Spring Ratings -- 2019

[tbolt909]

WYRK moves up to #1, slightly ahead of WBLK. The Breeze was stagnant (posting the same number as last book). The music they play is toothless and sounds old---Elevator Muzak.

WBFO(NPR) had a 3.5. The Classical WNED is not far behind JACK.

WECK posts a 2.9 ( They sound even older and still no 5 share). ALT Buffalo 1.5, KB 0.3. The days of Entercom having to worry about "protecting" their other stations are long gone. No competitor is interested in 1520 AM or 107.7 FM. Entercom has made those signals worthless...

 

[TheBigA]

WYRK moves up to #1, slightly ahead of WBLK.

So who is surprised? Not me.

 

[kw1025]

I think T-Bolt is leaving out some important facts, like that WECK BEAT WBUF Jack-FM, WNED, WLKK and came 6 tenths of a point from beating WGR, 12 plus. WECK has now consistently been up three books in a row, and would have a 3.3 if it would not have been for the unfair practice of "diary weighting" . It is also note worthy that WECK's weekly cume audience is now 64,300, the highest cume the signal has had in it's entire history. That cume number is up substantially from when the station was bought 2 years ago. You may also be interested to know that WECK is the highest rated Oldies station in the ENTIRE country. For a station that has signal issues and really reaches just Erie county, I would think that is a national success story. And by the way, their may be some competitors interested in WWKB and WLKK

 

[tbolt909]

I think T-Bolt is leaving out some important facts, like that WECK BEAT WBUF Jack-FM, WNED, WLKK and came 6 tenths of a point from beating WGR, 12 plus. WECK has now consistently been up three books in a row, and would have a 3.3 if it would not have been for the unfair practice of "diary weighting" . It is also note worthy that WECK's weekly cume audience is now 64,300, the highest cume the signal has had in it's entire history. That cume number is up substantially from when the station was bought 2 years ago. You may also be interested to know that WECK is the highest rated Oldies station in the ENTIRE country. For a station that has signal issues and really reaches just Erie county, I would think that is a national success story. And by the way, their may be some competitors interested in WWKB and WLKK

WECK might have a 7 share if half of its target audience wasn't dead. Highest rated Oldies station in the country? "Oldies" now includes Classic Rock, Classic Hits, Variety Hits, ad nauseum...
It's 2019. Music from the 1990s may be "Oldies" to some people.

Looks like Buddy has returned from his ban using a different name...

 

[kw1025]

WECK might have a 7 share if half of its target audience wasn't dead. Highest rated Oldies station in the country? "Oldies" now includes Classic Rock, Classic Hits, Variety Hits, ad nauseum...
It's 2019. Music from the 1990s may be "Oldies" to some people.

Looks like Buddy has returned from his ban using a different name...

Not Buddy, just a friend of him. Oldies, according to Neilson, does NOT include those genres you spoke of. An Oldies station has to be registered with Neilson as "Oldies". WECK is the top rated Oldies station in American, in any size market. Half of WECK's audience is not dead, although you may like to believe that. Stick to the facts.

 

[davideduardo]

WECK might have a 7 share if half of its target audience wasn't dead. Highest rated Oldies station in the country? "Oldies" now includes Classic Rock, Classic Hits, Variety Hits, ad nauseum...
It's 2019. Music from the 1990s may be "Oldies" to some people.

As a radio format, "oldies" has a very specific meaning: pop music with a core of 60's music and including, possibly, some 50's and some early 70's.

Nielsen allows stations to self-define according to a list of acceptable format names. If a station uses a name that is not accurate, other stations in the market can object and Nielsen will reclassify.

In the case of BDS and MediaBase, those organizations have panels of industry people who decide, based on what is played, the format for each station they monitor. The station can ask for reevaluation, but the names are determined by a panel.

Listeners may call a format whatever they want. Nobody calls a CHR station by its industry name, but inside the business we know that to be a CHR you must play current pop music in hot rotations, not go far back with gold and recurrents, and have certain repetition ranges in the categories, such as 70 to 120 per week for powers.

So if you are talking about radio programming, oldies is very specific and does not include those other formats you name.

 

[tbolt909]

As a radio format, "oldies" has a very specific meaning: pop music with a core of 60's music and including, possibly, some 50's and some early 70's.

Nielsen allows stations to self-define according to a list of acceptable format names. If a station uses a name that is not accurate, other stations in the market can object and Nielsen will reclassify.

