Since when does October not include Major League Baseball‘s ALCS, the World Series or Halloween?
Since right now, courtesy of Nielsen’s radio ratings. That’s because the “October” rating book runs from September 11 to October 8.
Meaning a whole lot of USDA choice Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals action did not make the ratings cut. So while both KCFX FM (which carries the Chiefs) and 610 Sports (which carries the Royals) likely left a whole lotta ratings upside on the table for what we will be calling the November ratings.
Make sense? of course not, but when in Rome…
In any case, 610 Sports had a nice jump while vying for the division championship with Detroit and smoking the Oakland A’s on the last day of September. And, sources say, the Chiefs radio listenership tends to be pretty constant rather than up and down with the what one might call the fortunes of war.
In any case, it’s hard to imagine that 610 won’t be in for a significant surge, as well as The Fox if the Chiefs can stay the current course. On top of which, according to Inside radio, KCFX enjoys the highest share rating of any local station carrying the home team in NFL football.
Factor in a combination of the Chiefs slow start and a fire and brimstone run by the Royals and the current Chiefs surge could return KCFX to No. 1.
In the wide world of news and talk radio, October was a less than stellar ratings book.
98.1 FM KMBZ Kansas City was flat from the previous month. Public radio station KCUR FM was down nearly half a share point. And Talk Radio KCMO AM posted a minuscule ratings rise, elevating it arguably from the crawling to the walking dead.
And what ratings book would be complete without taking a gander at KCPT Channel 19’s new love child The Bridge (KTBG), which actually regressed a tad as it yet awaits anything approaching a halfway meaningful lift off.
How bad are things for KTBG?
Well, for starters KTBG’s powerful new FM signal got power squashed by gospel weak sister KPRT AM while merely nosing out KCMO’s HD2 signal in a fierce struggle for last place in the ratings.
Now on to the October ratings…
I think you once explained that WHB doesn’t subscribe to the ratings company and that’s why their ratings are unknown. True? Is there more to this story? Why wouldn’t they? I assume people in the industry have some clue as to where they rank. Best guess?
I’d love to know how Petro/Kietzman/etc compare to their rivals on 610.
I’ll do a little digging now that you’ve called me out, Wolfe…
The reason they don’t subscribe is they can’t afford it. It would be a healthy six figure hit.
Why do you think they parted company with the Royals and now the Chiefs?
Hint: It’s not because they’re rolling in dough.
But yes, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that in specific weekday, prime time shows they own 610. That would probably not be the case if Entercom had hung onto Nick Wright and gone after another kick ass drive show…like the dude who left here shortly before Nick came in.
Of course, had 610 gone FM – and they still may – WHB would be in trouble.
Some of those old dogs at WHB are starting to get a little long in the tooth though.
Ever heard of a guy named Don Fortune?
you’re like brownback…just keep digging bigger and
bigger holes.
WHB could easily afford to buy the ratings book.
They’re expanding in every area. Moving to a state of the
art sports bar at 135….add more restaurants….they do
big billings…and I’m sure they made big big bucks from
the playoffs.
Hearne please double check your facts.
wrong again.
thanks..Harley
Are you nuts, Harley?
You have no idea how expensive these ratings are. Obviously.
Equally obviously you don’t have your ear to the ground on what’s been going on the past several years.
While they are moving to a newer 810 Zone Sports bar, do you know how many of those have opened and closed in recent years?
Apparently not.
uh..mr. hearne…wrong again.
they can afford to buythe ratings…but with
one station in the market it doesn’t make
financial sense.
What do ratings cost…well ask mike carter
at kprs. For years they didn’t buy the ratings
book…did very well.
then they bought it and lo and behold their
numbers skyrocketed.
WHB has the money to do what they want.
Look at their lineup of talent on the air
len dawson
frank boal
kk
Montgomery
st. john
petro
I’,m sure that payroll for talent is 2 or 3 times
what 610 pays their unknowns for talent.
Lets get serious…
as far as restaurants…you been to 810?
packed with good food.
and they’re growing with their partners.
come on hearne…
Need any morefacts? contact me…
HARLEY SCORES BIG AGAINST GOSSIP
COLUMNIST AGAIN.
Harley, you are so out of it on radio and WHB that it’s silly.
Keep scoring, bro!
They destroyed 610 because 810 skews to older people and younger people don’t listen to sports talk radio.
I remember a few years ago Petro was tripling Jim Rome’s ratings.
Not so sure about your younger people point, Bob.
What they don’t for sure do is listen to AM radio.
And that’s a big part of why sports talk here skews so much older
let me set the record straight:
The royals tv announcers are excellent regardless of what you say. they are
a team that blends pretty well together. and with Goldberg and monty they
are strong…and 610 basically sucks so there’s no reason to turn on the
tv and listen to the horrible 610 announcers.
