"Eric F. Richards" wrote in message
...
"David Eduardo" wrote:


Since we are talking about AM, and there are no AMs up on a frikkin'
mountain,

Actually, at this point we are talking about the selling of radio in
general.

Since FMs seldom get any coverage outside their own metro are, let alone
ratings, the point is moot.

Only when there are two metros that touch each other and are very close do
you see this at all, and most is A, not FM.

A good example is the Miami FMs... (whatever city in the MSA they "belong
to") where most have a tiny share of listening in West Palm Beach, a
separate market per Arbitron. The shares are so small they are unmarketable
at any price, since they do not represent very many people and are all to
the southern side of the market.

Similarly, the Riverside / San Berdoo market gets coverage by some LA
stations part way into the market geography. Since the IE is a shadow market
and has relatively few stations, a number of the bigger LA FMs show up, as
do a couple of AMS (only two or three LA AMs are listenable there) as the IE
is on the "backside" of the mountain where many of the biggest LA FMs are
grandfathered with superpower (some as much as 100 kw at 5,000 feet AMSL). A
real exception.

This is why there are less than 400 stations in the whole USA that have
ratings outside their home market. There are only about 25 cases where a
station has ratings that are above "half way up the ranker" anywhere in the
USA. So, we are discussing only a handful, at best, of stations that have
competitive listening levels outside the home market.


My experience is that local listeners are FM listeners, unless they
are sports or talk radio. Yes, KOA does very well, but they have a
niche.

Nationally, about 40% of Americans use AM, and about 85% use FM. In some
markets, AM usage is higher, and in others, lower. An example of high AM
usage is San Francisco, where only 3 stations fully cover the metro, all AM,
and no FM does due to terrain. On the other hand, in Washington, DC, AM
usage is much lower due to the horrible signals in the market... even the
all news station is on FM there.

AMs that are successful are either in the news/talk/sports arena, or in the
ethnic/religion/specialty arena. To be one of the first, you must have a
monster signal. To be one of the others, you must be gospel, teaching &
preaching, in a language like Russian, Korean or Kreyol (generally not
Spanish) or be a brand extension, like Radio Disney.

your whole point is very confusing. And no Denver FM covers down
to New Mexico.

Raton Pass. Look it up. I know my state, sir.

Picky. No Denver FM has a city grade signal (70 dbu) that gets south of
Larkspur. None has a 60 dbu that gets more than 2 to 3 miles to the north of
Monument. None even has a 54 (protected) contour that gets to Colorado
Springs. Just like I can occasionally DX on inversions San Diego FM stations
in Burbank or get a couple of Phoenix stations on FM in Prescott, there are
no Denver FMs that get anywhere close to NM except on rare and occasional
skip... in fact, all the Denver frequencies are duplicated with closer
operations than Denver at nearly any frequency. At minimum they have
powerful adjacents very close by.

You do know that the ideal AM site is in salt water, right? Lacking that,
it
is in the lowest, flattest, wettest, most organic soil possible. FMs and
TVs
love mountains of the 2000 foot creations of Stainless, but not AMs.

Actually, I do know that. (Better tell Reg Edwards... but I
digress...) ...I also know that AM will fill the holes that FM
stations can't.

And FM covers identically day and night, while most AMs have vastly reduced
night coverage.

But FM, last time I checked, outperformed AM. (No doubt, measuring
the local market only...)

All radio ratings measure all listening, including satellite and internet
streams. Were any distant signals to have any significance, they would show
in the ratings. They do not. The fact is, FM has more listeners in the
average market and has since FM passed AM in listening share in 1978. At
present, the shares are around 80% FM and 20% AM nationally, with
exceptions, all dependent on how good local signals are in the local market.

Again, the reason is that FM covers today's sprawling metros better than
99.5% of AMs (meaning all but maybe 30 AMs in metros do not cover their
market day and night well enough to be pleasant listening). Due to quality,
AMs have gone to talk, but due to coverage, most have been pushed to the
bottom of the stack.

Actually, I picked ones that I 1) personally knew about and 2) would
be common and unambiguous. For example, I didn't include the various
clear sodas -- Pepsi Ice? -- because I don't know if that was a test
market thing that bombed or a full-fledged rollout that bombed.

It was a novelty flavor. These are like the green shakes at McDonalds, done
for a while for novelty and brief sales, and then discontinued. Selling
sodas in disposable rather than reusable bottles has made this viable and it
is done all the time.

But, even if they do get a listener or tow at night outside the Cicny
MSA,
they do not quantify the sales that way. They look at the sales by region
and city and the local ad expenditures to determine effectiveness of the
ad
campaign.

In other words, what they do doesn't reflect reality. Your "listener
or tow [sic]" is probably more like 10 here, 20 here, 5 there, adding
up to the hundreds to thousands.

First, there are only a few stations that even get, consistently, outside
their own markets. And we are talking about maybe a few thousand listeners
outside the normal groundwave coverage for AM and none for FM. Let's take
KFI in LA for a moment... an AM on the best 1-A channel in the USA. If it
gets total listening at night of 200,000 persons in the LA market, and picks
up another 5,000 on skywave listening outside the groundwave coverage, that
is not enough to be significant. It is less than 2% increase, which is
smaller than the margin of error of the whole survey.

