WNWK Revisited

[fybush]

I'm speaking in terms of this.

WSTW's reach, if everyone who could recieve the station would listen to it, it would have a higher population reach then DC's. (this includes York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Vineland, Dover, Lancaster, and all of that).

I've only seen DC once and it seemed very small and compact. Much like Harrisburg. Compact with some minor outlying towns.

If you're speaking in the same terms, it's best to disagree. I remember reading 91.7 from the Brandywine Schools which only reaches Wilmington can potentially reach 1,500,000 individuals across DE and NJ. This is only DE/NJ, it dies before you even leave DE.

I think I finally see what it is you're trying to say - that if you go all the way out to the farthest fringes of WSTW's signal reach, you encompass more potential listeners than you'd get within the farthest fringes of a comparable DC class B signal?

This is not the way radio markets are defined, of course - they're based on stations' primary local coverage area, where local advertising is actually sold. WSTW doesn't sell ads in Baltimore against Baltimore stations (it really doesn't have a usable signal in Baltimore at all), or in York against York stations, or in Atlantic City against Atlantic City stations. So even if there are 6 or 7 million people who could potentially tune in to at least a weak WSTW signal, it doesn't mean much.

And even if it did, as others have pointed out, you seem to have a pretty big misconception about the size of DC and its surrounding market. There are about 618,000 people in Washington itself (as opposed to about 50,000 in Harrisburg), and the "minor outlying towns" are actually huge suburbs - more than a million people in Fairfax County, Virginia, alone. All told, there are nearly 5 million people in the immediate DC area...plus more than 2 million in the Baltimore metro area, within easy signal reach of the DC FM stations...plus all the fringe signal coverage the DC stations get, deep into Virginia and Maryland and up into the York area, too.

Which is to say, the DC FM signals have just as many people - and probably somewhat more - within their potential listening audience as WSTW does. And unlike WSTW, which puts its strongest signal over the relatively small Wilmington area and has to compete against local Philadelphia stations in Philadelphia, the DC FM stations put their strong local signal right over the dense population center of the DC market...which is why they can charge a lot more for ad time than WSTW can.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

I would say, Philadelphia's metropolitan area alone is 6 Million - short by about 45k. I'd say WSTW reaches about... Reading northernmost another 100,000 population

Just add them all up (All of south of trenton, nj, north of Dover, Cecil counties, York and Lancaster, etc, Philly and Wilmington of course) you get about 20M.

But, you do make a valid point. DC's stations cover about ALL of MD and most of North Virginia... It's close, certainly close.

I've finally understood this however. That markets are determined more by what is applicable to advertisers; hence why Cumberland, New Castle, Salem and Cecil are not in the Philly Market. This is cutting it down from 6,000,000. DC's is larger because the added counties in it's market have high influence from DC.

Am I correct?

 

[jhguthlac]

Actually, Wilmington is included in the Philly Market. Just like the Wilmington Market includes Salem and Cecil counties. You can always tell when a bigger Cecil sample is included. In the old days, WSER would show. And it used to help us at WNRK, as we had a sizeable following in Elkton. And the Baltimore stations would do better than Philly, with WBAL and the FM's showing stronger.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

Then where's the 600,000 arbitron left out? That's what I'm incredibly confused about.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

I believe that no the Wilmington metro area (New Castle, Cecil, and Salem counties) are not included in the Philly RADIO market, but are included in the Philly TV market. That's why Philly is #8 in radio, but is # 6 or something in TV. That 600,000 potential listeners from the Wilmington Metro Area is missing from the Philly radio market. What I've never understood is why Kent County isn't included in the Wilmington market. I don't believe they're included in the Salisbury/Ocean City market, so that would mean there listening habits aren't tallied by Arbitron.

