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Shall we discuss the summer ratings?

P

Pratte4Life

Really isn't that much to discuss- although here are a few talking points-

A- Three years ago WDSY hit No. 1 for a trend. Now they are in fourth place.

Obviously country isn't as popular as it once was, but I found this interesting.

B- 104.7 continues to impress. How will the loss of the Pirates for the time being effect their ratings? Don't laugh- the Bucs do have a following and even when the team is losing it's always nice to tune into the ballgame in the summer.

Will the Presidential election put them over KDKA? Or will KDKA be able to stay on, since one can still talk politics there as well.

C- Why has WISH 99.7 lost 1/3 of their audience in less than a year? Why is WJAS getting its lowest ratings EVER? Bad times at Renda when WMNY getting on Steve Forbes seems to be this book's success story.

D- WEAE got a slight improvement from their summer 2007 book. They got a better rating WITHOUT Mark Madden than with.

E- As a sports talk junkie, I see 970 failed to make the book while a bunch of radio stations I've never heard of have.

We can talk about how Clear Channel doesn't care about 970 and such and you'd be right.

But think of this, if they hadn't of canned Stan Savran a couple of years ago . . .

Not only would a larger audience have gone to WBGG after Mark Madden's departure, but WEAE couldn't have paired him with Guy Junker again, either.

There's the thought WEAE would be severly wounded and WBGG could have been a player in the sports talk wars at long last. The only real change would have been Scott Brown never would have become the Steelers' beat reporter for the Trib as Joe Bendel would still be there.



My guess is Tim Benz would have gone strictly to mornings on The X or possibly additionally handle an "Ellis Cannon" role of giving scores during Stan show, along with Steelers reporter duties.
 
Y108 did slip to 4th becuase of 104.7's strong showing, but their numbers are up from the spring book, and match their best numbers over the past year.

Politics will carry KD and 104.7. KD was also up over the summer.

WSHH? Probably some people switching to 92.9, maybe a TSL loss (time spent listening). Star is also up slightly, and frankly WSHH probably also shares listeners with Y108, particularly 35-64 women.

JAS is just done. Go John Tesh 24-7.

EAE is down from the spring numbers, and I'm betting that whatever gains have been made by the reunited Stan & Guy are more than offset by the losses in Madden's slot, and that will get worse now that he's back on the air. The only way 970 would ever be a factor is if a competitor to CC owned them. They have always been in "protect the mothership" mode, making sure not to take 25-54 males from DVE.

And it's interesting, on Thursday when the Super Genius took calls he was saying "you're on with Madden." Friday it was "you're on with Mark." Maybe "Madden" as a standalone identity is trademarked?
 
I can't imagine the Pirates did 104.7 any good in August and September. The TV ratings were absolutely in the tank this season.
 
Radio ain't TV though. In 1985 when the Pirates finished 57-104 they supposedly had the highest radio ratings in baseball.

You may very well be right, but baseball traditionally does well on the radio and often the success of the team is irrelevant. The Cleveland Indians drew big numbers for WWWE back in the day when they were a hopeless franchise with an announcer a listener could barely understand.
 
I think KDKA will continue to do well, fall book and beyond.

What? I'm logged on?

Oh. Gotta remember to use my inner voice.

;)
 
Pratte4Life said:
Radio ain't TV though. In 1985 when the Pirates finished 57-104 they supposedly had the highest radio ratings in baseball.

You may very well be right, but baseball traditionally does well on the radio and often the success of the team is irrelevant. The Cleveland Indians drew big numbers for WWWE back in the day when they were a hopeless franchise with an announcer a listener could barely understand.
Click to expand...


I'd need to see some evidence on that. I can't believe there's a chance they had the highest ratings in baseball with a 104-loss season in a year when the Cardinals and Dodgers won their divisions, and the Yankees were in the pennant race all season. The Pirates only drew 735,000 people and interest wasn't exactly high.

In more recent years, KDKA was dying in the second half of the season with the Pirates, who were buried by then. Some of the numbers they had were from the 50+ crowd who never change the dial anyway.
 
Forgive me. It was the Sept. 9, 1985 issue.

In it, Dave Nightengale elaborates on how the average listener to a Pirates game would listen for 5 1/2 innings, compared to 2 1/2 for the perennial attendance leading Dodgers.

