WSB-AM dethrones the V. Star is way down. Power just keeps climbing.
http://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb047
http://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb047
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JANUARY 2016 PPMs.....
- Thread starter deejaywestbrook
- Start date
I've never before witnessed a presidential race like the one we have now. And WSB has been playing it very smartly. In addition to their talk hosts, the race has been a big part of Atlanta's Morning News and WSB's newscasts throughout the day.
Huge drop for the Fishstick. Haven't seen ratings that low in a long time.
Did Cumulus misread the market on 98.9 or what? "Radio" isn't setting the market on fire, so what led Cumulus to decide they needed a competitor? I have no idea if the better ratings were just the result of Santa's stopping by or if "Warm" was actually filling a Soft AC void in the market, but I'm guessing we'll find out this time next year.
Roddy, I agree about this being a very interesting election season so far. This definitely makes for somewhat more entertaining material for talk radio. Not sure if it makes for good anything else, though.
Did Cumulus misread the market on 98.9 or what? "Radio" isn't setting the market on fire, so what led Cumulus to decide they needed a competitor? I have no idea if the better ratings were just the result of Santa's stopping by or if "Warm" was actually filling a Soft AC void in the market, but I'm guessing we'll find out this time next year.
Roddy, I agree about this being a very interesting election season so far. This definitely makes for somewhat more entertaining material for talk radio. Not sure if it makes for good anything else, though.
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The new ALL Belinda Skelton format is working well for WSB! (Honestly - she may be a very nice person but she is on EVERY commercial that station has. Or at least it seems that way. Her voice is less than pleasing!)
The Fish is where it should be with a 3 share. I find it impossible to believe that it has ever been a top 5 station, except maybe at Christmas. (They didn't get a Christmas kiss this year.)
I think the poster above is wrong about politics driving the WSB surge. Most people could care less about political. Those that do already listen to WSB. The problem is that Nielsen still has the "wobbles" (not to be confused with The Wiggles) which were supposed to go away with PPM. People (except for radio people) are creatures of habit and don't change stations they listen to without a very compelling reason. Remember also that Nielsen weights the raw numbers so there is an element of subjectivity involved. The cool thing about internet listening is that it is much easier to qualify, and quantify.
That is a great question.
There was something in Tom Taylor's morning email about a similar thing in San Francisco...I believe. Something about new contracts for some of the Pubcasters, and "some" of these entities have not sent the paperwork back yet. Maybe the same here. (Although, it seems strange that ALL of these would go under a new contract at precisely the same time...)
Most non-coms get their ratings through a national program from NPR. It is a very low fee the station has to pay to subscribe to the ratings service. Keep in mind this was something I heard mentioned on this board a few years ago so it is fuzzy memory. Anyway, with them all going out at the same time, I assume something is up with the national contract.
She has a very hickey redneck accent, not good at all in my opinion, She needs linguistics lessons. Sounds like market 300.
Between her voice and EEEERRIK EEEERRIKSON's voice, I can barely make it through 15 minutes of WSB. Lol
This might well be caused by the use of a proc amp which is designed to enhance 'watermarking', the process Nielson uses to identify stations. Called a "Voltair" and it works. And, like any audio processor, when it's overdone, it sounds chit-eye. Since it works, assume everybody has one by now. It develops a rerun of the 'loud wars' of 20 - 25 years ago.
The Voltair is not a processor in the traditional sense. All it does is identify the places in the audio spectrum where the PPM encoder can insert tags and increases the masking density of the audio in those tiny pieces of the audio spectrum to allow encoding to happen.
Since Nielsen introduced the new CBET firmware upgrades to its encoders in December, they have recommended that stations that use the Voltair employ it only for metering, not enhancement. The implication there is that continued use might be construed as ratings distortion.
In any case, most stations did not have Voltair units and few are using them now.
I was working during "the 'loud wars' of 20 - 25 years ago". A couple of things I observed:
The "older" the person's ears who was in charge of the sound* more the high end was pushed. This might have something to do with natural aging and loss of top end frequencies.
Never ever let a person who does a lot of "club DJ work" touch the audio chain.
One station I had just started working at Monday, The engineer quit / retired Thursday due to health reasons and was in the hospital with heart issues. The station hired a new contract engineer who was not going to be there till Tuesday. The PD who worked weekends as a DJ at club, made "adjustments" one Friday afternoon and left for the weekend. It sounded so bad the manager called me at 7AM Saturday morning me to fix "the transmitter" or call the FCC because another station was "cutting" in and causing the the sound to go up and down quickly. I had been out till 3 AM that morning. After 3 cups of coffee, I figured out that the Optimod was doing some kind of clipping causing distortion. After 2 hours or trying to undo the "adjustments" without a manual, which was never found**, I gave up. I had never worked with a Optimod before. I switched to a graphic equalizer, old audio max - volume max setup (which I knew very well), to feed the back the up auxiliary transmitter. There was no way to use this in main TX because the patch bay labels had fallen off. Monday morning the manager said his wife like the way the station sounded. He informed me that I was doing both AM an PM drive shifts for the same money, until he hired a new PM afternoon person. The old PD wanted a raise and got mad and left with no notice! He said he made more at the club than he did at the station. Tuesday the contract guy showed me how to get everything back to factory presets. The Contract guy was an very experienced and had every manual ever printed on his truck! He did order one for the station.
* usually the PD or OM telling the engineer what to do.
