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MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015
Eighteen months after merger, ‘Arbitron’ brand lives on. The company vanished in September 2013. But for tens of
thousands of diarykeepers and PPM panelists, Arbitron lives on. Some 18 months after Nielsen closed its acquisition of
the ratings company, virtually all of its solicitations, marketing materials and correspondence with radio survey participants
continue to be branded as Arbitron. Research assistants and coaches identify themselves as being from Arbitron. Nielsen’s
consumer-facing radio ratings website remains ArbitronRatings.com, which carries
the outdated phrase: “Our only business is research and our only job is ratings.” And
though the big Arbitron sign was removed within hours from the building shortly
after the sale closed, the mailing address for materials to and from diarykeepers
remains Arbitron’s former Columbia, MD headquarters. The Arbitron logo and the
phrase “since 1949” are prominently displayed in consumer-facing materials. One
reason why the branding hasn’t changed is logistics. Nielsen uses hundreds of
different types of Arbitron-branded correspondence, from envelopes and boxed
mailers to letters, email and the printed diaries themselves. For the PPM service
alone, there are some 600 different marketing materials. Changing all of that takes time. And any change of that magnitude
needs to be tested to determine what, if any, impact it has on things like participation rates. Nielsen Audio manager of PPM
methods & analysis Kelly Dixon says the company is testing Nielsen-branded radio ratings materials and has a tentative
date to make the switchover. To a limited degree, that’s has already begun. “Arbitron is now Nielsen,” declares a notice
on the website for diarykeepers and PPM panelists, with a link to the press release about the merger. “While our name is
changing, your important role in our ratings and research and the use and protection of your information will not.”
NAB’s lobbying budget soared in 2014. There’s been no shortage of attacks on broadcasters in Washington during the
past year, something that’s reflected in how much the National Association of Broadcasters spent on lobbying in 2014.
The NAB’s lobbying budget jumped 28% to $18.44 million, according to a disclosure form, as the organization advocated
for broadcasters in Congress and at federal agencies, including the FCC. That included $4.53 million spent during the
fourth quarter alone on a wide range of issues, from potential changes to the ad tax deductibility and political advertising
regulations to ongoing reviews of media ownership rules and a potential performance royalty on radio stations. And while the
trade group doesn’t detail how the lobbying is divvied up, the looming TV incentive auctions likely ate up much of its efforts.
Meanwhile, on-air and digital streaming royalties and other issues had the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) spending $4.14 million during 2014, a 10% decrease from a year earlier. It was the second consecutive year that
the RIAA pared down its lobbying budget. And the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences spent $455,469, a 3%
decrease. The NAB didn’t go it alone, however. Several radio groups also lobbied Washington on similar issues throughout
2014. The disclosures show CBS led the way, boosting its lobbying budget 1% to $4.97 million. IHeartMedia spent $4.4
million inside the Beltway, a 9% year-to-year decline. National Religious Broadcasters spent about $22,000. Christian
broadcaster Educational Media Foundation spent roughly $20,000. The disclosure filings also reveal Nielsen showed its
global footprint as it spent about $644,000 to lobby Congress on domestic issues but also on international trade.
Chicago’s record-setting translator deal is called off. Translator history won’t be made in Chicago after all. Elroy Smith’s
Integrity Radio Communications has scrapped a proposed $4.6 million record-setting deal to buy the Englewood, IL-licensed
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W264BF at 100.7 FM. And Smith is heading to the Greenville-Spartanburg market to become operations manager of
Summit Media’s cluster. Smith calls his move to South Carolina a “new chapter” in his radio career. He previously spent
15-years running iHeartMedia’s urban stations in Chicago. His head-turning deal was announced last July and Smith never
released what he planned to do with the signal. Financing may’ve been the problem as the deal was first extended before
being called off by both companies. The translator’s existing two-watt signal covers about 636,000 potential listeners with
a 60dBu signal and a proposed five-fold power hike that would cover 1,410,000 people. But the change has run into static,
so to speak. Digity Media’s co-channel classic rock “Q Rock 100.7” WRXQ has filed an objection with the FCC arguing
the plan would “cause harmful interference to thousands of listeners” in its suburban Chicago coverage area. The FCC
hasn’t made a decision whether to green-light Calvary’s upgrade. While Smith’s translator deal didn’t set a national record,
Chicago did set a new in-market record last year when John Bridge’s Windy City Broadcasting closed on a $1 million deal
for the translator W280EM at 103.9 FM. It’s now on the air as jazz “The Groove.” But in a crowded market, it too has run
into interference complaints and plans to make changes to its facilities are in limbo at the FCC.
