Is Howard Stern the only one who could help AM demos?

[davideduardo]

David, maybe this should be a separate thread but it's clear Salem is more interested in advancing its Evangelical Christian political agenda on its AM Talk stations. If they make a little money or break even, great. If they don't, they get propped up by the Religion stations, and in some markets Contemporary Christian FM stations. That's where Salem makes its money. Yes, they have to answer to shareholders, but many of them hold their same philosophy. While the paid religion station rakes in the bucks in a given market, if that Talk station on the other side of the building bashing Obama and the modern world doesn't make much money, who's gonna know?

If you look at the financials you'd see that Salem has quite good margins. They are able to monetize the talkers by a combination of national sales and local direct where ratings are not generally very important. There are lots of local accounts that do want to be in that kind of programming.

Terrible ratings on WNYM NYC, KKLA LA, WIND Chicago, etc. They're not on fulltime Class A 50,000 watt signals but those are not terrible signals either.

KKLA is a Mt Wilson FM... not the best, but definitely not the worst of those up there at 5000 feet AMSL. WIND is an excellent signal given its dial position, although WNYM is definitely deficient.

And even if PPM may have changed the ratings landscape a bit, to say Stern would only be #10 or #11 all those years he dominated morning ratings is a stretch.

Based on the very low cume and the fact that low cume stations with "niche appeal" did not grow much in PPM, and using a range of TSL calculations for comparable programs "before and after" it is very clear Howard would have dropped to around 10th in both NYC and LA.

Yeah, maybe his fans were writing in their diaries that they listened more than they did.

Yeah, about 60% to 70% more on the average. Broader appeal formats made up for part of the loss by showing they had larger cume than previously reported, but TSLs plummeted. A station that had 8 to 9 hours of diary listening showed 2:30 to 3:15 in the PPM (broad averages).

But I'm sure listeners to other stations did the same.

No, they didn't. That's why some formats were killed by PPM and others prospered.

I don't think we can go back and say Diary Ratings cannot be trusted to the point where the #1 morning guy really was the #10 morning host. When People Meters were introduced, some stations dropped a bit, some went up a bit but there wasn't such a dramatic change.

When you look at rating and AQH persons, not share, you see that overall listening levels declined nearly 40% with the PPM. There will always be 100 shares, so comparing share is not relevant for this discussion. Overall listening declined so each share point represented 40% fewer people. The most affected were narrow-appeal shows and formats that did not somewhat compensate with increased cume.

In the case of Stern and shows like that, there was no phantom cume being under-reported in the diary. If you listened to Stern, you knew it and you tended to write down long, uninterrupted listening spans. That does not work in PPM.

 

[radiophiler]

Didn't this also hurt Rush Limbaugh and talk radio stations in general? People were writing in diaries that they were listening to all three hours of Rush when their listening was actually somewhat less.
One other format I noticed (at least in Philadelphia) that took a big hit in the change from diaries to PPM: gospel. In diaries, Radio One's FM gospel station in Philly, with a deficient (compared to other Philly stations) signal used to score quite well. Now it's always near the bottom of the FM pack.
One more potential PPM casualty: Delilah in evenings on major market AC stations. She seemed to lose stations after the diary to PPM switch ... or was that just coincidence or more about the recent evolution of the AC format?

 

[Unregistered]

Salem buys because of their political agenda - not to win in the ratings.

As others have stated, Salem is a public company. It is there to make a profit...period!
Any who have been in the biz for a while know that religious broadcasters are usually the most immoral people in the business - same for peeps who put "fish" symbols in their ads. I can count on ONE hand the number of religious operators I could/can trust.
Ed has learned, like many others, that "thars' money in preachin' an' teachin' "

 

[Unregistered]

Whats days does howard work on xm now ?

 

[Wimmmex]

Any who have been in the biz for a while know that religious broadcasters are usually the most immoral people in the business - same for peeps who put "fish" symbols in their ads.

Wow...quite a slam from an anonymous/unregistered user.

 

[Wimmmex]

David, maybe this should be a separate thread but it's clear Salem is more interested in advancing its Evangelical Christian political agenda on its AM Talk stations.

Close, but no. They are more interested in making money than anything else.

They are not a charitable or ministry organization.

 

[TheBigA]

Close, but no. They are more interested in making money than anything else.

They are not a charitable or ministry organization.

The same could be said about Bonneville. However, there are lots of types of music and programming they absolutely won't air, regardless of money.

 

[davideduardo]

Didn't this also hurt Rush Limbaugh and talk radio stations in general? People were writing in diaries that they were listening to all three hours of Rush when their listening was actually somewhat less.
One other format I noticed (at least in Philadelphia) that took a big hit in the change from diaries to PPM: gospel. In diaries, Radio One's FM gospel station in Philly, with a deficient (compared to other Philly stations) signal used to score quite well. Now it's always near the bottom of the FM pack.
One more potential PPM casualty: Delilah in evenings on major market AC stations. She seemed to lose stations after the diary to PPM switch ... or was that just coincidence or more about the recent evolution of the AC format?

All your examples are low cume, high diary TSL formats or shows.

What happened is that people said, in the diary, "6 AM to 10 AM" and "Howard Stern". In fact, of those 4 hours they likely listened to much more than 60 to 90 total minutes due to interruptions, distractions, phone calls, coffee stops or breaks, potty breaks, taking out the trash, jumping in the shower and a million other things people do.

 

[Unregistered]

I doubt Stern would get great ratings now on AM or FM. Stern wants to be in TV.
he should go away . His act is old. but, Maybe he will make another film about his life .

 

[Unregistered]

Wow...quite a slam from an anonymous/unregistered user.

