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Has Rock Radio Peaked In The Philadelphia PPM's?

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

I've noticed that over the past two cumes, the four rock stations in Philadelphia have been consistently down. WMMR is down -3.4%, WMGK down -6.1%, WYSP with their retooled rock format is down -12%, and WRFF, the former darling of the market is down a whopping -16%.

And you can't really use B101's Christmas increase as an argument, since they only switched to holiday music in late November. Or is this just a fluke?
 
That's a good question, but can you explain what cume means? Is that how they measure listenership or is it share that matters?
 
radiotz said:
That's a good question, but can you explain what cume means? Is that how they measure listenership or is it share that matters?
Click to expand...

Cume = how many different people listened to the station at some time during that month. (The cume numbers are monthly, right?). Share = at the average quarter hour during that month, what percentage of the people in the market listening to the radio were listening to that station. Rating = at the average quarter hour during that month, what percentage of the people in the market were listening to that station.

I think the Eagles are a big cume-driver for WYSP, and when they stink, cume decreases, and when the season ends, cume decreases.
 
aindik said:
I think the Eagles are a big cume-driver for WYSP, and when they stink, cume decreases, and when the season ends, cume decreases.
Click to expand...

Regardless of whether cume is stronger than share, I just find it a bit alarming that you had most recently WMGK and WYSP, as well as WMMR (and even the neophyte WRFF) garnering a cume of at least 1 million, and now all see themselves in six digits.
 
If you're looking at the Holiday book, don't read much into it. Christmas exposure and traveling meters really skewed things.

In January you should see Rock cume and share back to normal.
 
I don't see the urban stations setting the world on fire, in fact the predictable DAS-F is the only one that receives decent ratings now and then, due to its embedded black heritage from the 60's...if this is race bate-ing monitor I don't know what else to say.....
 
I think the decline in cume could also be a "sampling" issue. The technology is still new, they haven't had those big-brother devices in circulation very long, and I am sure the KYW's and B101's were freaking out about having "rock" stations at the top of the ratings...cause only dorky white guys would be willing to wear another electronic device on their belt.

Now, if it was one station, or a station and it's main competitor playing the same music battling over the same sets of ears and they end up turning their listeners off...but with all 4 stations going down it tells you there is more to it. How did WIP do? That would also indicate if it was a male sampling issue or not.

Carry on.
 
Wexler said:
How did WIP do?
Click to expand...

Their cume was down 5.3% since last November; by comparison, its competitor, WPEN, long starved to even register in the PPM, actually saw a 21% increase in that period (granted their cume is roughly one-third of WIP's total cume).
 
I think the PPM's are totally inaccurate, how can WMGK consistantly pull in a million listeners?

In a half hour period I might hear one song or less that I can actually listen to, the other 4-5 songs are retreads that we have heard a thousand times in the last month!

Anyone else agree??
 
PPM is about "exposure" - literally...think about the Christmas season...as you walked into Hallmark or your local Deli if they had B101 on and you were wearing a monitor and were in there for 15 minutes or more, you counted...that's not to say that you liked hearing Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" for the thousandth time, but you certainly could not "flip" the dial either, thus "exposure". I think that would explain B101's massive share explosion during the Holiday season.

Diaries = popularity contest.

I think that the PPM is valuable in the respect of new content...like a station flip or daypart change cause you don't have to wait 3 months to see the effect. Otherwise, PPM has sort of damaged radio's credibility as a "reach AND frequency" medium...it's like PPM just cut radio's classic sales slogan in half...cause rarely will anyone ever see a "frequency of 3" ever again.
 
FM Dial said:
I think the PPM's are totally inaccurate, how can WMGK consistantly pull in a million listeners?

In a half hour period I might hear one song or less that I can actually listen to, the other 4-5 songs are retreads that we have heard a thousand times in the last month!

Anyone else agree??
Click to expand...

B101 leads the market in cume.

MGK is the B101 of rock music. It's the station everyone can agree on, even the boss.
 
WMGK has managed to morph into its old self from the "Magic 103" days and also replace WOGL as the station folks think of when they think "oldies" station.

So often now, when I hear people talking about the "oldies" station, they are talking about 'MGK, not 98.1. And they have managed to really grow in the female numbers, like when they did the soft rock format years ago.

As you point out, its the station everyone can agree on.
 
Wexler said:
PPM is about "exposure" - literally...think about the Christmas season...as you walked into Hallmark or your local Deli if they had B101 on and you were wearing a monitor and were in there for 15 minutes or more, you counted...that's not to say that you liked hearing Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" for the thousandth time, but you certainly could not "flip" the dial either, thus "exposure". I think that would explain B101's massive share explosion during the Holiday season.

Diaries = popularity contest.

I think that the PPM is valuable in the respect of new content...like a station flip or daypart change cause you don't have to wait 3 months to see the effect. Otherwise, PPM has sort of damaged radio's credibility as a "reach AND frequency" medium...it's like PPM just cut radio's classic sales slogan in half...cause rarely will anyone ever see a "frequency of 3" ever again.
Click to expand...

Excellent points by Wexler, and absolutely correct. PPM might be a novel way to rate listenership, but it might be fraught with more inaccuracies even than the good ole diary.
The problem here is that you can't just sample 1000-5000 people per market, you really need to blow the whole system up and figure out a way to get a larger percentage of population involved, say 25-30%. For instance, ideally you want at least 200,000 people to fill out a diary in Philly. Now this sounds crazy, and logistically it could be a nightmare, but with the advent of the internet, it would really be in Arbitrons best interest to have people do diaries via email, albeit an extremely streamlined diary. How do you get that many people to fill them out??? You'd have to almost make it contest based with a chance to win something, it could be done, but its a whole brave new world of thinking, and it will probably never happen. But the best way to sample listening habits of a market is to get as many folks as possible, and have them answer honestly as possible....
Wacky idea, yes... Best way to do it.... probably...

just my .02
 
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