“THE DAILY” KEEPS GAINING MOMENTUM • THE CREEPIEST STATION TOUR EVER • MORE JUNE 2018 PPM TRENDS

The New York Times’ popular podcast The Daily continues to reach more and more people on two platforms. 

According to Podtrac Analytics, The Daily was the nation’s second most listened-to podcast is June 2018. (The full Podtrac Top 20 list is below.)

Though Podtrac doesn’t publish granular audience numbers for individual podcasts, The Daily is reaching as many as 5 million people as of June 2018.

Circulation is also  growing quickly on public radio stations. 

According to internal information provided by American Public Media (APM) The Daily is now airing on six stations in the top six radio markets and on 23 stations in the top 75 radio markets (see the chart on the left). 

Not bad for a program that began national radio distribution in April.

Spark News has examined APM carriage data and we estimate that The Daily is now being carried on at least 140 stations, including stations in markets outside of the top 75, non-rated markets and repeaters.

APM took chance when then agreed to partner with The Times on a radio version of The Daily. 

The track record for newspaper content on radio is spotty.  Plus, half hour shows are tough to schedule.

Podtrac Chart -- click to enlarge

Though The Daily was partly inspired by public radio’s news style, at first some observers questioned whether station programmers would agree to carry it.

Now it appears that APM’s gamble is paying off.

Next up for The Daily and APM is an appearance at the PRPD Content Conference August 20 - 23 in Austin. 

Host Michael Barbaro and managing editor Theo Balcomb will speak at the conference. 

PRPD has not yet released the day and time for the session.

A MUST SEE VIDEO FOR ANYONE WHO HAS WORKED IN RADIO

Screen shot from WHJJ video

Not that long ago WHJJ-AM was broadcasting sports and music to people living near Providence, Rhode Island. The station is still on the air but it broadcasts from new corporate location. The former WHJJ offices and studios have been vacant for an unknown number of years.

The story was originally reported in Radio Magazine.  You read their article about it here.

Screen shot from WHJJ video

In 2017 RnK All Day [link], a video company that specializes in documenting abandoned buildings and business, made a video tour of the former home of WHJJ.  The result is a creepy and fascinating look at a radio world frozen in time. It looks a place where the rapture has already occurred.

Much of the backstory is unknown.  The current owner of the station is iHeartMedia.  They acquired WHJJ in the 2000’s when iHeart absorbed Capstar.  Capstar acquired WHJJ when another former owner declared bankruptcy.

Watch the video now:

You might call this video What it feels like when a big consolidator takes over your station.  It's sad, but it's true.

NIELSEN AUDIO PPM RATINGS & TWO-YEAR TRENDS FOR NASHVILLE, RALEIGH-DURHAM & SALT LAKE CITY

In Nashville Classical music WFCL lost 35% of its estimated weekly listeners in June 2018 compared with June 2016.   

The two-year trend was more positive for WMOT, one of two full-time Americana stations in the country.

Quite a few Classical music stations have had disappointing “books” recently.  Next week Spark News will examine all of the Classical music stations in PPM markets.

See what we mean when we say “disappointing books” for Classical music stations. WCPE, one of the first noncommercial Classical stations, had its worst performance in recent memory.

Another format was we look at more deeply is Christian Contemporary Music (CCM).  In the June 2018 Nielsen Audio PPM ratings we’ve seen many CCM stations loosing estimated weekly listeners when compare to previous survey periods.

The ratings news is more upbeat for Classical KBYU in Salt Lake City. Despite the grief about whether Brigham Young University would drop the Classical format, loyal listeners stuck with KBYU and made a lot of noise until BYU relented and decided to keep the format.  Good move.