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For those who say people don't listen to sports play-by-play on the radio...

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
Inside Radio reports today on the immense radio numbers which are "TV-like" for first NFL weekend:

"Last week, Inside Radio exclusively reported new data from Nielsen showing that NFL games broadcast on the radio attract TV-like numbers with audiences so large that they outperform the top-rated stations in many markets"

Read more athttps://www.insideradio.com/free/here-are-the-nfl-radio-broadcasts-that-ruled-week-1-of-the-season/article_150d1d18-61b1-11ee-b369-5b683cc8299d.html

Nielsen Seni8or VP/Sales John Snyder says "With the success of football broadcasts mostly focused on TV, where they consistently occupy the majority of top-rated programs, Snyder suggests a change in thinking about how radio is measured – which is by daypart, as opposed to program-focused TV – would show similar dominance by the audio broadcasts of games."

That concept of modified dayparts or program based ratings is a topic by itself!
 
Anecdotally ... I'm usually in the car a lot on fall Sunday afternoons, visiting family and friends, doing some shopping, etc. -- and I'm almost always listening to an NFL game while doing so, either the Patriots on the local affiliate or another game of interest on SiriusXM. Same thing on Saturdays; I flip around among college games on SXM. Football with its preponderance of afternoon weekend games, has a distinct advantage over the other popular US team sports, which schedule most games at night, and on all five weekdays -- when most of the potential audience is either home watching TV or at work. I suspect this is the key element of football's success on radio. I still wonder about MLB, NBA and NHL radio, though.
 
Also anecdotally - When I hear football on the radio I'm often reminded of one particular mom and pop AM/FM I worked at. On one side of the hallway was their AM studio (satellite-fed oldies with live mornings through the week), on the other side their FM (AC). They carried one college team on the AM signal and another on the FM as there were fans of both teams in that area and they easily sold those games. Since they were a small station and on a budget, if both those teams played at the same time (say, both teams had the 1 p.m. game on a given Saturday), the owner would only pay 1 board op - so the guy had to sit in a chair in the hallway between the two studios, listen for one or both (hopefully not at exactly the same time) commentators to throw to a local break or ask for the TOH ID and they'd run to the appropriate console to fire it. Good times!
 
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Mikey Radio said:
Also anecdotally - When I hear football on the radio I'm often reminded of one particular mom and pop AM/FM I worked at. On one side of the hallway was their AM studio (satellite-fed oldies with live mornings through the week), on the other side their FM (AC). They carried one college team on the AM signal and another on the FM as there were fans of both teams in that area and they easily sold those games. Since they were a small station and on a budget, if both those teams played at the same time (say, both teams had the 1 p.m. game on a given Saturday), the owner would only pay 1 board op - so the guy had to sit in a chair in the hallway between the two studios, listen for one or both (hopefully not at exactly the same time) commentators to throw to a local break or ask for the TOH ID and they'd run to the appropriate console to fire it. Good times!
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That's a good story. I won't name names, because what this owner was doing is illegal aa all hell, but once upon a time here in Texas, there was a licensee who decided that he would run both high school teams on his FM station. He had sold off his AM a few years earlier, so to remedy the situation he ran one team's game on the left channel and the other on the right. Made for a rather interesting listen when your receiver's audio was balanced equally.
 
rosecitymedia said:
That's a good story. I won't name names, because what this owner was doing is illegal aa all hell, but once upon a time here in Texas, there was a licensee who decided that he would run both high school teams on his FM station. He had sold off his AM a few years earlier, so to remedy the situation he ran one team's game on the left channel and the other on the right. Made for a rather interesting listen when your receiver's audio was balanced equally.
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Like you, not naming names, but let's just say your station's owner was not the only one to do that.
 
I cal also imagine big football fans wanting to hear the local play by play announcers instead of the audio from the national tv broadcast. I hear radio suggestions all the time encouraging people to watch game on tv, turn off the sound and listen to local radio broadcast for audio
 
DavidEduardo said:
Inside Radio reports today on the immense radio numbers which are "TV-like" for first NFL weekend:

"Last week, Inside Radio exclusively reported new data from Nielsen showing that NFL games broadcast on the radio attract TV-like numbers with audiences so large that they outperform the top-rated stations in many markets"

Read more athttps://www.insideradio.com/free/here-are-the-nfl-radio-broadcasts-that-ruled-week-1-of-the-season/article_150d1d18-61b1-11ee-b369-5b683cc8299d.html

Nielsen Seni8or VP/Sales John Snyder says "With the success of football broadcasts mostly focused on TV, where they consistently occupy the majority of top-rated programs, Snyder suggests a change in thinking about how radio is measured – which is by daypart, as opposed to program-focused TV – would show similar dominance by the audio broadcasts of games."
Click to expand...

