Question about AM radio usage today

[K.M. Richards]

WISN & WLW Cincinnati are the AMs that are ratings standouts on a 6+ basis in the top 50 markets.

There is no such thing as a "standout" in 6+. The industry rates stations based on their performance in their target demographic.

As an example, a station could be in the top ten in 6+ but near the bottom in any of the saleable demos. They might be top-heavy with 65+, but get enough of those listeners to boost their overall total. Yet the ad money is going to stations which may not even make it to the top ten in 6+ but do bring in an audience that advertisers want to reach.

 

[garfradio]

There is no such thing as a "standout" in 6+. The industry rates stations based on their performance in their target demographic.

As an example, a station could be in the top ten in 6+ but near the bottom in any of the saleable demos. They might be top-heavy with 65+, but get enough of those listeners to boost their overall total. Yet the ad money is going to stations which may not even make it to the top ten in 6+ but do bring in an audience that advertisers want to reach.

Disagree. I was very specific in that observation. Of course 6+ ratings don't impact sales or revenue, that's a whole different topic

I believe are two (and ONLY two) AM stations in Top 50 markets that are and have been double digit ratings performers (or close enough in WLW's case) in recent years. They DO stand out on that basis.

This is impressive given how small the double digit ratings club is today. Hell, there aren't that many FMs that have double digits anymore. There are 12 double digit stations by my count in the May 2025 PPM Top 50 that Radio Insight posted several weeks ago. (and, to be precise, WLW was the 25th ranked station on the May list with a 9.4 share.)
May 2025 (5/1 – 5/28) Nielsen Audio PPM Ratings Top 50

Was not commenting on revenue here either, though WLW has historically been a big biller.

Don't know about WISN's revenue -- though I did hear the station a bit last summer while visiting Milwaukee. To my ear, the over the air spotload included the standard IHeart national spots, the usual right wing talk network stuff (time share lawyers, 'enhancement' pills, tax 'relief', etc) PLUS a reasonable amount of local ads, though it sounded mostly direct, not agency business.

Not going down the rabbithole of the salable demo ratings since Nielsen allows such limited release of that data. Really the only public glimpse in the big markets is monthly 18-34/18-49/25-54 ranker coverage of some PPM markets from Steve Allen at Research Director (and truly, thanks for that!).

Agree that with these stations, the ratings certainly are top heavy with 65+ listeners. Most/all of the news & talk stations are.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I believe are two (and ONLY two) AM stations in Top 50 markets that are and have been double digit ratings performers (or close enough in WLW's case) in recent years. They DO stand out on that basis.

Agree that with these stations, the ratings certainly are top heavy with 65+ listeners. Most/all of the news & talk stations are.

Then what pride -- if any -- can be taken by a station that only achieves that status by having an audience that is almost completely in an unsaleable demo?

That is why we dismiss the 6+ numbers.

 

[cc333]

the usual right wing talk network stuff (time share lawyers, 'enhancement' pills, tax 'relief', etc)

KCBS has been pumping these sorts of ads out for years now, yet they don't seem to have any discernible right-wing leanings (to me, anyway).

During the times I've bothered to listen to some of the local music FMs, I've heard a few of these on them, too, but not nearly as regularly (granted, I don't listen to them often enough or for long enough to know for certain how often those ads play).

c

 

[K.M. Richards]

During the times I've bothered to listen to some of the local music FMs, I've heard a few of these on them, too, but not nearly as regularly (granted, I don't listen to them often enough or for long enough to know for certain how often those ads play).

The vast majority of those are PI/DM (per inquiry, direct marketing), whereby the station runs the ads as often as they want and get paid whenever someone calls the toll-free number and buys the product. I even run them at night on KRKE, when we have lower spot loads, and on Sunday mornings to make the classic American Top 40 shows time out properly.

They are not exclusively "right wing talk network" oriented in terms of response. I can attest to that.

 

[cc333]

The vast majority of those are PI/DM (per inquiry, direct marketing), whereby the station runs the ads as often as they want and get paid whenever someone calls the toll-free number and buys the product. I even run them at night on KRKE, when we have lower spot loads, and on Sunday mornings to make the classic American Top 40 shows time out properly.

