KQED & WAMU ARE BACK ON TOP IN AUGUST PPM RATINGS • PACIFICA’S INSIGNIFIGANCE ON DISPLAY IN PPM REPORTS

Add San Francisco and Washington, DC to the list of markets where NPR News stations are the number one source for radio news. Both markets feature competition between a NPR News station and commercial stations owned by some of the largest radio corporations.

SAN FRANCISCO

In San Francisco, KQED is back on top of Entercom’s KCBS in AQH share. KQED’s AQH share has increased by around 25% since April 2018. KCBS’s AQH share has decreased by over 22% since April 2018.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, according Nielsen Audio’s August PPM ratings, Classical KDFC continues its solid performance.

However, KALW seems stuck in a rut in both AQH share and estimated weekly listeners.

We received several reader comments about our September 4^th post {link] about the need for a noncom AAA station, especially since the loss of commercial AAA KFOG. 

Our readers seem to agree about the need and potential for such a station and had a couple of suggestions where it might happen. Some readers wondered why KALW wasn’t on our “likely to flip” list. 

Because of KALW’s licensee, the San Francisco School District, things there then to move slowly. A major change, such as the one we propose, would meet serious opposition from folks who like that KALW is airing news and public affairs programming that KQED isn’t.

Steve Yasko

One of our readers, Steve Yasko the interim GM at WMFE in Orlando, suggested that KCSM might benefit from a switch to AAA. KCSM [link] airs full-time Jazz music. 

According to CPB transparency documents, KCSM lost around $200,000 in FY 2016. If this budget-busting loss has continued since 2016, which it likely has, the station continues to drain money from the licensee, San Mateo Community College. 

Yasko told us that, based on his calculations, an AAA format would likely reach 450,000 weekly listeners. The size of KCSM’s audience is not known because they don’t subscribe Nielsen’s PPM ratings.

WASHINGTON, DC

The “mother of all radio news battles" continues in our nation’s capital. It pits NPR’s defacto NPR News flagship station WAMU against the top-billing commercial station in the U.S., Hubbard’s WTOP.

Since July, WAMU has topped WTOP in AQH share. WTOP has a larger number of estimated weekly listeners. WTOP’s higher cume is due to more “quick tune in/tune out” listening to traffic and weather reports. WTOP is very good at that kind of stuff.

To see how the other half lives we encourage radio geeks to view a video on WTOP’s website [link] showing how WTOP moved into its new HQ and what the new place is like.

In the August PPM ratings for noncom stations in the DC market take a look at the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) race between WGTS and newcomer K-Love repeater WLVW.

WGTS is a hyper-local heritage station that is deeply embedded in the DC Christian community. 

WLVW is a K-Love repeater that literally drops its canned programming in from the sky. K-Love repeaters have almost no local presence. 

But, satellite-fed automation is certainly a cheap way to operate.

PACIFICA’S AUGUST PPM RATINGS

Yesterday we featured the hostile takeover attempt that is going on within the Pacifica Foundation and its five top 10 market stations. There is lots of work to be done by whoever runs America’s most dysfunctional and embarrassing noncommercial media organization.

According to Nielsen’s August PPM ratings the five Pacifica stations are currently reaching less than .01% of the available 12+ population. This means that the Pacifica stations are not only in deeply in debt, they don’t has many listeners to help turn it around.