Holiday 2012 PPMs

[gabigley1]

"Get relevant, get local, get involved."

WLW in Cincinnati is almost entirely local and has been #1 in the 12+ demo for twelve, thirteen years. Finished the Holiday book at #1 with a 9.8 share, so it's not as if they're a ratings success only during Reds' season.

There was a guy that called into Saturday Morning Open Phones this morning. As you recall, they cut back the show for from four hours to two hours a couple of weeks ago. He talked on the air and was calling for WTVN to resume the four hours of Saturday Morning Open Phones by March 1, 1013.
He asked listeners to not call in listen or listen to the show anymore if WTVN dose not do this by March first. He said she wants to hurt the station in it's pocketbook to force them to do this. The host said to go to the WTVN webpage and contact WTVN management.

Chuck, you took few of these similar calls from listeners when you substituted for the show over the last few years. I knew you were not able to comment on the air because you had no comment most all of the time with these callers. What could you say to the person the person that wanted all local talk on 1230 AM??!!
Now that was a crazy idea and request.

 

[gabigley1]

This is the edited version... The edit is not giving you thirty minutes to edit any more.. Just 15 minutes at this time.

There was a guy that called into Saturday Morning Open Phones this morning. As you recall, they cut back the show from four hours to two hours a couple of weeks ago. He talked on the air and was calling for WTVN to resume the four hours block of Saturday Morning Open Phones by March 1, 1013.
He asked the listeners not call in or listen to the show anymore if WTVN dose not do this by March 1st. He said he wants to hurt the station in it's pocketbook by forcing them to do this. The host said to go to the WTVN webpage and contact the WTVN management.

Chuck, you took few of these similar calls from listeners when you substituted for the show over the last few years. I knew you were not able to comment on the air because you had no comment most all of the time with these callers. What could you say to the person that wanted all local talk on 1230 AM??!! Now that was a crazy idea and request.

Another reason the WTVN rating are heading into uncharted territory is because of major cutbacks to it's news and local talk programming. Last but not least is having Joel do the M-F morning show. Joel is a good talent but not able to fill Bob Conner's shoes in mu opinion.

 

[Chuck Douglas]

This is the edited version... The edit is not giving you thirty minutes to edit any more.. Just 15 minutes at this time.

There was a guy that called into Saturday Morning Open Phones this morning. As you recall, they cut back the show from four hours to two hours a couple of weeks ago. He talked on the air and was calling for WTVN to resume the four hours block of Saturday Morning Open Phones by March 1, 1013.
He asked the listeners not call in or listen to the show anymore if WTVN dose not do this by March 1st. He said he wants to hurt the station in it's pocketbook by forcing them to do this. The host said to go to the WTVN webpage and contact the WTVN management.

Chuck, you took few of these similar calls from listeners when you substituted for the show over the last few years. I knew you were not able to comment on the air because you had no comment most all of the time with these callers. What could you say to the person that wanted all local talk on 1230 AM??!! Now that was a crazy idea and request.

Another reason the WTVN rating are heading into uncharted territory is because of major cutbacks to it's news and local talk programming. Last but not least is having Joel do the M-F morning show. Joel is a good talent but not able to fill Bob Conner's shoes in mu opinion.

When I hosted SMOP, I tried to follw in BC's footsteps by letting people have their say, no matter how whacked I thought they were. On that show, it's not appropriate, at least to me, to confront and argue. SMOP was a place for people to be heard, period. Let me be clear, that was MY CHOICE. At no time was I ever told what to talk about or what guests to have or anything along those lines. If you called, you got on as long as the clock llowed it. I did hang up on a caller once...my first day as the "official" host of the show. This guy-who knows me, who worked with me on a political campaign-starts talking about how it's a shame that Joel was gone and I was there and that "Joel was the last gunslinger" and that he knew what was going on in this town...WHAT?!?!? God bless Joel, but I live in Columbus, I work in Columbus, I grew up in Columbus, I am active in community service in Columbus, my kids go to Columbus schools, I graduated from Columbus schools and to infer that Joel somehow had a better grasp on this city than I had was offensive to me. I told the guy he was free to stop listening and he could lose the phone number and I hung up...not my most stellar moment but we're all human.

