August PPM's: Who needs a transformation?

[lovejamminoldies]

WNCI took a hit while their sister station, WCOL takes first place for the first time in awhile. WNCI still killing in PPM though. What hurts them are their long stopsets.

Power really needs to focus on a rhythmic format and dump this repetitive urban format. I think a format like the one they built in Philly on Thursday would work here. Rhythmic-focused Urban... they were programming like that when they were beating WNCI. Why did they flip it again? ??? ahh, not street enough.

The two stations that need some serious changes: Gen X and Mix. Both finishing with a 1.6!

Gen X sounds stale. The format is slowly becoming a mixture of rhythmic AC and Hot AC... I've heard them play some upbeat recurrents like Boom Boom Pow and upbeat gold such as Hollaback Girl. I've also heard some Hot AC stuff like Whatever It Takes and Waiting On The World To Change... next format? I'm going to put money on Urban, I hope anyway!

Mix sounds a little better, but God knows why they're still settling for this corporate-programmed Hot AC. They are on a rimshot signal in need for some listeners and when you're in a market where the CHR is pulling numbers like that, you flip to CHR. Mix needs to become CHR or Rhythmic and go after NCI... commercial free hrs, longer music sets, etc. Would Saga spend the money? Doubtful.

What do you guys think?

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

I think NCI is actually performing consistently well.  Note that their 6+ AQH share of 8.5 in August is very close to their average of 8.7 for the period from February to August.

While it appears the decline for Mix may be a real trend (2.5 -> 2.0 -> 1.6), the sudden drop by Gen-X looks fluky (2.3 -> 2.5 -> 1.6).  Will need at least one more book to help determine the extent to which the latter is station/market-driven reality vs. sampling error or statistical outlier.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Speaking of trends I just noticed that WCOL's increase is its fifth in a row. Wow.

 

[xmusicmatt]

Looking at the list .. It seems like a "few" stations need to eval their current formats and look at possible changes...

Wasn't mentioned previously but WWCD (CD102.5) keeps rising too (despite still confusing its listeners on it's actual branding)

With the changes at 93.3 ... It may be time for a few stations to "step out" and try something 'different'

 

[lovejamminoldies]

I think NCI is actually performing consistently well. Note that their 6+ AQH share of 8.5 in August is very close to their average of 8.7 for the period from February to August.

While it appears the decline for Mix may be a real trend (2.5 -> 2.0 -> 1.6), the sudden drop by Gen-X looks fluky (2.3 -> 2.5 -> 1.6). Will need at least one more book to help determine the extent to which the latter is station/market-driven reality vs. sampling error or statistical outlier.

WNCI is doing very well, I just noticed a hit from their usual 10.0's! Florentino and Cage have become one of the best teams in NCI history.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Wasn't mentioned previously but WWCD (CD102.5) keeps rising too (despite still confusing its listeners on it's actual branding)

Hard to get a handle on performance with those guys.  From Feb-Mar-Apr they had an impressive uptrend, especially for April:  2.1 -> 2.7 -> 3.6.  But then in May they fell back to 2.3.  Jun and July were about the same, then they bounced up to 2.8 in Aug. That single-month increase isn't what I would call "keeps rising,"  but maybe what you were referring to the fact that they've had uncharacteristically high shares a couple different time this year.

Looking a little deeper: If you compare the share  vs. cume trends for CD10-whatever, it becomes clear that their share jumps were driven by time spent listening rather than the modest increases in cume.  So it looks like their up months could be largely driven by some PPMs ending up in the hands of major WWCD partisans.  Even though PPM is more cume-driven than the diary, PPM's sample sizes are smaller I believe, so you can still get nice bumps from a couple super-heavy P1's.  Maybe that's the story for WWCD.