The top News/Talk stations in the US have pretty solid cume. WTOP, KCBS and more. In Seattle cume has been declining for KIRO-FM and KNWN recently. When that happened their AQH declined. 25-54 neither of these stations is top 10 right now. Your point is well taken regarding KPNW. Sad part about this (as Bobcav points out) is we are talking about what appeals to metrics of measurement which all have flaws. Low cume stations/high TSL formats disappeared overnight when PPM arrived. Smooth Jazz, dozens of AAA stations and more. The stations didn't become terrible overnight, what was important to drive the metrics (PPM vs Paper diary) changed. AC, Classic Hits and cume driven formats worked better in PPM to drive AQH and impressions. Media buyers became more metrics conscious as well instead of looking at results that could be driven by a station with low cume, but a passionate audience.
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KPNW played “Bad Habits” by Ed Sheeran.
- Thread starter Cobra14
- Start date
They did. The thing that seemed to fix it was Voltaire.
Your examples are all-news. That's different from news/talk. All news has a very short clock, repeating stories on a regular cycle. That's why their cume is similar to a music station. More repetition leads to more audience turnover. Compare WMAL cume to WTOP.
Those are very good songs, indeed.
As for "Bad Habits," not my favorite Ed Sheeran song. I prefer "A Team," which I believe debuted on AAA radio before Sheeran crossed over to pop.
As a side, I have heard Taylor Swift's "Willow" on AAA radio before. She is similar to Sheeran in that she is a huge pop star but enjoys airplay across non-pop formats, as well.
As a side, I have heard Taylor Swift's "Willow" on AAA radio before. She is similar to Sheeran in that she is a huge pop star but enjoys airplay across non-pop formats, as well.
Overall, I like KPNW. I tend to like AAA so I am rooting for it. 0.5 share is pretty bad though. That's a deep hole to crawl out of, especially for a commercial station.
As for KEXP, they seem like a completely different animal to me. I do not think "AAA" is an adequate description of their format. "Eclectic" seems like a better description. I am not sure to what extent commercial stations compete with public stations, even if their formats are similar.
As for KEXP, they seem like a completely different animal to me. I do not think "AAA" is an adequate description of their format. "Eclectic" seems like a better description. I am not sure to what extent commercial stations compete with public stations, even if their formats are similar.
PPM measures which stations and for how long. It is no more cume based than the diary,
What the PPM shows is that people don't listen "all day" or "all morning". They listen in bits and pieces during a period of time while the do other things. The diary showed "all day" as nobody wrote in the little periods of on and off listening... they just put in "9 AM to 5 PM" listening at work, and did not take out the times for coffee breaks, lunch, the bathroom, phone calls, meetings and everything else.
Harker is just wrong. 90% of your share/rating/AQH persons come from about 50% of your cume. So the important thing is to super-serve the people who listen a lot so they will stay and, if possible, get more of the lighter listeners to become primary listeners.I don't think we disagree. Geek warning again! AQH drives impressions but since the arrival of PPM it is cume that drives AQH. My point is as we move to an impressions-based world cume becomes more important because in PPM-digital metrics it is the driver of AQH vs in paper diaries where TSL drove AQH that will be gone by 2025. There are outliers that get big AQH without cume but it is rare and generally short-lived relying on a couple Super P-1 panelists. Best analysis on the subject was from Richard Harker a few years ago. He explains better than I ever could:
It’s All About Cume, Stupid
In this week’s Programming To Win column, Richard Harker focuses on the importance of cume as the key element of a station’s PPM ratings. Harker digs into Arbitron data to show that cume, not TSL, should be the focus of your plan for ratings growth. Richard Harker By Richard Harker James...deanemediasolutions.com
Eventually Ed Sheeran did crossover to pop all together playing on Top 40 stations. Now he plays on formats like Hot AC, Modern AC and AC as well (though there aren’t that much Modern AC stations these days).
What does/did Modern AC sound like? I don't recall encountering that label before.
Think Dave Matthews, Tori Amos, Jewel, Sarah McLachlan and some 80s…it was modern rock that essentially targeted females that was popular for a time in the mid to late 90s.
Today it mixes in Adele, Ed Sheeran, Dave Matthews, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Ironically, Cities 97 is successful with the Modern AC formula even though it features 1980s hits. However it isn’t exactly like Click 2.0 on “Cities”.
They probably lean toward that but aren’t actually Modern AC. WTAR leans the most toward Modern AC out of all these stations I think since it retained some of the music from the “Lucy” format so it seems like kinda a hybrid between the two formats. However Billings Planet 106.7 is a Modern AC.
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This most likely explains why so many radio stations have decided to air a similar contest where you listen at the top of the hour to hear your name called, and then call in to try and win money. When you think about it, it’s a very clever strategy to ensure that you’re holding onto your listeners and they’re not tuning away (in fear of missing their name being called).
Except unlike KTCZ it doesn’t play 1980s titles and probably plays some newer alternative that KTCZ doesn’t play or doesn’t play very often. KTCZ isn’t a Click 2.0 despite the fact that they play some 1980s titles and Planet 106.7 is kinda more like how “Click 98.9” was originally but with a newer mix (since a lot of the newer songs they play didn’t exist at the time) unlike KTCZ which isn’t exactly like that and it kinda does follow the KTCZ model. Overall, Planet 106.7 seemed to go back and forth between a Alternative-leaning Hot AC and a Modern AC format over the years.
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KPNW has a 0.9 share still despite it making tweaks and adding personalities to the market.
That’s because people who listen to AAA in Seattle market are less likely to wear a pager than people who listen to other formats like Country. It’s part of the psychology and profile of the individuals. It’s an inaccurate way of measuring a particular demo of listeners. I know more people who listen to KPNW and like the station than others. Cue “that’s anecdotal” comments. Also people who like that format listen to the artists from other sources than radio and are more prone to be adopters of technology that provide content that KPNW provides. They have to figure out how to be unique from those sources that people will gravitate toward.
But people who don't wear "pagers" or similar devices such as PPMs are just the kind of people that get advertisers shaking their heads and saying "Forget about them." That's because they're seen as cynical, suspicious -- in short, the hardest demographic to win over with a sales pitch. Do you see how that sort of "psychology," which you seem to think is a badge of honor, scares off advertisers? They're adopters of technology that provides content, but yet won't wear technology that tells radio and ad agencies how many people and what kind of people are listening to radio. It's a self-defeating cynicism. I'm sure the owners of commercial stations trying to make a go of it with alternative rock would encourage every last one of their listeners to wear those devices religiously should they be lucky enough to be offered the chance.
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