Back in the early 1950's, Wilmington had its own TV market as WDEL-TV originally on channel 7 was on the air, apparently I believe from somewhere I read that WAMS actually had a request for a permit to have a TV station also. At some point in the 1950's the Wilmington TV market was lumped in with Philly's. WDEL-TV went to channel 12 due to complaints of interference with NYC and DC channel 7's. Then WDEL-TV lost the NBC-TV affiliation due to Channel 3, I believe there calls were WPTZ in Philly complaining to NBC about having another NBC-TV affiliate so close. Interestingly WDEL didn't lose the NBC radio affiliation. This lose of NBC-TV programming also with the demise of the DuMont TV network kind of ended WDEL-TV's real chance to be a player in the TV game, (no reruns back in those days and not much else available for an independent station to air) as they eventually sold the TV station and in 1958 ended Wilmington's days of having a commercial TV station as Storer Broadcasting's WVUE-TV went dark. In 1963 WHYY became channel 12 and the rest is history. By the way, Storer still uses the WVUE-TV calls in I believe New Orleans.

I'm sure there are some here who know the history better than I, but that's as I remember from things I've read on the subject. Feel free to correct and update.

 

[fybush]

I believe that no the Wilmington metro area (New Castle, Cecil, and Salem counties) are not included in the Philly RADIO market, but are included in the Philly TV market. That's why Philly is #8 in radio, but is # 6 or something in TV. That 600,000 potential listeners from the Wilmington Metro Area is missing from the Philly radio market. What I've never understood is why Kent County isn't included in the Wilmington market. I don't believe they're included in the Salisbury/Ocean City market, so that would mean there listening habits aren't tallied by Arbitron.

Let's back up here and remember why radio ratings, and thus "radio markets," exist in the first place.

Why do commercial radio stations need to know how many people are listening to their programming? Because they need to be able to tell advertisers how many listeners will hear their advertisements.

Measuring listenership costs money. If you're a PPM market, you have to recruit listeners to wear PPM meters, provide encoders to stations, collect and process all that data, and so on. If you're a diary-based market, you have to find diary participants, print diaries, mail them out, interpret and input the data, and so on. Arbitron doesn't do any of this out of the goodness of its heart. It's a business, too, and it only spends the money to conduct ratings surveys in areas where it knows its customers will pay for that data.

Arbitron first began collecting ratings data back in the days when AM was king, and the markets it surveyed then tended to be a little more compact than they are now, in large part because so many of those smaller AM signals didn't go very far. (There was a time when signals like WHAT and WDAS AM were actually competitive players in Philadelphia, after all!)

In some exceptional cases, Arbitron eventually merged small nearby markets when FM signal coverage completely changed the game. Dallas and Fort Worth were separate markets until 1970, each with their own roster of small-coverage AM signals. That 30-mile gap between the two cities became irrelevant when big class C FM signals started signing on that blanketed both markets, and in 1970 the broadcasters in both cities voted to combine the markets.

They didn't have a state line between them, the way Wilmington and Philadelphia do, and Wilmington and Philadelphia never got the massive commercial development between the two cities that Dallas and Fort Worth did. (Imagine if PHL airport was located somewhere in Chester County and had two million people living and working within ten miles of it. That's what the Arlington area between Dallas and Fort Worth is like.)

So back to the existing market lines: those are the areas where stations in Philadelphia and Wilmington, respectively, believe they have enough signal penetration and advertiser support to make it worth paying Arbitron to conduct ratings surveys.

If Philadelphia radio stations felt they had enough at stake to make it worth incorporating New Castle County into the Philadelphia market, and they wanted to pay Arbitron to do it, it's possible that Wilmington could become an "embedded" market - there would still be a separate Wilmington book, but New Castle County numbers would also figure into the Philadelphia book. (There are several such "embedded" markets around NYC - Middlesex/Somerset/Union, Nassau/Suffolk, "Hudson Valley.")

The fact that they don't do this tells you that Philadelphia stations don't think there's enough ad revenue at stake from Wilmington to make it worth the expense.

If Wilmington's stations felt that they had enough at stake to pay to have Kent County surveyed, they'd ask Arbitron to do so. In the AM days, the Wilmington AMs didn't really cover Kent County at all, and that set a marketing pattern that has continued into the present.

With TV, obviously, it's a somewhat different story, inasmuch as there is no local TV for Wilmington...

