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New York Metro Radio Ratings: October 2023

Theater of My Mind said:
The irony is that every time Audacy, or one of its corporate predecessors, tried to do Alternative in NYC, the execution was terrible.
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In your opinion.
Theater of My Mind said:
They always brought in some hotshot programmer who thought he knew better than everyone else, and who massively over-thought how to program the format, and ruined it instead.
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That's not at all how that happened. Programmers today depend on information about listeners that goes beyond the past-tense Nielsen ratings. They use research to try to find a "sweet spot" in different format areas.

The problem with Alternative is that the genre is very fragmented. What you think was "ruined" was actually the mix or blend that the largest number of alternative listeners liked. The problem is that all the fragmented parts have little in common except for, maybe, the top 50 to 100 songs. Beyond that, each group dislikes the songs of the other groups.
Theater of My Mind said:
Now that alternative has been exiled to a never-to-be-heard HD2 channel, the music mix and the imaging are actually sounding better than ever. In fact, it finally sounds exactly the way an alternative station should sound, programmed the way it should have been done in NYC all along, musically anyway.
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In your opinion. The problem is, as I have said, the various fragments of the alternative fan universe don't even like what the other groups love.
Theater of My Mind said:
It's too bad they could never manage to do this, with the addition of some star air talent, when it was on a main FM channel where people could hear it.
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You are doing what bad program directors do: judging formats and playlists based on your own personal taste. This is the same thing that many/most pirates do: playing a personal playlist because they think everyone has the same taste as they do. A good PD finds out what the largest reachable segment of the public will listen to by talking to them.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Much better sounding stations than they had in NYC in the past. Maybe they should try again on FM with the current format programming team.
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Each station was researched against alternative "fans" in their respective markets. The fact that it did not work in NYC is more related to the market than the specific format implementation.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Much better sounding stations than they had in NYC in the past. Maybe they should try again on FM with the current format programming team.
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The team is the team. What they found was the audience for the station was less in the 5 boroughs than in the surrounding areas, and they clearly wanted to sell more to the city than the suburbs. Similar problem with the country format. The current format on that frequency is performing much better.
 
TheBigA said:
The team is the team. What they found was the audience for the station was less in the 5 boroughs than in the surrounding areas, and they clearly wanted to sell more to the city than the suburbs. Similar problem with the country format. The current format on that frequency is performing much better.
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Having been involved with both AM and FM station in the market going back to the late 70's, I can rather safely say that agency buys (nearly everything) are for the Metro Survey Area. I never saw an agency that broke out just the boroughs.

In the case of country, in the post-WHN era no station has ranked high enough to get on agency buys unless the agency is buying 20-deep!
 
TheBigA said:
What percentage of billings at the former WNYL were "agency buys?"
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Local agencies, some. Local direct sold to accounts that understood and wanted the alternative listener. National only when part of a combo buy, but that was (and is) the way all clusters sell.
TheBigA said:
As I said, alternative got better numbers in Long Island, Westchester, and Northern NJ. The current format is more balanced.
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And agencies generally don't have time to look at geography, as that means creating custom survey areas for just one station when the buyer may be handling 50 to 100 markets for a national campaign. And generally, buyers are not there to "think". They are there to do math on CPP for the target demo and buy the most efficient set of stations.
 
DavidEduardo said:
And agencies generally don't have time to look at geography, as that means creating custom survey areas for just one station
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On the other hand, you figure the Audacy NYC sales team that does over $100 million a year in billings can probably help and demonstrate how their format cluster can handle that. They're not just "order takers," are they?
 
TheBigA said:
On the other hand, you figure the Audacy NYC sales team that does over $100 million a year in billings can probably help and demonstrate how their format cluster can handle that. They're not just "order takers," are they?
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A lot of agency buys today are done with pure computer analysis. Agency specifies goals, and station groups respond with offers of rates. Computer calculates CPP and creates the ideal buy.

In addition, many agencies use buying services that exist to hammer stations on rates and get better quotes than if the agency did its own buys. The services don't look at anything much beyond rate and AQH audience in the target.

Most agency buys are done through station and group rep firms, not station sellers.

Of course, in NYC there are a bunch of agencies handling local accounts, meaning firms that only serve the local metro area. An example would be the car dealer associations or individual car dealers. In those cases, the client themselves may have input and that input may be based on personal tastes or beliefs.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Most agency buys are done through station and group rep firms, not station sellers
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Regardless of who does what, the current format decisions were likely made with input from sales, not 6+ ratings, and I don't expect to see them replace the WINS simulcast with a different approach to alternative.
 
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