Advertisers buy by the market, so that will not change. Advertisers do not
buy stations that are not in the top few in the demographic they are looking
for, so the minor stations will not get bought anyway (that is why they are
ethnic, religious or whatever anyhow).

I gave you a list of stations that have the potential to get a signal
reliably into areas outside their local groundwave coverage. You can add a
few I-B stations like KWKH, KFBK, KGO, WMVP, etc to the list of ones that do
get some, directional, skywave coverage, but after a handful of those, there
are NO stations in the US capable of getting skywave without frequent
interference, etc, to many listeners. The number of stations is so small,
and the listening levels so low that no advertiser is going to look at this
as anything except a tiny bonus to their existing buy providing the station
is even on the buy due tolocal ratings.

You are trying to quantify on a grand scale something that does not
matter:
night DX AM listening.

It doesn't even necessarily have to be night listening, and I do not
view the listener of MW BCB who does so purely for the program content
as "DX." Especially when it doesn't have to be that far. Growing up
in Cleveland, my parents' station was WJR, Detroit and mine was CKLW,
Detroit/Windsor.

The CKLW ratings were, for a while, good in Cleveland because the CHR
stations there were on 1420 and 1260, both horrible AMs in suburban
coverage, both to the east (neither night covers well even to Lyndhurst) and
to the West as well. And in the time CKLW was a factor, FM was not. As soon
as the FCC forced FM to develop, CKLW died in Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo,
etc.

CKLW was not "Detroit / Windsor" It was a Windsor station always, and used
"The Motor City" as a euphemistic ID point.

You can go through the Arbitron diaries for east
Overshoe (every US county is rated at least once a year) and you will not
find that WLW gets ratings.

Because the listener count doesn't cross a certain threshold.

The threshold is intended to make the results reliable statistically. One or
two mentions could be form someone who vacationed a day or two out of town.
Arbitron looks for a pattern of consistent, measurable listening within the
market. If you add up the "outside groundwave" mentions you get nothing. I
just did for KFI in PHX and Las Vegas and came up with two diaries in
Phoenix and none in Las Vegas. Since each diary is representing
approximately 1000 persons, that means that there are maybe a couple of
thousand people who listened to KFI in the most populated areas that are
skywave accessible... compared to way over a million total listeners in the
market.

This is just not enough for any advertiser to care about. It does not give
measurable impact outside the market, and goes nowhere in satisfying the
needs in the other two markets.

The
problem is, though, that there are a *lot* of East Overshoes out
there. I'll say it again: No one is asking you to advertise East
Overshoe Laundramat; the idea is to be aware of the sales in the local
market that are created by non-local buyers.

And nearly every East Overshoe has local stations. Since advertisers seldom
buy ads on AM at night, and radio at night itself is not much used by
advertisers, there is no gain for advertisers to use speculative,
unsubstantiated data when they usually by with very complex reach and
frequency matrix based systems that determine buys on cost per point in the
target demo. Agencies are not going to rewrite their buying software
toaccomodate a few listeners to a few 1 A AMs that get a couple of
occasional skywave listeners.

So, statistically, it is not a factor even if in
reality one or tow people listen occasionally.

Statistically, your odds of winning the Lottery are 0. The odds of
someone winning the lottery, however, are quite high. But you are
saying that because the odds of any individual winning is 0, the odds
of someone winning must also be 0. It's a statistical fallacy.

The metrics for ad buys are based on real listening in the home market. the
software makes no compensation for out of market coverage. This is just not
going to happen, and introducing a fluctuating variable hurts radio overall
as it makes people doubt the medium. Radio is bought by market at the
station level. Even network or syndicated radio is bought by the total of
the individual markets, even in RADAR (an Arbitron network product).


When you have, for example, 1.6 million listening to KFI in the LA
market,
the fact that maybe 3 or 4 people listened in Needles or Barstow or
Bishop
or somewhere way off in the wilderness is totally insignificant. Does not
make a material change in either KFI or the people who hear ads on KFI.

But that 3 or 4 might be much higher than that, but are pre-filtered
by Arbitron.

There is no filtering. The diary mentions are there to see. I just looked at
them for two markets. the fact is, there are practically none of this type
of listening mentions.

The only "material change" that your advertisers care
about is someone who makes a sale. The guy who owns a Porsche in
Needles certainly isn't going to Fred's Garage in Needles to get it
serviced -- he'll go to where it can be done, in LA. And your Porsche
dealer advertising there might get his interest piqued.

The guy with the Porsche in Needles already knows where to take it. Most
radio advertising is for goods and services that are available in every
market of any size in the US. We are talking Wal-Mart, Bed Bath and Beyond,
Exxon stations, Heinz catsup, coke and Pepsi, Allstate agents, Ford dealers.
People who live in Needles who shop rodeo Drive already know where it is. We
are talking mass market, and the only way to reach most consumers via radio
is by local stations.

