The question is...Who do YOU think will be number one??
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October Radio Ratings
- Thread starter BJSteigner
- Start date
Here they are:
https://ratings.****************/content/arb001
What strikes me is that with all the discussion about how Red Apple is doing a great job and WABC has never sounded better, the numbers show that WOR is kicking their butt. WOR has about twice the share of WABC. They are close to a 3 share station. They are in a statistical tie with WCBS 88.
https://ratings.****************/content/arb001
What strikes me is that with all the discussion about how Red Apple is doing a great job and WABC has never sounded better, the numbers show that WOR is kicking their butt. WOR has about twice the share of WABC. They are close to a 3 share station. They are in a statistical tie with WCBS 88.
Talkers take quite a long time to grow. I would not form any opinion on WABC for at least 12 months.
Still, in 35-64 WABC is up 50% from the November to January 2019-2020, and has gone to being less than 25% behind WOR in that demo.
The explosion in audience for WOR has been recent. A few months ago, both stations were under 2 share. Something has caused more listening to WOR.
Most of its "big" numbers are 65+. Likely due to the total stay-at-home mandate for seniors.
Did the virus just hit New York 2 months ago? I don't think so. And why did it only help WOR and not WABC?
We are seeing some unexplained flutters in October. Some may be due to the new "earphone" adjustment and others due to panel losses and inability to recruit replacements; that results in horrendous weighting of remaining panelists in certain cells.
An example in recent months in NYC: 5 panelists in 2 households made up 40% of one station's share. When one household was not in compliance for a week, the station lost a full two share points.
Any way, when I said "any of its "big" numbers are mostly in 65+, I meant not just the last few months but total recent memory. The station is demographically very old. In the July-Aug-Sep combined months, 88% is 55+ and more than 50% of the 18+ audience is over 65. Only 12% is under 50.
How does that help WOR and not help WABC? Do only WOR listeners wear headphones? Not sure that can be proven.
Because as I said. WOR has experienced growth, while WABC has remained stagnant.
Just as a reminder, in July WOR had a 1.8 and now it has a 2.8. WABC had a 1.4, and now has a 1.5.
As I mentioned, ther are a couple of procedural changes and a major sampling issue. First, the panel has been hard to sustain during the pandemic and they seem to be getting worse as the months go by. With some cells not proportional, the weighting can make just a few meters able to make one and two whole share point differences, totally distorting the results.
Then we have the change in methodology with a mathematical model for earbud listening being introduced. It will take a while for that to be analytically dissected.
Then we have the change in how unsubscribed stations are treated, here even subscribers don’t see any station with less than a 0.1 rating (about a 1,3 share) because Nielsen will not list them at all!
All of this make for a stew of many changes and deficient samples that can be totally unpredictable.
Just as in Boston, where WBZ looked different from WRKO, the evidence only becomes visible when individual cells such as 55-64 and 65+ are broken out and compared and correlated with PPMV.
NONE of that relates to the specifics here: WOR vs WABC. Two 50KW AM stations with equally aging audiences, who listen to the same conservative talk. One station experienced a 1 point increase, the other one didn't. Why?
Maybe an actual listener has an opinion.
Answer: One household affected WOR and made it wobble.
As I said previously, another NYC station was affected by two whole 25-54 share points based on just two households. That was a couple of months ago. There is some horrendous weighting going on in many markets due to the difficulty of maintaining the panel. Panel based, as opposed to random sample based, measurement in a time like this is terribly hard and results in all kind of extreme weighting.
WABC in 35-64 went 1.3, 1.6, 1.7 and 2.0 in the four weeks; rather convincing growth
WOR wobbled, and got a 2.0 for the 4 weeks. So, based on week 4, they were tied.**
Keep in mind that since the PPM is a panel, and the same panel is active every week, individual weeks can safely be compared. The difference in the book is greater demographic depth (more breakouts, more data on ethnic breaks, income breaks and, of course, geographic ones) but there is no difference in the sample except for an average of 1.5% to 2.0% weekly panel turnover.
** The margin of error in the PPM with shares in the 1 to 2 level in "good times" is still in the range of as much as +/- 0.5 and right now I'd guess that it's as much as a 0.7 to 1.0. So a 1.5 could be a 0.5 or a 2.5 in an extreme case.
In normal times, a station with a 1.5 that goes to a 1.9 has made no statistical change. Or one that has a 1.7 and goes to a 1.1. Same thing. And if we have the less probably two standard errors, a 0.8 is a 1.9 is a 0.3.
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That's not what I'm looking at. I want to know what caused WOR to pick up a full point. Not just in demo, but overall. The ONLY logical thing is the Rush factor, people motivated to listen to Rush first for the virtual rally, and then his cancer news that followed.
We saw similar jumps for news/talk stations nationally. But not for WABC. They were stagnant.
Also, no increase for WINS, but there was an increase for WNYC.
It had extreme wobble in the month, with some weeks lower than WABC and some higher. That is both symptomatic of a single household; the extremes are either binge listening due to some week specific event or program content or due to some household event like off/on work weeks. In any event, it was AM Drive and Midddays that wobbled up and down. Rush's daypart was higher on average than usual during recent months of the pandemic, but about the same as March and April.
Since share is not a good comparison point from month to month during the pandemic, I can say that AQH persons in October was nearly the same as in April, but higher than any other pandemic month.
It wasn't just Rush that had higher peaks; it was AMD as well. Were it PMD, I'd say "halo effect" but there was better morning performance and that suggests in-tab issues or a regular listener with irregular habits. In any case, the level in share and AQH persons was about the same as April for WOR.
Again, very low share levels for conservative talk in NYC, putting the numbers well into the area of high statistical variability. This might not even be a "real" listening issue but one of total in-tabs and the ability of a couple of meters more or less to add a whole share or two.
And, as mentioned, WOR wobbled up, down, up, down in the 4 weeks. WABC was an upward stairstep, tying WOR in week 4. One might conclude that WABC was growing but it is really risky to make any conclusions about numbers below about a 2.5 due to the error margin.
Again, those increases can be just a couple of meters. With the sample being imperfect and listening habits during the pandemic and election period so irregular, it's hard for anyone to compare anything based on single months.
If you look at one of the five or six top rated stations, we are talking about 8-12 meters responsible for the moment to moment listening... so you lose two meters, and the shares are off 15 to 20 percent. This is very obvious in all markets when a station loses a heavy P1 panelist and the replacement household does not have one of your listeners. (Cume may be several hundred meters, but AQH averages perhaps 1% for a high turnover station to 1.5% of the total cume for a low turnover station.
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