One of the many themes of the piece was the decline of the steel industry had as much to do with the Bucs' poor performance at the gate as the play of the team. While I doubt that meant if the industry was thriving the Bucs would have led the NL in attendance as they did in 1948, it is an arguement with merit.

I remember that year and Perry Marshall, who didn't host a sports talk show, once had to ask people to quit calling about "What's Wrong With the Bucs."

It's my belief the interest was there. As bad of PR as it was to have "The Pirate Clubhouse" written in graffiti on a billboard advertising "Pittsburgh's No. 1 Drug Store," it does show that people still care.

Attendance isn't a barometer to sneeze at, but it's not tell all. It is my belief there was more interest in the Bucs then than now and the attendance is higher in this generation.
 
That's far from having the "highest radio ratings in baseball."

Wouldn't it figure that interest would be lower after 16 straight losing seasons? Someone who's 21 today has no memory of the Pirates being relevant. Meanwhile, 1985 was six years removed from a World Series championship and two years removed from a team that was in the '83 pennant race.

Back to the original point -- the last two months of this season were not a boost for 104.7.
 
I am only going by what the article reports and what was often being reported on KDKA shows at the time (sort of a bragging point for the station. Also was used as a talking point on why the team shouldn't leave town).

If you have evidence otherwise, please let us know. I'm sure the board would be overwhelmed and waiting with great anticipation for 23-year-old baseball broadcasting ratings and will believe the word of an anonymous poster over that of a published investigative report in a nationally respected magazine.

There was no fall in the overall ratings at 104.7 from spring to summer. I have no idea what the Pirates' ratings were- so why don't you let us know?
 
When they are going well Pittsburgh sports teams tend to have absolutely sick radio and TV numbers. Granted every city is full of bandwagon jumpers but somehow fans around here are better at it than just about anywhere else in the country. Steeler telecasts are almost never worse than third or fourth in the country and the Pens numbers dwarf even NBA teams in markets twice the size. Remember in 1985 KD still had a signal that took in more than half the population of the US and this was still a baseball team that was on the radar screen. Although finding exact numbers from 23 years ago would be at best difficult I wouldn't for a second doubt that the Pirates were one of the top draws in baseball. It was a different game and a different business than it is now.
 
MOVED: Re: Shall we discuss the summer ratings?

Some posts have been moved to Take It Outside.

[iurl]http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=111888.0[/iurl]
 
Pratte4Life said:
Radio ain't TV though. In 1985 when the Pirates finished 57-104 they supposedly had the highest radio ratings in baseball.

You may very well be right, but baseball traditionally does well on the radio and often the success of the team is irrelevant. The Cleveland Indians drew big numbers for WWWE back in the day when they were a hopeless franchise with an announcer a listener could barely understand.
Click to expand...

Amen to that, Pratte. Every station where I've worked has always made money with the Pirates, regardless of their success, or lack thereof. It's available for 100 percent barter, you can build a TON of creative promotions around it, and it does afford your station some credibility.
 
All true as a local affiliate. The original point, however, was that the flagship 104.7's numbers did not benefit from the Pirates after Bay and Nady departed, and that the station's up trend is from the political shows (and maybe Planet E talking Stillers).
 
I think there's a bit of "the team is bad, so the numbers must be bad" mentality and I'm not sure it is true.

I'm not saying the success or lack thereof is irrelevant to the numbers, but when 104.7 is doing better than ever, when they are doing better than they did in 2004 when the station was fresh and new and well promoted, and the overall ratings show no decline from spring to summer- I have to ask if maybe, just maybe, the Pirates broadcast didn't attract a larger audience than Michael Savage on tape delay did.


Again, historically baseball does very well on radio. It's the perfect sport for the medium.

I'll just add a personal note. I used to be a minor league baseball PBP guy. The station I did the games on now doesn't carry them anymore. And the team I called was lousy- last place.

Time goes by. Without the games on the radio, their numbers are A THIRD of what they used to be. The team's attendance has fallen (by 55% the year they quit broadcasting the games).

You can talk about the declining popularity of the game, or nobody listens to AM and FM listeners only want music, or that the Pirates haven't won since 1992, or all the games are on TV, or ANY of that.

No matter. Baseball on the radio does well.

