October PPM ratings

[buzzdemming]

I hear 6+  and 25-54 numbers for October are out.  Big Winners as well as Big losers.
start up your spin engines... hahahahaha

[buzzdemming]

here is what I've been able to find out:

October PPM for 6+ was 1 KSNE, 2 KVEG, 3 KKLZ, 4 KWID, 5 KMXB, 6 KXPT, 7 KLUC, 8 KQRT, 9 KWNR and Tied 10 KFRH and KOMP.  October PPM for 25-54 was 1 KXPT Tied 2 KVEG, KWID and KMXB, Tied 5 KKLZ, KLUC, KOMP, KZRT and KSNE.

[Rtyler]

Originally from Vegas, but have been in Tucson for about 5 years now. Tucson is not a ppm market but i've noticed that in ppm markets, top 40 stations do best. I guess these are the first ppm numbers but where does Vegas stand? I haven't been in a while and have never heard 1043 Now.

[Jay F]

Here's my list of October PPM winners and losers...

Winners:

KSNE: #1 12+ Diary, #1 6+ PPM

KXPT: #1 25-54. Massive male numbers. They sometimes get criticized for having a conservative, kind of boring music library. But you can never go wrong playing the hits with PPM.

KVEG: Urbans and urban leaning rhythmics often do poorly with PPM, not KVEG, the "little urban station" did extremely well.

KWID: Just like Urban, Spanish language formats are known to go down with PPM. KWID did great. I wonder how the Univision stations woud have done if they were encoded?

KMXB: They were starting to see somewhat of a decline with the diary, now they are back on top of their demo with their very PPM friendly format.

KKLZ: Classic Hits almost always goes up diary to PPM, KKLZ was no exception rising to #2 6+.

KPLV: What a difference PPM makes. PARTY went from the lowest rated city grade FM signal to a major player in adult women.

Losers

KOAS: This is no surprise. PPM is brutal to Smooth Jazz stations. This is why so many have flipped formats recently.

KKJJ: Normally JACK stations do very well with PPM (Seatte for example). Variety Hits in general thrive with PPM, the ARCH in St Louis is #1 with huge numbers. So I was pretty certain KKJJ would go up (even if I rarely hear the station played anywhere). I was wrong, JACK did poorly. They should consider flipping to news-talk KXNT-FM...speaking of which...

KXNT (and all AM stations in general): KXNT took a huge hit diary to meter. People don't listen to AM in this town. They just don't. KXNT has some very good programming. It's a waste to have it on AM when all the cume is on FM.

Country (especially KCYE). I had a feeling Country would do better in PPM than diary. It really didn't. COYOTE in particular did very poorly. Is it confusion from the frequency switch or are there other issues?

Of course this is just one pre-currency month. Things could change from here. Best of luck to all.

[laitguy]

You are right, KXNT should be on FM. Their problem is also the programming goes up and down with the political swing. It does not help either that their PD voted for a Dem when their cume is mostly republican.

[KVegas-HD]

With the major changes in station rankings from Diary to PPM, is there a flaw with the way Arbitron measures listening audiences? How can stations like KLUC go from being among the most listened to 7th in 6+?

How is anyone supposed to trust anything that comes from Arbitron?

[buzzdemming]

less than 700 people representing the listening habits of nearly 2 million?  HOW COULD it be flawed?
complete BS

[talk chick]

I don't claim to be an expert on PPM, especially since this is our first go-round with the results, but as I understand it, PPM measures what you're exposed to, rather than what you love. Even if you hate the format, you've heard the ads, and that's what advertisers care about. For example, I used to be miserable when I worked in an office and had to listen to the Celine/Mariah/Bolton wedding reception music all day. No offense to that format, but I can't take whiny coffee house music or ballads all day.

The fact is, offices often feel music is less divisive than talk, and therefore more appropriate for the work environment. In my case, people who love my show on the way to work may not be allowed to listen to talk radio in the office. Hence, the importance of morning and afternoon drive shows. I hear KKLZ all over town at various stores in the middle of the day. Diaries were a memory game. For example, you may claim you listen to Michael Savage for three hours, because you're a huge fan, but in reality, you only get to tune in after work. So far, I am not surprised at the results.

Heidi Harris
KDWN

[DavidEduardo]

less than 700 people representing the listening habits of nearly 2 million?  HOW COULD it be flawed?
complete BS

First, unlike the diary survey, the PPM survey is a Panel based system. The panel is, in theory, a perfect mirror of the 6+ universe on every stratification variable.

Under reasonable circumstances, a panel of 700 is adequate for measurement of a universe of that size.

We can measure the opinions of the whole country, 300 million, with 1,200 interviews. And the error is plus or minus a couple of a percent.

Radio ratings do not need to be within such tight tolerances as a peercent or two. So measuring it with 700 metered persons is not out of reason. And, in any case, that is all the broadcasters in the market have desired to pay for... sample size can be increased if the subscribing stations pay for it, which they did not do.

Finally, the population base for the MSA is 1.58 million, not 2 million. 

[Radioresearcher]

Here's my list of October PPM winners and losers...

Winners:

KSNE: #1 12+ Diary, #1 6+ PPM

KXPT: #1 25-54. Massive male numbers. They sometimes get criticized for having a conservative, kind of boring music library. But you can never go wrong playing the hits with PPM.

KVEG: Urbans and urban leaning rhythmics often do poorly with PPM, not KVEG, the "little urban station" did extremely well.

KWID: Just like Urban, Spanish language formats are known to go down with PPM. KWID did great. I wonder how the Univision stations woud have done if they were encoded?

KMXB: They were starting to see somewhat of a decline with the diary, now they are back on top of their demo with their very PPM friendly format.

KKLZ: Classic Hits almost always goes up diary to PPM, KKLZ was no exception rising to #2 6+.

KPLV: What a difference PPM makes. PARTY went from the lowest rated city grade FM signal to a major player in adult women.

Losers

KOAS: This is no surprise. PPM is brutal to Smooth Jazz stations. This is why so many have flipped formats recently.

KKJJ: Normally JACK stations do very well with PPM (Seatte for example). Variety Hits in general thrive with PPM, the ARCH in St Louis is #1 with huge numbers. So I was pretty certain KKJJ would go up (even if I rarely hear the station played anywhere). I was wrong, JACK did poorly. They should consider flipping to news-talk KXNT-FM...speaking of which...

KXNT (and all AM stations in general): KXNT took a huge hit diary to meter. People don't listen to AM in this town. They just don't. KXNT has some very good programming. It's a waste to have it on AM when all the cume is on FM.

Country (especially KCYE). I had a feeling Country would do better in PPM than diary. It really didn't. COYOTE in particular did very poorly. Is it confusion from the frequency switch or are there other issues?

Of course this is just one pre-currency month. Things could change from here. Best of luck to all.

Coyote had only been on 102.7 for six weeks when this happened.

First week of November - KCYE and KWNR were virtually tied with KCYE up and KWNR down. KCYE also won women 25-54 - where the majority of the gender buys come from.