The Door Swings Both Ways
> Not gonna happen these days. When they put a bridge across
> the Sound and Arbitron combines markets on both sides of the
> Sound, then we can talk about it.
Couldn't have said it better myself. We think of all the great Connecticut signals that cover a huge chunk of Long Island like WPLR, WEBE 108, WICC 600, Star 99.9, KC-101.3, Country 92.5, 960 WELI, and many others. None of the CT stations cover LI newswise, trafficwise or ADwise.
Think of this though, Long Island has some big signals that penetrate well into Connecticut. AM 740 W--- can be heard all the way up to Hartford, Walk 97.5 - I know people in CT who listen often to WALK, WBLI 106, Supposedly WLIE 540 gets up there pretty well now too, WLNG and 101.7 also make it to CT quite nicely. While WLNG does have a jingle that acknowleges CT, you still don't hear much at all in the way of advertising for Connecticut on Long Island Stations.
The truth is there is a bit too much competition in each market by itself for all of the stations to be sustainable. Look at how many stations in both CT and LI are floundering with ethnic formats, block programming and the flavor of the week format. I don't think any of the stations have the resources to be Bi-Shoral.
As was previously stated, build a bridge or two or eight from LI to CT an then we'll talk Turkey, but until then, expect that the Long Island Sound will be a big barrier to Bi-Shoral coverage for LI and CT radio stations.
And yes, our market is extremely weird. Look at how many different books/markts there are in Connecticut. Now look at Long Island, the East End book, which is embedded in the Nassau/Suffolk book which is embedded in the NYC book.
The last point of interest, is that the WLNG website used to point out, maybe it still does, that Montauk is further from Manhattan than Philadelphia is. This is indeed true. Yet an arbitron diary in Montauk will affect the ratings info of NYC.
The radio industry makes no sense.