They are not exclusively "right wing talk network" oriented in terms of response. I can attest to that.

I see. That makes sense.

c

 

[garfradio]

Then what pride -- if any -- can be taken by a station that only achieves that status by having an audience that is almost completely in an unsaleable demo?

That is why we dismiss the 6+ numbers.

When did pride enter into this topic?

And what's the deal with the royal 'we'? Most everyone here gets how ratings are used, and gets how advertising is bought.

 

[K.M. Richards]

And what's the deal with the royal 'we'?

We = David (Eduardo) Gleason, Mike Hagerty, myself, TheBigA, and others in the business who routinely dismiss the 6+ numbers and object when people here make them out to be more important than they are.

If that makes us royalty ... okay, I can live with that.

 

[michael hagerty]

We = David (Eduardo) Gleason, Mike Hagerty, myself, TheBigA, and others in the business who routinely dismiss the 6+ numbers and object when people here make them out to be more important than they are.

If that makes us royalty ... okay, I can live with that.

Not me. I'm just plain Mike. But, yeah, @garfradio , the consensus in radio and in advertising is that the 6+ numbers are meaningless and worthless, which is why Nielsen Audio, which charges for the salable info, gives 6+ away for free and doesn't squawk if you publish them.

 

[cc333]

Not me. I'm just plain Mike.

Has that always been true or is it only since you retired recently?

In general I like knowing plain people. They're often quite honest and open (what you see is usually what you get), so not too many surprises, and they're also usually pretty calm and relaxed about things, so they're easy to get along with.

Something else I've noticed about plain people is that they're usually very talented and intelligent, and sometimes have lived very interesting lives, but you wouldn't know it because they are often very modest and come across, well, plainly (plain people do nevertheless get proud of their accomplishments, of course, and some will gladly share with others about the things they've done).

c

 

[michael hagerty]

Has that always been true or is it only since you retired recently?

I'm a working-class kid who grew up in Bishop, California, got offered a job at a radio station before he turned 15 and has been very fortunate ever since.

As for the "just plain Mike", I was always Mike. Michael was what mom called me when I was in trouble.

It was only when I went to TV news in 1981 that I started using "Michael". Two reasons---I had only been in radio news eight months, which means that eight months earlier, I was a disc jockey, I was 25 but looked 15...



...and the News Director thought switching from "Mike" to "Michael" would give me a bit more gravitas. We were still discussing it when the technical director pointed out that my name on-screen would look better, because there would be seven letters in both the first and last name.




And that was that for the next 30 years. It's how I was known when I joined RadioDiscussions, which is why my screen name here is Michael instead of Mike.

When I went back to radio in 2012, I saw the opportunity for a fresh start, especially since I was doing national newscasts for iHeart instead of local in Phoenix, so I started using "Mike" on the air, and continued that at KFBK and Capital Public Radio.

In general I like knowing plain people. They're often quite honest and open (what you see is usually what you get), so not too many surprises, and they're also usually pretty calm and relaxed about things, so they're easy to get along with.

A very close friend of mine describes me as "easygoing but lethal."

Something else I've noticed about plain people is that they're usually very talented and intelligent, and sometimes have lived very interesting lives, but you wouldn't know it because they are often very modest and come across, well, plainly (plain people do nevertheless get proud of their accomplishments, of course, and some will gladly share with others about the things they've done).

When I share things I've accomplished or experienced, I hope it's taken as it's intended---to convey information or context and not "hey, dig me!".

The people that impressed me most in my career were the big-timers I met and was overwhelmed by their humility---Charlie Tuna, Dr. Don Rose and Jess Marlow (longtime L.A. TV news anchor) are the ones who had the smallest egos and the most heart.

 

[garfradio]

I've already agreed that 6+ numbers don't impact advertising sales.