And, in most places in the Southwest, Mexican station interference has
made
the usefulness of clears on skywave pretty limited in the last few
decades
(KFI and KNX are unlistenable 150 miles from LA, for example) and in the
Southeast, Cubans and Caribbean stations chew up WSB and WLW and stations
like that most nights of the year... another reason why these stations do
not even try to serve out of market listener groups.

Perhaps -- that's a believable explanation. However, CKLW, targeting
the American audience, had to contend with PJB being a flamethrower on
that same frequency ALSO targeting an American audience.

Actually, TWR on 800 was directional at South America at night. In fact,
form 10 PM to 4 AM EST it was in Portuguese for Brazil. It did not aim at
the USA at all. I have been there and owned a station on 805 in Ecuador that
got hit every night by the directional beam of TWR.

Usually
CKLW won out in the northern states, but I recall one evening of freak
atmospherics where CKLW was overwhelmed by PJB in Cleveland.

I remember a 10 kw Venezuelan overriding WKYC on 1100 in Shaker Heights one
night. Atmospherics do this on occasion. It is not normal.

And CKLW when it had ratings was in an era when AM was bought differently
and when AM was dominant to the extent of being about 95% of all listening.

Except that we do extensive field research on a monumental level.

It matters not a whit if the methodology is flawed. That's something
I'll never see because it's a closely guarded secret.

No, you will never see it. But the fat that there are 40 or so companies
doing radio research for stations should indicate they know a lot about
their listeners.

Irrelevant. Your experience with Quest and the purposes of the survey
were
at odds. Maybe the did not want to know your feelings, just your actual
behaviour... in other words, don't tell me what you feel, tell me what
you
actually did.

The questions they could have asked were, "Have you lost telephone
service in the last year?" or "How many times have you needed to
contact qwest in the past 12 months for loss of telephone service?"
or "Was your telephone service restored within 3 days?" or "Was your
telephone service restored with only one service call placed?"
Feelings aren't measurable in such a survey. The above numbers are.

I have no idea what they were surveying, but it could have been anything. If
they want a service satisfaction survey, they will do it. If they want to
ask about interest in a new service, they will not ask about existing ones
or about satisfaction.


LA ad rates on major stations are in the $1000 to $2000 per spot range.
In
Riverside / San Bernardino, the Inland Empire separate market, the local
stations sell for from $60 to a bit over $100 a spot. There is no way I
can
go in there and offer $2000 spots for the #5 station when the #1 station
sells for $100 a spot. And that is why major metro stations do not sell
in
fringe markets, even if they cover them partly or fully.

(sigh) here we go again. You don't sell ads to a local Riverside /
San Bernardino location; you sell (and track) information regarding an
LA business which may also be of practical use outside of LA. Not to
Riverside, but *anyone* outside of LA. The example I come up with
again and again would be J&R advertising on WABC. J&R is a New York
City store with a national clientele. You should make use of that
fact. (J&R isn't the only one in the known universe with these
features.)

Again, advertisers with an interest outside of the local market buy
advertising in the other markets they care about locally. They do not use
shadow stations to do this, as that is hit and miss, especially on
geography. It is just the way buyers do business, and radio can not change
this. Since it benefits so few stations, there is no incentive.

For a while, we subscribed to the IE ratings, and tried to use the add on
bonus numbers to sell with to make our stations more attractive. No way. All
we got was a couple of hundred thousand in extra cost for the book, and no
added sales. "We do not buy Riverside as part of LA for Radio... we buy it
separately." It was not even good as a tie breaker to get an edge on a
station with less than our Riverside delivery.

Since advertisers do not care, and can not be persuaded and there are so few
affected markets and stations, this is a non-issue. Even if it made sense,
thousands of advertisers and agencies are not going to change just to pick
up a few extra listeners from a handful of stations. There is no incentive.

Clear Channel and its component parts literally saved AM radio. In fact,
the
name of the company reflects on its first purchase, WOAI in San Antonio,
a
bankrupt AM. They expanded by buying good AMs even in places like Wyoming
and Montana and putting on good talk programming and, for all practical
purposes, creating or significantly contributed to the model that saved
AM.


That's why listeners hold Clear Channel in such high esteem? I recall
reading late last year how people have been flocking in droves to NPR,
looking for something -- *anything* -- worth listening to. When
you've chased your listener base to NPR, you've accomplished
something.

Actually, NPR ratings are downtrending. And most listeners have no idea of
what Clear Channel is... they either like or dislike a specific station.

Oh, I know, Clear Channel will continue to thrive for a while, since
people *tolerate* -- not enjoy -- their product.


Look: You want a local audience? Use a local medium, like FM. We
should have done what Canada did and opened up a new, different band
solely dedicated to digital broadcasting without butchering up the two
BCBs we have. But we didn't. And now, people who complain will be
ignored because they aren't local listeners. But those people who
complain are real, just like your non-local listener base is real.
And you will lose them, along with the 10 people who don't complain
and just tune out.

We did not have them to begin with on 13,300 of the US radio stations. Those
that do do not care, so there is no loss.