Nielsen integrates with jacapps as it begins rolling out a digital audio service. Nielsen begins digital audio measurement
service rollout with jacapps. Jacapps has become the latest company to embed Nielsen’s digital audio measurement software
into its own products, a move that will allow stations to get a better read on how listeners are consuming streaming audio.
Using a Nielsen-provided Software Development Kit (SDK), jacapps will install a meter into its mobile audio player. The meter
will feed listening data to Nielsen, which will crunch the numbers and report them
to any subscribing station, giving its subscribers a way to sell streaming advertising
based on Nielsen ratings. “Until today, program directors have been reluctant to
heavily promote their mobile app for fear of losing listening credit,” jacapps president
Paul Jacobs says. “Now mobile streaming data will be additive for broadcasters and
will help them showcase expanded reach.” Nielsen announced last month that Wide
Orbit would also offer a similar integration for stations using its streaming products. While a step forward, the integrations
are however a far cry from a complete set of streaming ratings from Nielsen. The ratings company is still trying to clear
a roadblock with its broadcast customers over how webcast numbers should be reported to the marketplace. In the
meantime, Nielsen EVP Matt O’Grady says integrations like the one which jacapps will offer helps stations more effectively
quantify the size and nature of their listening audience across broadcast and digital platforms. “That’s a great benefit for
their clients who will now have a fully integrated picture of the audio marketplace,” he says. It also sets Nielsen up for an
eventual squaring off with Triton Digital, whose Media Rating Council-accredited Webcast Metrics are currently the standard
for streaming audio measurement. One advantage Nielsen will likely play up is it will be able to combine streaming data
with a broadcaster’s over-the-air audience.
Wheeler backs multilingual EAS. FCC chair Tom Wheeler worries that, in a time of crisis,
emergency alert messages may get lost in translation. “We have an EAS that hasn’t been updated
since the Cold War,” he told Congress last week. So he’s throwing his support behind multilingual
EAS. “We have to fix it to represent new technology but also increased diversity,” Wheeler testified
before the House Telecommunications Subcommittee. The chairman didn’t offer any specifics
of how he’d like to see that goal achieved, but said he met with the agency’s Communications
Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) this week to discuss ways to improve
EAS. Rep. Yvette Clark (D-NY) told him multilingual alerts can’t come soon enough. “I hope you
will make that a priority because we’re facing 21st century challenges of climate change, flooding,
and terrorist attacks — it’s become more of a pressuring, current-day need,” she said. During
testimony before Congress, the FCC commissioners also weighed in on several other topics of
concern to broadcasters. With no indication of when steps to help AM owners may finally be
taken at the agency, commissioner Ajit Pai told lawmakers “the record is complete and [it has]
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unanimous support from public.” He also weighed in on the long-delayed media ownership review process. “We need to put
the ‘quad’ back in quadrennial,” Pai said, noting the last time the FCC took action on media ownership rules was in December
2007. Wheeler didn’t weigh in on the ownership rules topic. He’s previously said he expects the FCC to vote on the 2014
proceeding in mid-2016. The FCC’s testifying marathon continues this week. When it’s over, the commissioners will have
appeared before five congressional committees in eight days.
Hit-predicting tools come with caveats. Programmers have an ever-expanding toolkit to help them pick the hits. A sixmonth analysis of Billboard chart data from Coleman offers some clues about which ones are valuable popularity barometers.
The research firm found digital download sales follow a different pattern than listening behavior. A song’s listening demand
typically grows in the first eight weeks and hits a peak between nine and 20 weeks. But the majority of songs that listeners
buy most are 12 weeks old or less and only one in six songs that debut as top 10 bestsellers go on to become big hits.
Coleman found that the hits are the ones that not only debut in the top 10 but stay there for at least five weeks. “Don’t look
for songs that are top sellers today, look for songs that stay top sellers week after week,” Coleman new music research
manager Matt Bailey said on a webinar. YouTube can also provide a hit barometer — with a caveat. Songs that go viral
overnight on the service tend to disappear almost as quickly. “The real hits tend to develop slowly over several weeks,” Bailey
said. Shazam too has its pluses and minuses. For one thing, people only Shazam a song when they don’t know it or when
someone else plays it for them. And most of the most Shazamed songs are ones radio has already started playing. The best
use of Shazam is to see which new songs a station has been exposing regularly for a few weeks are sparking the greatest
interest, typically in their first five to eight weeks, Bailey said.