This thread was started by me in an effort to look at how many/few AM stations have audience of any size at all now. I tried to be thoughtful about how I framed the question and included the following points initially:

• Yes there are AM stations in unrated markets that have impact
• Yes there are very specific niche stations that have impact but not in ratings (David's comments early on about programming in other languages such as Spanish, Russian, Farsi, Tagalog etc, difficulty of measuring those audiences, and reluctance of some owners to be measured at all given those challenges)
• I wanted to filter out the AMs that have mostly moved audience over to FM simulcasts (though it is not easy to determine exactly how much has moved over) and filter out the AMs that exist to feed an FM translator.

This question for me was always about finding the AMs with even a small pulse of audience. Wasn't looking to see what the blood type was, just that there was a pulse. To continue the metaphor: Yes, I know some blood types are salable and others aren't.

This thread has turned into weird nitpicking, but I guess they always do that. And there's more than a whiff of "this is our clubhouse and don't you dare step out of our arbitrary lines" which I don't find kind or helpful.

 

[davideduardo]

As for the "just plain Mike", I was always Mike. Michael was what mom called me when I was in trouble.

I pretty much grew up in Latin America, where "David" is a fairly common name as well. There is no nickname for Davids there, unlike Jose that becomes Pepe and the like. So I was always just David. In fact, if someone calls me "Dave" it takes me a moment to think it out that they may be addressing me.

The people that impressed me most in my career were the big-timers I met and was overwhelmed by their humility---Charlie Tuna, Dr. Don Rose and Jess Marlow (longtime L.A. TV news anchor) are the ones who had the smallest egos and the most heart.

Culture has a great deal to do with this. One of my best friends in radio, both as a colleague form many years and as a manger for, will never be called by just his first name or a shortened version... he will always be "don Jesús" with the "don" being an honorific sort of like "sir" in English. And he never calls me "David" but just "Gleason" instead.

Your examples are situational, too. In my case, maybe I should have been called "el Gringo" in High School. But we already had a "Gringo" in the class, and he was just a nearly blonde, light skinned Ecuadorian whose ancestors a few hundred years back came from Spain!

So... would Robert W. Morgan have been the same as "Bobby"?

 

[michael hagerty]

I pretty much grew up in Latin America, where "David" is a fairly common name as well. There is no nickname for Davids there, unlike Jose that becomes Pepe and the like. So I was always just David. In fact, if someone calls me "Dave" it takes me a moment to think it out that they may be addressing me.

Culture has a great deal to do with this. One of my best friends in radio, both as a colleague form many years and as a manger for, will never be called by just his first name or a shortened version... he will always be "don Jesús" with the "don" being an honorific sort of like "sir" in English. And he never calls me "David" but just "Gleason" instead.

Your examples are situational, too. In my case, maybe I should have been called "el Gringo" in High School. But we already had a "Gringo" in the class, and he was just a nearly blonde, light skinned Ecuadorian whose ancestors a few hundred years back came from Spain!

So... would Robert W. Morgan have been the same as "Bobby"?

No. In fact, for the first several years of his career he was “Bob Morgan”—not terribly memorable.

Eventually, the full first name and the middle initial ( he was born Robert Wilbur Morgan) locked him into people’s memories (it made a great jingle).

There actually was a Bob/Bobby Morgan in L.A. at the same time—-at KGBS.

 

[davideduardo]

No. In fact, for the first several years of his career he was “Bob Morgan”—not terribly memorable.

Eventually, the full first name and the middle initial ( he was born Robert Wilbur Morgan) locked him into people’s memories (it made a great jingle).

There actually was a Bob/Bobby Morgan in L.A. at the same time—-at KGBS.

And then there were the stations that registered jock names, so if you left... or were fired... you could not keep your air name! I believe the "great" Don Burden was one who did this.

 

[cc333]

As for the "just plain Mike", I was always Mike. Michael was what mom called me when I was in trouble.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but there's a murder mystery whodunit TV show starring Angela Lansbury called "Murder, She Wrote" which aired 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996, and one of the recurring characters is a British intelligence agent who is also named Michael Hagerty played by Len Cariou.

Interesting coincidence, don't you think?

I'm a working-class kid who grew up in Bishop, California, got offered a job at a radio station before he turned 15 and has been very fortunate ever since.

Very fortunate indeed!

A very close friend of mine describes me as "easygoing but lethal."

