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WJMN has shifted to rhythmic hot AC
- Thread starter Tomgsinger
- Start date
We are talking about radio here.
MSA in radio is Nielsen's "Metro Survey Area".
MSA to the gub'mint is "Metropolitan Statistical Area".
The radio definition is based on actual listening patterns and such things as the coverage of radio stations.
Some radio MSAs are the same as the OMB / Census Bureau MSAs. Many are not.
Boston's radio MSA is made up of:
Essex, MA
Middlesex, MA
Norfolk, MA
Plymouth, MA
Suffolk, MA
Worcester, MA
Hillsborough, NH
Note that in San Francisco, KBLX is programmed to appeal primarily to all four ethnic groups, white, Black, Asian and, particularly, Hispanic. It only gets about half of its listening from Black listeners. KBLX is unique among Urban AC flavored stations in that nearly all of those elsewhere in the US are 90% to 95% Black in audience composition, while KBLX about is half that and appeals very broadly: nearly a quarter of all listening is by non-Hispanic Whites and another quarter by Hispanics.
KBLX has a very, very long tradition in the market, going back to it's Quiet Storm heritage beginning with its format flip 40 years ago when it included r&b, soft jazz and even some pop. It has many long-time listeners due to its implementation of a format that crosses color lines.
Similarly, KMEL is designed to appeal to Hispanics and "other" as much as to Black urban listeners. It is adapted to the market, which is absolutely nothing like Boston as it is 50% Asian and Hispanic and under 7% African American.
The only self-identified Urban in Pittsburgh is WAMO, an AM with a limited coverage translator and which gets an average of 0.2 in Nielsen.
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ACS is part of the Bureau of the Census. ACS is American Community Survey, a poll-based annual update of the decennial Census mandated by the Constitution.
So saying "Both" ACS and the Census is inaccurate. The Census, every 10 years, and the ACS surveys, every year, are both products of the same government bureau.
He's using the wrong definitions for MSA in the context of radio.
This is a good moment to post a link to the Arbitron / Nielsen market map... a big, expandable PDF that can be zoomed in on to see the exact geography of every MSA in the US. It is updated each year and the last 32 years, with some gaps, are available here...
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arbitron-Market_Maps.htm
Excluding Rockingham County from the Boston MSA makes zero sense. Methuen, MA, is part of the Boston MSA, yet Salem, NH, is not? Meanwhile you have every single town in Hillsborough County -- which is farther west and north of Boston than Rockingham -- being included in the Boston MSA. What is the methodology behind this bizarre gerrymandering, David? Is it because Boston stations generally have their transmitters in places like Needham, which are west of the city and farther away from Rockingham County?
In part, this is the summary data for market redefinition.
"METRO REDEFINITIONTo help ensure that a Metro appropriately reflects the marketplace, we may add or remove counties from the Metro (e.g. ‘redefine the Metro’). We prepare a Metro redefinition analysis as often as once each calendar year for a Diary measured Metro and as often as once every three calendar yearsfor a PPM measured Metro. We conduct a redefinition analysis for all Metros following the release of each decennial U.S. census. After careful review of the analyses findings, Home-to-Metro clients may elect to amend their licensing agreements to redefine the metro based on our eligibility criteria and deadlines. By amending their license agreements, authorized usersagree to the cost of any sample increase needed to maintain the statisticalreliability of the redefined Metro’s audience estimates. The users also agree to a three-year freeze on additional redefinition analyses in that Metro. A contiguous county is eligible to be added to the Metro with 75% acceptance from owners/operators of commercial home-to-metro stations that are licensed to use the Nielsen Radio Market Report for the given Metro(client consensus) if the sum of the percentage of listening to metro based stations and commuting from the county into the Metro is 70 percentage points or more. For the county to meet the 70-point criteria, the county’s percentage of total unweighted quarter-hour listening to Metro stations must be 55% or more.In addition, a contiguous county is eligible to be added with 66% client consensus ifthe sum of the percentage of listening to metro based stations and commuting from the county into the Metro is 100 points or more. For a contiguous county to meet the 100-point criteria, the county’s percentage of total unweighted quarter-hour listening to Metro stations must be 75% or more.An existing Metro county is eligible tobe removedwith 75% client consensus if the sum of the county’s percent oflistening to Metro stations plus the county’s percent of commuting into the Metro is less than 70 percentage points or if less than 55% of radio listening in that county was credited to stations that are home to the Metro
So, to add a county or piece of one to an MSA, it takes the consent of subscribed stations in both the market to be added to and the county to be changed. In addition, there are listening and commuting requirements that have to be met.
Examples: in 1981, the managers of all AM and FM subscribers in the Ft Lauderdale and Miami markets voted whether to consolidate the two markets into one. Some of us voted against, as our signals did not cover both or our audiences did not live equally in both. Others voted for, as they would benefit from having the market move into the top 20 markets nationally, meaning more revenue. I managed a Spanish language AM, and voted no, and the manager of our sister FM, Y-100, voted yes. In this case, the listening to each county's stations was about equal in the other county, so it met the criteria.
In the same era, it was proposed that the Inland Empire market (Riverside / San Bernardino) be added to the LA market. The listening to LA stations in the IE was high enough to justify it, but each market's subscribers had to be consulted as both were rated separate markets. Both groups voted no. The LA stations got lower shares in the IE, so their shares (and rating) would go down. The IE stations had limited coverage into LA, and would have been "lost" among the big LA AMs and the Mt Wilson FMs. And the lesser LA AMs and Class A FMs would also get lower shares. So the vote failed, and the markets were not combined.
So the original point was that WJMN is "marketing/trageting to NH" based on the music mix UrbanTeenager is hearing?