As for "forcing" Clear Channel to do anything-expanding SMOP, putting local talk on 1230, anything-don't get your hopes up. Mike Elliott is the (poor) guy that gets to take all the crap. The calls and emails go to him, but he can't do anything that San Antonio does not allow him to do. If he could wave a wand, I would be back with you every day. When they cut me loose, Elliott was as surprised as I. In fact, I was in for Joel that fateful Thursday morning and Elliott and I were texting during breaks about what I wanted to do on the Friday show. When I got off the air at 9:00am and was "summoned" at 9:03, I had no clue and neither did he. For some reason, WTVN is -again, my opinion- disrespected at a corporate level. They didn't even bother to let the program director know that he was about to lose staff. To see WLW get all the resources they get, a ful line-up of hosts and producers and board ops, and news people, and to also see cut after cut after cut at WTVN is sad. The caller you mention that wants to get people on a non-listening bandwagon is (understandably) angry and he wants to try to do something but the problem with any kind of "boycott" is that you end up hurting the few remaining local people. Corporate won't care. As you can see, they do what they do based on nothing but squeezing the last golden egg out of the goose and when the goose is dead, they'll eat it.

As for Joel in the morning slot, I say again God bless him. That is a huge responsibility and ultimately it will work or it won't. Because I had such love for WTVN and such regard for BC, I would have cherished the opportunity to take over when Bob left and I believe Joel felt the same way. I think he and I both grew up in the business looking upon that job as the premiere place to be. It took time for Bob to become the Monarch and it will take time for Joel to define himself too. If it works, he will retire a legend. If it doesn't work...they know where I am ;D.

You see, after all the problems, losing the job, watching the bad things happen, I do and will always love the legend of WTVN. I really do hope they are given the opportunity to recover from a bad day at the ratings ranch.

 

[del_griffith]

Chuck: Thanks for a behind the scenes look. Most people don't understand that these decisions are often made without any or much local input. And worse, they will continue.

I know a lot of people are in agnst about the loss of the 8-10 hours of SMOP. But before SMOP, the station awoke us with music and a Saturday version of John Fraim. A lot of people were upset when John left and even more so when Bob began blending talk and music initially on Sat AM. Change happens. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it is a train wreck. I think ultimately CC will be a train wreck. They have what has been described as an unreal and probably unsustainable debt load. They are for all intents and purposes rationing paper clips.

And to a point, while they are participating in their own demise, research will show that listeners in general don't care. SMOP loyalists are passionately upset because they were for all itents and purposes they were given pretty much free reign without much pushback whether the information was solid or not. And frankly, there were a lot of listeners simply because it was a place to hear some of the train wreck ideas and the personalities that some displayed.

But we're probably dealing with the old 80-20 on this and 80% of TVN listeners don't really care whether SMOP survived or whether any of the shows are local or syndicated. And that's why Clear Channel is doing what they are doing. Just a handful, in their research, truly cares about any of this.

 

[del_griffith]

WLW #1 in Cincinnati 13 straight years.....article from today.

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2013/01/25/wlw-am-no-1-for-13-years/

Now we have a little bit of red face going on down along the river. If champaign corks were popped in, the bubbly flowed a bit early.

WLW has lost it's crown. Arbitron forgot to include the Cumulus stations in their top line report. When correctly added in, WARM beat WLW. Cumulus had reached agreement to subscribe to Arbitron, but the numbers for Cincy didn't get loaded.

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2013/01/25/wlw-am-no-1-for-13-years/

 

[Allfirdup]

WLW #1 in Cincinnati 13 straight years.....article from today.

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2013/01/25/wlw-am-no-1-for-13-years/

Now we have a little bit of red face going on down along the river. If champaign corks were popped in, the bubbly flowed a bit early.

WLW has lost it's crown. Arbitron forgot to include the Cumulus stations in their top line report. When correctly added in, WARM beat WLW. Cumulus had reached agreement to subscribe to Arbitron, but the numbers for Cincy didn't get loaded.

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2013/01/25/wlw-am-no-1-for-13-years/

The books that went to subscribers did have all the numbers, just not the public sources that we can see. So WLW was very aware of not being number 1 in the PPM 6+ numbers

 

[KFodor]

Moving to FM wouldn't help WTVN much. WTVN's demos are getting old, and younger demos aren't suddenly going to start flocking to Rush, Sean and Corby just because they're on FM. Even aside from demos that format is showing signs of slipping. Talk has been doing pretty badly across much of the country the last few books. People talk about classic rock growing long in the tooth, but that applies even more to talk. It's not uncommon to hear a twenty-something walking down the street singing a 60s, 70s or 80s hit, but I don't hear them talking about what Rush said. I'd wager that even if Conners was there WTVN would still be hurting, though maybe not quite as badly.

Yes..we're pretty consistently #2 12 plus for a few years now...

You don't have to get the teenagers...lots of people between 35 & 54 will listen to talk radio. Just not on AM.

Actually, haven't you folks done pretty well with adding an FM component to WHIO?

