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Hub PD Calls Out WEEI For Fudging The Numbers

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

WBZ-FM program director Mike Thomas tells the Boston Herald's Jessica Heslam that rival WEEI is "inflating its ratings" by citing a combined rating of WEEI-AM (850) and WEEI-FM (103.7). At the end of the day, Thomas says of the FM signal: "It's still a Providence radio station. Those ratings would count in the Providence market - not in the Boston market."

The PD of 98.5 The Sports Hub adds that WEEI is "trying to do everything they can to make it seem like they don't have any competition."

Radio-Info's own Tom Taylor says the battle of Boston's top-rated sports stations is "a real grudge match in one of the most sports obsessed cities in the planet."

Full story:
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/r...sports_rival_claims_eei_is_padding_hub_stats/
 
Isn't 'EEI on about 6 or 7 stations? Does total listenership count for anything? Any idea on how many listeners 'EEI has in VT, ME, Springfield, Worcester, and wherever else they are heard?
 
According to Arbitron, since they are running different commercials in each market, they are fudging the numbers by adding in the out of market WEEI FM

If they want to claim to be the number one program in New England with demographic A between the ages of X and Y in morning drive then they may have a valid claim as long as they don't use Arbitron data to back them up.
 
Thomas says of the FM signal: "It's still a Providence radio station. Those ratings would count in the Providence market - not in the Boston market."

uhh....not really....if someone with a meter is on the south shore, in the BOSTON market, listening to 103.7, then that counts in the Boston book, not the Providence book.

the numbers in the providence market are a whole nother story and that's not what they are claiming

the .7 or whatever it is that 103.7 gets in BOSTON should be legit boston numbers that they can claim, and if they aren't then it's arbitron's mistake
 
looking at the Boston 6+ PPM's, there is a notation that WAAF and WKAF are simulcast, and there is no rating listed for WKAF ( same thing for WBUR am/fm) so it appears WAAF is a simulcast because of identical programming and commercials being on both stations, where WEEI is considered a network because there are subtle differences in what comes out of the transmitter.

If WEEI wanted to straight simulcast WEEI AM on WEEI FM and give up the ad revenue the FM generates for local market (are they selling Providence/RI/South Shore spots?) and meet the other criteria for Arbitron considering it a simulcast ( same streaming audio feeds?) then they would have a legit argument against Arbitron's and CBS's position.

But since it is Arbitron's data, and they get to control how it is interpreted, they have all the marbles.

The reality of the situation is that EEI is closer to the truth than Arbitron and CBS are, and it is not unreasonable to add in the FM's .6 or whatever the 25-54 Male number is to the AM number.
 
thetheo said:
Thomas says of the FM signal: "It's still a Providence radio station. Those ratings would count in the Providence market - not in the Boston market."

uhh....not really....if someone with a meter is on the south shore, in the BOSTON market, listening to 103.7, then that counts in the Boston book, not the Providence book.

the numbers in the providence market are a whole nother story and that's not what they are claiming

the .7 or whatever it is that 103.7 gets in BOSTON should be legit boston numbers that they can claim, and if they aren't then it's arbitron's mistake
Click to expand...

EEI-FM numbers fall off when they sell spots to the local AM advertiser. There are no if's or but's here. You can only sell local spots based on local numbers. EEI-FM is not a local metro station and they can't claim them as Boston numbers. I am sure some south shore listeners get Matty's show on a Providence station which means zero when they sell his Kiss show to Kiss108 clients. Hub's PD has a legitimate beef and he's 100% right. They(WEEI-Entercom) are misrepresenting the totals.

Network numbers can be pitched to a network buyer but that's a different story.
 
Opened a thread on this before I saw this thread. Rookie mistake, moving my post here.

First time poster, long time reader. I do a little advertising for my business on local radio (smaller stations). Got a ratings question and figured I'd register and ask you guys because you'll probably know better than I do.

Been a lot of hub-bub the last few days on 98.5 because of this :

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1270428

Just heard the night guy play a piece on it and chortle about how he was going to include his Mom and Dad in Florida in his ratings because they listen to him too.

What am I missing here? How exactly is this a manipulation of ratings?

I'm a South Shore guy who does a lot of driving all over MA for my business. In about 40% of the places I go in Massachusetts, 103.7 FM out of Providence is the better option to listen to WEEI on. You can't even get 850 in half the places. I'm talking anywhere WEST of Ashland you're either on 103.7 or 1440 AM. South of Hopkinton through Milford, Bellingham and Franklin its 103.7. Where I live on the South Shore its 103.7 or NOTHING, 850 AM won't even come in. On the South Coast forget about 850 AM completely.

From what I can understand, WEEI is not adding in their Providence market listeners to their Boston numbers (which is the way 98.5 is going out of their way to portray this as), they're adding together their numbers in the BOSTON market for listeners to both 850 and 103.7 FM. Am I correct here, because that's how all the stories on this have come across to me. Is that correct? I think it has to be because I know in Providence EEI has pretty strong numbers, much more than the 1.5's and such that they are adding to these Boston ratings (I know because I once called to buy ads on it and had to back out once I heard about their ratings/rates).

Because in Cohasset, Milford, North Attleboro, Plymouth, Franklin, Rockland or Foxboro if you're listening to WEEI, you're listening on 103.7. But all those towns are part of the BOSTON radio market, so why wouldn't the 103.7 listeners in the Boston market count towards WEEI's ratings?

