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DIFFERENT FREQUENCY

Talk Radio Takes A Beat-ing

Latest ratings show music formats tops in Hartford


By Sean O’Leary

Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer

11/12/07

Listeners in the Hartford region are increasingly asking their radios to sing to them, not talk to them.

Contributed photo

Sean Ross

Two local radio stations — one that plays country and the other that plays rock ‘n’ roll — had more listeners tune in when Arbitron, a media research company, measured local audience shares this past summer. However, nearly 19 percent fewer listeners wanted to hear about the news.

It was not a surprise that Lite 100.5 WRCH-FM held on to its top spot in the local radio market, continuing its stranglehold on the region’s audience.

The latest ratings also were good news for Country 92.5 WWYZ-FM, with its audience share jump of 30 percent, and The Rock 106.9 WCCC-FM, which saw a 51 percent audience share gain. As a result, WCCC experienced the most significant change in its ratings, leaping to fourth place from ninth one year ago.

 

Live, Local and Rock ‘n’ Roll

But the ratings revealed that NewsTalk 1080 WTIC-AM fell a notch, from second place to third because 19 percent fewer listeners tuned in.

Station officials at WCCC attribute its gain to the station’s independence and dedication to live, local content.

“We pride ourselves on being live and local, and it has always been our goal,” said Michael Picozzi, the station’s program director. “We’re the only station in Connecticut that has a live person in the studio 24/7. I really think that it has contributed to our rise and the fact that we’re non-corporate. We’re from the old school I guess.”

WRCH and WTIC-AM are owned by CBS Radio, which operates 144 radio stations.

“I really believe people have caught on that this is a fun place to be, and they’ve rewarded us by listening more,” Picozzi said. “We’re out and about doing local charity events as much as we can, and we have that local presence.”

Certainly, the increased ratings are a source of pride for Picozzi, but the reaction to the ratings was much different with WTIC-AM’s operations manager Steve Salhany.

 

Event Driven

In essence, Salhany said he rarely looks at the ratings by period and that the ratings for his station are driven more by events than listener habits.

“We’re an information station,” he said. “When things are going on, like the weather, sports or elections, people are going to tune in. When it’s the summer, there’s a little less going on. That’s not an excuse; that’s just what happens.”

“If you look at the fall, we have Red Sox playoff games, UConn football has been doing really well and the UConn basketball games will be starting up again,” Salany said. “It is also election time, and that always seems to help.”

The changes, both good and bad, for the stations just below the top spot came as no surprise to Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming for Edison Media Research.

“When you look at the country station doing well, it has been a really good time for the format,” he said. “Ever since Big & Rich came along, not to mention Carrie Underwood and a host of others, there has been an upswing for country stations. If anything, 92.5 had been performing below the level of other stations until now.”

Ross agreed with Salhany’s assertion that talk radio stations are similar to cable news channels in that their ratings are a direct result of current events.

“Those types of stations are always one major news event from a rebound,” he said. “Summer is also a time where you have more teenagers listening, and they probably aren’t listening to the news station.”

WTIC wasn’t the only news talk station to take a hit in recent months. Ross pointed out that other news talk stations in the Northeast, including Boston and Philadelphia, saw their audience share fall this past summer.

Similarly, the power of rock radio had rebounded in the past year and the reason could be a reaction to the number of hip-hop stations.

“It’s not a sign that hiphop isn’t doing well, but there were a lot of hip-hop stations that popped up a few years ago and now Clear Channel, for example, is starting to turn on more rock stations,” Ross said.

 

Satellite Competiton

That is evident in Connecticut as Power 104.1 WPHH-FM recently changed its format from hiphop to rock, the format it had operated with as Radio104 for years.

“I can’t imagine they didn’t look at WCCC’s numbers when making that decision,” Ross said.

The impact of satellite radio, specifically Sirius and XM radio, has not been as great as industry insiders had predicted, but it has fragmented the audience.

Locally, WCCC was poised to take the biggest satellite hit because it lost its morning show personality, nationally-syndicated Howard Stern, to Sirius.

Instead of a body blow, the change has not cost WCCC as much of the audience as expected, in part because the station replaced Stern with locally well-known radio host Sebastian as opposed to continuing with syndication.

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