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Cleveland Radio June 23 Ratings
- Thread starter skiwest
- Start date
It's summer time, and people want to listen to music, thus WZAK, WNCX, WGAR, Q 104 and Kiss 96.5 all got noticeable bumps, while WKSU and 92.3 The Fan cooled off.
And for the 4th book in a row WARF 1350 The Gambler registered a rating
5 iHeart + 3 Audacy + 1 Urban One + 1 ideastream = top 10
And for the 4th book in a row WARF 1350 The Gambler registered a rating
5 iHeart + 3 Audacy + 1 Urban One + 1 ideastream = top 10
Z107.9 is also cooling off, while WMMS continues to lead over WTAM when it comes to the Guardians.
107.3 remains steady in the ratings.
107.3 remains steady in the ratings.
Ratings don't have the importance they used to, especially in cities like Cleveland where the big groups moved in and carved up the market 20 years ago.
There is little real competition between stations. The only place I see it is in the sports talk arena where we have 92.3 and 850 and one could make the case that 850 has such a disadvantage being AM that's no real battle either.
And we have the discussion about people meters vs. diaries. Which system shows what folks are listening to, not just hearing, and does that make a difference to advertisers?
There is little real competition between stations. The only place I see it is in the sports talk arena where we have 92.3 and 850 and one could make the case that 850 has such a disadvantage being AM that's no real battle either.
And we have the discussion about people meters vs. diaries. Which system shows what folks are listening to, not just hearing, and does that make a difference to advertisers?
Yes, very true. I'm going to talk about "cume" again, if you don't mind. In the peak of the classic WMMS days (Jeff and Flash/Matt the Cat/Kid Leo/ Denny Sanders/Betty Korvan/Bill Freeman, etc) the station had roughly 700,000 plus weekly cume. Today, the number one station in Cleveland (usually WMJI) has a cume of about 400,000. There are the same amount of stations now as then, and the population has not changed all that much to explain the drop. What has happened is that young people don't listen to the radio for music anymore, so that audience is gone. Add to that the general staleness of music on the big stations as they try to chase the older audience with lots of library stuff. Yes, I know about 107.3, but they have made little impact. Most alt stations around the country gave up and dropped the format. Most of the Cleveland stations are either voice tracked -- often from out of town -- or, like 106.5, have no people at all. So that important connection is gone. So much of this damage is self-inflicted. If you go to (for example) London, the stations over there lost a little bit due to streaming and other competition, but generally the broadcast stations are doing just fine because they never lost touch with new music and never watered down their presentations and cut their airstaffs. Go listen to BBC Radio 1, or Capitol Radio or Radio X from London on the stream or go stream FM 104 from Dublin or QMusic from Amsterdam and you will hear vibrant radio, almost always "live" with good personalities and a fine mix of current music.
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Which may explain why WMMS doesn't play much music anymore. Radio stations know what they own, and they don't own music.
You're sort of comparing apples to oranges. BBC London may be local to London because the BBC is based there. But it's a national service. The iHeart stations in NY & LA are mostly local there too. But a lot of those hosts are heard throughout the country. Just like the BBC.
Sure they do. Ratings are used to set pricing and agencies, the principal users of ratings, have rather strict CPP (Cost Per Point) goals for each market and they use all kinds of ratings analysis processes to look for the lowest CPP from a station.
"But our CPP in the last book against this rate is the lowest in the market"
"Yes, but we buy on a 6 book average, and you have some bad months so we need a better rate".
Remember, ratings are principally used with agency sales. They never have been as big a part of local direct selling as agency selling. And, unless all stations have the same rating (not share) agencies will look at the most recent books to determine if your rate quote is acceptable.
None at all.
In any case, in the smaller markets where there are diaries, the diary keepers are told to register everything they hear, whether it is a station that is on in the reception room of a doctor office or one they picked themselves in the car.
Actually, overall use of radio has only declined about 15% overall in the last 20 years. What has happened is that many of those 10 share stations around the USA have been fragmented and there are few left. Lots of 4 and 5 share station, and not much difference between #1 and #6 in many markets. Lower cume for the top station or two, but higher cume for #4, # 6 or #8.
With consolidation taking place in the mid 90's, owners of clusters found they could make plenty of money without trying to have every station be #1. So they accept a variety of top 10 to top 15 ranked stations, since they sell them in packages or combos. Previously, if you had one station that was #14, you got nearly no agency business. Today, if you have the #3, #6, #7, #10 and #11 FMs and package them in different combos, they all make money.
We have always done that. Some formats aim younger, others older. As long as the core is in the 18 to 55 year range, you can hope to get on buys.
If you research, you find that most people under about 40 don't want much... or any... DJs or "talents" talking outside of mornings. Stations that know this program accordingly.
In part, because the significant stations are national and program for a whole nation with one set of air personalities. You can't compare radio in nations where everything important is national with little local stations in single US markets.
In fact, the first Top 40 station in Europe was national... "Los 40 Principales" in Spain around 1965! And it was on FM, too. An example of how you can not compare any significant nation in Europe with the US.
