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Philadelphia PPM Ratings: January 2015

Q

Questionable

Guest
When WBEB went back up the chimney, they came down pretty hard! Forom 15.1 to 7.3! Not that 7.3 is a bad place to be, of course.

KYW somehow lunged back into 2nd place with the highest share I can remember from them in quite some time. A 6.5 in a winter without the snow that typically helps them out. Anyone remember where they were last year? I assume they did great since we had one of the most consistently snowy winters I can remember in my lifetime. I'm a little worried about how hard they'll crash when everything thaws out this time around.

WMGK rises more than a point to 5.8.

WOGL holds their own losing just four-tenths from their Christmas high.

WDAS-FM is down to 5.5, good for the lowest share I've seen them score in recent memory.

WMMR recovers quite nicely from their Christmastime slump (4.3 - 5.2).

WRFF is now slouch either, posting the best share in quite some time (3.7 - 4.5)!

WIP-FM's decline continues (Baseline: 5.1 - 4.6 - 4.3).

WXTU starts to rebound finally (5.9 -5.5 - 4.8 - 3.6 - 4.3).

WPHI remains Radio One's bright spot pulling consistent mid-to-upper 3-shares after their flip. They'd been wallowing below 2-shares beforehand!

WRNB even saw a decent uptick (3.3 - 3.1 - 3.6)

WISX gets back exactly what they lost over Christmas, but it still putst hem at only 2.8.

More good news for Radio One: January is a good month for Gospel! 2.7 is the highest I can recall for them.

Share-wise, nothing else really interesting jumps out, unless you consider that WRDW's flip from Rhythmic CHR to Mainstream CHR had pretty much no impact on them. They only went up two-tenths to 2.4. Meanwhile, Q102 rose THREE-tenths...to 3.7.

WBEB is tops in cume but off a little from their pre-Christmas levels.

Q102 is #2 in cume, beating Wired (#6) by 304,500. WRDW, BTW, got the lowest cume I can remember with just 776,800. I guess the listeners who turned off the Rhythmic chose not to stick around for the songs they're already getting from 101.1, 102.1, and 106.1 Nothing about what's happening at 96.5 FM bodes well for a CHR with new owners in a town where the competition is significantly and consistently winning.

KYW's cume is way up at 1,045,800. Seriously, imagine what would happen if it really started snowing here. They'd probably start simulcasting on sister station WRDW-FM...and never stop.

WMGK and WOGL round-out the million-plus club.


WDAS has also lost cume to hit a low point at 697,200. WRNB has now dropped below 500,000.
 
IMO, WDAS and WRNB will keep losing cume as long as they cater to what the hip-hop generation wants and not the hits they used to play. Both stations lack energy/tempo in their playlists. It almost always downbeats and ballads. Even their mixsets are boring.

Boom 107.9 has taken a lot of the hop-hop old school crowd away from both, yet they don't replace the rap stuff with the dance stuff they played from the 80's and early 90's.

I say it serves them both right for pandering.

Edit: Just saw the PPM ratings pattern for WDAS-FM. 6.5 6.4 5.9 5.5 [Nov/Dec/Holiday/Jan]

I take back what I said about tempo. It seems that a 2 hour House show has alienated their core audience, since Philly is one of few major Urban centers where blacks aren't allowed to appreciate Dance music. To me, it looks like their ratings have dropped since they let Steve Mason play Dance music on Saturday Nights/Sunday Mornings, even though his ratings wouldn't be averaged into the overall ratings. It's similar to when WGCI in Chicago cancelled their dance show [ which had triple the station's average as an after midnight show ] because it conflicted with the image and music they played the rest of the week. It would be an interesting experiment to put Steve's show on hiatus and see if the overall ratings go back up, IMHO.
 
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q102 is like kzzp in Phoenix, the very worst of Iheart large market chrs and totally beatable. You cannot beat a z100 or kiis la, but q102? very easy, in fact many of the amp offerings in different cities would win in Philly thanks to q being so weak. A clone of amp la would destroy the badly done q.
 
Why do so many folks in here think that something will work in Philly simply because it worked in other markets? Some guy in another thread simply said "of course it would" (paraphrasing) when I challenged the notion. Umm, OK. I guess it doesn't matter how many times people say that's how it works. It just plain doesn't work that way. Period. #KnowItAll lol

Q102 doesn't seem particularly weak to me. What in your opinion is the problem? I mean, I'm no fan of iHM but I think they're doing it pretty much spot-on with 102.1. I guess we'll just have to see what happens if CBS keeps 96.5 in direct competition. Personally, and based on LOCAL history, I seriously doubt they'll take much from Q102. The last time Philly had a worthy Mainstream Top 40 contender it was Eagle 106. That was a long, long, LONG time ago!
 
I should clarify something: Radio in general sounds pretty bad in 2015. I mean to say that Q102 sounds good when you consider the landscape. All of CHR has pretty much sucked since the '90s!
 
Jul, I do hope you continue along in this same vein as it is not at all redundant or annoying. I'm sure if you keep complaining on internet message boards long enough, eventually AM radio as we know it will cease to exist and you will have won! Keep on keepin' on, Julius. Your fight will not have been in vain!
 
In every major market, the chr station is in the top 5 18-34, most of the time #1 in that demo, q102, with only a rhythmic competitor and not another chr full signal in the market, doesn't crack that top 5.