I do not believe that anyone in Boston radio is "marketing/programming to NH"...based on ONE county (and, if memory serves, it is a 'portion' of that one county.)
Rockingham County has not been part of the metro for at least the last 40 years, and you are right, it makes no sense.
However, a county can't belong to 2 different metro's....and to include it, itwill have to be 'taken away' from another market (Manchester?) If you start taking cities like Salem, Derry, Nashua (which are all pretty connected to Boston), then what do you have left to create a Manchester survey area ?
If you look at the crooked map used for Manchester, you wonder how that made any sense either.
But the changes and makeup of the metro are done with the consent of subscribed (paying) stations, to obviously make the Arbitron reports more valuable to them.
There was a time years ago, when Boston was about to drop out of the Top 10 markets (because other markets like Atlanta, DC, etc had grown), and station owners came up with a plan to add some counties/area to the metro...and I think some areas around Petersham are now part of the metro...where you can't even hear many of the Boston stations. THAT would have been a good time to add Rockingham...but, from what I was told, it would have had to take Rockingham away from NH, and that would have done irreparable harm to the business Arbitron does in the Manchester market.
Once a market is established, for anything to change the stations in that market have to vote on it.
Of course, if there are no subscribers for the Manchester survey, then it would be up to the Boston subscribers to approve, conditioned on compliance with listening levels and commute patterns.
Adding geography generally means adding sample, so the stations would have to approve a commensurate increase in costs, particularly since any new counties would be former diary markets.
There might also be the possibility that Manchester could become an embedded market (Like Nassau-Suffolk, for example) inside the Boston MSA, but with a separate book just for Manchester.
Actually... an area can be part of two metros. Mahy areas on the outskirts of the NYC metro area are in both the NYC metro and a localized one (Long Island, for instance). DC has a couple too. In my opinion, the Manchester market (including Nashua, Derry, Salem and Concord) should be partially embedded into Boston... and the Worcester one, too (many Boston stations rank very high in both areas in addition to the local stations).
This is reminiscent of my discussions about rock radio stations. There is definitely two schools of thought regarding playlists. There's the listener perspective and the corporate perspective. I always find myself in discussions with the people in the buisness and they present their reasoning. For us listeners, it's up to us to change the trends. If we collectively adjusted the data that they reference to suit our choices, then and only then we will experience the changes that we feel are best.
Ideally, the Boston MSA would include:
Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Worcester, Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties, plus northern Bristol County (MA)
The partially embedded Manchester-Nashua-Concord MSA would include:
Hillsborough, southern/eastern half of Merrimack, western half of Rockingham Counties
The partially embedded Portsmouth MSA would include:
Eastern half of Rockingham, all of Stafford, southern third of York Counties
The fully embedded Worcester MSA would include all of Worcester County and the Providence MSA would remain as is.
Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, Worcester, Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties, plus northern Bristol County (MA)
The partially embedded Manchester-Nashua-Concord MSA would include:
Hillsborough, southern/eastern half of Merrimack, western half of Rockingham Counties
The partially embedded Portsmouth MSA would include:
Eastern half of Rockingham, all of Stafford, southern third of York Counties
The fully embedded Worcester MSA would include all of Worcester County and the Providence MSA would remain as is.
That's an awful lot of people to get to agree on something!
A full part of a metro can be an "embedded" market.
Embedded markets include:
Nassau-Suffolk, NY (just Nassau and Suffolk counties, not the part of Long Island that at the far west). Both counties are also in the NYC MSA.
San Jose, California. One county, also part of the San Francisco MSA, which is over-sampled to achieve accreditation.
Embedded markets must have the same survey methodology as the full MSA, and the data from the embedded market is also part of the full market report.
A few cases, like Fredericksburg, MD, are part of the DC PPM MSA but are also measured twice a year as diary markets in a separate sample. Same for Morristown, NJ.
Here are some other cases:
Portsmouth-Dover-Rochester also includes:
New Bedford-Fall River
New York also includes:
Middlesex-Somerset-Union
Monmouth County, NJ
Morristown
Nassau-Suffolk (Long Island)
Putnam, Rockland and Westchester Counties, NY
Stamford-Norwalk
Washington, DC also includes:
Frederick, MD
Stafford County, VA
In the case of all of these, they are historical markets, sustained by client interest. When NYC went to PPM, the East End market, which was embedded in the NYC Diary market, was not willing to pay the extra PPM cost and the market was dropped.
Before the PPM, the Orange County CA subscribers dried up, and Arbitron cancelled the OC embedded market book.
You can look at market lists and survey method (PPM or not) and frequency at: https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Arbitron/Red-Blue-Books/RedFall19.pdf
I find it funny that the Providence radio market is considered larger than the Hartford/New Britain/Middletown market. Probably only because the Providence radio market is the same area as the Providence/New Bedford TV market in terms of area: All of RI and Bristol County, MA. Meanwhile, the Hartford/New Haven TV market is all of CT minus Fairfield County. The H/NH TV area includes all/some of Hartford/New Britain/Middletown, New London/Groton and New Haven.
On a side note, referencing the white areas on the US map of radio markets...are those areas that either lack their own radio market OR simply do not subscribe to market data? I'm confused!
On a side note, referencing the white areas on the US map of radio markets...are those areas that either lack their own radio market OR simply do not subscribe to market data? I'm confused!
Huh?
Cut and paste fail.
That should be "Providence"
The NH reference is:
Portsmouth-Dover-Rochester also includes: Rockingham County M-Split.
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There are lots of "markets" that use Eastlan and not Nielsen so they are not on the map. There are also areas so small in population that stations would not need or buy ratings.
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