In the case of BDS and MediaBase, those organizations have panels of industry people who decide, based on what is played, the format for each station they monitor. The station can ask for reevaluation, but the names are determined by a panel.

Listeners may call a format whatever they want. Nobody calls a CHR station by its industry name, but inside the business we know that to be a CHR you must play current pop music in hot rotations, not go far back with gold and recurrents, and have certain repetition ranges in the categories, such as 70 to 120 per week for powers.

So if you are talking about radio programming, oldies is very specific and does not include those other formats you name.

Using your strict interpretation, how many "Oldies" stations still exist on big signals? The moniker is toxic to Ad Agencies which is why many Oldies stations changed their name to Classic Hits. They also shifted to more 70s and 80s music, although some kept 60s in rotation.

Consider this -- 1989 was 30 years ago. That's a long time ago. Those valuable 25-40 year olds may consider all of those formats as "Oldies". It's all old music, no matter what Radio chooses to call it.

Buddy's new "friend" misspelled Nielsen, just like his pal...

 

[RadioGuy1864]

I think T-Bolt is leaving out some important facts, like that WECK BEAT WBUF Jack-FM, WNED, WLKK and came 6 tenths of a point from beating WGR, 12 plus. WECK has now consistently been up three books in a row, and would have a 3.3 if it would not have been for the unfair practice of "diary weighting" . It is also note worthy that WECK's weekly cume audience is now 64,300, the highest cume the signal has had in it's entire history. That cume number is up substantially from when the station was bought 2 years ago. You may also be interested to know that WECK is the highest rated Oldies station in the ENTIRE country. For a station that has signal issues and really reaches just Erie county, I would think that is a national success story. And by the way, their may be some competitors interested in WWKB and WLKK

Is that you Buddy?

 

[flybynight]

If we're going to start tabulating dead audiences....then these stations are going to start showing up in the national rankings BIG TIME:

KDKA
KHJ
WWJ
KYW
WLS
WBZ
WHN
WIP

 

[davideduardo]

Using your strict interpretation, how many "Oldies" stations still exist on big signals?

None, unless you consider hi-band 50 kw AMs.

The moniker is toxic to Ad Agencies which is why many Oldies stations changed their name to Classic Hits. They also shifted to more 70s and 80s music, although some kept 60s in rotation.

It's not as much the name that is toxic as it is the demos.

But in any case, stations did not "change their name" to classic hits. Stations changed their focus to the 70's and 80's and then, as an industry, convinced Nielsen to add "classic hits" as a format name. To get Nielsen to do that, it has to be shown that there are a significant number of comparable and similar stations nationally.

Consider this -- 1989 was 30 years ago. That's a long time ago. Those valuable 25-40 year olds may consider all of those formats as "Oldies". It's all old music, no matter what Radio chooses to call it.

Stations prefer not to use the term, as it is most identified with another format.

 

[kw1025]

Of course T Bolt is shot down with facts on every single thing he said, showing he knows zero about radio. Every, single point he made was wrong.

 

[SirRoxalot]

"Not Buddy" is right. WECK crushed WNED - the classical station. WBFO, however, beat him nicely. WECK has been up 3 books in a row, but still hasn't equaled the 3.0 share from summer of 18. If the cumes are the best ever then TSL must be down. That smacks of a programming issue. As far as the "diary weighting" being "unfair", I'll let David explain it to "not Buddy". I'm surprised he let that pass the first time. Too bad "not Buddy" missed that college statistics course.

Otherwise, not a lot of movement in the Top 10 stations. Most of the meaningful movement is likely to be in demographics, not 12+. WECK may have killer 55+ numbers for all we know. That's the audience Buddy is going for. Mostly, he's got live bodies on the air who are getting paid, the money is staying local instead of being siphoned off to corporate, and the "little teapot that could" is whistling -er, steaming along. If Buddy's happy with the revenue, then it's a local success! It ain't scaring the big boys, and they're not likely to sell him an FM unless he pays stupid money for it.

Meanwhile, "Tbolt" is still whining about Alt 107. Some things never change...

 

[davideduardo]

"Not Buddy" is right. WECK crushed WNED - the classical station. WBFO, however, beat him nicely. WECK has been up 3 books in a row, but still hasn't equaled the 3.0 share from summer of 18. If the cumes are the best ever then TSL must be down. That smacks of a programming issue. As far as the "diary weighting" being "unfair", I'll let David explain it to "not Buddy". I'm surprised he let that pass the first time. Too bad "not Buddy" missed that college statistics course.