And don't take this as a knock on Savage, but if you were Iron City Beer, or PPG, or Gulf Oil, or the Pennsylvania Milk Producers, who would you rather buy ads on- Pirates baseball or a rather controversial talk show host that creates divides?
 
104.7's numbers were up. The Pirates' attendance and TV ratings were the worst in recent memory. Common sense would dictate that it's unlikely their radio audiences were increasing at that point.
 
Pratte4Life said:
I am only going by what the article reports and what was often being reported on KDKA shows at the time (sort of a bragging point for the station. Also was used as a talking point on why the team shouldn't leave town).

If you have evidence otherwise, please let us know. I'm sure the board would be overwhelmed and waiting with great anticipation for 23-year-old baseball broadcasting ratings and will believe the word of an anonymous poster over that of a published investigative report in a nationally respected magazine.

There was no fall in the overall ratings at 104.7 from spring to summer. I have no idea what the Pirates' ratings were- so why don't you let us know?
Click to expand...

I don't have the numbers, but I have my memory. I was GM at the station at the time, and the ratings were pathetic. Worse than pathetic; we had sponsors calling up saying "I don't care if you have me in an uncancellable contract, if you keep running my spots I'll sue you." True story.

You may remember 1985 as the year of the Pirates' drug scandal, and the year when we brought back Bob Prince. The Prince return was *precisely* because of the disastrous season, it could not have happened under any other circumstances. The team wouldn't have allowed it, Westinghouse (upper) management wouldn't have allowed it, and we wouldn't have even thought it up.

I don't know where this magazine got its information, but its dead wrong to say "best ratings in baseball." KDKA produced great ratings, but the year-over-year comparisons for "just baseball" were abysmal. (Inexperienced writers will often look at "the nighttime ratings" and attribute that to "baseball", but that is a very wrong thing to do, as the game account for less than 50% of the programming during that time period.)

It's possible that they got a "baseball extract" from Arbitron (the only one rating radio at the time), but that costs thousands of dollars, and I seriously doubt some LA magazine bothered to do so before inserting that "one line" analysis.

You might note that when I say "KDKA produced great ratings" I mean exactly that. John Cigna slid into the morning program and instantly produced a 20 share. Jack Bogut had a 20 share, and went to WTAE and produced a 6. "The ratings" are a combination of "the station" and "the program", and "the Bucs" were only a small part of it.

There's no question that there were times when the Bucs helped KDKA and produced good ratings. 1985 wasn't one of them.
 
Rick, I'm not saying what you say is untrue.

But I was one of "those" fans who listened to every game back then. I was a kid who was in love with baseball.

Because of that, I recall your talk shows after the game getting NOTHING but Pirates calls. Chris Cross and Bruce Keidan coming on and talking nothing but Bucs after the game, and producing lively shows with lots of callers. The same with Perry Marshall.

These were supposed to be "general" talk shows. But all anyone would call up about was "What was wrong with the Bucs." The aforementioned Cross and Keidan were able to attract lots of attention for their "Ballot by Ballpark" promotion, where fans were encouraged to attend a June 30 game against the Cubs to say they wanted the Pirates to stay in town.

The result was the largest crowd of the season, sans opening day. It was 14,000 more than any other non-opening day game of the season.

At one point I remember Marshall put a moritorium on Pirates calls. He just was sick of everyone calling in with a single subject.

The only other thing I will say is you did bring back Bob Prince officially in early May, and the announcement was made two weeks into the season.

As a kid in love with baseball, I can tell you the '85 Bucs started 3-3 and then lost 9 of their next 11, and the annoucement to return Prince to KDKA (he had already made a return to cable TV broadcasts- I wonder why more people don't remember that. I think his color guy was Willie Stargell for a time) was made sometime during that losing streak.

But that was awful early to say the season was "disastrous." It turned out to be, but plenty of teams have overcome horrid Aprils, and the Bucs traditionally started slow back then (the '79 Pirates, for instance, were 9 1/2 out and in last place in mid-May).

I could see you saying "this team is going nowhere" and you would turn out to be right to say so.

But, boy, it was awfully early to make that proclamation.
 
ACK! I see your other posts now and see what you mean about the situation now and Bob Prince.

It wasn't just that the Bucs were off to a slow start- it was that they'd finished in last place the year before, too, and there were rumors concerning the future of the team.
 
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