Back in the early 1950's, Wilmington had its own TV market as WDEL-TV originally on channel 7 was on the air, apparently I believe from somewhere I read that WAMS actually had a request for a permit to have a TV station also. At some point in the 1950's the Wilmington TV market was lumped in with Philly's. WDEL-TV went to channel 12 due to complaints of interference with NYC and DC channel 7's. Then WDEL-TV lost the NBC-TV affiliation due to Channel 3, I believe there calls were WPTZ in Philly complaining to NBC about having another NBC-TV affiliate so close. Interestingly WDEL didn't lose the NBC radio affiliation. This lose of NBC-TV programming also with the demise of the DuMont TV network kind of ended WDEL-TV's real chance to be a player in the TV game, (no reruns back in those days and not much else available for an independent station to air) as they eventually sold the TV station and in 1958 ended Wilmington's days of having a commercial TV station as Storer Broadcasting's WVUE-TV went dark. In 1963 WHYY became channel 12 and the rest is history. By the way, Storer still uses the WVUE-TV calls in I believe New Orleans.

Under Storer, channel 12 tried to become a Philadelphia-market station. It moved to a new tower in Glassboro NJ and bought land in Roxborough with the intention of relocating there.

I don't believe Storer ever owned the New Orleans WVUE (and the company hasn't existed, anyway, in about twenty years.)

There was also a construction permit for WILM-TV in Wilmington on channel 83.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

But, Camden is counted in the Philadelphia market as well - Trenton is NOT, when Trenton is indeed across the river from Philadelphia ZIP codes - What is the reason for this?

 

[MikefromDelaware]

WVUE is in New Orleans on channel 8 as a Fox affiliate, but not under Storer. Thanks for the additional info on channel 12 as WVUE and explaining how the radio markets are set up. Yes, I had forgotten about the construction permit for a WILM-TV. So at some point we could have had 3 TV stations in Wilmington. We managed to end up with none.

WHYY really is a Philly station that produces a once a week 30 minute news magazine show in Wilmington and will end producing here as soon as they can sell their 8th and Orange St. studio.

 

[fybush]

But, Camden is counted in the Philadelphia market as well - Trenton is NOT, when Trenton is indeed across the river from Philadelphia ZIP codes - What is the reason for this?

Follow the money.

The Trenton stations decided many years ago that it was worth paying Arbitron to make Mercer County its own market...there was enough of an advertising base up there to justify a separate market. What percentage of Trenton/Mercer County residents commute to Philadelphia to work or shop? Probably not all that high - you've got a solid economic base of state government, Princeton U., etc. to sustain a separate economic climate. (And nowadays, there's even the economic pull in the opposite direction from Philadelphia - just look at the traffic up the Route 1 corridor towards New Brunswick.)

Yes, there's plenty of Trenton/Mercer County listenership that goes to the Philadelphia signals that come in just fine there, but the local Mercer County signals get something like 24 share points in a typical ratings book, and another 10 points or so go to New York City stations.

Camden is much more closely tied economically to Philadelphia. Yes, there are "Camden" stations, but there's also a huge commuter traffic directly across the river into the big city. I don't have access to county-by-county breakouts, but I'd bet that Philadelphia signals account for better than 90% of Camden County listenership, probably closer to 95%.

 

[jhguthlac]

There is an Arbitron survey for Ken County. I saww a copy while I worked at WDEL. So it was being done at lest in the early 90's. I have no idea the frequency, whther its twice a year or annually. The Wilmington metro book clearly states the counties included and Salem and Cecil have always been part of the book (by always I mean as far back as the late 60's. That's when I started seeing the books).

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

But, Camden is counted in the Philadelphia market as well - Trenton is NOT, when Trenton is indeed across the river from Philadelphia ZIP codes - What is the reason for this?

Follow the money.

The Trenton stations decided many years ago that it was worth paying Arbitron to make Mercer County its own market...there was enough of an advertising base up there to justify a separate market. What percentage of Trenton/Mercer County residents commute to Philadelphia to work or shop? Probably not all that high - you've got a solid economic base of state government, Princeton U., etc. to sustain a separate economic climate. (And nowadays, there's even the economic pull in the opposite direction from Philadelphia - just look at the traffic up the Route 1 corridor towards New Brunswick.)

Yes, there's plenty of Trenton/Mercer County listenership that goes to the Philadelphia signals that come in just fine there, but the local Mercer County signals get something like 24 share points in a typical ratings book, and another 10 points or so go to New York City stations.

