> As we await the posting of the Buffalo 12+ numbers, the lack
> of postings on the Rochester 12+ ratings found in Radio &
> Records comes as something of a surprise. Are you folks in
> the Flower City (or as an un-named Buffalo talk show host
> said on a different matter a few days ago, Buffalo's "step
> sister city") that disinterested?
Not at all. Just that not much surprising happened here in Ra-cha-cha.
> A few questions: Were Warm and Fickle battling each other
> with All-Christmas formats? When did they begin?
Don't recall the exact timing (before Thanksgiving in each case, IIRC) but it seems to have helped both stations a little. Proportionately it helped Fickle more, and I expect them to fall back into the mid-2s.
> Looks like Bee's the undisputed champ o' the market, up
> nicely from last Fall (I prefer to compare performance to
> corresponding rating periods) although off from their Summer
> high.
BEE is a good sounding station. One other thing that may be helping them (and that they're continuing into the winter book survey period) is a new TV campaign that's selling modern country music as essentially the soundtrack of people's lives...looks a lot like the old Kodak spots, complete with a smiling baby. That'll grab the 25-54 working families' attention bigtime, and it's translating into sampling and numbers (although their TSL is also pretty good, so they must be doing a good job holding people once they sample them).
> WHAM is very much off from last Fall, essentially flat
> compared to Summer.Is slash & burn news-talk beginning to
> erode? Or is this nothing more than a market correction.
> Have to admit, being #2, 12+ isn't exactly a bad thing and
> WHAM could be turning some sizeable 25-54 numbers.
WHAM's 25-54s are not as good as you'd expect. The station has a significant skew problem in its demos after the morning drive show...a lot of their listenership from 10 AM onward is 55+ and a disproportionate amount of it is also outer-metro rural and downscale. The year to year trendline is also down, and that's not good. This is a station that needs a substantial post-10 AM makeover. Speaking from a competitor's point of view, of course, I hope they don't get one. ;-)
One other thing I'd like to point out...WDKX is continuing to show strongly despite its relatively limited signal range. It's a station that not only superserves its target audience but appeals to a lot of younger listeners all over Monroe County. It's well programmed, start to finish. Their 12-35 numbers, both male and female, are great. If they had a good class B full market coverage signal, they would probably be #1 overall 12+ in the market.
> Is it my imagination, or has Buzz changed its format
> description back to "80's?"? I thought it was listed in past
> R&R ratings summaries as Classic Hits.
R&R's description doesn't match the Buzz's own description of itself on air as a 70s and 80s station (an accurate one, IMHO). Sometimes I wonder where R&R gets its format info because they often don't match what the station itself is airing. And they can be months behind in catching up with some format changes.
Buzz does a pretty good job of being the station it's trying to be, so it's no surprise that it's doing pretty well. They have a good music mix and an interesting lineup of people presenting it.
> Seems the Buzz gets
> the benefit of Clear Channel's Fox challenging WCMF.
> From this end of the Thruway, it looks like WCMF has issues.
CMF's issues are mostly post-10 AM when they go head to head with more-music Fox 95.1. I think they need to put more emphasis on personality in the post-Wease timselots, let the jocks establish themselves as foreground personalities to provide a value-added difference over the Fox, and provide more service and info elements in afternoon drive. Wease can carry that station on his shoulders indefinitely the way Howard carried K-Rock in New York for many years, but it's a strategy that will only last as long as Wease decides he wants to keep doing his thing. They need to do what they've done in the past---develop other foreground people in other dayparts (that's how they developed Wease in the first place).
> Fickle appears to have gotten some traction. With the
> exception of Fickle, that "cluster of 3 share stations"
> looks kind of sad. Mean to tell me some astute programmer
> can't break out of the pack? Two of the four stations are
> full power signals!
Fickle benefited from the Christmas music fad, but it will probably fall back into the middle or upper 2s in the winter and spring books. They have a good morning show, but the rest of the day musically is like a train wreck and their TSL numbers will soon turn godawful again.
WVOR strikes me as a station that needs a full format change. It not only sounds clearly voicetracked and automated, it sounds too much like the Buzz with a little new music thrown in but the personalities thrown away. WPXY also needs some serious tweaking---the bleeding has stopped but it should be doing better than it is. It even sounds badly mixed from an audio standpoint...the afternoon and evening jocks' voices get buried in background music beds so breaks and stopsets sound like aural mush, unlistenable. Other stations, like Kiss 106.7, have impaired signals and can't hope for much more than they've got...while the Zone not only has a lower power signal, it has lost its main attraction (Howard) and his replacement is not going to get traction in Rochester. Zone needs to change to another format that will play well within its limited, urban-centered coverage area. Rochester has no fulltime Spanish language station, and the latino demo is by far the fastest growing community in the market, fast approaching the critical mass to support its own station. So I think CBS would do well in the next couple of years to make 94.1 the area's first Spanish language signal.
A couple other interesting things from the lower end of the ratings...
-Air America on 950 had its worst outing yet, a 0.8, with audience almost fallen in half. Don't know where it went, but stripping out the last local program couldn't have helped. Fall '05 was an up book for Air America in New York and other large markets, so factors unique to Rochester appear to be playing a role here.
-A lot of listening was registered to rimshot and out-of-market FMs, leading me to believe that diary distribution may have played a significant role in this book--more diaries coming in from the five outer counties of the metro and fewer from Monroe County, perhaps. (That may have helped WHAM a little and kept the battle for the top closer than it might otherwise have been, as well.)
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Edited by BobSmith on 01/19/06 03:02 PM.</FONT></P>