 

[KFodor]

Moving to FM wouldn't help WTVN much. WTVN's demos are getting old, and younger demos aren't suddenly going to start flocking to Rush, Sean and Corby just because they're on FM. Even aside from demos that format is showing signs of slipping. Talk has been doing pretty badly across much of the country the last few books. People talk about classic rock growing long in the tooth, but that applies even more to talk. It's not uncommon to hear a twenty-something walking down the street singing a 60s, 70s or 80s hit, but I don't hear them talking about what Rush said. I'd wager that even if Conners was there WTVN would still be hurting, though maybe not quite as badly.

You don't have to get the teenagers...lots of people between 35 & 54 will listen to talk radio. Just not on AM.

Jason, your selectivity about "this format is viable" vs. "this one's listeners are dying off" kind of perplexes me. In OctoberHubbard's WDRV The Drive in Chicago was #5 25-54 (and probably even higher 35-54) in that hugely competitive market with primarily old-line classic rock that you've said only appeals to people with one foot in the grave. Yet when an FM talker is able to snare a decent chunk of 35-54 that's viable. Huh?

Nu-roo: I think you're kinda talking apples vs. oranges here. I just looked at Drive and Q-FM on Mediabase. While both stations have been around for quite a while, both are playing a significant component of what I'll call "Today's Classic Rock" (New buzz word alert!). And yes, there is such a thing. Quite a few classic rock stations are moving away from the Jimi Hendrix/CSN & Y/Grateful Dead, early Zep 70's sound and focusing more on a sound from 1976 or so to 1992 or 1993. That will get you the 35-54 audience if you're playing the right music in a significant amount...and both stations are playing at least 50% of that newer focused classic rock, or more. That's the audience, by the way, that was the 18-34's who "discovered" Star 107.9 when we put it on the air about 15 years ago. I'll admit today (with 20/20 hindsight) that I just didn't have the research available at first to tell me that the rock product drove the boat. The 80's rock sound (which goes back to about '76) seems to now be starting to drive the boat at Classic Rock. If you keep your music in line with that audience, a station tends to continue to do well. On the other hand, if you're top heavy with music that primarily appeals to the 60 plus crowd, you're dead.

Now, to talk radio: It's not just the talk hosts who produce the ratings. I told our boss here in Dayton years ago, "if we're going to say we're a news station, we've got to BE the news station."
News, especially local news, weather and traffic IMHO, is a critical component to the success of a news talk station. Take that away...and lower ratings tend to result. WABC/New York cut it's staff, So, too WLS-AM and WTVN, too. What's happened? Add to it the retirement of B.C., the loss of service elements. None of it is helpful, though it may be reality for them. And God help them if they end up with a traffic reporter who can't pronounce "Olentangy"!

FM is not a cure-all, either. Look at the struggling Tier 2 AM talkers that jumped on the FM bandwagon thinking it would help them...and it didn't. No, you have to have the product...the top talk of the day, local news, traffic and weather. You can't have two day old forecasts slip onto the air because the computer played the wrong file when you were in automation without a producer in the studio. News needs to be 24/7 or darned close to it. If you're not 24/7, you need to have plans in place to cover an emergency with staff on-call to come in at a moment's notice.

Can FM help a news talker? It did for us. Our demos are nicely 25-54, largely concentrated above age 35. But, we're fortunate to have news resources well and beyond what an average radio station typically has today, though a successful news-talker could merge with other platforms and make alliances to offset that.

But, I think it's way too early to suggest that because some newstalkers are faultering right now that it has to do with conservatism or politics. I don't deny a shift in the demographics in the country...but there are young conservatives on college campuses...Rush "Grandbabies" if you will, and there's plenty of audience to grow into the format. But...not on AM radio. AM radio, I hate to say, probably has 20-30 years, or less before most go off to that great regenerative circuit in the sky, absent something allowing for band parity. And, I also think Newstalk, like CHR, is an expensive format. If you're not going to give it the resources it needs, and the audience wants, don't get into it.

 

[del_griffith]

I think our country is still overall center right, but the lines are blurring. One thing I'm beginning to see is more public radio stations moving toward higher positions in the ratings. In certain markets, they are among the top listened to stations. In San Francisco, they are #2. As they are in DC.

While in most markets, they dont' show that strongly, they do get respectable ratings. In Cincy for example, XVU is not that far behind WKRC.

I think the reason for the growth is not ideology but rather the constant drumbeat of liberals bad, conservatives good is beginning to wear thin. Could you imagine if public radio really tried to compete with an on air delivery that had some intensity rather than the geeky sound?

I think one program really well done is the Marketplace program. The host is conversational, has a sense of humor and yet doesn't talk in a condescending manner as many pubcasters can sound.