Camden is much more closely tied economically to Philadelphia. Yes, there are "Camden" stations, but there's also a huge commuter traffic directly across the river into the big city. I don't have access to county-by-county breakouts, but I'd bet that Philadelphia signals account for better than 90% of Camden County listenership, probably closer to 95%.

That doesn't change that Philadelphia signals make up more them half the listenership of Trenton (if not more).
And Wilmington, it's the same deal. The Philadelphia Metropolitan area is growing between Philly and Wilmington, Chester County had a 32% or 33% growth from 2000-2010. Delaware had something around 7.2% from 2000-2010. Philadelphia itself had a 1.64% growth. New Castle County had something around 10%. These areas are growing, the predicted growth of Philadelphia from 2010-2014 is 2.04%, and from 2010-2020 is 3.21%. Due to this huge influx of people coming in. It's getting built up more and more, and Wilmington stations also have a huge listenership in Chester and Delaware Counties, it'd make more sense to merge the two. On Q102 I have heard advertisements for DELAWARE stores, MMR advertises Downtown Wilmington Events. There is some ads from Delaware on the Philly stations. WJBR advertised "Kia in West Chester". WPST (transmitter located in PA) is also playing advertisements seldomly for "The Philadelphia Autoshow". Also, almost all advertisments mention having a store in Wilmington, as well as Philadelphia and so forth.

It would be logical to merge then, Philadelphia's advertisers already are reaching out to New Castle and Salem Counties. And the Philadelphia Market also doesn't include Vineland, when the metro does. That's more of a half and half influence with Philly and Atlantic City, but with the logic behind DC's market, we'll take that too and make our market 6,300,000 like our metro population.

 

[fybush]

Follow. The. Money.

Yes, Philadelphia radio makes up well over half of Mercer County listenership.

But how much ad money that's specific to Mercer County gets spent on Philadelphia radio? If you're a local car dealer in Princeton or a restaurant in Trenton or a political action group trying to influence a bill in the NJ legislature, do you buy a spot for 25 dollars on local Trenton radio, or for 500 dollars on Philadelphia radio?

If your goal is to reach listeners specifically in Mercer County and vicinity, you'd be foolish (or at least wasting a lot of your money) to spend on Philadelphia radio to accomplish your advertising goals.

The examples you cite are regional advertising. Philadelphia is a major regional economic center, one of the largest in the country. Nobody's arguing otherwise, and of course it's going to exert some degree of economic pull on the millions of people within, say, a two-hour drive of Center City. Regional events like the auto show certainly draw customers from Trenton and Wilmington and Reading and Atlantic City. The fact that you're hearing them advertised on WPST proves my point: those ads may be for Philadelphia events or stores, but they are using media in the Trenton market to reach Trenton listeners.

Same deal for the Delaware ads on Q102 or MMR: if a Delaware advertiser is paying Philadelphia rates for Philadelphia media, they're aiming at more than just Delaware listeners. They're hoping to draw at least some listeners from the southern half of the Philadelphia market down to their businesses in Delaware. Same deal for Kia of West Chester: it's on WJBR in part because it knows a significant part of its business comes from drivers coming up 95 from Delaware.

In the end, all advertising buys and all market definitions are based on at least some degree of guesswork and approximation. There's no steel wall precisely delineating the end of "Philadelphia" and the start of "Lancaster" or "Trenton" or "Wilmington." When you have six million people packed so tightly into an area like southeast PA/south Jersey/Delaware, you're going to have all kinds of shopping and commuting patterns that can only be approximated very coarsely with a broadcast signal that extends far beyond the typical area in which any given local consumer is doing business.

Advertisers can have very different "markets" and thus different advertising needs, even if they're located in the same area. The restaurant down the street from you probably doesn't draw customers from more than a few miles away. The car dealership next door might be able to get customers from 30 or 40 miles out. The supermarket across the street might only draw customers from within five or six miles, but it's probably part of a regional chain with stores covering half the state, and the McDonalds down the road probably only draws from within a mile or two, but it's part of a chain that advertises regionally and nationally.

It would be logical to merge then, Philadelphia's advertisers already are reaching out to New Castle and Salem Counties. And the Philadelphia Market also doesn't include Vineland, when the metro does. That's more of a half and half influence with Philly and Atlantic City, but with the logic behind DC's market, we'll take that too and make our market 6,300,000 like our metro population.