With the chiefs it’s different. You can’t help but love the best c0lor
guy in the nfl…lenny dawson…and mitch is so wound up you can’t help
but catch the excitement of his presentation even when the chiefs are losing.
When the chiefs are on tv you’re forced to listen to mr . boring…Kevin Harlan
constantly who has the personality of a goat. Sorry kevin…no one broadcasts
more sports than you and we can’t figure it out. Must be the points you get
for flying coast tocoast. But almost everyone would rther listen to lenny
and mitch than some rookie obscure tv announcer who doesn’t understand
what the people in kc really want.
As far as the ratings…again we will quibble over the ridiculousness of hearne
trying to act like he knows something about the ratings. He’s never been
right and his 6 plus numbers mean nothing…except to his readers who don’t
get it either.
I can tell you this…whb is crushing 610. They are more knowledgable and
their following is much larger. Noone would recognize the 610 crew in public
but when the whb crew is out…people know who they are.
610 is boring…and its crew knows nothing about sports. You couldput
glaze on there and his limited knowledge of all sports would make the
fools of 610 look like grade school broadcasters.
You can be such a clown sometimes Harley…
It’s not like I don’t understand that specific, prime demos are what advertisers are mostly looking for. But those numbers are expensive to get.
That doesn’t render the 6 and 12 plus numbers meaningless.
They are in fact, the broadest measure of people listening to a station
Get a clue, dude
It’s time for a new rule; the length of Harley’s comment can not exceed the total word count of the story he’s commenting on.
and all losers are not allowed to comment on
this blog.
you’re a loser. You’d look good with your pic
like glaze has on tkc.
go away. You’ve made a big enough fool of yourself
with all your falsehoods and wrong statements.
Move over chump and let the real wiinners in the
game explain what’s true and what’s not.
I am right. Ask anyone in the business world
and they’ll agree that peter pan Christopher just doesn’t get it. So just stop.
thanks
your friend
Harley
Interesting concept, shoe dog, I mean Paul…
Just kidding!
He does have a way with words, too much of a way at time, you’re right
JoJo is as stupid as ever.
I am close buddy.
Hearne makes valid points as always. I don’t see that winning in pro sports really ups the attention to a city or helps it grow…ala Green Bay.
WTF? PLEASE GLAZE YOU MADE YOURSELF THE FOOL.
Its not been a great year for you. Please stop.
According to the top people…having the world series in kc was like
getting a free 3 hour commercial promoting the city.
For many viewers they’d never been here.
And as an attention hungry that you are….its good to highlight
the positives of our city.
If not for the packers…no one would know about Green Bay!!!!
But nodoubt kc got prime time coverage and if you read any of
the articles from the san fran people…they loved kc…
and that’s good news.
please….you’re on a huge downswing. Your picks are dead…you’e
be proven to be wrong again and again!
And you change your mind every 5 minutes.
thanks…just take a position and stay with or just never say anything.
And if you need any “vintage” shoes call shoedog. I heard its buy
one get one free at the Lawrence cobblers this weekend.
You’re funny, Harley…
You think people are going to start vacationing in KC now because they saw the Royals do well in the playoffs?
And you accuse the shoe dog of not having a clue!
Harley we won it all in 85…did our city grow from that win? No. In fact we were one of the slowest growing cities and have been til now.
It is a big ego boost no doubt. How proud we were to have Joe Montana and Marcus here together in the 90’s and we won a ton of games, playoffs, national attention by the truckload. The area around the stadiums never did anything much.
I do believe if the sports stadiums were in a different location that would help. Like the Plaza area or Johnson County. The I could see a positive for our city.
Don’t get me wrong its fun to win. But an economic boost, I don’t see that. Harley its not the first time we got media crews to shoot Bar B Q and the Plaza. I was on the Plaza during the games, no action. Daytime was very quiet, few news trucks and few interviews of KC people there. Dont know why.
Again its better to win than not, but does it grow your city and its economic goals….as far as KC. NO. It hasn’t.
Harley why do you get so mean? Nobody is attacking you. You say I had 3 bad years in picking football, HARLEY ITS ONLINE EVERYONE CAN SEE THE WINS AND LOSSES, WINNING OVER 70% ALL THREE YEARS…so why do you attack that? You can go back and add them up. This year I suck, but so do most people who are using the spreads, teases or parlays…its a tough year..still no excuse under .500 a loser so far…I admit that. Things change. Hey I was wrong about our Chiefs to this point and I think they are a good team now.
Here is why WHB doesn’t buy the ratings: They don’t have to because Sports Radio always has crappy ratings and the ratings they would get would not lead to incremental revenue to off set the expense. They are already priced above the market on most buys.. because they are a must buy.
So Hearne you are correct in the fact that Nielsen ratings are ridiculously expensive. For a 1 station owner in KC it doesn’t make sense
So Harley you are correct that they make a ton of money and could afford them.
