Hartford Summer Book - More than meets the eye

[TheJudge]

I know we have a rule on this board that we can't
quote actual ratings numbers so that's why my message
below sounds a little obtuse.

But... I'm assuming that the final number for the
Summer '05 book is the average of the ratings in the
three parts of the book. Is that correct? If not,
ignore the rest of this message.

But if so....

If you look at the trends in the first two parts of
the Hartford summer '05 book, you'll find that a
couple of stations took a huge nosedive in the third
part of the book in order to arrive at their final
numbers.

WDRC-FM, which usually got a nice summer boost when
they were Oldies, looks like they held steady with the
Spring '05 book. But compare that final number to
the trend numbers in Parts 1 & 2 and it means that they
had to take a 33% dive in Part 3.

WTIC-FM, which was trending severly downward in Parts
1 & 2 had to have taken almost a 70% dive in Part 3 to
get to their final number.

 

[EvanJ1]

> But... I'm assuming that the final number for the
> Summer '05 book is the average of the ratings in the
> three parts of the book. Is that correct? If not,
> ignore the rest of this message.
Each month is a rolling 12 week average with four weeks added and the oldest four weeks removed. The Summer 2005 Phase 1 ratings had the last two months of the Spring and the first month of Summer. The Summer 2005 Phase 2 ratings had the last month of the Spring and the first two months of the Summer. The final Summer 2005 ratings that just came out have all three Summer months. For the purpose of the ratings, 1 month = 4 weeks. Arbitron only monitores 48 weeks a year, they take a break near Christmas.

 

[TheJudge]

> Each month is a rolling 12 week average with four weeks
> added and the oldest four weeks removed. The Summer 2005
> Phase 1 ratings had the last two months of the Spring and
> the first month of Summer. The Summer 2005 Phase 2 ratings
> had the last month of the Spring and the first two months of
> the Summer. The final Summer 2005 ratings that just came
> out have all three Summer months. For the purpose of the
> ratings, 1 month = 4 weeks. Arbitron only monitores 48
> weeks a year, they take a break near Christmas.

Thanks for the good info. So I was correct that these two stations, WTIC-FM and WDRC-FM, must have taken a bath in those last four weeks.

The downward trend at WDRC-FM coincides with the early August release of Mike Stevens who was the morning personality. Any connection?

But what happened at WTIC-FM?

 

[tim95]

>
> Thanks for the good info. So I was correct that these two
> stations, WTIC-FM and WDRC-FM, must have taken a bath in
> those last four weeks.

Yes, probably. But, they also could have both had especially good "last" months of the Spring book, that rolled off this time. With the books always being a rolling average, it's pretty much an "eyeball" guess at the months unless you subscribe to Arbitron's software that lets you look at the actual monthly data.

> The downward trend at WDRC-FM coincides with the early
> August release of Mike Stevens who was the morning
> personality. Any connection?
>
> But what happened at WTIC-FM?
>
It's possible that they just got hosed this time. In Hartford, you've got about 800 diaries out there per month. While statistically that's not a bad number (markets like New London, Stamford or Danbury have 800-ish for their entire book) there is the chance that very few of those 800 hit TIC fans. Happens once in awhile to everybody. If the numbers stay low next book, that could be a sign of a problem, but I'd bet they're not panicking in Farmington just yet. Bumming a little, sure, but not panicking yet.