Remember, on average KOST beats KRTH in 25-54 by around 2.5 points... nearly a 50% advantage for KOST. That data is based on a 6 month rolling average through December of last year.
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March Los Angeles 6+ Ratings
- Thread starter david
- Start date
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
The December bump in KOST's numbers is, of course, to be expected; they have consistently topped the overall ratings annually since they began doing all-Christmas for the holidays in 2001. (Yes, it's been that long.)
February was obviously due to something else. David, how were they in-demo for that period?
Inside Radio just posted a Top 10 list of afternoon drive shows based on cume:
www.insideradio.com
Interesting to see that KROQ is in the Top 10 and KFI isn't there at all. Neither is KYSR.
L.A. PM Drive, By The Numbers: KBIG's Raph, K-Earth's Greg Simms and KOST's Sandy Rule The Roads.
The freeways may be the world's largest parking lots during the afternoon and evening commute, so entertaining drivers on the slow ride home is a tall order for Los Angeles'
Interesting to see that KROQ is in the Top 10 and KFI isn't there at all. Neither is KYSR.
Of course, this raises the point of "why would Inside Radio do a list of cume by daypart" when essentially nobody looks at 12+ cume and even less look at 12+ daypart cume. It seems very strange for an industry professional trade publication to even bother with those numbers.Inside Radio just posted a Top 10 list of afternoon drive shows based on cume:
L.A. PM Drive, By The Numbers: KBIG's Raph, K-Earth's Greg Simms and KOST's Sandy Rule The Roads.
The freeways may be the world's largest parking lots during the afternoon and evening commute, so entertaining drivers on the slow ride home is a tall order for Los Angeles'
Interesting to see that KROQ is in the Top 10 and KFI isn't there at all. Neither is KYSR.
Everybody loves Top 10 lists.
Agreed.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Cue David Letterman instead of David Gleason?
It really takes a staggering level of hubris and incredibly narrow vision to take the position that "ratings data isn't good for any purpose if it isn't used in making a sale". There are other worlds besides yours and other people who use radio and its related information differently than you do. Really.
ChannelFlipper, I absolutely agree with you on people using radio differently. But truth is, ratings were created to give advertisers some guidance as to where to find an audience and how much to pay. Absent that, they wouldn't exist.
On the other hand, those who are interested in ratings for that reason pay to see the full report. They'd never be satisfied with 6+ or cume only figures. Free sites like Inside Radio make money from advertising, so they do these articles basically as click bait. They drive up pageviews, and that makes money. Nielsen releases it for publicity. Everybody has a reason.
Ratings companies are businesses. Radio Stations are, for the most part, businesses. The radio business buys ratings so that they can justify pricing to advertisers.
Stations also use ratings as an internal metric for things like staff bonuses, performance evaluations and the like. But if it were not for the sales aspect, we would not pay the high costs that ratings involve. There are much better ways of getting useful programming information.
A "bad book"? Radio's response: "I think we need to do some perceptual research... maybe a new music test, too!" Ratings are not programming research... they are a past-tense autopsy.
For two years, 1973 to 1975, San Juan, PR had no ratings. Advertisers had no way of determining value of ads, so they offered much lower rates than they had been paying. By mid-1975, radio revenue was off by more than half in the market. I spent months talking to the Roslows and recruiting The Pulse and in mid 1975, they began surveying San Juan 4 times a year... by 1976 radio revenue was not only up to the 1971-1972 level, it actually exceeded that point by about 25% by 1976.
I had relaunched two new formats prior to the entry of The Pulse. They came out very well when the first book arrived. We did not make a single programming change because of the ratings. We had our own programming research for that.
And today, there are plenty of stations that don't subscribe to the ratings. Generally, that is because there is no information to be obtained in ratings that help them sell because those are niche stations and ratings only show how few listeners they have. Those stations certainly can't get any useful programming information from the ratings.
IMHO, ChannelFlipper makes an excellent point here - one that in my short time on this board I have watched play out repeatedly.
It's one thing to have an opinion on a subject. Beating one's chest repeatedly with "experience' and an attitude of "let me tell you what really matters' doesn't make you an expert - it makes you obnoxious. Different people see things differently, and that doesn't necessarily mean one is right and the other wrong.