The bottom line is that they are so successful with Direct business and relationship business that they don’t get bought on CPPs, so they don’t need the ratings. On top of that, Sports Radio ratings are always low.. to play on an A2554 CPP, you’d have to give it away.
There are some things that are known without looking at ratings.. WHB attracks a large audience, regardless of what the numbers say. KK sets the sports tone in this market, like him or hate him.
So if you can’t gain large incremental revenue from spending on Nielsen ratings, there is no sense in adding the expense.
It is a smart business decision on their part. Not unlike what CG does when he selects comedians. You could pay the highest priced guy to come in and sell the place out. But you can also get a mid level guy to come in and sell the place out, because he has a monopoly on established comedy clubs in JC. Sure every once in awhile he’ll splurge, but he’s been in business this long because you make the best financial decision that will lead to profit…
FOR hearne..he doesn’t have to lookat the bottom line.
He has money to burn.
for companies that are looking at the bottom line
they look at the bottom line.
Union could afford the ratings but why. If its 100,000
dollas they’ve got it.
KPRS had to do it. They’re an urban station and needed the
national buys. Carters lived a long time and made big bucks
withoutthe ratings….union can do it too.
Listen hearne…you stick with the cobblers in Lawrence…
the jewl theif who never materialized….the stalker who we never
heard from again….let glaze and shoedog write about their
fantasies (glaze about some young hotties and shoedog fantasizing about
Harley!) and move on.
when y ou become a real businessman give me a call!!!!!thanks
Aye-aye, captain…
Sheesh!
As long as Harley brought up the Chief’s radio broadcasts, I always used to watch the tv broadcast with the sound off and tune into Len for analysis. So is it me or has Len lost a step or two. He seems to have 4-5 comments he just recycles endlessly. A week or so ago, he couldn’t bring up names of some past players and Mitch had to help him out. Is it time to find his replacement or wait until he really embarrasses himself? I’d love to hear Grunhard as his replacement or maybe Bill Maas or both. And I like Trent Green on TV as analyst.
Back to 810/ratings/arbitron/etc. I cannot stand Kietzman’s schtik (look it up Hearne) any more but I do love Petro. I have noticed that Petro is spending more time at the beginning of a segment pushing the advertisers. Kietzman has done this forever but Petro never did it as much and now he spends an extra 5 minutes or more pushing some local business. So I wonder if their ad rates are falling due to falling ratings and they have to do this to appease their advertisers. That’s why I wonder what they tell their advertisers how they rate when they don’t subscribe to a ratings service. How do they justify their ad rates with no ratings?
As for dropping the Royals, perhaps they just decided it wasn’t worth it as the Royals were perennial losers (until a miraculous stretch the last two months) for years and the money wasn’t worth it. I also assume the Chiefs prefer an FM signal.
As for the Chiefs and to a lesser extent the Royals, these sports teams are getting incredibly arrogant (Yes, I know–a shocking revelation). A friend owns a business that supplies certain materials to big companies (I cannot be any more precise than that). He at one time sold to the Chiefs and Royals but no more. They basically told him that it was such an honor to sell to the Chiefs and Royals that he should lower his prices below the break even point so he would lose money. It is certainly possible that 610 and KCFX for the Chiefs pay so much that they lose a significant amount of money for the prestige of being their broadcaster. And I realize there is a halo effect even if they lose some money on that. It is also certainly possible that 810 decided not to lose money in that way as a pure business decision.
I have also noticed the closing of 810 zones but the opening of one out south seems like a good move if it works. The real question is: how much do the principals have invested in these restaurants/bars or are they just selling the name and getting a small % of sales for use of the name? They seem to have a lot of broadcasts from the various locations pimping an $8.10 lunch special all the time.
Keep posting these ratings Hearne. I find them fascinating.
Thanks
wolfe: fyi:
the sports stations/networks/announcers all come to the king of the
broadcasts, lenny, for advice and consultations.
Lenny is in the hall of fame for the game and for the broadcasting.
JUst inducted into mo. hall of fame.
he’s still right on about the game
Lenny might be in the broadcaster’s HOF for his HBO work years ago as well as being on radio. I am just saying I think he has lost a step or two right now.
Well Lenny has gotten older of course and that changes things. He is nearly 80 years old. In his day with NBC and HBO he was one of the best. Used to see him at the airports all the time when he was covering games back in the 80’s and 90’s. Nobody can stop the clock. Len has been very honest about this team for years and I will miss him when he retires.
Let’s set the record straight on WHB. The boys at 810 do pretty well with top line revenue. One would hope so running 20 plus ad units an hour and endorsing any product or company that is willing to pay an endorsement fee for KK or Petro to talk about using their product which is very doubtful that they do.
