RATINGS: WHICH BETTER??

[MR. JAROME_CALVIN]

When looking at Ratings, which is better?


Example
WXKS FM

-EST %
8.2

-Cume
1,416,800




Which one is better? Which one counts more?


Thank you all for your help

 

[beantownradio25]

With a format like CHR, cume really does matter.

I would go with cume

 

[MR. JAROME_CALVIN]

ok thank you very much.

 

[DanStrassberg]

With a format like CHR, cume really does matter.
I would go with cume

Can you explain what the cume means? 1,416,000/0.082 = 17,268,292, which suggests that there are more than 17 million people in the market. I believe that number is several times the population of the market; it may even be greater than the population of the New York City market (which includes parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut).

 

[Dick Skinner]

With a format like CHR, cume really does matter.
I would go with cume

Can you explain what the cume means? 1,416,000/0.082 = 17,268,292, which suggests that there are more than 17 million people in the market. I believe that number is several times the population of the market; it may even be greater than the population of the New York City market (which includes parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut).

It's confusing, but in simplest terms, cume is the number of people tuning in during the given period (in this case the entire week). Share is a percentage of people actually listening to the radio during the given period; share isn't based on population. For instance: If my population is 100 and 90 listened to the radio that week and an average of 10 are listening to my station during any given quarter hour, I have an 11.1 share (10/90). However, up to 90 of those total listeners could tune into my station at some time during the week and that would be my cume.

 

[Laurence Glavin]

If you look at the ratings on radio-info.com, they rank stations by their averages, not cumes. Thus a station can rank let's say 10th with a 2.8 while a station with a 2.7 comes in 11th. But the former may have an 800,000 cume, while the latter 1 million. Maybe they got many of the 6-plus listeners who didn't show up in the 12-plus diary ratings.

 

[oaktree]

And, as mentioned so frequently (and accurately) that both cume and rating in the 6+ or 12+ configuration, literally, means absolutely nothing except in a total market "beauty contest." It is impossible to extrapolate demo, TSL, cume and ratings from that demo spread.

Even more so with PPM, based on "hearing" not "listening." If your "meter" picks up mom's mini-van filled with six people, you all "heard" the station mom is listening too, and your meter says you "heard" it, too -- while everyone else also was exposed to it, but only is part of that unknown "estimate" of what the audience composition truly is.

On the other hand, diary recall, though the standard for four decades, isn't much better, as it is a "guessing game" of what and when people actually listened, especially when trying to compile from "recall" the week prior to the end of the particular weekly sample, when so many diaries are filled out at the last second -- not ongoing, as they should be.

It's all about "science" or "fuzzy logic" -- depending on what side of the fence you're on.