I can understand how this would be 'manipulation' if you were trying to sell an advertiser time on 850AM and were combining the numbers. That's manipulation because 103.7 sells their own ads, and thus you can't sell an advertiser on both stations if they are only buying one of them. But as an overall indication of the TOTAL AUDIENCE for your product in the Boston market, what's wrong with including both stations if they both show up with ratings in this market?

I won't get into the politics of it, or how much of a snake the WEEI program director sounds like in his quotes, or which station I like better (I happen to like parts of both), but this to me is clearly a case of 98.5 milking this to try and make WEEI look bad, when in reality all WEEI is doing is giving a true indication of who is listening in this market.

Now, whether that's WEEI's true motivation is clearly debatable, and not disclosing that you're adding in Boston listeners to your Providence station is weasel-like, but still, is that "manipulation"? Isn't that a more clear indication of your actual Boston audience than just the 850AM numbers? If 20% of your audience is listening to the FM station in the BOSTON market, why wouldn't they be included in your listenership?

Thoughts please.
 
Alright, as a follow up to my post, after having read this thread, it seems I am right.

For arbitron and advertisers (and 98.5's) purposes, you can't do it.

But as a look at total listeners in a market, you can?
 
With all the talk about the Prov-market the 103.7 stick is in Westerly which is about 45 miles South of Prov., and a de facto Cn town if you went by those blue license plates you see everywhere along the waterfront.

BigO addressed this yesterday saying he's stayed at the Cape last week and couldn't get 850 but 103.7 came bombing up the coast. Much of the spots in the evening are identical and obviously they are during the RS broadcasts.
 
DaveMaynard said:
Because in Cohasset, Milford, North Attleboro, Plymouth, Franklin, Rockland or Foxboro if you're listening to WEEI, you're listening on 103.7. But all those towns are part of the BOSTON radio market, so why wouldn't the 103.7 listeners in the Boston market count towards WEEI's ratings?
Click to expand...

If WEEI and WEEI-FM were 100% simulcast, they could share a single PPM encoder and count as one radio station regardless of the fact that they transmit in different markets. But if they run different commercials, they are not 100% simulcast, so each station must have its own encoder and count separately.

Moreover, Arbitron numbers are averages. If station A has an AQH of 12,000 and station B has an AQH of 12,000, it does not follow that the combined AQH for stations A and B is 24,000. If you add the shares for all the stations in the market, you don't get 100%.
 
Cool, thanks for the info.

So WEEI by fragmenting itself to all these area stations and not simulcasting spots (a la WAAF/KAAF) they kind of bring this on themselves. Not that 850 would be able to service the entire area by itself anyway, crappy signal as it is on the South Shore, South Coast, North of Chelmsford/Haverhill, etc (while 98.5's signal is pretty much everywhere, I don't ever have reception issues in this state, or Providence or southern NH for that matter) but if I read it right, if WEEI were to simulcast their content completely, commercials and all, those numbers that show up in the Boston ratings WOULD count with arbitron.

I still think 98.5 is completely milking/twisting this to their advantage, as WEEI isn't actually adding in Providence listeners as they're accusing, but I guess that's radio war.
 
WEEI isn't doing anything wrong by adding those listeners as Boston listeners to the "network"

If they are selling adds, including the 103.7 listeners, but then only running them on 850, then that's an issue.

But I don't think that's the argument here, as I'm sure the legit CPM is in the sales sheets when they are made out with the accurate ratings.

They are just saying we're #1 in this demo in this market and so on, which is true.

It doesn't matter if you are listening on 850/1440/103.7/etc, if you are listening in the Boston Metro to any of them then you are listening to WEEI.
 
I'm smelling some very VERY sour grapes here. 98.5 has only the one signal, where WEEI has four. And, as has already been noted, numbers for WEEI-FM regularly show up in the Boston market PPM data, and although some of the commercials are different, the programming content is identical, so there's no reason in the world for WEEI not to report the Providence numbers along with the Boston ones. The 98.5 PD wants to draw attention to his station, which is his right, and he's using a time-worn but often effective technique: Take pot-shots at the market leader and hope some of that will rub off on his station. Hey, more power to him, especially if it works.
 
Herein lies the miracle of WEEI's new math.

Kahn said WEEI began including WEEI-FM Boston listeners in its Hub ratings about four months ago when it realized the strong Providence signal began showing up in the sprawling Boston market.
Click to expand...

It's almost as if Kahn & Company didn't have every square inch of WEEI's (both AM & FM) signal plotted since day one. But yet the folks over at Entercom would have you believe they only just happened upon this new science. Oh, how shocking.
 
when it realized the strong Providence signal began showing up
Click to expand...
Ha! It was a weasel-worded quote.
I remember Felger talking about it --the signal--years ago when he was in the rotation, before he jumped to 890. He was saying how great it sounded at the stadium in Foxboro and environs. Maybe Kahn didn't pick up on that?
 
I'm sure they knew the station had plenty of listeners, but in diary days I'm sure most just said "WEEI" whereas now with PPM it's more specific.

So now it's actually putting up .6/.7 which is considerable when added to the AM.

103.7 is a powerful signal, when my show was on both 101.7 and 103.7 when WFNX had it I'd say 60% of my calls were 103.7 listeners and 40% were 101.7/92.1/online

Most listeners were in RI or CT, and even some on Long Island.
 
Here lies the miracle of WEEI's new math.

Kahn said WEEI began including WEEI-FM Boston listeners in its Hub ratings about four months ago when it realized the strong Providence signal began showing up in the sprawling Boston market.
Click to expand...

It's almost as if Kahn & Company didn't have every square inch of WEEI's (both AM & FM) signal plotted since day one. But rather the folks at Entercom would have you believe they only just happened upon this new science.
 
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