADV. And this longtime Buffalo radio listener remembers it fondly!
 
KB could have WECK's numbers today instead of a 0.3. All it would have taken was belief it could be done and of course some work.
 
Buddy Shula said:
KB would never have WECK's numbers. They simply do not care about local radio, promotion, air-talent and 3 metro translators.
Click to expand...
My point exactly! Let's see they could have filled in the weak spots in KB's coverage with....107.7....no? Just throwing it out there!
 
Buddy Shula said:
KB would never have WECK's numbers. They simply do not care about local radio, promotion, air-talent and 3 metro translators.
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Do you have an estimate or data you are willing to share about what percentage of WECK listening is still to the AM?

I've seen a couple of breakouts of AMs with translators where the translator(s) has over 90% of the listening.

Do you have the translators set up so that properly equipped car radios will look for the best signal of the three as they drive around?
 
DavidEduardo said:
Do you have an estimate or data you are willing to share about what percentage of WECK listening is still to the AM?

I've seen a couple of breakouts of AMs with translators where the translator(s) has over 90% of the listening.
Click to expand...
When WBEN was given a full FM signal (not a translator), the ratings went down. Nobody moved to the FM. It's still about content.
The failure of the recent formats on 107.7 show that the problem is content...
 
tbolt909 said:
When WBEN was given a full FM signal (not a translator), the ratings went down. Nobody moved to the FM. It's still about content.
Click to expand...
What you don't know is how much the FM helped preserve the audience of the AM. In several cases, declining AM talk formats have reversed the trend by adding FM; they did not improve, but they stabilized.
tbolt909 said:
The failure of the recent formats on 107.7 show that the problem is content...
Click to expand...
Or, as Buddy... who actually runs a successful radio station in the market... say, they have a model that is less ratings dependent and focuses on the "tween" market.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Do you have an estimate or data you are willing to share about what percentage of WECK listening is still to the AM?

I've seen a couple of breakouts of AMs with translators where the translator(s) has over 90% of the listening.

Do you have the translators set up so that properly equipped car radios will look for the best signal of the three as they drive around?
Click to expand...
Yes, in my pickup truck David, the radio will automatically switch translators when one is fading. For instance, our 100.5 translator covers the Tonawandas and a bit south and north of that

It is actually our weakest coverage translator as we have to protect Canada. When that fades, the radio will automatically go to either 100.1 or 102.9, which by far, are the best translators in the market, between those 2 translators, our persons coverage is about 800,000 as WECK is primarily an Erie County station. Niagara county is not in our wheelhouse at all.

As far as FM listening, yes, we see the diary comments for WECK and everyone else, and we do know the percentage of FM listening. You are spot on….it’s about 85%.

Our steaming listeners in Buffalo is huge. Our SEASAC royalty fees top over $2,500 per month. 4 years ago, that number was about $ 200 per month. The number is based on the amount of streaming usage. I only look for Buffalo listening on line. In my mind, I could care less about anything outside Buffalo
 
Buddy Shula said:
Our steaming listeners in Buffalo is huge. Our SEASAC royalty fees top over $2,500 per month. 4 years ago, that number was about $ 200 per month. The number is based on the amount of streaming usage. I only look for Buffalo listening on line. In my mind, I could care less about anything outside Buffalo
Click to expand...
So why haven't you geofenced your streaming yet? Are there so few out-of-market users of the stream that cutting them off wouldn't significantly reduce your fees?
 
DavidEduardo said:
What you don't know is how much the FM helped preserve the audience of the AM. In several cases, declining AM talk formats have reversed the trend by adding FM; they did not improve, but they stabilized.

Or, as Buddy... who actually runs a successful radio station in the market... say, they have a model that is less ratings dependent and focuses on the "tween" market.
Click to expand...
To your point, t bolt, WBFO is putting a dent into WBEN. The WBEN cume audience has gone down big time. It is 110,000. WECK is 80,000, WBFO is about 60,000.

Honestly, I only care about ratings for my ego purposes. Obviously, it is nice to see my station inside the top ten, and just a few tenths of points from three other big stations, but for sales, nobody cares about ratings, except local and national agencies. With that said, WECK had almost zero agency business when I bough it over 5 years ago. Now, we have a significant amount of agency, especially local. Direct clients care about results, that’s it

I prefer direct, locally owned businesses. I like marketing sales, more than I like owning WECK. I am constantly straddled to my desk, where I would rather be on the streets, selling. I still do that, but not as much.

So, getting back to AM vs FM, our FMs are king with 85% listening. We will be announcing some incredible new technology in the coming weeks. It will blow your mind, and we are going to be the only ones with it, although, I am sure the other groups will follow. It’s not cheap, but it is worth it. It’s just another platform that we will exclusively have. I am wrapping up that deal today.

WECK could give a hoot about anybody under 55 listening. Our focus is 55 plus, which we are number 3 behind BEN AND YRK. We are actually number 5, 45 plus for some reason.

So, do ratings matter? Yes and No.
 
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