“THE COLORADO SOUND” & “SUN RADIO” HAVE BIGGEST GAINS IN SUMMER TRIPLE A & CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PPM RATINGS

Spark News has just completed analysis of Nielsen PPM ratings for 25 full-time Triple A and other Contemporary Music stations. In addition to Triple A stations, the list includes Alternative Rock, Americana and various Urban music formats.

The analysis compared Nielsen Audio PPM data from Summer 2018 and Summer 2017.

The stations with the largest gains in estimated weekly listeners were KJAC a/k/a The Colorado Sound and Sun Radio in Austin, an amalgam five signals reported by Nielsen as KDRP. 

Both were up and an estimated 20% in the past year. WFUV, New York also had a sizeable gain, up 10% during the same period.

We had complete data for 20 of the 25 stations. Of the 20 in-tab stations 13 broadcast full-time Triple A music.       Of the 13 full-time Triple A stations, 5 increased their estimated listeners between Summer 2017 and Summer 2018.

The total number of estimated weekly listeners to all 13 Triple A stations combined was about the same for the two years. In Summer 2018 the 13 stations had an estimated 1,938,600 weekly listeners. 

In Summer 2017 the same group of stations had 1,984,300 weekly listeners.

Several stations had large declines in weekly listeners, particularly Americana WMOT in the Nashville market. 

Between Summer 2017 and Summer 2018 WMOT lost an estimated 40% of their weekly listeners.

THE "CUME RATING" FOR THE CURRENT IS REMARKABLE

Some ratings observers follow the metric called Cume Rating. 

The concept is easy to understand – It tracks what proportion of the total population in a market listens or views a media outlet for at least five minutes during a specific time period.

Cume Rating is used by media outlets of all types to gauge their penetration of the market as a whole. 

Television channels pay a lot of attention to Cume Rating. For instance, NFL Sunday Night Football had a Cume Rating of 6.1 (Not good!) last week.  This means an estimate 6.1% of American population, ages 6 or older, saw at least a portion of the game.

The chart on the left shows the Cume Ratings above 3.0 for the stations discussed in this post. 

You will notice that KCMP a/k/a The Current is in a league of their own.

NPR News/Talk stations often have Cume Ratings above 10.0. 

The Current’s performance is something other Triple A stations should aspire to.