Both numbers matter. But none of it matters.
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Los Angeles Radio Ratings: October 2023
- Thread starter pjc1961
- Start date
That may be, but all of the stuff you don't care about affects whether or not what you want to hear is available for free on OTA radio. Someone else is paying so you can have that experience. One day you wake up, and what you know & love has changed. If you wonder why, it's because of the other stuff. While we in radio get blamed for this ("greedy radio owners, etc), it's really the advertisers who are to blame.
I think they are planning to flip on the morning of Nov 10 probably at 8 or 9 am.
All that stuff matters to people on the inside. It matters if the station can pay the monthly nut, which determines if it stays on the air, and if the current programming brings in enough cash flow to cover it. But for purposes of many discussions on this and other boards, you folks get way too anal over casual references to numbers that insiders consider irrelevant. You need to loosen up when the non-insiders make a reference to 6+ shares. It's basically hot-stove league baseball. The scouts are evaluating very specific statistics on teams and players, but the fans care about runs, hits and errors, which are low-granularity numbers that can be used as common currency for discussions.
Until the day your favorite station changes format or gets sold to EMF.
BTW, you never see me writing about "greedy station owners". Though a buttload of radio's problems can be laid at the footsteps of greedy consolidators, who bought everything in sight they could get their fingers on, damn the carrying costs, and then left their successors with the problems and the bills. But that's also ancient history.
Do you really, truly think EMF and its clones have an unlimited treasure chest? Sooner or later it's going to catch up to them too.
Were you ever my program director?
If you live and work in this country, you want to make money. But you don't want to talk about that, because it's "inside baseball."
Maybe. That's up to their listeners who give them money. It's all about money, but again, you're not interested in that.
I don't see how. When EMF buys a radio station, there's very little major added and ongoing expense beyond the purchase price---no leases, staff, etc. It's one more outlet for a product it already creates and every new or improved signal in a market opens the door to a group of new potential donors.
We have quite a few people on these boards who have a listener perspective and not a revenue and ratings perspective. Michael is giving a ratings perspective and shows how the stations will do financially, the listener perspective is based on artists and songs and era and texture and other criteria, those who are analyzing the contents rather than the revenue and ratings perspective will always find differences.
yes they are. I have never found an agency that paid any attention to 6+ numbers the buyers have instructions from the media, planners and media Director to target specific ages, genders, ethnicities, and similar qualities. They never look at 6+ because it is not within the range of the client and their supervisor‘s criteria.
perhaps that is true to radio fans and listeners but ad oh, freaking buyers won’t even pull up 6+ or 12+ when they are planning a buy.
Having been involved with a large group of major market stations, I can tell you that in many cases, the sales manager or general manager or both will tell sellers never to look at 6+ or 12+ so that they are not influenced by things that are unimportant and will not help them to sell
I think it is the exact opposite because the sales effort for K rock its tradition name and prestige make up for the very slight difference in ideas. As Michael has mentioned, the cume difference between the two stations would not even fill a high school stadium.
You are forgetting that Audacy cells a cluster not an individual station is the group of stations they have is a very viable cluster and can get multiple stations on nearly every buy made in the market, except for Spanish language
Actually, it does quite a bit better than its average quarter our ratings would indicate. While it certainly needs some improvement the real issue there is the changing denmographic profile of the Los Angeles market. We are pure white formats are at a definite disadvantage.
no, it is the reality established by advertising agencies, who are the principal clients for high rated radio stations. They look for specific ages, ethnicities, genders, and regions. They base their criteria on who the largest buyers of their products and services are. They are “infected” by a desire to make a profit, and not waste money, sending messages to people who will not buy enough of their products and services to cover the expenses of the advertising.
And the ad industry is where radio gets nearly 100% of its revenue with the possible exception of a few community events concerts and other occasional and non-recurring revenue sources. So of course the industry and every station manager at a commercial property is going to try to deliver to advertisers and ideas that they will want to buy and which can be profitable for them.
And that is why Nielsen gives away the 6+ numbers. To be more clear those 6+ numbers have absolutely no value in the business. But Nielsen feels, and so do most subscribers that the free publicity for radio and Americans fascination with Rankers of all kinds makes it valuable to give those useless numbers away. Heck, there was a late night TV show that used Rankers as a principal part of the Shows format!
