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Arbitron Out Today

C

canio

Posted this somewhere else- thought you might like to see. Came out today. Sorry if it did not line up correctly.

Summer book out today- Here's what I saw (website only had persons 12+)
F 09 W10 S10 S10
1 WGGY-FM 7.8 6.7 8.9 9.0
2 WKRZ-FM 9.7 9.6 8.9 8.1
3 WMGS-FM 7.6 7.0 7.7 7.7
4 WILK-AM 6.3 7.0 7.8 6.1
5 WEZX-FM 4.7 6.2 5.9 5.4
6 WBSX-FM 4.5 5.0 6.0 5.3
7 WBHT-FM 4.6 5.6 3.4 4.8
8 WQFM-FM 2.4 3.4 3.0 3.6
9 WSJR-FM 2.8 3.3 1.3 3.0
10 WWRR-FM 2.2 2.0 2.0 2.5

The second S10 indicates summer '10. Looks like WILK took a hit, but 'BHT went up. KRZ down for fourth book in a row
 
Judging by KRZ's numbers, it's time to bring Rising out of retirement. Plus it looks like some odd diary placement.
 
Nice to see the River in the top 10. I always liked that station. But can someone tell me why I can't get this station in downtown Wilkes-Barre. It's total static for me.

Also, I wonder if it was a mistake for WQFM to change formats. They seemed to do ok with their Cool format. It's not like they will ever break the top 5, no matter what they do. I don't know if they think they are going to bring down the X, but I think that highly unlikely. I kind of get sick of the big boys using their smaller stations as cannon fodder for their premium stations. I mean it seems their goal is to use the small stations to bring down the competition to help their own big stations. Sometimes they actually create a good small station format but never let it develop. The Mountain is one of the few stations that seems to have a certain commitment by their company. They rarely break the top 10 but it seems Entercom is happy to leave them alone. Anyway, that's my rant.
 
Damian,

The River's signal in downtown WBarre is weak because of their Bald-West Mtn. location. They have a good signal in cars in the WBarre area but because of their low power and high height they do not penetrate buildings well. They have 270 watts H and V at 333 meters HAAT...they cover a wide area but have trouble penetrating buildings over 8 or 10 miles from their transmitter site. We moved Rock107 off of Bald Mtn because of this reason, at Montage we have 1450 watts at a lower height...a good trade off. WILK-FM and WDMT have had chances to move up on the ridge...they did not because of this same reason.

KF
 
Thoughts on the ratings....WILK loses a significant amount.....Rock107 loses a very small number....so much for the morning show making much of a difference. What was that famous quote...."The Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated". I and my 35 to 54 male counterparts listen to a Classic Rock station because of the music...the air talent is an enhancement...not the main reason we listen....NEXT.

KF
 
If it's just about the music then why don't you and your 35 - 54 male counterparts just get an iPod?

Or, wait, pardon me. Why don't you get a Walkman?

(see what I did there...???)
 
Kevin,

Thanks for the info. I wished there was a way to enhance their signal. When our office was by the Arena, I usually did not have a problem getting them, but here in the pit, it's complete static. It's a shame. They advertise as Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. In any event I guess I should give them more kudos for breaking the top 10 with such a weak signal.
 
Sigon,

In the late 1980's when Walkmans came around people said the same thing.....more than 20 years later radio still rolls on. I didn't say personalities were unnecessary...just that they were not the star of the show....the music is on a music oriented FM. I would say maybe the music was 80% important....we could debate this. Why doesn't everybody just get sat radio....its not FREE and its less convenient. Ipods are nice...many people use them....ultimately you pay for the music and the ipod....its not FREE and its less convenient. Radio is FREE and more convienient. The future will hold more challenges for over the air FREE radio and more competition. Internet radio will provide some competition....but not as much as many people think. Bandwidth is finite...its about physics. ATandT's system has already been maxed out! and they have greatly upped their charges for bandwidth and no longer offer packages for unlimited bandwidth. They have a few percent (at best) of market penetration and they're already maxed out...even 4G will not fix this problem. Even if all of the allocated bandwidth for TV was deleted and reallocated to internet it would still amount to a small amount in the scope of what FREE over the air radio provides.

KF

KF
 
I have to chime in on this one.

