{"id":1580,"date":"2007-11-08T07:45:18","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T12:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1580"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:20:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:20:53","slug":"fun-with-lambert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1580","title":{"rendered":"Fun With Lambert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Someone emailed me to ask what I thought about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rakemag.com\/blogs\/slaughter\/2007\/10\/fun-radio-ratings\">Brian Lambert&#8217;s take on the latest round of ratings<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What the heck; it&#8217;s always good entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll ask you to remember one thing that, for some of you (and you know who I&#8217;m talking about), might seem counterintuitive; while I <em>am <\/em>a conservative host (part-time, anyway), I&#8217;m also very, very clinical about the business itself. [Pacino on] It&#8217;s not personal. It&#8217;s business. [\/Pacino off] As I&#8217;ve noted in the past, I could probably do a better job of making the local Air America affiliate successful than whomever Janet Robert has doing it now.\u00a0 Not that I&#8217;m <em>going <\/em>to; I&#8217;m just saying.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s go to Lambert (whom the <em>Rake <\/em>has absorbed, along with Deb\u00a0 Caulfield-Rybak):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In response to thunderous demand for radio ratings statistics &#8212; a task I find strangely titillating &#8212; the Slaughter offers these snapshots of what Twin Cities listeners <em>say<\/em> they were tuned to over the past summer.<\/p>\n<p>The disclaimer I will always issue is that as they are currently handled, by volunteers filling in written diaries, the Arbitrons have about as much scientific validity as The Flat Earth Society. The game will change dramatically when the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arbitron.com\/portable_people_meters\/home.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Portable People Meters<\/a>, devices that accurately record what people are actually listening to, as opposed to what they remember, or prefer to think they were listening to, hits this market. But until then, the radio industry lives and dies by these things, and the patterns &#8212; even with constantly shifting volunteers &#8212; are pretty static.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>True.\u00a0 With one important caveat; Arbitron&#8217;s method is notoriously&#8230;no, <em>notoriously <\/em>fickle with stations with smaller numbers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Here are the rankings for the top 15 local commercial stations, among adult listeners 25-54.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embedded-ad\"><a class=\"ad-jump\" href=\"#adjump\">Continued<\/a> <span class=\"ad-caption-top\">advertisement<\/span> <!-- OAS AD 'Middle1' begin --><script>     <!--     OAS_AD('Middle1');     \/\/-->     <\/script><!-- OAS AD 'Middle1' end --><a name=\"adjump\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>STATION&#8230;..2006&#8230;&#8230;.2007<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>KQRS &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.11.1&#8230;&#8230;.11.0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It truly amazes me what a juggernaut KQ has become&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>KS95&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;5.9&#8230;&#8230;..7.0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;or that KS95 is hanging in there at all, much less this far up the rankings.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>K102&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;9.2&#8230;&#8230;..6.7<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow.\u00a0 Great job, Clear Channel!\u00a0 Gassing Mick Anselmo did you a world of good!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>JACK&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;5.0&#8230;&#8230;..5.8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On the other hand, that makes me happy.\u00a0 Jack is my favorite &#8220;conventional&#8221; music station (although I&#8217;ve found myself listening to MPR Classical more and more lately)<br \/>\nThe Evil Talk Empire continues its post-Limbaugh languish&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(Tie)KSTP-AM&#8230;&#8230;.3.4&#8230;&#8230;..3.8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With its consultants&#8217; view that &#8220;conservative talk is dead&#8221; still undisturbed in its&#8217; cabinet at Hubbard HQ, I betcha the winter book, <em>sans<\/em> the Twins (not to mention next summer, with a rebuilding team) is going to huuuuuuurt.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>WCCO&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;4.7&#8230;&#8230;..2.9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>This <\/em>astounds me; WCCO is unravelling.<\/p>\n<p>And this&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>KTLK&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;2.3&#8230;&#8230;..1.9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>KTLK fired program director (and my old KSTP colleague) Doug Westerman; I can&#8217;t imagine that dropping &#8220;The Limbaugh Station&#8221; into freefall made &#8217;em very happy (although sources tell me Westerman didn&#8217;t have much more actual programming authority than did the manager of the Caribou across the street from Clear Channel Twin Cities&#8217; studios).<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the important part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(Tie)Air America&#8230;0.6&#8230;&#8230;..0.7<br \/>\n(Tie)The Patriot&#8230;1.2&#8230;&#8230;..0.7<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So.\u00a0 After three years, the Patriot and AAo&#8217;M are tied.<\/p>\n<p>Except we&#8217;re not.\u00a0 Remember &#8211; this is radio inside baseball, so I <em>am, <\/em>in fact, very clinical in my approach.\u00a0 My <em>apparent <\/em>bias toward the Patriot (where I host a show) applies a <em>lot <\/em>less than you might think:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>A tie may not be a Patriot win, but it&#8217;s a loss for AAo&#8217;M from a &#8220;physics&#8221; perspective.\u00a0 Both stations are 5,000 watt AM operations; AAo&#8217;M is a 950 Kilocycles, while AM1280 is, obviously, at 1280Kc.