Talk is in a transition.

 

[KFodor]

I think our country is still overall center right, but the lines are blurring. One thing I'm beginning to see is more public radio stations moving toward higher positions in the ratings. In certain markets, they are among the top listened to stations. In San Francisco, they are #2. As they are in DC.

While in most markets, they dont' show that strongly, they do get respectable ratings. In Cincy for example, XVU is not that far behind WKRC.

I think the reason for the growth is not ideology but rather the constant drumbeat of liberals bad, conservatives good is beginning to wear thin. Could you imagine if public radio really tried to compete with an on air delivery that had some intensity rather than the geeky sound?

I think one program really well done is the Marketplace program. The host is conversational, has a sense of humor and yet doesn't talk in a condescending manner as many pubcasters can sound.


Talk is in a transition.

I would agree there's a transition in talk...but I don't expect the "issues oriented" talk to go away. What may need to happen on that front is for the hosts to be more entertaining and with a little less verbosity and pomposity. In other words, explain your positions in an entertaining manner.

NPR is successful in quite a few cities...mostly your more liberal cities, but that's by no means a hard and fast rule. But, where that is true "liberal talk" was tried, and failed. And, perhaps a strong public station could have been part of the equation.

 

[del_griffith]

I think our country is still overall center right, but the lines are blurring. One thing I'm beginning to see is more public radio stations moving toward higher positions in the ratings. In certain markets, they are among the top listened to stations. In San Francisco, they are #2. As they are in DC.

While in most markets, they dont' show that strongly, they do get respectable ratings. In Cincy for example, XVU is not that far behind WKRC.

I think the reason for the growth is not ideology but rather the constant drumbeat of liberals bad, conservatives good is beginning to wear thin. Could you imagine if public radio really tried to compete with an on air delivery that had some intensity rather than the geeky sound?

I think one program really well done is the Marketplace program. The host is conversational, has a sense of humor and yet doesn't talk in a condescending manner as many pubcasters can sound.


Talk is in a transition.

I would agree there's a transition in talk...but I don't expect the "issues oriented" talk to go away. What may need to happen on that front is for the hosts to be more entertaining and with a little less verbosity and pomposity. In other words, explain your positions in an entertaining manner.

NPR is successful in quite a few cities...mostly your more liberal cities, but that's by no means a hard and fast rule. But, where that is true "liberal talk" was tried, and failed. And, perhaps a strong public station could have been part of the equation.

I agree that they tend to be strongest in moderate to liberal cities. And I believe the reason pub casters are getting stronger is they have more content than just angry liberals bad/conservatives good or conservatives bad/liberals good. I hear discussions on NPR. Yes, I do think they need to be more compelling and/or entertaining in their presentation, but I find myself listening more and more to them and less and less to Rush or Big Ed.

Again, I use Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace. He takes a dry topic, economic talk, and makes it interesting to listen to.

 

[Buckaroo]

If you are good, and offer content that cannot be duplicated you should do well. Agree, radio is being fragmented with exception of FM sports. AM is declining no matter how good they are. Most markets, AM listeners now make up only 15 % of the audience, that is a far cry from 5 years ago.....and it will continue. My opinion on CC is ALOT of their markets are down to bone-zero, and they are building their iHeart platform to compete in the car radio. Who wins? You'll see in two years, they'll spin a ton of their station who basically are iHeart programmed and are used to promote iHeart, they won't be able to make the two-billion dollar payment, unless they sell off a ton of stations.

 

[Buckaroo]

Also some hot AC is doing well around the country - with personality (sorry, forgot to mention).

 

[alans613]

Also some hot AC is doing well around the country - with personality (sorry, forgot to mention).

WMMX/Mix 107.7, the (Stuck in the 80s) Hot AC in Dayton does well somehow, mostly from lack of competition. They are owned by CC, & have been spared for the most part from the CC RIFs. How, I don't know.

 

[gabigley1]

WTVN still falling... This can't be good now that we're out of election season...

They got a 5.0 share 12+. This is the lowest share they have ever had over the last twenty years or so?
I don't believe they have ever been this low and continue the slide now that we're out of election season. I predicted 13 months ago the station would be on a downward slide after hiring
Joel for mornings. Wouldn't be surprised to see WTVN slip another point or two over the next
few months or so before we see WTVN on FM as WTVN-FM.

WTVN has rebounded to a 6.0 share 12+. They have been running many TV ads over the last month or two. This and the bad weather
we have had over the last few weeks may have helped WTVN to rebound in the recent ratings. Many people in Columbus tune into WTVN during bad weather and that was what those TV ads were about.