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| Alison Stewart |
Alison
Stewart and Leonard LoPate have at least one thing in common: Both have fond
feelings about the weekday Noon – 2:00pm shift on WNYC-FM in New York.
Lopate
was host of The Leonard Lopate Show
on WNYC for many years before he was suspended
and eventually fired in December 2017 amid allegations of “inappropriate
conduct.”
He had worked at the station for over 30 years.
Stewart,
a media jack-of-all-trades, will begin hosting WNYC’s Noon – 2pm program (LoPate's old shift) this
fall.
She wants her new show to be a hit public radio program, in part, because
her previous effort for NPR, The Bryant
Park Project, ended with a whimper after less than a year in national
syndication. Bryant Park was a
critical success but it failed to catch on with NPR-member stations.
LoPate
and Stewart are at different points in their careers. LoPate recently
resurfaced on New York radio at WBAI-FM [link].
Stewart [link] has been doing part-time reporting for PBS. A couple of
years ago she authored the highly acclaimed book First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School.
Stewart
seems like a perfect match for WNYC. In addition to her writing and work on Bryant Park, she is a veteran of MTV
News, MSNBC, ABC and CBS. She hopes her new program, in LoPate’s old airtime, will
be the hit she wants and deserves.
LOPATE: WORKING AT WBAI
HAS BEEN “QUITE DISTURBING”
 |
| Leonard LoPate |
Since
leaving WNYC, the road has been tough for Lopate. To his credit, he has kept
working hard while trying to regain credibility in a fickle business.
LoPate
joined a small, NPR-affiliate, WHDD,
an hour north of the city. His one-hour show was also marketed as a podcast.
The WHDD gig was likely a big drop in salary. In 2015 we published a report that
LoPate was paid over $250,000 a year by WNYC.
Then,
in July LoPate accepted an offer from beleaguered Pacifica station WBAI for a
weekday one-hour show. Many observers wonder if LoPate made the right move by joining
WBAI, a station with many problems and questionable reputation.
According
to a recent article in Columbia
Journalism Review (CJR) [link], after being hired by WBAI’s General Manager
Berthold Reimers, LoPate is realizing that he may be worse off at WBAI than he
was at WNYC.
Keep
in mind that WBAI does not have the infrastructure of WNYC. When Reimers hired LoPate, he told CJR “You know at WBAI, I don’t think we have
5,000 people listening for the whole week.” WNYC had almost a million weekly listeners in
the June 2018 Nielsen Audio ratings.
Other
sources report that LoPate’s show on WBAI has been marred by technical and
timing snafus. Reportedly, he has had trouble booking guests because of the
persistent “stink” of his departure from WNYC. Also, WBAI has only one working
phone line which makes it difficult to do a talk show.
It
is also hard to say whether LoPate has helped WBAI. A couple of weeks after
LoPate’s show began, WBAI lost one of its very few bankable personalities, DJ
Jay Smooth, who quit rather than be on the same station as LoPate.
Lopate’s
producer, Mimi Rosenberg, told CJR that his time at WBAI so far has been “quite disturbing.”
Maybe
things will eventually turn around for LoPate.
He is a very talented fellow, who, with the proper technical support, is
capable of doing excellent radio work again.
We do wish him well.
But,
for now, Misery Loves Company and
LoPate and WBAI are apparently miserable together.
NEW METRIC ADDED FOR
NIELSEN AUDIO RATINGS REPORTING
A
number of Spark News readers have
asked us to publish more detailed data from Nielsen Audio’s ratings. We have
been providing estimated weekly listeners (“cume”) – a powerful metric. Now we are adding Average-Quarter-Hour (AQH)
listeners to station reports.
AQH
is also a powerful metric because it combines cume and time spent listening to
provide an estimate of the number of people listening during an average quarter
hour. Please let us know if you think we
are adding information that is of value to you. You can direct comments
directly to us at publicradio@hotmail.com.
The
first of our Spring 2018 reports from markets where Nielsen uses Diary
methodology is for Burlington-Plattsburgh.
As you can see in chart on the left, Vermont Public Radio’s (VPR) News
stations have an increase in the number of estimated weekly listeners but fwere
AQH listeners. How can this be?
The
answer is, more people are tuning in to VPR News but overall people are spending
less time listening.
This is a trend that is being watched for radio listening
in general. Retaining listeners in a major challenge for stations in our
multi-channel, multiple platform media world.
Also
note that AQH measures listening only in the core metro area and estimated
weekly listeners measure listening in a the total survey area (“TSA”) which
includes listeners outside of the metro area. You can this in the Burlington-Plattsburgh report
where New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) has 26,100 estimate weekly listeners
but there are no AQH listeners in the metro area.
The
big news from Portland, Maine is the growth of Maine Public’s Classical music
programming channel.
Maine Public recently added a new powerful signal, WBQA
a/k/a K-Bach, to the Classical
network and it is really paying off.
The
difference between cume and AQH is also a factor in the Portland market.
Note that NHPR has an estimated 33,100
weekly listeners in the total survey area but it isn’t even a factor in the
Portland metro.
In Rochester, New York, NPR News/Talk station WXXI-AM has a stronger presence
compared to Spring 2017.
They are up in both weekly listeners and metro AQH
listeners. These are trends station
programmers like to see.
WXXI-AM
also benefits from simulcasts of NPR News magazines on WRUR during drive times.
WEOS in exurban Geneva has lots of listeners
in the total survey area but only a
handful in the Rochester metro.
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