Uh, David, you're sort of mistaken on both points. The Voltair is an audio processor, although it only addresses certain very narrow parts of the spectrum as you point out. If you have played with one you know it has the potential - as has any modern [processor - to really garbage up the audio if you overdo it. As to market penetration, it's my considered opinion that more stations here use them than don't use them. I refer to FM stations.
For Nielson to claim 'distortion' they would in essence be claiming that a) the boxes work; and b) their watermarking system has serious faults which allow the boxes to work. My ol' daddy the lawyer is currently dead, but that's the kind of case he would of purely loved to defend.
For Nielson to claim 'distortion' they would in essence be claiming that a) the boxes work; and b) their watermarking system has serious faults which allow the boxes to work. My ol' daddy the lawyer is currently dead, but that's the kind of case he would of purely loved to defend.
I purposely said that the Voltair was not a processor in the traditional sense. It is more like a very high-Q notch filter in reverse. When it becomes objectionable is in the case that there is little real audio in any of the 4 channels in each of the 10 bands the PPM uses to mask; the Voltair will amplify undesirable noise or low level subtleties into the range that the PPM can use, thus making the audio grungy.
Actually, I'd expect the statement that non-accredited methods used to enhance ratings performance to come from the MRC at whatever point they release a policy about such practices. CBET will be part of the MRC accreditation process... Voltair won't.
While a few stations may actually have the enhancement feature of the Voltair on, I believe that the majority of those that used them pre-CBET are only using the monitoring functions today. When Nielsen releases the new monitoring capabilities this year, the Voltair will essentially be redundant.
Well, we're going to differ. As to the 'non-accredited methods', good luck with that. Proving it would be a nightmare. The thought that someone might try would produce erections in law firms throughout the industry. The idea that these boxes are being used in major markets such as Atlanta purely as monitors is frankly incredibly naive.
What you want to be is the first guy in format to enhance the encoding, it demonstrably increases your share. So, for 15 Large, a station increases by a point for a year. In a 300 million market, a point is 3 million scoots. You're gonna turn your back on that?
Then everybody has one shortly and now you have to maintain to maintain your position. The manufacturer does well.
It will be interesting to see how the enhanced by Neilson watermarking works out.
What you want to be is the first guy in format to enhance the encoding, it demonstrably increases your share. So, for 15 Large, a station increases by a point for a year. In a 300 million market, a point is 3 million scoots. You're gonna turn your back on that?
Then everybody has one shortly and now you have to maintain to maintain your position. The manufacturer does well.
It will be interesting to see how the enhanced by Neilson watermarking works out.
Several Voltairs in Atlanta. I would guess that none are being used as simply a monitor.
It shows up on voices giving them a distinct "hallway" or "restroom" effect, even bordering on low level feedback.
The folks in the head office are convinced they work. That's the end of that discussion, in most stations and companies.
I am not sure that the Voltairs will be rendered redundant by the future enhancements of the PPM monitor and encoders. See the line above for the explanation of why that probably won't be true.
Seriously, in the pre eCBET scheme Voltair helped a talk format, at least in my opinion. Music-- not so much. Voltair proobably helps talk formats under eCBET, but not to the extent that it did pre eCBET.
It shows up on voices giving them a distinct "hallway" or "restroom" effect, even bordering on low level feedback.
The folks in the head office are convinced they work. That's the end of that discussion, in most stations and companies.
I am not sure that the Voltairs will be rendered redundant by the future enhancements of the PPM monitor and encoders. See the line above for the explanation of why that probably won't be true.
Seriously, in the pre eCBET scheme Voltair helped a talk format, at least in my opinion. Music-- not so much. Voltair proobably helps talk formats under eCBET, but not to the extent that it did pre eCBET.
We have now had the Holiday and the January books (As well as big parts of November in some markets) to see the new CBET encoding enhancements, and Nielsen issued a report to subscribers showing A:B tests. The encoding, vs. the old encoding, definitely helps in high noise locations, which are typically "at work" situations. The estimates are that CBET could improve overall listening and increase market PUR significantly and some stations might realize increases in ratings (not necessarily share since there are always 100 shares available)
Enhanced CBET was rolled out starting with the two test markets on October 12, and then all the others, in batches, starting with the top 5 on Nov. 5. In general, where improvements over traditional CBET were noticed were in noisy environments where the noise and station audio were around 40 to 45 db. Greater improvements were noticed in talk programs, whether on talk stations or in talk-heavy environments like personality shows.
There is no evidence that adding a Voltair after the implementation of advanced CBET will result in any additional instances of tagging beyond what the Nielsen encoder inserts. And there is no evidence that the Voltair changes tagging levels making detection more frequent. What all of us who have used the product know is that improperly used it will create rather fatigue-causing and artifact-laden audio.
I know of many stations in major markets that have shut off the enhancement of the Voltair and are using the unit only to monitor encoding. I would imagine that some stations that do not understand the encoding process may think that two scoops are better than one, without realizing the fact that it dirties the audio and that you can't have more than 100% of the encoding opportunities tagged.
The MRC can indeed rule on "ratings distortion and bias" as their job is to guarantee advertisers effective measurement of audience sizes for the purpose of pricing. The threat of a "distortion and bias" issue with Nielsen is enough today to keep most stations from doing anything that might generate such an issue: see the Bubba example from Tampa.
Also note that Voltair was most effective when only a few stations had it. When every encoded station has enhanced CBET, there is no advantage. Again, there are only 100 shares available and while PUR may increase, share on a level playing field will be exactly the same now as before CBET with the only variable being audience preferences.
David, well taken except for the last sentence. We buy radio based on ratings, not shares. So if PUR rises, it increases the rating points, and the same GRP's should cost less.
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