Note that these are national services and they are not in the US. Different tastes, different formats.
You will find, for example, that Mexico City, with about 22 million people, has 5 or 6 very successful all talk stations on FM where several of them are well placed in the top 10 in their (different) sales demos. Again, different nation, different radio systems and tastes.
And they have 4 shares or 5 shares at best, not 10 and 11 shares.
But nobody has 100% coverage of the whole USA with a morning show. The European stations of importance generally do.
And in Europe they don't think of a show being on "a whole lot of stations". They think of those shows being on one station that has dozens or even hundreds of transmitters. They have national services, not local stations.
The only that would even remotely come close are K-Love and NPR's Morning Edition. But K-Love is still absent in Dallas and Houston (and a few mid-major markets like Cleveland) and Morning Edition is structured for affiliates to opt-out for local reports and other features at their discretion. WKSU's iteration of Morning Edition is naturally different from how ... say ... WQLN in Erie carries the show or WNYC in New York.
Even the CBC up north doesn't have a fully unified lineup among their station group, but some of their big key stations have very expansive lists of rebroadcasters.
I am of the belief that, in order for radio to even remain relevant in a streaming environment, there needs to be presentation and branding consolidation. but that's impossible because no one chain owns ALL the stations in a particular format. Otherwise it comes off as hollow as Cumulus trying to impose "Nash" on their country stations or Audacy imposing "Alt" on all but two of their modern rockers.
And yet... WMJI, WSWR in Mansfield, and WHOF in Canton have similar classic hits formats and share music playlists (and, IIRC, on-air talent). There is no reason for them to individually be called "Majic 105.7", "My 100.1" and "Sunny 101.5".
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Bingo. Name the most successful radio group today and the only one buying major market stations.
I'd rather see larger groups doing trades to get fuller coverage of at least all the rated markets. I'd rather have one or two national formats than 4 or 5 stations in some markets and none in others.
I agree. Totally.
"With consolidation taking place in the mid 90's, owners of clusters found they could make plenty of money without trying to have every station be #1. "
But you see, that's part of the problem. In the old days, when you had a dozen different owners and they could only own one AM and one FM in a market, they put effort into making these stations successful. Now, when a handful of companies own most of the stations, they have a cluster strategy whereby they don't have to be aggressive and vibrant with any one station. They can piece together a bunch their stations to make a number and none have to be programmed to be outstanding.
But you see, that's part of the problem. In the old days, when you had a dozen different owners and they could only own one AM and one FM in a market, they put effort into making these stations successful. Now, when a handful of companies own most of the stations, they have a cluster strategy whereby they don't have to be aggressive and vibrant with any one station. They can piece together a bunch their stations to make a number and none have to be programmed to be outstanding.
On the other hand, there are still a few single station owners right now, and they still operate the old way.
The big companies are still competing against each other for audience and advertisers. Nothing is a given.
It's nice to romanticize about the old days. But that was 30 years ago, and a lot has changed since then.
"Note that these are national services and they are not in the US. Different tastes, different formats." ...........Yes, some are national services, but there are also local stations in those regions which do very well with full staffs and great street presence. And even the national stations who program to young people, have very popular personalities like Fearne Cotton and Scott Mills on BBC 1, so I am not sure about the statement that young people don't want personalities, although it may be different in London where the personalities interview rock stars, write columns, etc whereas in the USA the talent has been reduced to just making announcements, so it may be no wonder that young people in the USA think that these folks are annoying. My point is that American radio seems to have lost their desire to create a fully developed radio station full of vibrant personalities. With now several stations owned by the same group in the same market, it is quantity not quality.
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Like who? Rubber City runs WNWV on the cheap. WQGR in Madison is a shoestring operation. And WEOL (Elyria) is almost all national talk shows. WOBL/WDLW, from all reports, is on the verge of bankruptcy and let go almost all of their staff.
Kent State owns WKSU, which is one of the most listened-to stations in Cleveland. If you want quality radio, try non-commercial radio.
You mentioned the BBC and they're non-commercial radio in the UK
It all takes money to pay those personalities. Those personalities demand top dollar. They know they're good, and the only companies that can afford to pay them are the big companies. WMMS has local talent. Not everyone wants to have their music interrupted by a lot of talk. Radio has to appeal to lots of different tastes.
Yes, BBC 1 is non-commericial. But Capitol, Radio X are totally commercial as is QMusic in Amsterdam and Dublin's big CHR, all with great personalities. And yes, only the big stations can afford great personalities and the big stations are not doing it. As far as the current WMMS having personalities, Rover and Alan Cox are talk show hosts. Not music personalities.
WMMS gets great ratings by having local personalities. People who listen to music radio today listen for the music.
The current WMMS ratings are about in the middle of the pack when taken outside of sports play by play broadcasts. And once again, the only personalities they have are talk show people, not music personalities.
I'd like to see where you get that. They have baseball and basketball, that play most games at night, which is typically radio's lowest rated daypart. I would bet Rover is one of the top morning shows in Cleveland. They wouldn't have signed him to a long term deal if he wasn't.
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