wheatstone said:
Somewhere along the way it looks like Al got the shaft from Delaware and he's out to get them down there! Seriously, one comment about the old WDEL TV is off the mark. WDEL TV (now WHYY TV, still licensed to Wilmington) went off the air after KYW forced NBC to pull its network from the station back in the 1950's. They didn't want the competition. And if you didn't have a network back then, you didn't have a station. It went dark, was sold by the Lancaster media barons Al refers to and reemerged in the 60's as public TV.
Some other data on the Wilmington Metro - sure there is a lot of listening to Philadelphia stations, but the ten DE metro stations, not just WJBR and WSTW, normally push something like a 30 share. And if you add up their cumes, it's strong - around 300,000 last time I saw a Wilmington ranker. Not that bad given all the spill from Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Jerry Lee seams to be making a decent living in Philadelphia radio. If Clear Channel and other groups would stop gutting their stations (voice tracking etc.) and focus on solid programming they should do just fine without having to beg for more cume out of Wilmington.
I'm surprised to see this thread still going.
I enjoy this board, except when people see opinions they disagree with or facts they don't wish to accept and then try to impugn the motives of the person who posted them. In any case, thanks for continuing this conversation.
To recap: The OMB established Metropolitan Statistical Areas based on various factors (including social, economic, transportation and distribution, and media usage). On the face of it, Northern New Castle County has a lot more in common with (and seems more oriented to) Philadelphia and to Chester and Delaware Counties than to Kent and Sussex Counties (although sometimes you wouldn't know that from listening to local news in Wilmington where a routine accident or crime around Georgetown gets more play than bigger incidents just up the road). Yes, I think for the most part state lines drawn by bureaucrats thousands of miles away don't reflect how people really orient their lives. Georgetown has more to do with Salisbury than with Wilmington and Wilmington has more to do with Philadelphia than Georgetown. The MSA's reflect this.
Almost always Arbitron follows the OMB's MSA definitions. As earlier posts pointed out, sometimes Arbitron does designate some embedded markets. Frederick is a "Metro Divsion" within the Washington, DC MSA. San Jose and Santa Rosa are MSAs outside the San-Francisco Oakland MSAs. Wilmington is also a Metro Divsion, included in the Philadelphia MSA, according to the OMB.
So back to the original question, why does Arbitron exclude Wilmington from their "Philadelphia MSA," even as an embedded market?
If rim-shots are included, then Delaware stations account for about a 30 per cent average share of listening in the "Wilmington market." Without rim-shots, it's about 20 per cent. Either way, 70 to 80 per cent of radios-in-use are listening to out of market/out of state stations (almost all to Philadelphia stations). In Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton market, the numbers are reversed. More than two thirds of radios are tuned to in-market stations (almost one-third to out-of-market stations). Did all those Wilmingtonians listening to Philly "get the shaft," too?
Trenton is not included in the Philadelphia MSA because Mercer County is divided in its orientation between Philly and New York/North Jersey. In a sense, it really is "Not New York; Not Philadelphia" and both New York and Philadelphia. You can see this clearly on the train platforms in Trenton (and Princeton Junction). North and South bound platforms are equally crowed each morning.
Wilmington is ranked currently as the 75th market in 12 plus population. I haven't seen the BIA rankings lately, but in sales revenue that ranking is about twice that. Did all those advertisers who are not spending money in Wilmington radio "get the shaft," too.
This issue has been raised here before but it's worth mentioning in this context: The Lehigh Valley (viewers and advertisers) support their own independent television station (channel 69) with a strong and very active local news operation. Wilmington's channel 61 offers no comparable local service for Northern Delaware (although two Salisbury stations provide extensive and aggressive coverage of Kent and Sussex Counties). Does channel 61 not offer local programming because it can make more money with infomercials and paid religion (plus an occasional re-run)? Or because of a lack of interest in local news and programming in Wilmington? (Maybe this is a chicken and egg question.) Also brought up on the board before: Wilmington does not have its own public radio station either. And the two stations doing local news in Wilmington added together do not get anywhere near the audience shares of leading local news stations in other markets. Without casting aspersions, I think these are valid questions. Based just on media consumption, most people in Wilmington seem to act like they think they are part of the Philly metro.
And if you didn't have a network back then, you didn't have a station.
False. The stations listed below were commercial VHF stations operated as indies from the 50s until the late 80s or mid 90s (and the launches of Fox, WB and UPN). Some of these are in TV markets smaller than Philly. (I worked for one of them and I was not "shafted.") George B. Storer, a notoriously cheap operator (I never worked for him although I know people who did. I never admired his operations. I was never personally "shafted.") elected to let channel 12 go dark. Ironically, about five years later, Philadelphia channels 17, 29 and 48 signed on and managed to survive and even thrive as indies, despite the additional and major handicap of being UHF stations starting up at a time when most TVs could not receive UHF. Storer went for the quick and easy pay-off and was not willing to invest for the long haul. However, had channel 12 stayed commercial, it most likely would have ended up as a Fox station targeting the entire Philadelphia TV market.
KPHO-TV, Phoenix
KTLA, Los Angeles
KHJ-TV, Los Angeles
KTTV, Los Angeles
KCOP, Los Angeles
KTVU, Oakland
KTVR, Denver
WTTG, Washington
KHON-TV, Honolulu
WGN-TV, Chicago
WTTV, Bloomington-Indianapolis
CKLW-TV, Windsor-Detroit*
WABD, New York
WOR-TV, New York
WPIX-TV, New York
KTNT, Tacoma-Seattle
KTVW, Tacoma-Seattle
*CKLW-TV carried some CBC programmes and functioned mostly as a Detroit independent station owned by RKO-General through the 60s until the Canadian government imposed Canadian content rules and forced the sale of the station to a Canadian broadcaster.
