Comments & Conjecture?

[JimPastrick]

Just noticed the Buffalo Fall Book first phase trends have been posted. Rochester trends are posted too, showing some pleasant surprises for WDKX and Legends.  Yes, it's 12+ but are not speculation and conjecture just a few of the things that make this board so compelling? Window for comment is now open.

[SirRoxalot]

Big numbers for 'BLK, and nice uptick for 'HTT. 'KSE, not so much.

[Scott Fybush]

A few quick observations:

Buffalo: What's up with Star? It looks to have taken more of a hit, proportionally, than its clustermate Kiss. And it will be very interesting to see how a downright miserable Bills season will affect the Citadel FMs...and WGR, too.

Rochester: The CHR war between PXY and Kiss is always interesting to watch...but who'd have figured that CC flipping Kiss to its "Premium Choice" satellite-fed lineup for most of the day would yield a statistical dead heat with live'n'local PXY? Yeah, it's only a trend, and it's only 12+...but it would be most interesting to see the demos here. Not a good trend for the Stephens cluster, either - Fickle is falling off the face of the earth, with Zone not far behind, and Warm looks only lukewarm at best, though its imminent flip to Christmas music should help some. And was that really a goose-egg for "ESPN 950," against better than a 1 combined for WHTK-AM/FM?

[dustintv]

WYSL is pretty close to netting a 1.0 hope Mr. Savage achieves it! I'm also interested in the rather large number of Canadian stations that showed up in Buffalo this trend.

[SirRoxalot]

Star is likely to rebound with the Christmas format battle against WJYE. Star's biggest problem is that "CHR" Kiss is dayparting heavily, and has an AC morning show. Entercom is competing with itself. When is Janet Snyder going to admit she's middle-aged & move to Star, allowing Kiss to skew younger? Maybe when Roger retires - in 2032 - Janet will go to Star, & Rob will move to mid-days...

[Element9]

Rochester's feisty stand-alone WDKX is beating the corporate clones. Mighty, Mighty!  Given that WDKX is Urban and reaches a lot of younger demos who also listen to mp3 players and iPods, this is quite an accomplishment.  Same for WBLK in Buffalo. The dark lining behind the silver cloud for both stations: How much of the 12+ ratings are derived from HDBA weighted diaries which will disappear once PPM reaches the markets?

WYRK down, but still on top of the heap in Buffalo? So what else is new for the only FM Country format in the market?

WHTT apparently made the right move when it dumped the chick-mix format and returned to Classic Hits. Makes you wonder why the station switched to Mix in the first place. Question is, how will WHTT sustain, rotating 320 songs with only two live personalities? East of Buffalo in Lancaster, Classic Hits 95.3 comes in loud and clear with a wider variety of Classic Hits and some Canadian Content to spice things up. Street chatter says WHTT is considering Truckin' Tom Kent to replace the soporific John Tesh in the syndicated 7-midnight slot. BTW, is Citadel GM-RVP Kevin Legrett on his way back to Rochester to partner in a business venture with one of his former managers at CBS? Talk may be cheap, but it's coming from reliable and well-placed sources.

Star's 12+ is a head scratcher. It's 12+ Phase 1 is lower than the dismal 3.9 that WHTT scored in the Summer book before dumping the Mix format and returning to Classic Hits. All Christmas should remedy Star's loss. Could Star's smash-face compression be the cause for listener fatigue. Dial down the Omni a bit? That Star is tied with Jack indicates something ain't right. Oh that's right, "it's only 12+." Star owns the Women. Jack's simply a thorn-in-the-ass station on life-support designed to screw with 97 Rock and protect WJYE. And Regent is out of compliance with its debt covenant. This is all so tawdry.

Looks like 97 Rock is stuck in the sixes, but this is likely to change with Bills football. Speaking of which, WGR and WEDG drew an ace from the deck when the Bills fired Dick Jauron. Both stations' cume and share must have soared. WGR seemed to be a half step ahead of WEDG, especially when the Edge's usually blunt S&R waffled with a few callers who speculated on the fate of Bills GM Russ Brandon.

WGR and WEDG went "wall to wall" featuring experts and pundits. Both stations did compelling live local radio.  WEDG served-up Ruben Brown, John Murphy, Vic Carucci and Daryl Talley.  WGR featured Thurman Thomas and ESPN analyst John Clayton.  The ex-Bills on both stations sounded surprisingly articulate.  Brown and Thomas have improved dramatically over the years, speaking with conviction and articulating clarity of thought without a lot of bombast, which was left to the hosts.

Thomas in particular brought to light the human side of the Jauron's dismissal, "He's still a human being, let's take it easy on him... just because you fire Dick Jauron doesn't mean everything is going to be fine."  Ruben Brown offered insight as to how players and coaches react to each other. "It's not rocket science, but it's chemistry."  Nice metaphor, especially for a lineman.  Maybe these ex-jocks are beginning to take this broadcasting thing seriously.

[Mark_Giardina]

WYSL is pretty close to netting a 1.0 hope Mr. Savage achieves it! I'm also interested in the rather large number of Canadian stations that showed up in Buffalo this trend.

Personally I believe that WYSL's ratings exceeds what Arbitron is reporting.

I base my belief on statistics I've been shown which incidates WYSL has a larger audience than the .08 shown in this latest ratings book. My guess is that the station's ratings are closer to a 1.5 or even a 2 share.

* Stolen from Scott Fybush handbook: I do work at WYSL Saturday mornings and the opinions on here are my own and not those of the station's management.

[The Voice of Reason]

Personally I believe that WYSL's ratings exceeds what Arbitron is reporting.

I base my belief on statistics I've been shown which incidates WYSL has a larger audience than the .08 shown in this latest ratings book. My guess is that the station's ratings are closer to a 1.5 or even a 2 share.

* Stolen from Scott Fybush handbook: I do work at WYSL Saturday mornings and the opinions on here are my own and not those of the station's management.

I never had much faith in Arbitron ratings, especially when books showed the station in Dansville with a larger audience than WYSL.  Hell I can't pick up the Dansville station until I'm almost near Geneseo, yet WYSL comes booming into metro Rochester daytime with a strong signal.

[cee]

And at the very bottom of the Rochester page is all sports WROC with a 0.   This proves once again it doesn't matter if this station runs conservative talk, liberal talk, sports talk or idle chatter, they will never win with anything they run.  Basically, a waste of electricity.  Better to get into leased time programming.

[dustintv]

I never had much faith in Arbitron ratings, especially when books showed the station in Dansville with a larger audience than WYSL.  Hell I can't pick up the Dansville station until I'm almost near Geneseo, yet WYSL comes booming into metro Rochester daytime with a strong signal.

Good point. I know WBTA from Batavia shows up on the ratings board...I live in Brockport and sometimes get it on a good day, but does anyone in Rochester get it, let alone listen to it? So I can believe if WYSL is actually higher than a 1.0 already then.