All you have to do is listen to q102 for 30 minutes, then listen to say a z100 kiis fm 997sf or 925 Seattle to see why. Q is boring, there is no life to it, it seems like they are just a follower and not a trend setter as the stations mentioned are.

I don't know what it is but you take jocks on q, like Maxwell, he sounded bland and boring on q102, now on z100 he sounds pretty good, most importantly he sounds like he is having fun now on whtz.

I do think that the amp chr model that never beats the heritage chr(iheart media mostly) in all other major markets, would actually win in Philly thanks to q being so weak after 10am.
 
Questionable said:
Jul, I do hope you continue along in this same vein as it is not at all redundant or annoying. I'm sure if you keep complaining on internet message boards long enough, eventually AM radio as we know it will cease to exist and you will have won! Keep on keepin' on, Julius. Your fight will not have been in vain!
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...r-inc-presents-exclusive-january-p?ref=search It looks like in all important 25-54 WMMR, WBEB, WRFF, WMGK and WUSL all did excellent being in the top 5. WOGL is again lagging behind. Probably because the station fails to realize that need to move forward with their music. They are the only CBS Classic Hits station still playing 60s. WCBS, WOCL, KLUV, WOMC, KHits, Kool FM and Krth. The other stations occasionally will play a Beatles song but that is it. Does anybody know how 97.5 The Fanatic is doing vs WIP in the 25-54. I know Mikey Miss is winning...but not sure about the other hosts.
 
AM/FMRAINMAN said:
http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...r-inc-presents-exclusive-january-p?ref=search It looks like in all important 25-54 WMMR, WBEB, WRFF, WMGK and WUSL all did excellent being in the top 5. WOGL is again lagging behind. Probably because the station fails to realize that need to move forward with their music. They are the only CBS Classic Hits station still playing 60s. WCBS, WOCL, KLUV, WOMC, KHits, Kool FM and Krth. The other stations occasionally will play a Beatles song but that is it.
Click to expand...

I don't think the "station" fails to realize anything. They're taking a slower path than some of their sister stations, and likely have a very good reason for it. Their approach works here, and might not elsewhere...and the converse is likely true as well.
 
Well, I'm not sure what the strategy is. WOGL is #4 overall, and in fourth place in cume. But in the 25-54 demo, it's not in the top 7. (That's all the Research Director article shows us: WMMR, WBEB, WMGK, WDAS-FM, WRFF, WUSL and WPHI.)

I miss not hearing more than an occasional Beatles song on my Classic Hits/Oldies station, but in 2015, that's about all the 60s music you can play and still do well with the 25-54 listener. I notice WCBS-FM does have "Drive My Car" and "Rock and Roll Music" in pretty good rotation, but those were hits in the 70s, well after the Beatles had broken up. The idea that WOGL can keep playing 60s music and get the 25-54 demo is probably wrong.

Of course, WMGK is able to play plenty of 60s titles. But as we've discussed before, Classic Rock stations can do that because when we were growing up, Rock stations always played a lot of library material, more so than Top 40, Country or Urban would play. So even if you were in high school and college as late as the 90s, your Rock station was playing The Stones, Zeppelin, The Beatles and The Who along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2. But since WOGL recalls Top 40 stations of your youth, you weren't hearing 60s titles if you came of age in the 80s or 90s.
 
I actually like WCBS' approach. They are 80s focused, but still play some 70s and play about 1 90s an hour. They also play 1 60s song every other hour. They also have the 80s at 8(so does, Sunny 105.9 WOCL, Kluv, WOMC and Kool FM.
 
I think what a lot of people never take into consideration when they talk about what they wish WOGL would sound like (again, forgetting that it's a business) is WBEB.

WBEB is not like WLTW in NYC. WLTW is getting along just fine with iHM's typical lazy programming but WBEB has proven time and time again that they will not just sit back and watch while anyone starts nipping at their heels. WOGL sounds frozen in time because they basically are. WOGL has to be very, very careful with the '80s titles because WBEB can very easily cut back on the Hot AC/Adult CHR titles and add more '80s. WOGL is a much bigger concern for WBEB than WISX is. If forced to pick one to aim for, they're gonna aim for WOGL.

Classic Hits stations (such as WLTW) are now moving beyond what a lot of people think of as '80s (Toto, Genesis, early Live A Virgin-era Madonna, etc) and are adding LATE '80s and early '90s (Paula Abdul, Taylor Dayne, Like A Prayer-era Madonna)! WCBS is spinning "Opposites Attract" in pretty regular rotation right now. Do you think for a second that WBEB wouldn't add it if WOGL did? They can both get away with playing that song but neither has to, which is why neither of them is. Comprende?
 
I made what I thought was a very good response in this thread yesterday but for some reason, it never got approved. I won't bother to rewrite the whole thing because I don't recall all of it. In essence, WCBS and WLTW in NYC have the ability to live more harmoniously than WOGL and WBEB have here in Philadelphia. WOGL is pretty stuck in their musical time period because if they come too far forward, WBEB will react. I'd love for WOGL to sound more like WCBS but for right now from a business sense, they don't really have to and it wouldn't be a good idea for them to try.

There was a lot more detail in the original post but for whatever reason, the mod must not have liked it?
 
I've noticed the same thing about delayed approval. I think it is simply that it's not possible to get approval on posts from unregistered users since it requires an action on the part of a human moderator to do so. The number of unregistered posts on the Philly board alone has sharply increased (which I think has mostly been for the better, since more of us can now complain about WPHT). I'm guessing the moderators get swamped sometimes.
 
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