Bottom line revenue (after serving their debt service) is totally another picture. Why didn’t WHB pay the Royals their rights fees or KC Chiefs what was owed to them and why they don’t buy the ratings?
The jock sniffers know their sports but not business.
Does anyone remember what they lost in their bid to play regular radio when they partnered with another company and purchased 97.3 for a combined 20 million. Then in their bid to win the Royals they broke the agreement and had to pony up another ten million of sugrdaddys Jerry Green’s money. Not to mention the fact that they paid a whopping 10 million for WHB’s 810 signal. Bon Jovi is living on a prayer and WHB is praying to stay alive. The banks want their money.
As far as 610, they just got a whole bunch of new folks to try them out with the cume infusion of playoffs and World Series. It’s going to be very interesting to see the next cume report and see who between WHB and 61 Sports has more listeners for the World series. They both aired the World Series btw. If WHB loses that battle it could be the turning tide. 61 Sports is already ahead of WHB for 18-34 and 18-49 men listeners and that does not include Royals broadcasts.
radio dude:
again…I will make you look the fool you are.
according to miller…they are one of the top 5 grossing revenue stations in the
market. Do you know that?
Do you know what miller is? Probably not.
They also own other companies which you don’t take into account..
but that’s because you’re out of the loop.
and your statement about green was 1000% wrong…
if you need advice about your life (which you probably do)…about
media…sports…careers feel free to contact the always right
Harley at law4life1000@yahoo.com.
I would love to set you straighton the real story. Now back to the closet!
Harley. Harley….why do you continue to show your backside and arrogance.and ignorance? It is not miller….its Miller Kaplan Arase.
You need to read my posts if you are going to comment on them. I said their topline was good, that is the number in MK. Where WHB has their problems is bottom line And paying their huge debt service.
Lets test your knowledge. What were the 97.3 s two formats and call letters under Union Broadcasting ownership? What is that station today?
You can easily find this information if you do the necessary research. Happy googling for answers.
DONT’ NEED TO GOOGLE…YOU’RE SO FAR OUT OF THE
RADO WORLD THAT YOU GOT HIT WITH A HOT
COMB THAT NUMBED YOUR MIND.
debt service? every station has it that was sold in the last
10 years.
wilks…debt service til they sold.
cumulus: hugedebt service.
but you don’t understand that debt service is a
two sided blade…adding huge tax breaks to a company
and reducing debt service at the same time.
Iwould not expect you to understand that since you
have no knowledge of radio of it’s inner workings.
being a gopher for so many years makes you another
little patter on the whole realm of business.
you’re shown us your total lack of knowledge on the
business side of radio…you never mentioned miller Kaplan
(I used the short wording) but as stupid as you appear along
with your aging friend hearne tryingto use obsolete numbers
to make yourselves look like experts….how dumb can 2
people be.
You backing up hearne 6 plus numbers because you never
undestoood business..and were a freaking idiot….
you never really explaining to hernia that numbers for
6 years and older were absolutely pitiful to use. Radio dude..
how oftere did you use 6 plus numbers to make a sale?
I know if you used those number they’d laugh you out of the
room and threw your power point out with you in the dump
because you are the only remaining dinosaur who defends
the use of this type of number system.
When you get into the current century and get with the
new technology that you left behind when you went on the
road selling elixir and bullshit…come back to Harley.
If you really are a radio dude..you one stupid fool.
According to all the emails I’ve received you’ve looked like
a complete fool.
maybe we take you and hearne ….add in another fool on the
hill and call you the three stooges.
Now I know what to expect from you and hearne…2
losers with old style business acumen and outdated
ways of doing business.
You’d be fine if you were inbusiness in the 60’s….but
today you’re just another “old hat”.
Get your stats right….please stop making a fool of yourself.
one email said “I’d be surprised if radio dude ever saw
a rating book. Sound like he used to do the old call
and question surveys before they had “real” authenticated
ways of providing ratings. Sounds like the “dude” is
as old as the Marconi my dad has on his mantle at home”
way to go dude and hearne…another miss.
haven’t you learned not to doubt Harley.
go google yourself…it’ll come out beter than trying to
make people think you knowv what you’re talking about.
Your memory is gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Harley
You need to go see your shrink. You are one crazy, out of your mind dude.
Harley, that you don’t get it is painfully obvious.
Sometimes I wonder why people – me included – waste our time trying to clear up some of the ridiculously wrong bs you put out.
The sad reality though is that sometimes you halfway know what you’re talking about.
And the fear is that readers who may recognize that, might also buy into the really dumb stuff you pretend to understand and know.
Boy, it must be something else to wake up every day, look in the mirror and realize that it is indeed still you. And then those tiny chipmunks start going crazy in your little brain wheel and crazy shit starts flying out of there in every direction imaginable.
Do even you actually believe any of it? Or does it really matter to you?
You certainly were blessed with the gift of inexplicable, zany unpredictableness