I see you use a "pen" name...not your real name. So what's your point?
I have many years in this business and have worked for many religious broadcasters. I know a few who are good as gold. Far too many are simply interested in gold...
People who feel a need to tell people who, and what they are just aren't always trustworthy. You will know a true Christian (or Jew, Muslim etc.) by the way a person lives their life. No need for a bumpersticker...

 

[Gregg.]

Yes, but that was true of Scott Shannon, Luis Jimenez, Imus, Gambling, all the morning shows. If you were a fan, you'd write down you listened all morning. How can we calculate that Stern's fans were more dishonest than Tom Joyner fans or even those listening to NPR or Classical in the morning? Everyone is invested in the success of their favorite stations and shows. People listening to Lite-FM were honest in diary days but people listening to Howard were not? I just don't think we can say Howard, book after book at #1, was really #10.

And I meant to say KRLA, not KKLA. KKLA-FM is the FM paid religion station in LA that makes tons of dough for Salem, and Contemporary Christian 95.9 KFSH is #25, between KLYY and KXOL, not bad for a 6000 watt station licensed to Anaheim. Those two stations make the cluster money. 870 KRLA, 50kw Day/3kw Night, is currently tied for #37, down in the point-somethings. If 870 KRLA is barely breaking even, but, in the view of Salem's owners, is pushing all those LA liberals to the right, getting them to vote for candidates that support the owners' and God's politics, who's going to know it's not producing? What shareholder asks for a break down?

In the top ten markets where Salem subscribes to Arbitron, here are the January ratings for their AM Talk stations...

KRLA Los Angeles: #37
KSKY Dallas: #29
WGKA Atlanta: #27

If tomorrow you did a study to show Italian mandolin music would bring in more revenue than the Salem Talk line up does, the Salem executives would take your study and promptly throw it in the trash. As long as the revenue from paid religion keeps coming in and the stock price goes up, none of the shareholders are going to press for the Talk stations to fire Dennis Prager and Bill Bennett and start playing O Solo Mio and That's Amore.

 

[davideduardo]

Yes, but that was true of Scott Shannon, Luis Jimenez, Imus, Gambling, all the morning shows. If you were a fan, you'd write down you listened all morning. How can we calculate that Stern's fans were more dishonest than Tom Joyner fans or even those listening to NPR or Classical in the morning? Everyone is invested in the success of their favorite stations and shows. People listening to Lite-FM were honest in diary days but people listening to Howard were not? I just don't think we can say Howard, book after book at #1, was really #10.

But the Stern TSL was considerably above that of other significant younger targeted morning shows, and the cume was proportionally lower. The only one coming close to that low cume and high TSL was Luis Jimenez, who also suffered considerable declines in the PPM environment. This was because, unlike talents like Shannon who had music in their morning shows, there was no real cume growth to partially offset the loss of TSL due to the revelation of phantom cume.

870 KRLA, 50kw Day/3kw Night, is currently tied for #37, down in the point-somethings.[/QUOTE]

Considering the deficient signal, KRLA bills over $5 million a year, which is likely quite profitable given the efficiencies of cluster operation and the use of syndicated programming. WIND bills over $4 million, great for Chicago secondary AMs. KFSH, with higher ratings, bills less than KrLA.

In the top ten markets where Salem subscribes to Arbitron, here are the January ratings for their AM Talk stations...

KRLA Los Angeles: #37
KSKY Dallas: #29
WGKA Atlanta: #27

All of these bill better than the average deficient signal AMs in their markets and at levels very capable of having positive cash flows.

Keep in mind that stations outside the top tier don't sell on ratings. They sell local direct and have programming and relationship based sales models. Depending on the market, the top tier might be 25 stations in LA, or 15 stations in Atlanta... but once outside that group that does a lot of transactional (ratings used as a metric) business, the ratings are mostly meaningless. Yet many of those stations are quite profitable using a different model.

If tomorrow you did a study to show Italian mandolin music would bring in more revenue than the Salem Talk line up does, the Salem executives would take your study and promptly throw it in the trash.

That is no different than saying that SBS is unlikely to consider doing country or Radio One is unlikely to do Classic Rock. It's not in their area of expertise and the additional staffing required would not represent a good business model. I use those two comapanies as examples as both have tried out-of-expertise formats in recent years (Spanish for Radio One and English Churban for SBS) and done poorly by the decisions.

Salem has a working model for conservative talk, block relegious teaching and preaching and, in some cases, Contemporary Christian as a cluster and it produces good profitable billing for the cluster.

 

[JPlainJohn]

When was the last time Stern was on AM Radio? You can't compare WNBC in 1984 to 2014!!!

 

[TheBigA]

That is no different than saying that SBS is unlikely to consider doing country or Radio One is unlikely to do Classic Rock. It's not in their area of expertise and the additional staffing required would not represent a good business model.

Although it has been interesting to watch Radio One replace gospel music with all news in Houston. I'm sure it was very expensive, and outside their normal comfort zone, but they claim it's currently making money.

 

[Tom Wells]

Where can I tune in this Italian mandolin music?

I'd rather hear that than Howard Stern.

Here in Chicago, Howard Stern was a blip on the radar.

 

[Bill_W]

Stern supposedly brought 3 million subs to XM radio.
IF....half of those subscribers paid $13.00 monthly for Howard's internet service that would be $19.5M MONTHLY. That's almost $235 million per year.
Costs would be.......overhead for studios. Salaries for cast of characters. No SoundExchange fees because there's NO music. Any music bed will be unlicensed to avoid SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI.
So the big "IF" is could Stern sign up 1.5 million subcribers? I think it's a definite *maybe.*

Howard went to Sirius, not XM.