DOES WAMU NEED A COMPETITOR IN DC?

We’ve been looking through the Nielsen Audio Summer Quarter PPM ratings. Unfortunately, things look the same for one station. WAMU, the de facto NPR News/Talk flagship station, continues to loose both listeners and listening share/

WAMU reached its high water mark in the 2017 Winter Quarter ratings (AQH 11.2; Cume 864,100). 

Things have only gone downhill ever since.   

• Compared to the recently released Nielsen PPMs for the 2018 Summer Quarter, WAMU has lost more than 200,000 estimated weekly listeners, 24% of its weekly listeners.

• The drop in AQH Share is even worse.  Compared to Winter 2017, WAMU has lost almost 30% of its AQH share. 

Programmers around the public radio system are scratching their heads as to why this is happening at WAMU. No other major market NPR News/Talk station in the nation is seeing losses of this magnitude, particularly in AQH Share. 

Perhaps the key question needs to be asked: Is the best WAMU can do?

It is possible that the solution can be seen in Boston. The news/talk competition between WBUR and WGBH has benefited both stations. Since WGBH went head-to-head with WBUR, we estimate the number of NPR News/Talks has increased more than twenty percent. Almost a million people each week listen to WBUR and WGBH combined. And, Boston is a smaller market than Washington, DC.

Could a direct competitor for WAMU create the same kind of growth dynamic in DC? Competition between stations is one of the best attributes of the U.S. system. The "public/private partnership" is the “secret sauce” that spurs creativity and brings new ideas to public service media.

WHO MIGHT BE THE COMPETING STATION?

This is a hypothetical scenario, so stick with us as we explain it.

90.1 FM has an awesome coverage area

The perfect competitor is WCSP 90.1 FM, now airing C-SPAN radio. We like C-SPAN on cable TV and online, but the truth is the folks at C-SPAN are not effective radio broadcasters. 

Time has proven again and again that television audio doesn’t work on radio. For the type of events C-SPAN covers the video is necessary to make sense of what is happening.

It is impossible to know how many people listen to C-Span on 90.1 FM or on their channel on SiriusXM, but there probably aren't many. Researchers we have spoken with tell us that WCSP has never appeared in a Nielsen report they have seen. Rumor has it C-SPAN doesn’t even embed the Nielsen PPM codes into its signal.

However, C-SPAN has an audio app [link] that works well because it offers on-demand audio. Listeners can choose what they want to hear and when they want to hear it. Because of the app, there is no need for C-SPAN to have a full-power radio signal.

Continuing our hypothetical scenario:  What if one of public media’s most entrepreneurial organizations (such as PRX, APM, WBUR or even WETA) offered C-SPAN a plan to operate WCSP via a Public Service Operating Agreement and make 90,1 FM a real radio station? There certainly are enough potential listeners and revenue in the Washington, DC area to support a second NPR News/talk station. With the recent performance of WAMU there certainly is the need.

Why would the folks who own and operate C-SPAN listen to such a plan? They understand the public/private business model. C-SPAN was created by cable TV dreamers who leveraged their biggest asset – available cable channel time – into an institution that is now one of major players in American democracy.

NIELSEN PPM RATINGS FOR BALTIMORE, SAN FRANCISCO & DALLAS

Baltimore is Washington, DC’s “companion” market. The two metro areas are less than an hour from each other and several DC signals have a strong presence there. 

This provides another reason that WSCP can compete with WAMU. (Take a look at 90.1’s coverage area above.)

Also, there is an excellent example of AQH Share rising and estimated weekly listeners falling on the Baltimore charts.   

Classical music WBJC is up in its AQH and down a bit in weekly listeners. This means few people are hearing WBJC, but those who do are listening more.

In the Bay Area there are many changes happening all at once at KQED but the station still tops all others in AQH Share.

The local K-Love repeater – KLVS – is gaining traction.

NPR News/Talk is doing fine in Dallas-Fort Worth. Both their AQH Share and estimated weekly listeners were dramatically up in Summer 2018 compared with Summer 2017.

There have been considerable changes in the very competitive Dallas Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) competition. 

There are three noncom CCM stations in the market plus there is a big commercial CCM station owned by Salem Broadcasting.

Note how two of the noncoms – KCBI and KAWA – went up and K-Love repeater KYDA went down. Perhaps this is because KCBI and KAWA are live and local and K-Love is a 24/7 satellite-fed drone.