Colleges are using radio to attract thirty-something back-to-school students. The working stiff’s best buddy on the way
to work just may be radio. Baby Boomers employed full-time spend an average 15 hours and 25 minutes a week with radio,
according to Nielsen. Employed Gen Xers spend 13.75 hours. That’s why Saturday and Sunday are radio’s two lightest
days for listening. So it’s no surprise then that to reach the working person, several colleges are turning to radio. “That
has worked for us,” Rutgers-Camden School of Business dean Jaishankar Ganesh tells the New York Times. “Our target
audience is commuting between home and work.” The paper reports that many schools are using radio to target older
and employed prospects for part-time and virtual M.B.A. programs. Rutgers University, for instance, relies on Bloomberg
Radio. Temple University’s business school in Philadelphia has turned to CBS Radio’s “Newsradio 1060” KYW. And North
Carolina’s Elon University runs underwriting announcements on public radio outlet WUNC-FM, Charlotte (91.5). A growing
number of schools are also using streaming radio to reach an on-the-go demo where the average age is 37. “Women tend
to be a larger group for the executive M.B.A. than the regular one because of the usual at-home issues, so we try to target
them,” St. Joseph’s University spokeswoman Carolyn Steigleman tells the Times.
Broadcast ads stay on menu, as Taco Bell embraces web radio. With a growing focus
on the mobile consumer, Taco Bell says it’s planning to spend more on digital radio in 2015.
VP Juliet Corsinita tells eMarketer it is part of a strategy to follow the fast food chain’s core
Millennial customer as they move through their day. “We know that our consumers are on the
go, and digital radio helps reach them with appropriate messages,” she says. “This helps us
build frequency and recency when customers are making their meal and snacking decisions.”
While attribution can be one of the tallest hurdles for any media, Corsinita says Taco Bell’s
research has shown using audio advertising can be independently tied to selling more tacos
and chalupas. The chain’s bong audio signature became a sort of alarm clock as Taco Bell
began offering breakfast items last year. To drive awareness and customer trials, Corsinita says the media plan included
traditional broadcast radio spots, as well as ads on iHeartRadio. The audio campaign included the Mario Lopez-hosted
“Breakfast with a Rockstar” live event featuring Neon Trees. The web concert was featured on about 400 iHeartMedia
websites as well as on iHeartRadio. Corsinita tells eMarketer the cross-platform effort “exceeded our expectations in terms
of reach,” fueling 37 different Twitter trending topics with 80% of the posted messages coming from Millennials. Even as it
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spends more on digital audio, Taco Bell continues to be a big user of broadcast radio. Two weeks ago it aired 12,862 spots
on stations tracked by Media Monitors, putting it at No. 24 for the week.
Boston’s WGBH hits ratings high. CBS Radio’s “Newsradio 1030” WBZ wasn’t the only Boston spoken word station to
register its highest PPM ratings in Nielsen’s February survey. “Boston Public Radio” WGBH (89.7) jumped 2.9-3.4 for the
public radio station’s highest monthly share on record and nearly a 20% increase over February 2014. Add in Boston
University WBUR-FM and public radio captured 7.6% of all 6+ listening in Boston in February. While WBZ attributes its
historic high to listeners tuning in for coverage of Boston’s record February snowfall, WGBH credits an expanding local
newsroom, a renewed focus on its local “Morning Edition” broadcast and the “Boston Public Radio” midday show hosted by
Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. The midday program, which expanded to three hours last September, features newsmakers
like Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh. It ranked seventh in middays in February. It may have also been
helped by a soft book for Entercom’s talk WRKO (680) which saw its 6+ shares drop by 30% in February. Nielsen says
WRKO had a 1.4 share (6+) during the survey. WGBH wasn’t the only pubcaster with February ratings to write home about.
Northwest Public Radio’s KUOW-FM ranked fifth in Seattle with a 5.0. American University’s WAMU, Washington ranked
second with a 7.5. San Francisco’s KQED-FM placed sixth with a 4.0. And Colorado Public Radio’s KCFR, Denver ranked
fourth with a 5.3. According to Nielsen, public radio reaches 32 million people aged 12+ on a weekly basis. The South has
the most weekly public radio listeners, 10.1 million strong, representing 32% of the total public radio audience. Public radio
is big in the Beltway, too, with more than 30% of Washington, D.C.’s population listening to it each week.
SBS back in Nasdaq compliance. Spanish Broadcasting System no longer needs to worry about being delisted from the
Nasdaq. The company tells shareholders it has been informed by the exchange that it now complies with the minimum
requirement of $15 million in market value for publicly held shares. In December the exchange warned SBS that it had until
June 17 to regain compliance with the rule. Had it not closed at a value of $15 million or more for 10 consecutive days,
SBS could have been forced to move once again off the high-profile exchange. SBS was traded on a smaller exchange for
several months in 2013 and 2014. Spanish Broadcasting System’s stock opens today at $3.90 a share following a 3% drop
during Friday trading.
