And Jeff, while 25-54 ratings ARE important, they are not the be-all, end-all. The ability to sell the ratings and demos that you do have is a major player in the equation.
I've said this before, I do believe, (and I have sources that indicate this is true) that Movin can have worse overall ratings (12+) and sell more spots because they've moved from the tail end of the 25-54 demo to the front end. There are more advertisers looking to lock in brand preference with people while they're young, than trying to convince the AARP-eligible to (for example) stop drinking the coffee that they've drank for 30 years and switch to the hot new brand...
To see if they're really out of the competitive mix we need someone who has access to the Miller-Kaplan reports (is DE around?) (MIller Kaplan aggregates billing info and publishes a report to subscriber stations about how much each station/group in a market is billing)...
If we can find out how well they're doing in billing that will show how much they're actually in "the competitive mix"...
The other way to try and figure out how well they're doing is to list the spots from a couple of hours of stop sets. How many spots per hour? Who are the clients? Are they clients that can afford to pay a decent dollar for a spot, or are they Mom and Pop's getting bargain basement rates? How many of their spots sound like generic national spots that are probably part of some network trade deal? (i.e. Spots like Himmel gold Bond. They don't buy 'local' radio, they buy time on networks where they get massive exposure nationwide)
With a little thinking, you can learn a lot from analyzing spot breaks...