My mother is like that. Very easy going, but with very firm boundaries, and anybody who crosses those boundaries will be treated accordingly.

In other words, if you are polite and respectful to her, she will do the same, but if you're not, watch out....

When I share things I've accomplished or experienced, I hope it's taken as it's intended---to convey information or context and not "hey, dig me!".

That's how it comes across to me; informative and educational. Not boastful or arrogant.

The people that impressed me most in my career were the big-timers I met and was overwhelmed by their humility---Charlie Tuna, Dr. Don Rose and Jess Marlow (longtime L.A. TV news anchor) are the ones who had the smallest egos and the most heart.

That's what I mean! They're so plain and nice when you meet them, but they accomplished all these things and they were famous. I regret not having the opportunity to meet any of them myself. I'm sure I would've liked them.

 

[michael hagerty]

I don't know if you are aware of this, but there's a murder mystery whodunit TV show starring Angela Lansbury called "Murder, She Wrote" which aired 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996, and one of the recurring characters is a British intelligence agent who is also named Michael Hagerty played by Len Cariou.

Interesting coincidence, don't you think?

"Michael Hagerty" isn't quite "Bob Smith" in Irish, but it's close. In addition to the character on "Murder She Wrote", there was also the actor Mike Hagerty:

Mike Hagerty | Actor, Soundtrack

Known for: Overboard, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Inspector Gadget

www.imdb.com

I actually got a few "You okay? Call me!" texts from friends who were only half-listening to the radio the day he passed three years ago and heard "Longtime television mumblemumble Mike Hagerty is dead at age 67." Didn't help that we were less than two years apart in age.

And there were more:

I did news in Reno from 1981 to 1984, at KOLO radio and KTVN television. For most people it was long enough not to remember (if they ever knew in the first place), but in 2008, another guy named Michael Hagerty started doing TV news in Reno on the PBS station.

And then...in 2012...went to the NPR radio station:

Hagerty named KUNR news director | University of Nevada, Reno

New news director joins KUNR from KNPB

www.unr.edu

The announcement was by David Stipech, then General Manager of KUNR. The thing was, David Stipech used to be a disc jockey named Dave McKnight, and I hired him, first for weekends and fill-ins, and then for overnights, at KOLO in Reno, in 1980, when he was 19.

When I took the job at KTVK in Phoenix in 1986, it was a big deal---I was moving from Las Vegas, then only market 94 to market 20. Very nearly double the salary---lotta pressure for things to go well.

I rented a big new apartment with a third-floor view of the Superstition Mountains in Mesa, Arizona, and got myself all set up for life in the new city.

On the morning I was to go into the newsroom for the first time, I picked my copy of the Mesa Tribune off my doorstep and opened it up to read while I had breakfast. I got to the Op/Ed page and there was a letter to the editor---one of the most offensive racist screeds I'd ever seen in a newspaper. And it was signed:

Michael Hagerty
Mesa

I called my new boss immediately. "I just saw this letter in the Trib and I want you to know I had nothing to do with it and..."

My boss: "Oh, yeah. THAT Michael Hagerty. Don't worry. We know it's not you. He gets a letter in the Tribune every three weeks or so. Has for years. If I'd thought of it, I might have asked you to change your name, but the business cards are already printed, so..."

More recently, there's been confusion between me...

New Car reviews | Mike Hagerty Cars

Car reviews. I've been doing them since 1997 on TV (3TV, AZTV and ABC15 in Phoenix), radio (KTAR, Phoenix and KFBK, Sacramento), in print (The Los Altos Town Crier) and online (AAA magazines in six states, BBC Autos and LosAltosOnline.com). Mike Hagerty Cars helps you choose your next vehicle.

www.mikehagertycars.com

...and the guy who owns Hagerty Collector Car Insurance, and years after I became an automotive writer, started his own automotive media company. His name is McKeel Hagerty.

Hagerty Media | Car Stories, Reviews and Market Trends

Get the automotive stories and videos you love from Hagerty Media. Find up-to-the-minute car news, reviews, and market trends when you need it most. - Hagerty Media

www.hagerty.com

Now, I'm not gonna change my name and McKeel (a great guy who I met years ago when I was block announcer for the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction and his company was a title sponsor) isn't about to change his, so I've just included a line in my bio:





Even with that, about a third of my new contact requests on Linkedin turn out to be people trying to get in touch with McKeel.