The issue with trends is that they are not fully and proportionally weighted, so they wobble as the diary sample is never perfect in any single 4 week period.

Otherwise, though, weighting is done to achieve proportionality of the final sample. It's a good thing, and not unfair. It means that if too many 18-34's respond, each diary counts a little less and if two few 55-64's participate, each diary is weighted up. The end is a proportional sample where all groups are representative of the makeup of the market.

I've seen unweighted samples when I was working on the software for the company that did ratings in Puerto Rico prior to Arbitron. They can be crazy, and cause totally distorted results. They are anything but unfair.

For the "poster who is not Buddy":

Example of weighting. A town has 50% women and 50% men. We do a survey of 100 people, and we get 55 women and 45 men. Our sample is skewed in favor of women unless we weight. So we count each female response at down (multiply by approximately 0.9) so that it is equal to 1% of the population and we weight each male response up (multiply by approximately 1.1) to make it equal to 1%. The end result is that men and women are represented equally.

(That is horribly simplified, but it shows the beneficial aspects of weighting vs. the potential harm of not weighting).[/SIZE]

 

[davideduardo]

Meanwhile, "Tbolt" is still whining about Alt 107. Some things never change...

It's often the tiny stations and translators that get the most attention.

And formats like smooth jazz and EDM seem to get posts totally out of proportion with their actual interest. So I mentally weight those posts down!

 

[tbolt909]

None, unless you consider hi-band 50 kw AMs.



It's not as much the name that is toxic as it is the demos.

But in any case, stations did not "change their name" to classic hits. Stations changed their focus to the 70's and 80's and then, as an industry, convinced Nielsen to add "classic hits" as a format name. To get Nielsen to do that, it has to be shown that there are a significant number of comparable and similar stations nationally.



Stations prefer not to use the term, as it is most identified with another format.

Sorry David, you're wrong. Oldies 104 changed their name to Classic Hits. Other stations have done the same. Call it rebranding or whatever you like...

 

[davideduardo]

Sorry David, you're wrong. Oldies 104 changed their name to Classic Hits. Other stations have done the same. Call it rebranding or whatever you like...

That's exactly what I said. Many oldies stations changed format from 60's pop gold to 70's and 80's pop gold and re-imaged the station. The change in music was a format change, the change in imaging was a rebranding.

Some oldies stations called them selves "oldies" and some did not. Some classic hits stations use that term on the air, some do not.

But as far as Nielsen, BDS, MediaBase are concerned, oldies and classic hits are separate formats and stations using the terms, on the air or in sales, have to actually be in the format they say they are or they will be changed by Nielsen, BDS and Mediabase.

 

[tbolt909]

Radio found out that "Oldies" was bad for business, so they had to get Arbitron (Nielsen) to accept a new name. It's semantics...

 

[SirRoxalot]

"Oldies 104" didn't just rebrand, it also shifted its music considerably. When it was "Oldies 104" you heard hits from the '50s and '60s and the upper limit was in the '70s. As "Classic Hits" there's a sprinkling of '60s but the bulk of the music is '70s and '80s. That's a lot more than just "rebranding." That's a significant format change in search of a younger audience. There was even a foray into the "Mix" rabbit hole that hasn't worked effectively in Buffalo since the early '90s.

 

[kw1025]

"Oldies 104" didn't just rebrand, it also shifted its music considerably. When it was "Oldies 104" you heard hits from the '50s and '60s and the upper limit was in the '70s. As "Classic Hits" there's a sprinkling of '60s but the bulk of the music is '70s and '80s. That's a lot more than just "rebranding." That's a significant format change in search of a younger audience. There was even a foray into the "Mix" rabbit hole that hasn't worked effectively in Buffalo since the early '90s.

We think the diaries can be unfair to the stations that target older. Because those people do fill out the diary. And also, Oldies is not a bad word financially in Buffalo. It is good. We were just looking at the entire book today . WECK has a 72,000 cume in June. WECK is a top ten 35 plus and a top 5 50 plus share. Those trends are going to continue. Our June share is 5.2 12 p. These are the facts folks. 72,000 cume in June!! Remember folks, WECK covers really just one county. Erie. If we had a great signal, the game would be far different.

 

[Rusty Bridges]

"I'm not Buddy" ... haw, haw. Sounds like an Alt Rock band 27 listeners might hear on 107.1.