KPCC LOOSES 20% OF ITS WEEKLY LISTENERS, DECIDES TO OPEN A NEW PODCAST STUDIO • THE DRAWING POWER OF WPLJ

Southern California Public Radio’s (SCPR) KPCC lost 140,000 estimated weekly listeners between May and June according to the Nielsen Audio PPM ratings, a loss of 20%. 

Meanwhile, KRCW’s weekly listeners went up 14% during the same period. 

KCRW beat KPCC in weekly listeners for the first time in recent memory.

KCRW and KPCC have been spirited competitors since American Public Media (APM) took over operations at KPCC in the early 2000s. 

We tracked the Nielsen Audio trends since June 2016 (chart on the right) and KPCC has maintained its advantage in both AQH share and estimated weekly listeners during the entire three years. That is, until June 2019.

It is important to realize that one bad month does not make a trend but KPCC’s weekly listeners have dropped 30% since they reached a high point in June 2018. KCRW’s weekly listeners have stayed about the same over the past three years.

Illustration courtesy of SCPR

So SCPR is searching for more listeners on a different platform: podcasts. 

Earlier this week, Fast Company reported [link] that SCPR has opened an “audio boutique” studio to create new podcasts. 

The new studio, LAist Studios [link], operates separately from KPCC.

KPCC has produced several notable podcasts including The Big One: Your Survival Guide. However, KPCC has not been able to create podcasts with the circulation and critical acclaim as podcasts from KCRW, such as Below the 10: Life in South LA, Design & Architecture and The Treatment.

 Now LAist Studios has opened the door to submissions for new podcasts. You can see what LAist Studios is looking for here. 

Fast Company reports that LAist Studios has hired Angela Bromstad, former president of primetime entertainment for NBC and Universal Television Studios, as the talent scout and developer of new podcasts.

Also in the June PPM ratings, Classical KUSC remains the top noncommercial station in the market. 

Jazz KKJZ and AAA KCSN stayed about the same.

The biggest mover in the Los Angeles book was Contemporary Christian KKLQ,   EMF’s K-Love repeater.   

Compared to June 2018, KKLQ has increased its AQH share by 1.0 and estimated weekly listeners have increased 35%. In a market the size of LA, these are big-time gains.

In the competition with commercial News and Talk stations, KNX and KFI were both down a bit in the June book. But those losses were nowhere near the size of the drop by KPCC.

So how big of a magnet was WPLJ’s final week as a legendary rock station? 

Between May 23 and May 31 WPLJ drew over a million weekly listeners, including more than 100,000 via streaming audio. 

It is assumed that many of the streaming audio listeners came from outside of the New York area.

Nielsen gave the station credit to EMF’s new K-Love format on 95.5 FM because they were on more days during the survey period May 23 – June 19. EMF is still using the WPLJ call letters.

Listening to AAA WFUV and Jazz WBGO stayed about the same. Classical WQXR was up a bit. WNYC-AM dropped almost 100,000 estimated weekly listeners compared to June 2018.