Kansas college station’s new lesson: how an FCC wrist-slap feels. Ottawa University’s modern rock KTJO-FM, Ottawa,
KS (88.9) calls itself “Rage 88.9” on-air, and raging may be what school leaders are doing over what amounts to an FCC
fine and a short leash license term for the station. The FCC determined the student-run station failed to include quarterly
issues and programs lists in its public file from 2005 to 2010. And it recreated lists from 2011 and the first half of 2012. The
station also failed to file biennial ownership reports in 2007 and 2009. And it often went silent during 2009 and 2010 without
FCC consent. And then there was KTJO-FM’s emergency alert equipment, which was outdated and not CAP-compliant.
Media Bureau chief Bill Lake says a student-operated station that’s a first-time offender does deserve some leniency. But
there will be a penalty nevertheless. KTJO-FM will get just a four-year license and pay a $12,200 penalty under a consent
decree with the station.
Inside Radio News Ticker…Consultant Ed Shane has died...Consultant and veteran programmer Ed Shane died Saturday
after a battle with colon cancer. Shane owned the Houston-based Shane Media Services since 1977 with his wife and
fellow consultant Pam Shane. He previously programmed then-rock KRBE (104.1) and “News Radio 740” KTRH in Houston
with previous programming stints in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston, among others…Spotify shops at Gap
for CMO…It’s not just radio groups adding chief marketing officers. Spotify has hired Seth Farbman, the former CMO at
Gap, to lead its marketing efforts. He left the clothing retailer in January. Farbman earlier worked in marketing for AT&T
Wireless and Verizon and spent time as television news reporter…People Moves…Summit Media hires Elroy Smith as
operations manager of its four-station cluster in Greenville-Spartanburg, SC. And Entercom’s hot AC “107.9 The Mix”
WNTR, Indianapolis announces Kari Johll and Paul Proteet as the station’s new morning hosts. Catch up with all the latest
People Moves at InsideRadio.com
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CLASSIFIEDS
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MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015
MARKET MANAGER - COLORADO
GENERAL MANAGER
Cumulus-Colorado Springs is searching for an exceptional Market
Manager to guide our 6 well positioned and impactful stations. The
successful candidate will have a history of leading high performance
sales teams, coaching good to great, and attracting sales all-stars.
Here’s your opportunity to join our growing company and become an
integral part of our stellar team in Colorado Springs by contributing
to their continued success. Not many better places to live and work
than in the beautiful landscape of Colorado.
Keokuk/Burlington IA
and Quincy, IL.
Inquiries will be held in
the strictest confidence:
[email protected]
Equal Opportunity Employer
OPERATIONS MANAGER
Digity LLC continues to grow and needs the best
Operations Managers in the country!
If you are an experienced, strategic, creative, organized brand
manager with a can-do attitude, we want to talk to you. Applicants
must be proficient in identifying new air talent, earns the respect
of high profile morning teams, is excited about social/digital/events
and develops ideas that are sellable not because he/she has to, but
because he/she understands a full integration with sales is the key to
success. The perfect candidate knows how to strategically program
for ratings for both PPM/diary markets and is a leader who is ready
to take on corporate responsibilities as well as manage a cluster of
stations.
Need a General Manager
with solid business knowledge
to grow our station cluster.
We have 3 FMs, 100kw, 50kw,
6kw and heritage full service
AM. This position requires
a community leader that
understands the importance of
radio. Great opportunity to build
your own team. Must be a
leader and trainer with
involvement in the community;
and lead by example. Good
area, great communities to live.
Experienced Sales Managers are
encouraged to apply.
Send resume and cover letter to:
[email protected]
Please place GM position in
the subject line. EOE.
Qualified candidates will have at least five years of proven success
as a programmer, preferably in a PPM market. Candidates must be
strategic and analytical but also must possess creativity and the
instinct to win. OM must be proficient with RCS Selector, Adobe
Audition, PPM Analysis Tool, Social Media platforms, Audio Vault,
PD Advantage and Media Monitors. Find a full list of qualifications
and responsibilities in our ad at insideradio.com. Send resume to:
[email protected]. EOE
GM and GSM CANDIDATES
We seek innovative, dynamic sales motivators who will thrive in high-profile markets. If you are:
- PASSIONATE about creative solution selling
- DRIVEN to continuously develop new revenue sources
- A TRANSPARENT, lead-by-example manager
… and you can inspire your team to always exceed budget, we should talk. Salem is an integrated media
company with an impressive national platform. Our local radio operations target audiences seeking
Christian and Conservative content. To qualify, you must have proven ability to find, hire and empower
great sellers. You can use your hands-on management skills to drive our growth in attractive southwest
or midwest markets. Email: [email protected] — reference this job:GM/GSM-SWMW.
Equal Opportunity Employer.
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