San Diego 91X FM getting "as many or more listeners" via its stream than RF?

[yeoldeschool]

I would have not thought this possible, but Dean Imhoff, while giving a station tour to The Broadcast Engineer, said that 91X is getting as many listeners or more via its stream than its signal. 3:00 to 5:00 here:

He said it twice in that timeframe, so it wasn't a misspoken statement.

How is this possible? He did mention that people from out of the area are listening to 91X a lot. Do the published Nielsen ratings for streams exclude all out-of-market listeners or something? Every time I look at any town's ratings, the RF signals are beating the pants off the streams.

 

[Huff]

Nielsen publishes any stations that are encoded and that register at certain minimum thresholds. (Non-subscribing stations do not show in the public numbers.) If an out-of-town stream gets enough listening in a market by panelists in that market, it will show up. (eg. LA stations have shown up in Vegas before, but it is a rare occurrence.) A broadcaster in San Diego will not see a universal nationwide estimate of listening to a stream, only the listening in San Diego will register. A San Diego station could, in theory, register in another market, but those numbers would not count toward the San Diego numbers.

Furthermore, streaming data is a census, (ie. you know exactly how many streams are being downloaded at any given time.)
Nielsen's audience measurement is a representative sample. There's no way to count every single listener listening to a station at any given time, so they use a representative sample from which they extrapolate totals.
Server counts and Nielsen estimates are not comparable, they are apples and oranges.

 

[vw86]

Are stations/station groups that subscribe to their home market able to see any of the captured streaming from other markets? I feel like until recently those numbers would sometimes show up in the public release if they were high enough.

 

[Huff]

Are stations/station groups that subscribe to their home market able to see any of the captured streaming from other markets? I feel like until recently those numbers would sometimes show up in the public release if they were high enough.

"A broadcaster in San Diego will not see a universal nationwide estimate of listening to a stream, only the listening in San Diego will register. A San Diego station could, in theory, register in another market, but those numbers would not count toward the San Diego numbers."

 

[davideduardo]

Are stations/station groups that subscribe to their home market able to see any of the captured streaming from other markets? I feel like until recently those numbers would sometimes show up in the public release if they were high enough.

Expanding on Huff's response I have a good example:

The better signal Los Angeles FMs and several of the AMs from there do very well in the Riverside / San Bernardino market. On average, half of the top 15 stations in the Inland Empire are LA operations.

Yet nearly none of the LA stations subscribe to the book in that market, as they can't see any benefit in added revenue by doing so. Ad buyers that use ratings, mostly agencies, look at markets individually. And if they are buying the Inland Empire, they are not going to pay LA rates for a vastly smaller market; they will buy local stations.

This example is for over the air listening, not streaming that you mentioned. But since the numbers are much bigger, this is a better comparison.

 

[vw86]

I think I figured out how to better formulate my question based on the examples above.

Can subscribers of the Riverside/San Bernardino marker see all of the LA stations getting meter hits that aren't showing up in the public release? And if so, can/do different groups share that? For example, iHeart subscribes their Riverside stations - can they see how the LA stations are doing because of that?

 

[Huff]

I think I figured out how to better formulate my question based on the examples above.

Can subscribers of the Riverside/San Bernardino marker see all of the LA stations getting meter hits that aren't showing up in the public release? And if so, can/do different groups share that? For example, iHeart subscribes their Riverside stations - can they see how the LA stations are doing because of that?

They can't see "meter hits"... if a non-subscribing station shows up with greater than a 0.1 AQH rating it will show up (rating = % of listening universe as opposed to "share", which is % of radio audience and what people commonly refer to as "ratings")... anyway, any station with greater than a 0.1 AQH rating will show up in the ratings for subscribers to see.
In most markets, a 0.1 AQH rating translates to around a 2 to 3 share of audience.

 

[vw86]

Thank you! This finally makes sense to me

 

[MarkW]

Streaming providers (think internet, not Nielsen ratings) are able to see how many streams are being served. 91X is basing the claim on data it receives from web traffic analysis, not Nielsen.

 

[Bongwater]

It honestly would not surprise me. At all.

First, the pickins' of retail modern terrestrial home stereo/portable radios is mighty slim (Yes, you can still order a nice new radio online. But I'm talking about something one would need now. Like in an upcoming natural emergency or a big local sports game and there isn't a thrift shop for miles) And the ones you do find are 25-30 year old stock that have a half inch of dust on the blister packaging are of utterly terrible quality. (I don't know what a Lenoxx Sound is, but I just couldn't blame Annie Lennox for calling her lawyer if she heard one of those things.)

Second, Cars. Car manufacturers want to get rid of AM. They also want to get rid of FM too. They see streaming as the ultimate replacement for broadcast radio and they may be right. Consumers want brand new shiny bleeding edge tech. Not dinosaurs like HD Radio. Or anything outside of the car manufacturer's remote control.....

Third, The Junk Heap; In 2019, at my oldest daughter's first job, she called me over to her work because she wanted to show me something. I drove over and there were two giant boxes packed with assorted radios; Clock radios, portable radios, table radios, pocket radios, a couple novelty radios, personal headset cassette radios. Both with 8x10" sheets of paper taped to the boxes with the word FREE printed in bold Arial font.

There was nothing wrong with these radios. They were all perfectly good. A few nearly mint condition, including a mid-'80s vintage GE Mono AM/FM Portable Radio/Cassette, which I quickly snapped up. There was just too many of them and nobody was buying them at any price. There was literally no turnover in radios on the shelves in years. And the back room was already getting crazy and on the cusp of illegality with other things coming in. But this growing collection of unmovable radios was getting beyond noticeable. Something had to give.

Her boss explained to me that the whole thrift shop industry had been overwhelmed by radios people were getting rid of. It was nationwide. And her story corroborated with what I (and maybe even you) had been noticing in the late 2010s while weekend bargain hunting the thrift shops, flea markets and people's garage sales; There were a lot of second hand radios for sale. Cheap. And radios can still be found cheaply. But as we speak, cars with old radios are getting crushed, electronics are getting recycled. It's only a matter of time.

And in spite of the still cheap availability of terrestrial radios of any sort, TuneIn and other stream aggregators are becoming the modern replacement for radio for those under 50.

Also with streaming, Stations, even advertisers could potentially see in real time who's tuning in/out, how long people are tuned in, etc.

Yes, listeners in other markets don't count.....Until they do.

And they eventually will.

 

[TheBigA]

Streaming providers (think internet, not Nielsen ratings) are able to see how many streams are being served. 91X is basing the claim on data it receives from web traffic analysis, not Nielsen.

For that reason, SoundExchange requires stations that stream submit actual usage numbers from the ISP and won't accept Nielson for royalty payments.

Which is why the experts say that broadcast streams are being undercounted and undervalued for sales purposes.

There is no public way to know how broadcast streams are doing with audiences other than the occasional polls.