Local sports talk in Rochester & Utica

[therealjm12]

You might want to check out my posting on the Buffalo/Rochester thread "Who Cares" http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=209858.0

 

[Bob1370]

Syracuse has local sports talk on the dial middays and afternoons on WSKO/1260--which may well be because they have not only play by play of local pro teams but also a lot of big time college sports (Syracuse U.) to talk about. Don't know what the ratings are like--that station has a decent daytime signal, but like most of the Syracuse market AMs, their directional pattern at night lops off the southern third of the market. If Cumulus is investing as much as they seem to be in local production, and also piping in Don Imus in morning drive from NYC corporate sibling WABC, the numbers have to be decent even though that market has been embargoed by Arbitron from publishing numbers to the trades for four years now.

Rochester also has a little bit of local sports talk on the air on WHTK, done by people who double in brass over at Clear Channel cluster-mate WHAM, but that station's overall numbers are hurt by the lack of locally based major league pro teams or Division I-A college programs to talk about. Entercom sports-talker WROC-AM, which pulled a 0.6 in the fall with virtually wall-to-wall ESPN content, doesn't do any local sports talk to speak of, and doesn't even import programming from WGR in Buffalo any more except for Sabres play-by-play during the fall and winter. It's not a sports-talk hotbed when you compare it with the action generated by stations like WGR, WFAN in New York or WXYT in Detroit.

 

[CNYRadio.com]

Syracuse has local sports talk on the dial middays and afternoons on WSKO/1260--which may well be because they have not only play by play of local pro teams but also a lot of big time college sports (Syracuse U.) to talk about. Don't know what the ratings are like--that station has a decent daytime signal, but like most of the Syracuse market AMs, their directional pattern at night lops off the southern third of the market. If Cumulus is investing as much as they seem to be in local production, and also piping in Don Imus in morning drive from NYC corporate sibling WABC, the numbers have to be decent even though that market has been embargoed by Arbitron from publishing numbers to the trades for four years now.

Arbitron's new "no embargo" policy finally gave us a look at the Syracuse numbers yesterday, for the first time in four years. However, it's not that informative -- the second half of the "no embargo" policy is "subscribers only" and it looks like Cumulus didn't subscribe to the winter book. In fact, aside from Clear Channel's cluster, the only other stations to show up on the list were WOLF Radio's two FM formats.

However, Eastlan Ratings does release numbers for the entire market. It's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison with Arbitron since Eastlan releases ALL stations (even non-commercial) and their survey dates and methodologies are a little different. But, their Fall 2011 Syracuse book puts WSKO pretty far down the list, with a 0.9 share P12+.

Of course, sports talk is one of the key examples of a format where P12+ numbers aren't that useful, since sports talk isn't a "mass appeal" format. I would assume they're doing a decent job in their target demo just from the fact that they could just run network programming all-day, but they maintain a local lineup weekdays from 10am to 6pm, plus a few weekend local shows, and on top of that, they have Chiefs, Crunch and Le Moyne College.

 

[Bob1370]

One other small item from the Rochester market... Clear Channel's WHTK/Sports 1280 has dumped its simulcast on Ontario County rimshot WHTK-FM 107.3, turning it into an automated oldies station and losing what had been a nighttime and pre-sunrise null-filler for WHTK-AM in the southeastern part of the market. You could iinterpret that as a negative vote on sports talk, or an attempt to nibble a bit at WLGZ's oldies audience (although its impact in-home and in the workplace will be minimal except in Ontario County since it doesn't even put a 60 dBu metro-grade signal into Monroe County). They'd be better off just selling it to a broadcaster who's interested largely in reaching the Finger Lakes area since it's not worth much as a Rochester rimshot.