Just because one person sees no intrinsic value in some data point does not, by extension, mean there is absolutely no value in it.
I can't imagine RadioDiscussions.com has legions of media buyers among its active members. We're radio people, so the constant preaching of what "buyers" care about, while not necessarily incorrect, is not the only point of view. Those of us who actively work in the business do find value, and take interest in things that buyers don't, and I would implore a few people here to pause and consider that.
But, as Michael said, the business of radio determines what we will spend money for. Radio buys ratings to be able to establish pricing for advertising. And to demonstrate to advertisers that our station is worth being used to promote their product or business.
Any other use of the ratings is not part of why we buy them.
Heck, once I could not find a hotel room and slept in my car. But I did not buy the car to have a portable bed. We buy cars to go places. We buy ratings to sell spots.
Whether we find ratings interesting for other reasons does not increase their value. I have an extensive collection of ratings books and summaries... tens of thousands of pages of them. But I have them for historical value... which is not why the original buying stations purchased the books.
And that is my own example of how any use other than as a sales tool does not create the "value" required to spend lots of money with Nielsen today.
Another analogy... my dog loves an occasional RiceChex tidbit. But that is neither the dog's principal diet item nor the reason why I buy it.
Exactly.
Similarly, record charts weren't invented so the general public could follow along with how a favorite record is performing. They were invented to goad record companies into buying advertising that would spur sales at the wholesale level and push those records up those charts.
The American public had no idea what Billboard magazine was, for the most part, until Casey Kasem made it famous by crediting it with the data used for American Top 40 from 1970 onward. Billboard had been publishing charts for 30 years at that point.
As a follow up, I just talked with a person who was PD and air personality in LA, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, SF, San Diego, Phoenix and a half-dozen other markets.
I asked, "if ratings were not required to make most sales in radio, would we have them?"
The answer was "No!"
I don't know anyone who would dispute that - you miss the point entirely and you're too stubborn to acknowledge, or even see it.
Yes, I know ratings have an intrinsic curiosity value and I participate in one aspect of that myself. But ratings have no value other than as a sales tool.
There is a restaurant near where I live that has unusually nice decoration, acoustics and atmosphere. But if the food were not better than excellent, we would not spend around $150 for a nice dinner.
I can give plenty of examples of things people have or do but which do not contribute to the value or purpose of the "thing" itself:
- Collecting old car license plates
- Collecting sea shells at the shore.
One of those is man-made, but intended to regulate auto ownership and to raise funds. The other is made by nature, and intended to be part of our ecosystem. Neither requires or needs collectors to warrant their existence.
Do you go to a movie that is about a subject you dislike just because it has a high box-office revenue number? Do yo watch a TV show with high ratings, even if you dislike the genre or the cast members? But in both of those cases, we get amusement from seeing which movies and shows "win" even if we won't be seeing any of the current offerings.
Similarly, ratings have an amusement value outside of the sales intent. But without sales (or donations for non-coms), no station would buy ratings. And that is my point: ratings have no tangible value other than to help in the sales effort.
Not everything of "value" is associated with money. That may be a concept difficult for some to grasp - but let's take it back to what started the entire discussion -
In Los Angeles, Audacy's spoken word station KNX, out cumes ALL spoken word stations in the market combined. In your view "nobody looks at 12+ cume" because there is no value to it. Such broad, declarative statements should be made with great caution. Seriously.
You see no value, but Audacy certainly does. That talking point is 100% on the lips of every single seller in the organization.
In Los Angeles, Audacy's spoken word station KNX, out cumes ALL spoken word stations in the market combined. In your view "nobody looks at 12+ cume" because there is no value to it. Such broad, declarative statements should be made with great caution. Seriously.
You see no value, but Audacy certainly does. That talking point is 100% on the lips of every single seller in the organization.
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Only because they can't make a compelling demographics case yet.
And as for value and money:
Definition of VALUE
the monetary worth of something : market price; a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged; relative worth, utility, or importance… See the full definition
www.merriam-webster.com
1. That statement is, I'm sure, demonstrably false
2. It doesn't change the reality that SOMEONE is looking at cume in a sales capacity even if that someone isn't you.
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