Let’s take a few to sift through some tea leaves of the December radio ratings…
Up top at Numero Uno we have – big surprise – classic rocker KCFX The Fox.
Not a big surprise since Baby Boom, Gen X (and some Millenials) have a penchant for classic rock music. My wife’s 16 year-old son, for example, is an AC/DC fan.
Add to that the Kansas City Chiefs broadcasts and it’s easy to see how more than a half million locals might sample the station.
Country music station KFKF FM took second place, in part because for the fourth year in a row it played Christmas Music. But not until after the Thanksgiving holiday had passed, so the Ho, Ho, Ho ratings were only in play for half of the ratings period.
We all know though that country in king.
Because with four stations in the market playing Yee Haw muzak, country accounts for nearly 18 percent of the listening audience, right up there with Rock (and without a helping hand from the Chiefs).
Entercom’s adult contemporary powerhouse The Point (99.7 FM) continues to impress.
With all that holiday music flooding the airwaves – KFKF was joined by oldies station KCMO FM – The Point slipped a bit but still posted a cume of 459,300 listeners.
Speaking of the area’s oldest and most listened to oldies station, KCMO leapt from a 3.9 share to a 4.8 share, one might venture, on the strength of just a handful of days of Xmas muzak.
That’s still far below KFKF’s numbers, but they narrowed the gap some.
And speaking of country music and Christmas, WDAF FM had a huge one and one-half share point spike. Was it from country listeners wanting to dodge the Christmas music bullet?
We won’t be able to tell until February, but it will be interesting to see and also to find out what happens to KMBZ after it splits into two separate stations on Monday.
With a 4.8 share and 231,800 listeners, KMBZ was in 8th place but that’s almost certain to drop when Entercom divides its news/talk baby in half.
The $64 million question: How far will it fall?
One thing appears almost certain, and that’s that Entercom will be making beau coup bank by doubling the ad inventory by having two stations to sell instead of one.
One oddity: that religious station KJNW fell from a 4.0 share to 1.9…during the holiest time of the year, no less.
Which brings us to the bottom of this month’s ratings barrel…
That’s where KCPT Channel 19‘s new adult alternative baby The Bridge can be found, still limping along with a lowly 0.3 share and a cume of 31,200 listeners.
With luck, Paul Wilson sent them a big, fat holiday check to keep the home fires burning.
Radio. I have always been only a car listener. I am a 48 yr old male and used lo listen to 980 exclusively… then in 1999… listened to 980 and 810 exclusively… 980 for morning with Noel and Ellen and then KK in the PM… then some 980. To me… KK still delivers a good pulse on local sports… but doesn’t seem to dig into the dirt as much as he used to. I love news and current events but the local stations seem to me mundane and predictable on current local news.
When I bought a new car 3 years ago I was equipped with satellite. That changed everything. Now I listen to whatever I want on Sirius/XM and switch to terrestrial for 810 if I have time for KK in the afternoon. I happily pay my satellite bill.
I couple that with twitter for news. It works…I am not sure how traditional local radio will survive in the long run. I am sure they still get some solid ads… but seems like a dying medium to me.
Interesting take, Rainbow…
Not dissimilar to my own, except Noel and Ellen was too saccharine and corny for my taste. There were (and continue to be) so many other options.
Satellite is my primary choice, too.
Howard Stern, CNN, BBC, the comedy channels (CanCom is excellent and Comedy Central is on there now as well). Once in a great while I’ll check out some of the music channels but putting up with the relentless commercials and goofball DJs (Church of Lazlo, anyone?) gets old fast.
I’m not that much for local talk show hosts chewing the fat about local and national news either. And I’m pretty easily entertained!
What is KK?
Kevin Kietzman…
Spoken like a true sports agnostic!
No, I love sports just don’t like little ladies’ aid sportscasters like Keitzman.
Lady’s aid?
What you did there….I see it.
I really do not think that the 980/98.1 split is going to go well. They are taking all the conservative hosts and putting them on AM, then all the local yuk yuk’s on FM. They work well together but honestly nothing makes me turn the dial faster than hearing the first dumb local caller, or the hosts talking about an issue for 4 hours that really only 10 people care about. Radio is the older generations entertainment, I rarely listen to local radio and mostly have Pandora, itunes going. I do like 810 in the mornings but it is like news radio…..one horrible caller (Which is 99.999999% of all radio callers) will make me switch back to whatever I just bought on iTunes fast.
Therein lies the problem, Jess…
There’s something lame about listening to a bunch of local nimrods skirmish with B local celebrities that just isn’t very interesting to me. More so on the news talk stations than in sports.
At least in sports the callers seem more informed and the hosts have the opportunity to set the record straight to some extent.