\u00a0 The lower an AM station&#8217;s frequency, the more range and clarity it has per watt of power; AM950&#8217;s signal <em>should <\/em>cover &#8211; <em>very <\/em>conservatively &#8211; 50% more area than 1280&#8217;s.\u00a0 And AM950 broadcasts from the heart of the \u00fcberliberal 5th District.<\/li>\n<li>As we noted above, Arbitron numbers this far down the standings are <em>notoriously <\/em>fickle.<\/li>\n<li>When the numbers are this fickle, it makes no sense for a station to take Arbitron ratings to potential advertisers.\u00a0 They have to rely on demographics and results.\u00a0 So compare advertisers and inventories; by that measure, the Patriot is <em>creaming <\/em>AAo&#8217;M.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, yeah &#8211; to the extent anyone cares about the numbers, the first &#8220;Trend&#8221; numbers after the summer book show the Patriot up, and AAo&#8217;M down.\u00a0 Just saying.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The Patriot has problems; as noted in this space (by many, many commenters as well as me), it&#8217;s had a series of frustrating technical glitches leading to hours of dead air, doubled-up commercials and other problems.\u00a0 When those get fixed (and while I don&#8217;t want to go into inside-station details, <em>big <\/em>changes are underway there), it&#8217;ll\u00a0 be a huge improvement.:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On the downside, K102, Twins-less WCCO and The Patriot took tough slides in audience levels. Speaking of the Twins though, KSTP-AM can&#8217;t be thrilled that their expensive &#8220;partnership&#8221; with the Twinkies netted them only a meager 0.4 increase in adult listeners. That ain&#8217;t good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s worse than that; apparently whatever numbers they <em>got <\/em>from the Twinks didn&#8217;t transfer to <em>any <\/em>of the station&#8217;s regular programs.<\/p>\n<p>Now, to the fun part &#8211; drive time:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>STATION &#8230; AUDIENCE SHARE<\/strong><br \/>\nKQRS &#8230;&#8230;..22.9 (Barnard)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Say what you will about Barnard, his personality, his show&#8217;s teenage-boy orientation &#8211; but speaking <em>purely <\/em>clinically, it&#8217;s kind of fun to be able to watch one of the industry&#8217;s most enduring phenomena, year-in, year-out.\u00a0 Barnard is the Walter Peyton of radio; year after year after year, he just continues to dominate.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>KS95&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.9.3 (Greg &#038; Cheryl)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Not <\/em>speaking clinically in the least, it&#8217;s great to see Greg Thunder (the first Mr. Eleanor Mondale) score.\u00a0 I knew Greg nearly 20 years ago; he&#8217;s one of the good guys.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of good guys:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Patriot&#8230;1.1 (Bennett\/Ingraham)<br \/>\nKTLK&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.1.0 (Hines\/Conry)<br \/>\nAirAmerica&#8230;.0.5 (Press\/Miller)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All of the usual caveats about numbers below 2 points still apply &#8211; but this is just plain fun.\u00a0 Forget about Bill Press and Stephanie &#8220;The Liberal Laura Ingraham&#8221; Miller &#8211; the fact that the syndicated Bennett is beating the local legend (and expensive but pointless host)\u00a0 (UPDATE:\u00a0 Ex-host, actually) John Hines is a sign of how badly Clear Channel is handling KTLK.\u00a0 And it&#8217;s reportedly worse after 8AM, where the syndie Laura Ingraham is reportedly body-slamming the local (and, honestly, not-bad) Dan Conry in the mid-morning slot.<\/p>\n<p>Now, let&#8217;s move to afternoons:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>STATION AUDIENCE SHARE <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>AM1500&#8230;5.3 (Soucheray\/Thomas)<br \/>\nKTLK&#8230;..2.3 (Hannity\/Lewis)<br \/>\nAirAm&#8230;.0.8 (Hartmann\/Heaney)<br \/>\nPatriot..0.5 (Medved\/Hewitt)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lewis&#8217; performance is counterintuitive; he <em>should\u00a0 <\/em>be dominating the late-drive slot against the limpid sportstalker Matt Thomas.\u00a0 Forget Clear Channel &#8211; his numbers are a disappointment to <em>me<\/em> &#8211; Lewis is the host I always wanted to be when I grew up.<\/p>\n<p>As to the vital AAo&#8217;M vs.Hewitt battle &#8211; that&#8217;s an interesting question. \u00a0 The Mark Heaney show has expanded to two hours, which merely makes Heaney twice as excruciating. Remember &#8211; I&#8217;m being pretty clinical here.\u00a0 Heaney is boring enough to be on MPR, but smooth and professional enough for KFAI.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Hewitt&#8217;s numbers lately are pretty terrible.\u00a0 Part of that, no doubt, can be chalked up to the inter-election slump that <em>always <\/em>bedevils conservative talk.\u00a0 Part of it is the Patriot&#8217;s technical bugaboos, which seem to be worst in the afternoon (and have even made <em>me <\/em>tune out).\u00a0 And part of it, perhaps, is that Hugh Hewitt might, perhaps, overestimate the fascination the American people have\u00a0 for the inner workings of the legal system; as someone who is not only a big fan but an acquaintance (whose own radio show owes a lot to support from Hewitt in the first place), there&#8217;ve been times where even <em>I <\/em>get tired of endless insider-noodling about appellate court decisions.\u00a0 Hewitt will benefit when both he and the audience switch into election mode (provided the Patriot gets its&#8217; pernicious technical bugs squared away).<\/p>\n<p>The next year, with a national convention and a presidential election, is going to be the real test.<\/p>\n<p>And (not speaking clinically at all, now), I&#8217;m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone emailed me to ask what I thought about Brian Lambert&#8217;s take on the latest round of ratings. What the heck; it&#8217;s always good entertainment. I&#8217;ll ask you to remember one thing that, for some of you (and you know who I&#8217;m talking about), might seem counterintuitive; while I am a conservative host (part-time, anyway), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-narn","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53015,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/53015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}