JerseyDude said:
This question is for David or anyone else who would like to answer.
Allan Sniffen said AC stations are doing better with PPM than "loud" stations like KRock and Hot 97 because AC stations are played in offices (Board Reflections).
Why are loud Rock stations like Radio 104.5 doing so well in Philadelphia?
I think Alan has oversimplified it. While he is getting part of the story, here is the rest of it.
PPM measures hearing, not "listening and listener recall." So stations that are often on in public places that are "heard" by panelists with meters so there is a lot of incidental or "second hand" listening that helps such stations. Working persons use more radio, so that also helps.
But then there is another issue. Men use about 20% more radio, in weekly quarter hours. So rock stations do quite well... in Houston, KODA, the AC looks good, but Alternative The Buzz and Arrow are also much bigger in PPM. And your Philly example is another good one.
What is unfortunate is that many are looking at the huge cumes. In fact, half the cume contributes 92.5% of the AQH listening... so those stations that added two million in cume added cumers who listen for tiny tidbits of time, which were not written in diaries as the listener may not have remembered or even been conscious of having heard a station. The bulk of listening is by P1 and P2 listeners, just as always.
The issue with Hot or BLS is the fact that the cume ceiling for ethnic stations is limited to members of the target groups, not the whole market. So a Spanish language or Black station can not even reach occasionally much of the population. More important, the ethnic communities in NY are undersampled by virtue of the fact that, as younger communities, the 18-34 sample is only around 60% of target in NY right now... a major flaw... but then again, October and November are not currency months for the PPM study. We can only hope Arbitron fixes the proportionality problems with the sample.
