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May PPM's

I feel like I saw an article a while ago that mentioned how younger people are gravitating toward classic rock music lately. I think it said something about the cyclical and fracture-prone nature of pop music vs. the "known commodity" properties of the rock content. Or maybe I dreamed that whole thing.
 
In the monthly analysis article that AllAccess publishes, they listed the top 9 in 25-54, the top 8 in 18-34, and the top 9 in 18-49...but without including #8. (I hate when they do that. And I have no idea why they don't just do a standard top 10 in all three, but whatever.) Does anyone know what came in 8th in 18-49? I'm assuming it was WIOQ, but you know what they say about assuming. (It makes an ass out of U and Ming.)
 
This is nothing more than an example of why agencies, who are the principal users of Nielsen ratings, don't buy off single months. They buy off multiple month rolling averages, often ignoring December-Holiday and often, even, July and August.

I love Radio Insight's PPM tables as they show more months than others, allowing us to get a better timeline and multi-book perspective.


You're right. I honestly don't know why I bookmarked the AllAccess ratings page and not Lance's. I have corrected that!

Speaking of which, @lanceventa : Can anything be done about the issue with sorting? I don't know if you know, but sorting by a previous book doesn't produce the desired result. For the easiest example, re-sort by the Holiday book and take a look at where B101 shows up in the ranking. It might not be worth fixing, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. Thanks, dude!
 
In the monthly analysis article that AllAccess publishes, they listed the top 9 in 25-54, the top 8 in 18-34, and the top 9 in 18-49...but without including #8. (I hate when they do that. And I have no idea why they don't just do a standard top 10 in all three, but whatever.) Does anyone know what came in 8th in 18-49? I'm assuming it was WIOQ, but you know what they say about assuming. (It makes an ass out of U and Ming.)
I'm guessing they don't release the top 10 in all three demos because they don't want to give away too much information. Sucks for us want that information but can't pay for it, but it is what it is.
 
You're right. I honestly don't know why I bookmarked the AllAccess ratings page and not Lance's. I have corrected that!

Speaking of which, @lanceventa : Can anything be done about the issue with sorting? I don't know if you know, but sorting by a previous book doesn't produce the desired result. For the easiest example, re-sort by the Holiday book and take a look at where B101 shows up in the ranking. It might not be worth fixing, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. Thanks, dude!
I've been trying to solve that for awhile. It only affects stations with double digit shares and the Cume column. As a perfectionist it bothers me, but one of those things where the time it would take to solve is not worth what will come out of it.

I'm guessing they don't release the top 10 in all three demos because they don't want to give away too much information. Sucks for us want that information but can't pay for it, but it is what it is.
Nielsen only permits rankings for demographic info, but I've been told that even making a top ten list for them is a no-no which is why I shy away.
In general, when writing about the standings of the radio stations in a market, only estimates for Persons 6+ in PPM-measured markets or Persons 12+ in Radio Diary-measured markets may be published, regardless of the source of the information.
All other demographic information (Persons 25-54, Men 18-34, etc.) may only be used in a form that does not publish the actual estimate. Ranking or characterizing the data is acceptable, e.g. Station WAAA is #2 in Men 25-54. Demographic information may only be used in the context of a story. Publishing the ranking of the actual estimates is prohibited.
 
This is nothing more than an example of why agencies, who are the principal users of Nielsen ratings, don't buy off single months. They buy off multiple month rolling averages, often ignoring December-Holiday and often, even, July and August.

I love Radio Insight's PPM tables as they show more months than others, allowing us to get a better timeline and multi-book perspective.

You can thank @Huff for the layout. He wanted to replicate the old R&R Ratings Directories. If not for limitations put on us by Nielsen and coding, we'd have the graphs and the demo breakdowns too. Someday.

 
Let's look at WMGK and WMMR in these demos:

25-54: 1. WMMR 2. WXTU (up from #10) 3. WDAS 4. WBEB 5. WUSL 6. WHYY 7T. WBEN 7T. WMGK 9. WIP (down from #3)
18-34: 1. WMGK (up from #6) 2T. WBEN (up from #7) 2T. WXTU 4. WDAS 5. WUSL (down from #1T) 6T. WBEB 6T. WMMR 6T. WIOQ

WMGK is the Classic Rock station and it's #1 among the youngest demo, while it's only #7 in the oldest demo. It plays Rock from the 1960s to the 80s, maybe a few 90s. If you are between 18 and 34, you were either not born or only in grade school when these songs were current.

Meanwhile WMMR, while a heritage station, plays mostly rock from the 1990s to today. So why is it #1 in the oldest demo but only #6 in the youngest demo? Wouldn't you expect these numbers to be flipped?
 
Let's look at WMGK and WMMR in these demos:

25-54: 1. WMMR 2. WXTU (up from #10) 3. WDAS 4. WBEB 5. WUSL 6. WHYY 7T. WBEN 7T. WMGK 9. WIP (down from #3)
18-34: 1. WMGK (up from #6) 2T. WBEN (up from #7) 2T. WXTU 4. WDAS 5. WUSL (down from #1T) 6T. WBEB 6T. WMMR 6T. WIOQ

WMGK is the Classic Rock station and it's #1 among the youngest demo, while it's only #7 in the oldest demo. It plays Rock from the 1960s to the 80s, maybe a few 90s. If you are between 18 and 34, you were either not born or only in grade school when these songs were current.

Meanwhile WMMR, while a heritage station, plays mostly rock from the 1990s to today. So why is it #1 in the oldest demo but only #6 in the youngest demo? Wouldn't you expect these numbers to be flipped?
Remember that a large portion of 18-34's don't listen at all or listen for very short amounts of time. So more traditional listeners give a disproportionate amount of time to the PPM measurement.

Also consider that there are simply less 18-34's that participate. So pure 18-34 dwelling units are scarce participants while 18-34's that are members of more"traditional" households do participate. I am making suppositions, of course, as some of this data is beyond my reach but having been on Arbitron PPM committees going back to 2002 I am pretty familiar with the system.

In other words, what you are seeing is, to some extent, the divorce of 18-34''s and, particularly, 18-24's from terrestrial radio and its streams. Since 18-24 is key to the target agency buy demo for both Black and Hispanic radio, this is being seen first in those stations... particularly Urban and Reggaetón / Hispanic CHR.
 
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