Is WKAF in trouble?

[CTListener]

Actually, advertisers don't pay much if any attention to how long a listener spends with a station each day or week. What they look at in the agency versions of the Nielsen software is the number of listeners that hear each spot.

"Reach & Frequency", the math that gets you both per-spot impact average and total number of "hears" of each spot based on cume, is not implemented much any more. Just AQH persons per spot.

So, in a simplification, I am saying that they don't care how long you listen... just if you heard a spot and how many others did, too.

Interesting. So advertisers no longer value repeated exposure to their specific spots -- which would be greater during a 90-minute commute than during a 30-minute one -- and instead are happy that X number of commuters hear a spot once during that drive?

 

[Retro]

Here is a far fetched, and yet still entirely possible scenario, in the past , but not rumored recently. Salem could theoretically be a silent wild card player and very quietly working on a deal to purchase WKAF instead. Now I have not heard as much as even a single rumor or murmur about about this at all. I am just saying as always, anything can happen in radio.

 

[davideduardo]

Here is a far fetched, and yet still entirely possible scenario, in the past , but not rumored recently. Salem could theoretically be a silent wild card player and very quietly working on a deal to purchase WKAF instead. Now I have not heard as much as even a single rumor or murmer about about this at all. I am just saying as always, anything can happen in radio.

Yes, what they look at is the CPM, mostly. The Cost per Thousand listeners. They are not concerned about whether the same listener hears the spot again in the same day (they never have been, in fact) or in the same week (Reach and Frequency is weekly, as the measurement is in weeks). They just want the number of persons to compare with the cost per spot.

Advertisers used to look at the time listeners averaged with a station so that stations that held listeners longer might need fewer spots on the buy, and shorter listening might require more to get the same Reach and Frequency. Today, as lots of agency buys are automated, none of that is looked at. Too many stations to analyze each one individually; this is another reason why some groups are looking at national simulcast networks as one buy gets dozens or more stations and the stats are easier to present.