 

[CTListener]

I pretty much grew up in Latin America, where "David" is a fairly common name as well. There is no nickname for Davids there, unlike Jose that becomes Pepe and the like. So I was always just David. In fact, if someone calls me "Dave" it takes me a moment to think it out that they may be addressing me.

Culture has a great deal to do with this. One of my best friends in radio, both as a colleague form many years and as a manger for, will never be called by just his first name or a shortened version... he will always be "don Jesús" with the "don" being an honorific sort of like "sir" in English. And he never calls me "David" but just "Gleason" instead.

Your examples are situational, too. In my case, maybe I should have been called "el Gringo" in High School. But we already had a "Gringo" in the class, and he was just a nearly blonde, light skinned Ecuadorian whose ancestors a few hundred years back came from Spain!

So... would Robert W. Morgan have been the same as "Bobby"?

Totally off track here, but I need to tell the story of my brief encounter with the then-program director of WJPZ, the then-carrier current AM Top 40 station at Syracuse University for a year or two in the late seventies. This guy's name, IIRC, was Brian Miller, but he used the air name of John W. Sinclair. The only reason I remember this was that I'd heard him earlier using the name "Ted Williams," and since he lived in my dorm, I believe I was the first to break the news to him that Ted Williams was also the name of a rather famous baseball player. He had no interest in sports, had never heard of Williams, a Hall of Famer. Cultural differences at work, even between two guys with similar suburban New England upbringings!

 

[michael hagerty]

Totally off track here, but I need to tell the story of my brief encounter with the then-program director of WJPZ, the then-carrier current AM Top 40 station at Syracuse University for a year or two in the late seventies. This guy's name, IIRC, was Brian Miller, but he used the air name of John W. Sinclair. The only reason I remember this was that I'd heard him earlier using the name "Ted Williams," and since he lived in my dorm, I believe I was the first to break the news to him that Ted Williams was also the name of a rather famous baseball player. He had no interest in sports, had never heard of Williams, a Hall of Famer. Cultural differences at work, even between two guys with similar suburban New England upbringings!

And in a further "small world" note, one of the teenage DJs at KIBS hired the year before me was a guy whose real name was Ted Williams, and constantly got "Oh, like the ballplayer", which kinda bugged him because he was trying to make his own mark as a disc jockey.

He finally went into local politics.

 

[semoochie]

I'm a working-class kid who grew up in Bishop, California, got offered a job at a radio station before he turned 15 and has been very fortunate ever since.

As for the "just plain Mike", I was always Mike. Michael was what mom called me when I was in trouble.

It was only when I went to TV news in 1981 that I started using "Michael". Two reasons---I had only been in radio news eight months, which means that eight months earlier, I was a disc jockey, I was 25 but looked 15...

View attachment 9677

...and the News Director thought switching from "Mike" to "Michael" would give me a bit more gravitas. We were still discussing it when the technical director pointed out that my name on-screen would look better, because there would be seven letters in both the first and last name.


View attachment 9678

And that was that for the next 30 years. It's how I was known when I joined RadioDiscussions, which is why my screen name here is Michael instead of Mike.

When I went back to radio in 2012, I saw the opportunity for a fresh start, especially since I was doing national newscasts for iHeart instead of local in Phoenix, so I started using "Mike" on the air, and continued that at KFBK and Capital Public Radio.



A very close friend of mine describes me as "easygoing but lethal."



When I share things I've accomplished or experienced, I hope it's taken as it's intended---to convey information or context and not "hey, dig me!".

The people that impressed me most in my career were the big-timers I met and was overwhelmed by their humility---Charlie Tuna, Dr. Don Rose and Jess Marlow (longtime L.A. TV news anchor) are the ones who had the smallest egos and the most heart.

However it happened, this was a good choice: "Mike Hagerty" sounds like your last name begins with a "K"! "Michael Hagerty" avoids all of that.