WETA-FM's New Format Sees Ratings Dip

[Joseph_Gallant]

According to this Washington Times story, WETA-90.9's first full Arbitron book with it's 24/7 NPR news/information format was not an especially good one.

The station lost slightly more than one-fourth of it's total 12-plus audience compared to the Spring 2004 book. By contrast, classical-formattred (and commercial station) WGMS-103.5 had a healthy gain in the Spring book, when compared to the Spring '04 book. I suspect that many former WETA classical listeners are now tuning-in WGMS.

But this was the first book for the new WETA format. And for the station, the new format's ultimate success won't be decided by Arbitron, but by listener pledges and donations: When WETA announced plans to change their format nearly six months ago, they stated that the major reason for doing so was to receive more pledge dollars from listeners. And under that criteria, WETA may still win if their membership revenues go up, regardless of Arbitron share.

The article also noted that WAMU-88.5, which has had an NPR news/information format for several years, had in the Spring 2005 book more than twice the share WETA did.

 

[Timothy]

> According to this Washington Times story, WETA-90.9's first
> full Arbitron book with it's 24/7 NPR news/information
> format was not an especially good one.
>
> The station lost slightly more than one-fourth of it's total
> 12-plus audience compared to the Spring 2004 book. By
> contrast, classical-formattred (and commercial station)
> WGMS-103.5 had a healthy gain in the Spring book, when
> compared to the Spring '04 book. I suspect that many former
> WETA classical listeners are now tuning-in WGMS.
>
> But this was the first book for the new WETA format. And for
> the station, the new format's ultimate success won't be
> decided by Arbitron, but by listener pledges and donations:
> When WETA announced plans to change their format nearly six
> months ago, they stated that the major reason for doing so
> was to receive more pledge dollars from listeners. And under
> that criteria, WETA may still win if their membership
> revenues go up, regardless of Arbitron share.
>
> The article also noted that WAMU-88.5, which has had an NPR
> news/information format for several years, had in the Spring

The article is not completely accurate. Their share was down quite a bit, but they had higher cume numbers. This means people are sampling, and they probably have many more P2's and P3's than P1's now. Their TSL is signifigantly lower.

Also look at the fact that WAMU had a large increase in listeners. This may be accurate, or it may be that some diary keepers are confused about which station they think they're listening to. It has happened before when a public station has flipped to news-info while another station in the market already had that format. Considering so much of the WAMU and WETA schedules are similar, it's not unusual to think that may happen.

WETA is doing a couple things very wrong right now. They are attempting to offer an alternative to WAMU by injecting very little local content. In other words, every chance they have to say, "HEY, WE'RE WETA! 90.9!" they are NOT taking. Entire hours go by on the weekend when WAMU is in bluegrass that WETA has on unhosted news programs with no local breaks. They really need to get into a competitive mindset if they want to make this work. They need to replace hosts who are doing little more than board opping with actual producers and journalists.

And in the end, they chose to stop competing with a commercial station that regularly gets a share in the fives, and compete against a well staffed public news station that gets somewhere in the fours. In essence, they are choosing to be the second choice for a smaller audience.