Cume it does not matter for sales to any significant extent in the pre-PPM era, some agencies still calculated reach, and frequency to determine how many spots on each station was needed, based on the ratio between comer and a AQH listening but that is not done in the PPM era so almost all ratings pay sales are based on average quarter hour audiences and other factors such as value added promotions quality of service, the other stations in a group cluster and so on.
and if you work at a radio station or an ad agency, a direct account or an agency account, those things do matter with or without italics
Here's the top ten billing stations in the U.S. And right after, I have their current rank in the 6+ ratings...
1. WTOP ... All-News ... Washington ... #2
2. KIIS (FM) ... Top 40 ... Los Angeles ... #6
3. WLTW (FM) ... Adult Contemporary ... New York ... #1
4. WBZ-FM ... All Sports ... Boston ... #1
5. WHTZ (FM) ... Top 40 ... New York ... #4
6. KBIG (FM) ... Hot AC ... Los Angeles ... #2
7. WINS-AM-FM ... All-News ... New York ... #7
8. tie WFAN-AM-FM ... All-Sports ... New York ... #13
8. tie WBBM (AM) and WCFS (FM) ... All-News ... #3
10. WSB (AM) and WSBB (FM) ... Talk ... Atlanta ... #2
So yeah, I think we can say that 6+ ratings are helpful in understanding how a station is doing. Except for WFAN, all the stations above are top ten in their markets' ratings. Again, it's not an exact predictor of how a station is doing. If you are a media buyer, you must subscribe to Nielsen to get the true picture. However, we are not media buyers. I think the word "worthless" is too strong.
1. WTOP ... All-News ... Washington ... #2
2. KIIS (FM) ... Top 40 ... Los Angeles ... #6
3. WLTW (FM) ... Adult Contemporary ... New York ... #1
4. WBZ-FM ... All Sports ... Boston ... #1
5. WHTZ (FM) ... Top 40 ... New York ... #4
6. KBIG (FM) ... Hot AC ... Los Angeles ... #2
7. WINS-AM-FM ... All-News ... New York ... #7
8. tie WFAN-AM-FM ... All-Sports ... New York ... #13
8. tie WBBM (AM) and WCFS (FM) ... All-News ... #3
10. WSB (AM) and WSBB (FM) ... Talk ... Atlanta ... #2
So yeah, I think we can say that 6+ ratings are helpful in understanding how a station is doing. Except for WFAN, all the stations above are top ten in their markets' ratings. Again, it's not an exact predictor of how a station is doing. If you are a media buyer, you must subscribe to Nielsen to get the true picture. However, we are not media buyers. I think the word "worthless" is too strong.
Missing from that list?
The #1 (AQH 6+) station in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta.
Why did stations in those markets with lower rankings make that list instead of them?
Because nobody buys 6+. Because the stations that made that list got more agency dollars, which are based on demographics.
A station that is top 10 6+ that can’t sell effectively isn’t doing as well as its ratings suggest. That’s what doomed Beautiful Music stations in the late 80s/early 90s. It’s what prompted the dismantling of KGO in San Francisco 12 years ago—-great 6+ shares, and demos that were hard to sell.
That list proves that economically successful stations (at least in terms of gross revenue) have good overall ratings. It does not prove that stations with good overall ratings are economically successful.
All of Elvis Presley is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Elvis Presley.
My grandmother listened to beautiful music. At least until they went all crazy by adding vocals from Streisand and Diamond.
What is exactly is “beautiful music”? In my years working in radio, I’ve kept forgetting to ask that 🤣
Michael... not disputing your response that discounts agency utilization of 6+, but Gregg's point was to show directional correlation between the publicly available 6+ numbers and revenue. The #1 AQH 6+ station in Los Angeles, for example, KRTH has appeared in these BIA Advisory Services charts in prior years. KFI (which reached #1 for a moment not too long ago) has also appeared in the BIA roster of the nation's top 10 radio stations by revenue.
Note the "dismantling" of KGO was also about misguided management. The station was still a strong revenue producer (albeit had slipped from its prior peak earnings - which saw it also placing in BIA's roster of the nation's top 10 revenue stations in prior years) and the changes were intended to imbue it with more news and some younger on-air personalities, while staying within the same format. It failed because it disposed of too much heritage too quickly.
It's still an inverse example. Stations in the top 10 in 6+ AQH are not necessarily successful or profitable. Successful or profitable stations are usually (but not always---see WFAN) in the top 10 6+ AQH.
KGO was 3rd in revenue with $33 million in 1996.
By 2008, it was $27 million. 2009, $22 million. 2010, $23 million. 2011 $16.6 million. The changes came in December of '11.
KGO might have been the poster child for the dangers of reading too much into 6+ numbers without understanding how much of that audience was not just over 55, but over 65, 75 and up.
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