PPM Kills Format

[jwvo]

I am personally really interested in watching the PPM ratings affect the reported numbers in this market.

I note that we just started encoding over at KMIH on Thursday and I am really interested to see if there is a noticeable difference given the 94.5 translator (which as of Thursday now sounds much better due to the final install of the off-air pickup antenna being complete something which I would love feedback about). Given the fact that 94.5 is now in the top 10 strongest signals (stronger than everything from tiger) in downtown Seattle I find it hard to believe that it is not being noticed... I know at least one person who found it on their Zune at the gym and was really surprised when they found out that was KMIH.

My theory is that we probably always scored a bit low in the diaries due to the low level of imaging vs commercial stations... Anyway, time will tell. At a minimum it should be fun to watch.

-- J

 

[TVradioguru]

Given the fact that 94.5 is now in the top 10 strongest signals (stronger than everything from tiger) in downtown Seattle I find it hard to believe that it is not being noticed... I know at least one person who found it on their Zune at the gym and was really surprised when they found out that was KMIH.

My theory is that we probably always scored a bit low in the diaries due to the low level of imaging vs commercial stations... Anyway, time will tell. At a minimum it should be fun to watch.

-- J

My guess is KUOW has the stronger signal in downtown Seattle.

I don't live in Seattle, but isn't KMIH a high school station run by a bunch of white kids from Mercer Island, playing a disjointed mix of Hip Hop?
If so, then you're wise not holding your breath waiting for the big numbers to show up.

 

[AQH]

My guess is KUOW has the stronger signal in downtown Seattle.

I don't live in Seattle, but isn't KMIH a high school station run by a bunch of white kids from Mercer Island, playing a disjointed mix of Hip Hop?
If so, then you're wise not holding your breath waiting for the big numbers to show up.

True the big numbers might not be there, but numbers nonetheless. I'm sure KMIH is on KUBE's radar.

 

[radioprofessor]

Unlikely sorry to say. Based on data I am seeing no high school or non-com stations are showing up in the PPM with any significant numbers. Webstreams are actually beating many in some markets. These kind of stations actually did better under the diary system, in my humble opinion. PPM parameter is cume centric and these stations don't get cume. In point of fact, non-com, religious and non-profit operation like KEXP are suffering. Most would be wise to save the dollars and move to the internet in my view. They do serve a training ground parameter which is missing today in commercial radio. For that reason alone I hope they stay on.

 

[SeattleObserver]

My guess is KUOW has the stronger signal in downtown Seattle.

I don't live in Seattle, but isn't KMIH a high school station run by a bunch of white kids from Mercer Island, playing a disjointed mix of Hip Hop?
If so, then you're wise not holding your breath waiting for the big numbers to show up.

KMIH has actually gone more mainstream pop lately, I suspect it's partially from things like Lady GaGa and big artists like Kanye West or Estelle crossing into the commercial charts, but this is the best KMIH has sounded since I discovered it. I'm more of a KNHC listener, but lately KMIH has been somewhere I'll linger for a song or two- adviser change at the high school?

Also, I really hope the local newspaper report about them adding more "Mercer Island centric" programming wasn't B.S. - I think people there could end up being your bread and butter and probably should know they have a 'community' station.

 

[jwvo]

Of course KUOW has a stronger downtown signal, hard to compete with a 100KW station that originates from the same tower... Based on my looking at the v-soft propagation numbers when we did the engineering work for K233BU the signal is about the same as the 50KW cougar stations in terms of actual strength in most of the downtown zipcodes (98121 and 98101 were the ones we looked up)

I know from conversations with broadcasters that KMIH is on the radar big time at several of the top40 stations. It is not exactly a disjointed mix these days, it is aimed to be a rythmic/top40 station and sure seems to be hitting that, I am not aware of a non-com doing this anywhere. I totally agree though, i think the eclectic formats are likely to suffer with the PPM. Don't worry the webcast is getting encoding too... That being said we already have the web casting numbers (seeing several thousand tun-ins per day with an average listening time of about 1.5 hours).

KMIH's recent format tightening is actually the result of us setting up a more coherent set of programing guidelines combined with the hard work of a high school student who handles virtually all of the day to day scheduling, a training ground we are! That being said, the program is also mostly self-supporting which is why we have become much more driven towards a mainstream format.

In the next few months as the class goes into second semester you will hear progressively more student voices in evenings (non-drive) and during the day as well as in the PSA production work. Our main goal is and will always be educating students.

We believe that without a commercial format it is very difficult to provide a realistic learning/training environment. It is just a side benift that a commercial format and the associated listeners help to produce revenue that keeps the station running.

We have also been very active in helping support the city of Mercer Island's emergency management preparedness (we have a fully redundant setup including batteries and diesel generator backup, which not many low-power stations can claim).

 

[AQH]

Noticing that Larry has five consecutive responses on this board as of this writing, I thought I would bring this thread up to see if he would like to answer the KUBE and the PPM responses. Doubt it, but it's worth a shot.