There is logic behind the way the DC market is defined, and you still don't seem to be understanding it.

The present-day DC market grew in a completely different way from Philadelphia. Go back 100 or even 200 years, and the very big city of Philadelphia was already largely encircled by smaller but very significant regional market centers 30 or 40 miles out. Wilmington, Lancaster, Reading, Trenton, Atlantic City - all of them had their own commercial "orbits," if you will, at the time the radio infrastructure was being built.

Washington was and is different. The city of Washington was a sleepy southern town until the middle of the 20th century, and it was only then that things changed in a massive way. The growth of federal government and the infrastructure that supports it led to a phenomenal boom in suburbia that started in the 1940s and 1950s and was still going strong at the turn of the century. That growth couldn't go very deep to the north or east into Maryland because it banged up against the suburban growth fanning out from the established urban center of Baltimore. It couldn't go very deep to the south/southeast because of Chesapeake Bay. But to the south and west, there was a huge swath of very rural Virginia where growth could and did happen and where there were no established centers of commerce.

I'd highly recommend to you a book called "Edge City" by Joel Garreau. It's 20 years old now, but it still holds up, and it tells you a lot about how areas like northern Virginia have developed. (Imagine King of Prussia on steroids.)

It's entirely possible to live and work in an area like Tysons Corners, Virginia and never cross the Potomac into Washington itself for anything. In many ways, Tysons and Fairfax County is its own commercial market. But, again, broadcast signals are a fairly coarse way to reach specific markets, and the "Washington" stations are just as local to Fairfax County and the million people there as they are to the District of Columbia...and thus Fairfax (and the ring of counties beyond it) end up in the Washington radio market.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

I'll check out "Edge City" - It's actually on Google Books for free.

Meanwhile, I have immensely small knowledge of anything South of Baltimore.

 

[Slinky]

It would be logical to merge then, Philadelphia's advertisers already are reaching out to New Castle and Salem Counties. And the Philadelphia Market also doesn't include Vineland, when the metro does. That's more of a half and half influence with Philly and Atlantic City, but with the logic behind DC's market, we'll take that too and make our market 6,300,000 like our metro population.

I don't know where you keep getting the idea that Vineland is part of the Philly MSA. It isn't.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

It would be logical to merge then, Philadelphia's advertisers already are reaching out to New Castle and Salem Counties. And the Philadelphia Market also doesn't include Vineland, when the metro does. That's more of a half and half influence with Philly and Atlantic City, but with the logic behind DC's market, we'll take that too and make our market 6,300,000 like our metro population.

I don't know where you keep getting the idea that Vineland is part of the Philly MSA. It isn't.

What county is Vineland in? Cumberland? I'm horrible with Jersey,

 

[Slinky]

What county is Vineland in? Cumberland?

Correct.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

I thought Cumberland was a county in the proper Philadelphia Metro? Or is it a "considered suburb" by many people?

Maybe my increased listening to WSJO has thrown this stuff off.

... But - what market does it belong too?

[Edit - It's listed as a "Delaware Valley" county]

 

[Slinky]

... But - what market does it belong too?

[Edit - It's listed as a "Delaware Valley" county]

Cumberland County is its own metro (the official name is the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton MSA).

The "Delaware Valley" doesn't have any official definition. It's just a term used to refer to anything around Philadelphia, similar to "Tri-State Area" for NYC or "DMV" for DC.

 

[RadioPhillyFan]

... But - what market does it belong too?

[Edit - It's listed as a "Delaware Valley" county]

Cumberland County is its own metro (the official name is the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton MSA).

The "Delaware Valley" doesn't have any official definition. It's just a term used to refer to anything around Philadelphia, similar to "Tri-State Area" for NYC or "DMV" for DC.

Hmmm... I thought the Philadelphia Metro was the Delaware Valley, this is what it's called in the MSA.

 

[Slinky]

Hmmm... I thought the Philadelphia Metro was the Delaware Valley, this is what it's called in the MSA.

The name of the MSA is the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington MSA.

"Delaware Valley" is not an official name for anything.