Although even that has gotten old for me.
At least online you can edit your intake and seek out the best of the best.
Exactly, People arguing about things that most people do not care about does not make for great radio.
Jess, I remember in the days and weeks following 9/11 when Tom Becka was hosting the middays on 980 KMBZ.
That was a period of time when many of us were glued to hard news stations like CNN following each and every fragment of news as it became available.
Not having satellite back then – and doing quite a bit of driving around town – I listened as much as I could stand to Becka’s show. And let me say, I didn’t have a hard time with Tom’s stuttering style. I gave him a hard time, but I liked him.
What I could not stand though was listening to him bantering with the goofy, clueless – just not at all interesting caller – who phoned in vent their two cents worth. It was a total waste of time, given how grave the situation in this country and the news was.
Do I care what Dana and Parks have to say? Eh, not much to be truthful. I like Dana Wright, but I’d far rather meet her for drinks every once in a while than listen to her for four hours a day, five days a week.
As for Parks, I’d far rather catch his Kiss cover band live than listen to him pretend he knows what’s going on.
And that doesn’t even begin to cover the quality of the local callers – I’ve got a life, for crying out loud.
So we’ll see how things shake out, especially on FM.
Carla, Rush and the boys will probably be OK and most of their shows air live so locals can take their best shot at calling in.
Honestly, who could listen to any of the Kansas City stations? Virtually all of them, minus talk radio, have a handful of tracks they constantly put on heavy rotation. Hell, on 101 KCFX, it’s Boston>Tom Petty>Steve Miller>repeat. They are like the Mix 93.3 of classic rock; the most horrible retro station yet. Even Springfield has a classic rock station called The Cave that plays deep cuts. But with this dying medium, along with print, they’re probably long gone since I’ve been there.
I should stop being a cheapskate and subscribe to XM. Granted, all their stations have a dozen or so songs played on heavy rotation each month, it’s a much better alternative to this repeat terrestrial land known as KC. At least they introduce you to some undiscovered music once in awhile. But I’d rather add some tracks from Rhapsody onto my MP3 player.
and then there’s a whole bunch of us radio geeks doing our own thing.
on the internet. while it lasts….
http://www.planetradio.us just celebrated our fifth year anniversary.
Everything from The Carpenters to Zappa.
Jim Croce to Sabbath, complete classic rock. and great old top 40 tunes, too.
Internet radio has it’s challenges getting discovered, however once you’re found, like I stumbled across( www. martini in the morning.com)is a wonderful collection of rat pack, Sinatra, Martin, etc…. standards music.
Interesting…
I just haven’t taken thew time to explore
I can’t think of another city the size of Kansas City that has so many totally worthless local radio stations. I listen to the NPR station out of Lawrence when I’m helping my friend with his KC Star paper route during the overnight hours because it plays jazz that is quite tolerable as a rule, and on the evenings when I don’t have to go to bed early in order to help my friend with the papers, I listen to WBBM out of Chicago. All news. No nonsense. But I have to get below Fort Scott to be able to pick up my favorite all-around station, KDMO out of Carthage, Mo. It features music from the ’40s through the ’70s with national news once an hour and Missouri news once an hour. “Swap Shop” twice a day is the only negative.
Spotify has pretty much eliminated my need for music on radio. My car is Bluetooth enabled and I have the Spotify app on my smartphone. So I get in the car, turn on the radio, hit the auxilary button and voila! My customized playlists blast away in my car, which I can control with my phone. It’s a beautiful thing. And having Google Fiber with Netflix is totally changing how I watch television outside of sports. If you haven’t checked out Netflix’s new original series’, you’re missing out. The way we consume tv and music content is ever changing, and the old gaurd of over the air radio, and cable companies are going to die a slow death.
Take a number, Guy, Spotify rocks!
Which Netflix series? Watched Marco Polo and enjoyed it (although it took some hear from the Hollywood Reporter critic)
The wife and I are in the middle of Marco Polo right now, but we’re also big fans of Orange is the New Black, and especially House of Cards. HoC is simply spectacular! We’ve also watched all three seasons of “Borgia” which is really pretty filthy considering it’s about Pope Alexander VI back in the 1490’s. Tons of great stuff on Netflix…..almost too much to watch.
I’m with you…Liked HOC and Orange first seasons. Having a hard time getting back in cuz I’ve been watching so many other shows like Mi5 and Luther – even Fleming.
Will check out Borgia, now that you’ve assured me how filthy it is!
Borgia paints the college of Cardinals and Pope Alexander (Rodrigo Borgia) pretty much as hypocritical immoral degenerates. Fornication, drug use, drinking, rape, murder…this series has it all. Much better than Showtime’s version, called “The Borgias”