Summer and Winter books are metro only as opposed to full TSA

Stations with weaker signals will do better in these books and enhance their 4 book averages

A drop in these books by stations like WILK and WEZX is more significant because the diaries are placed where their signals are stronger

WQFM and WWRR SHOULD do better in these books

Look at the Winter book for WEZX. They had a 6.2. A drop to a 5.2 is big

And don't forget the Arbitron lag.
Let's see what the fall says
 
Waunder..

True to a certain extent.....although through the years Rock107 has tended to do better in the Fall and Spring books and worse in the Winter and Summer books (which indicates the current number as not much of a drop). Because of WPZX covering part of Monroe Co. and the Hazleton area; Rock 107 is somewhere between the have's (KRZ, GGY, MGS) and the have not's (WWRR, WDMT, WFUZ). Better than just a Class A but not as good as a Class B. I would have to say that BHT and BSX are in the middle ground too.....BHT with a good Class A on Penobscot and a soso Class A on bald; and WBSX, a directional Class B at Penobscot with a big null towards Lackawanna County (not great in downtown Scranton, which is still the largest city in the metro) and significant interference from WHWK in Binghamton (at my house in East mtn Scranton 98.1 WHWK has a much stronger signal than WBSX, rendering them noisy...which is the case for them in the upper valley and the Abingtons especially).
Then again the lag....there is no logical reason for it.....it just seems to exist....where a station takes a hit one or two quarters after the ratings period it should have taken a hit. I'm thinking this lag is not as great in PPM markets (someone please chime in here)...but in a diary market like NE PA the lag always seems to come into play.

KF
 
Why all the fuss over 12+? Nobody uses it, nobody buys it. The target demos of all the stations you talk about are what matters. WEZX is still # 1 across the board Men 35-54 which is what is important to us. Even with a significant loss of cume in mornings, the station was still able to hold mornings at #3 in Adults. WBSX and KRZ have strong #'s in their resepective target demos as well. That's what counts at the end of the day.
 
Plus in Monroe, once you go past Mount Pocono, both BHT and BSX get a lot of interference from Hot 97 and Mega 97.9, while Froggy and Magic continue to come in great.

We lose WKRZ 98.5 after Mount Pocono, probably due to a combo of weaker signal and interference from WRKS 98.7 , but that's why WKRF 107.9 is here.

Rock 107 (which itself is drowned out by WWYY and Lite 106.7) has WPZX 105.9, but they get a lot of interference from WQXR in that one section of Mount Pocono where you get a clear shot of all the NYC stations after the train bridge, which is why they have the newer translator on 105.3.

WFUZ comes in decently until we start getting closer to the NJ border and both WNTI and WXRK start interfering
WSBG kills any chance of getting WSJR in Monroe
WWRR is hit and miss because of their weaker signal which regularly gets interference from both WSPK and Power 105.1
WSUS kills any chance of getting WDMT
 
Good point Will....I guess us radio geeks look at 12 plus like a beauty contest! Interesting but not with a lot of substance!
 
12 plus means nothing.
All national and regional buys look for Adults 18-34 and 25-54. They are the prime demos. Without being in the top 3 can cost a station serious cash.
 
I'll offer my thoughts on "the lag." Diary methodology is simply a game of unaided recall. Many stations would do a lot better if all the market choices were listed on the side of the page. But they are not. It's "an essay test, not a fill-in-the -blank". So, as stations rise or dip in popularity due to any number of reasons, self-destruction, increased and /or improved competition of any type, technical issues( Like Class A stations coming in worse in the summer when the leaves are on the trees), it takes a while for people to remember what to write.Their(our)lives are complex and our stations mean less to them, in reality, than we like to admit. So they write what they remember. Diaries are forgiving at first, but unforgiving over the long run;we fix our mistakes and hope for a payoff in the books.But the lag sometimes keeps bitch-slapping us after we've already fixed our issues. When the books show a quick improvement, IMHO, the fix was a good one.
As to PPM, the nuances of adjusting to this methodology are many. Not the least of which is getting the listeners to return time and time again. Both horizontal ( later this hour or day) and vertical ( tomorrow at this time...).There is still a lag, but everything is quicker. Months become weeks. Weekly data every Monday. A book every 4 weeks, 13 a year. Now when big events like weather storms or sports events shift listening from music stations to spoken word stations, it takes a week or two for the regular listening patterns to return. When the Phillies are hot, the audience shifts from music FMs to the big AM that carries them.And it takes a few weeks before they are back to where they were before.
So that's my two cents on " the lag"; it exists both in diary and PPM .
 
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