One of the two (or three, hard to tell from the way the article was written) examples given was Kansas City, where Chiefs fervor is a longstanding phenomenon. The city pretty much stops for home football games and that was even before Mahomes came along.

What I'd really like to know is whether the stations are making money after accounting for the cost of rights and other associated expenditures...or whether the stations view this as a loss leader and, if so, how much of a loss are they willing to take.


DavidEduardo said:
That concept of modified dayparts or program based ratings is a topic by itself!
Click to expand...
It feels like something of a return to the way audiences were counted in the 1930s and 1940s. It would also be a rare set of examples of appointment listening.
 
Larry said:
I cal also imagine big football fans wanting to hear the local play by play announcers instead of the audio from the national tv broadcast. I hear radio suggestions all the time encouraging people to watch game on tv, turn off the sound and listen to local radio broadcast for audio
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That's what I've been doing for over 30 years for Dallas Cowboys Football.
 
My take on this is that stations are selling the association with the teams, the access to the content and players for use in daily programming and online, and sell the PBP with the idea that listeners will use it in short bites, not for the entire game. When people say they "don't listen," what they really mean is they don't plan their day around it. But if they happen to be in their car, they're listening. The stations understand, and that's how they sell.
 
rosecitymedia said:
That's a good story. I won't name names, because what this owner was doing is illegal aa all hell, but once upon a time here in Texas, there was a licensee who decided that he would run both high school teams on his FM station. He had sold off his AM a few years earlier, so to remedy the situation he ran one team's game on the left channel and the other on the right. Made for a rather interesting listen when your receiver's audio was balanced equally.
Click to expand...
I'd had the thought before of what if someone did that and ran two different formats on the different channels? :LOL:
 
Even with the delays ramped down and the Usual HD delay the only issue. I have seen an FM station well ahead of the TV broadcast by almost a minute during an NFL game.

From what I have seen with both Baseball and Football, radio is ahead of the TV play by play.
 
Larry said:
I cal also imagine big football fans wanting to hear the local play by play announcers instead of the audio from the national tv broadcast. I hear radio suggestions all the time encouraging people to watch game on tv, turn off the sound and listen to local radio broadcast for audio
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I'd heard of people doing that with University of Tennessee games because of wanting to hear the late John Ward while they watched the TV broadcast.

I'd also heard of people doing that when Monday Night Football was on ABC and they would listen to the game on the radio because they didn't want to hear Howard Cosell. :LOL:
 
Mark Roberts said:
It feels like something of a return to the way audiences were counted in the 1930s and 1940s. It would also be a rare set of examples of appointment listening.
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Back in the late 60's and earlier 70's in Puerto Rico the ratings companies in Puerto Rico did a separate breakout for mid-to-late afternoons on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. That was when the races at El Comandante racetrack ran and the ratings were so high they had to be separated from the rest of the week.

Of course, El Comandante was owned by San Juan Racing, the company that for a while had a nice portfolio of FM stations, including WKTU in New York City.
 
DaveBayArea said:
That worked in the days of full analog. But throw in HD radio delay, delay introduced by profanity "dump" buttons, streaming buffering, and whatever else a broadcaster (radio or TV) might introduce... it might not work today.

Dave B.
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Yes the delay is bothersome, but I fight through it because Brad Sham and Babe Laufenburg are wwwwaayyyy more entertaining than the TV guys.
 
To put this into perspective: Just like what regional sports networks are facing for cable, radio is feeling a similar pinch when it comes to teams/leagues and escalating broadcast rights fees. It's pretty typical for a radio flagship broadcast of professional games to only have inventory to sell in the pregame and postgame portions of the broadcast. All the in-game ad slots are held by the team. So when you think about it; even if the station sees ratings go up because of game carriage, they're hamstrung if advertisers want to buy time in the game. All the station can offer is pre and post-game slots, which usually don't come close to the listenership tuning into the game itself.
 
Kelly A said:
It's pretty typical for a radio flagship broadcast of professional games to only have inventory to sell in the pregame and postgame portions of the broadcast. All the in-game ad slots are held by the team.
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I don't know of any teams that have all of the in-game spots. Except perhaps the Angels who own the station.
 
TheBigA said:
I don't know of any teams that have all of the in-game spots. Except perhaps the Angels who own the station.
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When I worked the board for the Dallas Mavericks Radio Network, all the in game spots were network avails. The Mavericks gave the affiliates 1 minute per game: 30 seconds in the 2nd period and 30 seconds in the 4th period. The Pre and Post game shows, the local stations got most of that inventory. We had a mandatory network join at 20 minutes before tip off.
 
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