Tuesday, January 19, 2016

ONE-YEAR TRENDS: RICHMOND, LOUISVILLE, OKLAHOMA CITY & ROCHESTER


Nielsen Audio ratings for Fall 2015 Diary markets are now pouring in via the Radio Research Consortium (“RRC”). Most NPR News and Classical stations subscribe to the data.  Fewer Triple A and CCM stations subscribe and their listening is not available. The majority of the Diary Markets are measured twice a year – Spring and Fall. Today we have comparisons from Fall 2015 and Fall 2014.

RICHMOND • Nielsen Audio Market #54

STATION
FORMAT
2014 WEEKLY LISTENERS
2015 WEEKLY LISTENERS
TREND
WCVE
NPR News & Classical
105,800
108,200
+ 2%
 WFFC
NPR News
16,700
29,900
+ 44%
 WJYJ
CCM
66,600
51,400
- 22%
 WNRN
Triple A
Na
16,800
Na
 WVTW
NPR News & Classical
15,100
29,700
+ 49%

 Despite the fact that WCVE remains the top NPR News station, two out-of-market repeaters continue to gain ground in Virginia’s capitol city. WVTF must be doing something right particularly with 24/7 NPR News WFFC aka Radio IQ. Good to see WNRN subscribing to the ratings again. They appear in several Virginia markets.  Look for our Diary market Triple A summary.

LOUISVILLE • Nielsen Audio Market #55

STATION
FORMAT
2014 WEEKLY LISTENERS
2015 WEEKLY LISTENERS
TREND
 WFPK
Triple A
64,300
62,400
- <1%
 WFPL
NPR News
105,700
110,100
+ 4%
 WUOL
Classical
38,500
31,700
- 17%



Two of the three Louisville Public Media stations saw gains in weekly listeners but Classical WUOL declined a bit. WCHQ 100.9 FM, a new LPFM station – Crescent Hill Radio – is an up-and-coming noncom that concentrates like a laser on the local music community. Keep this station on your radar [link].




OKLAHOMA CITY • Nielsen Audio Market #50

STATION
FORMAT
2014 WEEKLY LISTENERS
2015 WEEKLY LISTENERS
TREND
 KGOU
NPR News & Jazz
69,700
58,500
- 14%
 KLVV
CCM
10,900
15,200
+ 28%
 KOSU
NPR News & College Rock
64,300
55,500
- 13%
 KUCO
Classical
45,300
38,400
- 15%
 KXTH
CCM
32,700
30,800
- 5%

 All three public radio stations in OKC had declines in weekly listeners. KGOU should own this market but they haven’t taken the initiative.  This has given KOSU, another compromised station from Stillwater, the ability to take about half of the NPR News listening. KLVV, part of a regional network of CCM stations based in Ponca City keeps building momentum.

ROCHESTER • Nielsen Audio Market #58

STATION
FORMAT
2014 WEEKLY LISTENERS
2015 WEEKLY LISTENERS
TREND
 WEOS
NPR News
4,200
7,500
+ 44%
 WRUR
NPR News & Triple A
31,700
33,700
+ 6%
 WXXI-AM
NPR News
58,700
42,400
- 27%
 WXXI-FM
Classical
57,400
68,500
+ 16%


WXXI operates all of these stations.  WRUR simulcasts NPR News magazines from WXXI-AM.  Wouldn’t be nice if WXXI-AM could take advantage of the FCC’s move-your-AM-to-FM ruling.  Maybe then WRUR could become fulltime Triple A.


These data are provided for use by Nielsen Audio subscribers ONLY, in accordance with
RRC's limited license with Nielsen Audio.

Monday-Sunday 6AM-Midnight Persons 12+








Data Copyright Nielsen Audio.
Format designations are the sole responsibility of Ken Mills Agency, LLC.




















1 comment:

  1. Being the former GM of WEOS, I can assure you that the situation is, well, "complicated".

    Arguably WXXI should've put their news product on 91.5 ages ago, back when the suburbs centered in and around Victor, NY started getting more filled-in with wealthy folks. That's squarely in a null of 1370's pattern, esp at night. But that ship has sailed; to move the classical off 91.5 would badly hurt major donor cultivation...something WXXI GM Norm Silverstein is a bloody genius at. And Rochester is unlike much of upstate NY in that it was a strong tradition of major giving philanthropy thanks to the Eastman/Kodak empire and a comparatively strong higher education, healthcare, and biomedical research industries.

    The relationship with WRUR is also complicated; it's still owned by the University of Rochester (a private college) and the LMA dictates certain programming restrictions. But really it's more that the news/talk product is their big moneymaker and their only realistic FM outlet for it is WRUR. To say this has led to massive confusion on the diary reporting is an understatement.

    It gets worse: WXXI-FM-HD2 is a simulcast of WXXI-AM. While HD Radio penetration isn't big there ARE at least a few (and passionate) HD2 listeners out there; I know that when the HD2 goes down, the engineers hear about it from listeners pretty fast.

    This partly explains why WXXI AM's ratings continue to drop; people are instead listening to ME & ATC on WRUR instead. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

    And to top it off, WEOS was on 89.7 for many years, with a big directional null towards Rochester to protect WITR 89.7 in Henrietta (a suburb just south of Rochester proper). Back in 2012 they finally moved to 89.5 and an omni signal (also boosted from 4000 to 6000 watts) and now WEOS covers a lot of those wealthy suburbs centered around Victor that I was talking about before. Plus Canandaigua NY which is a major summertime tourist destination for Rochester folks. And when the LMA happened WXXI paid to have a local news anchor for Morning Edition. Between all that, it's no surprise WEOS's ratings have climbed, too.

    Anyways, I'm sure WXXI would like to have an FM translator in the abstract but it's not really a solution to the core problem that WXXI's directional signal doesn't cover some key neighborhoods that have appeared over the last 60 years, nor does it solve the problem of pubradio listeners migrating to FM over AM in general. There's no way a single FM translator can cover the entire market well enough for that...not when the core programming (ME & ATC) are already available on a vastly superior signal on WRUR 88.5.

    Strictly speaking, what would make more sense is to put WXXI-AM's news/talk on 91.5 and put the classical programming on 91.5-HD2 and 1370 w/an FM translator. I'm sure there'd be howls of protest but likely you could just buy all the complainers an HD Radio receiver and still come out ahead financially.

    Of course, this assumes there's room on the dial, which I don't think there is...not for a good translator signal, anyways. Although there are a few existing translators already in town that have quite good signals but I doubt they're for sale.

    ReplyDelete