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FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2015
No end in sight for urban ratings roll. To say the urban format is on a ratings roll would be an understatement. For a second consecutive month, the format shattered its PPM record in May. Urban’s latest share of audiences aged 6+ (3.6), 18-34 (6.6) and 25-54 (4.1) were all new records under PPM measurement. “Simply put, the last year-and-a-half has been the best stretch we’ve seen yet for urban contemporary,” Nielsen says its monthly format trends report. Programmers say it’s more than just mega-hits from core acts like from Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar and Trey Songz driving the growth. “Urban programmers have continued to learn how to effectively program their station to deliver compelling content to their station’s P1 consumers,” consultant Tony Gray says. Stronger contesting and marketing are helping help drive more listening occasions. Gray also points to a number of urban station operators that have added the Telos Voltair audio processor to their audio chain, thereby increasing the likelihood of their station’s encoded signals being detected by Nielsen ratings meters. While it’s tough to peg the growth to any one factor, urban’s ratings trajectory is undisputable. Cox Media Group’s “99 Jamz” WEDR, Miami charged 3.7-4.4-5.0 in May, despite the presence of a well-oiled competitor. Radio One’s “92-Q” WERQ, ranked second in Baltimore with a 7.2, up from a 5.4 in January. In St. Louis, Radio One’s “Hot 104” WHHL has trended 3.8-5.4 during the past year. New competitors, meanwhile, are expanding the format’s market share. The February arrival of a second urban station in Los Angeles has grown the format’s 6+ share by more than 50% since January.
No summertime blues for classic hits. When it comes to ratings growth, the summer of 2014 belonged to classic hits. Could the Greatest Hits format scale the ratings chart again this summer? Based on Nielsen’s May survey results, it’s off to a strong start. Across PPM markets, classic hits jumped 5.0-5.3 in all listeners aged 6+ from April to May. The format strengthened its stature in the 25-54 Money Demo, trending 4.1-4.5. Even 18-34 year-old listening is up 3.2-3.4. “All of these results are on par with or slightly ahead of where the format sat a year ago, putting classic hits squarely into the race this summer,” Nielsen says in its monthly ratings trends report. Last year the format quietly grew its total audience share by 10% during the summer months. CHR, meanwhile, cooled a bit in May, dipping 8.5-8.4 in 6+, 12.8-12.6 among 18-34 year-olds and 9.4-9.1 with 25-54s. But it’s considerably above its May levels for the past two years in all three demos. And Nielsen says the format is “setting a faster pace this year than any of the last four.”
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Country faces ratings headwinds Borrowing a phrase from the finance community, country radio faces “strong headwinds” heading into the summer months. No, it’s not the dust-up over female artists, but comparisons to last summer’s scorching ratings growth that are the issue. Sure, the format has made a turnaround in recent months, reversing a nine-month ratings slide among Millennials. But it still lags last year’s record-setting growth. May marked country’s third consecutive growth across the three broad demos Nielsen tracks in its monthly format trend reports. It returned to positive growth among Millennials in March and has been increasing its share of the demo ever since, trending 8.5-9.0-9.3. In fact, its most dramatic growth in May was among 18-34 year-olds. Country’s on the upswing with other demos, too. “Country’s 8.0 share among all listeners 6+ is the first time the format has been back above an 8-share since October 2014,” Nielsen says in the report. Its 25-54 audience grew 7.4-7.6-7.8. Country was No. 1 in total audience in eight of the 48 PPM markets in May: Baltimore (iHeartMedia’s WPOC), Indianapolis (Emmis’s “Hank FM” WLHK), Milwaukee (iHeartMedia’s WMIL-FM), Providence (Hall Communications’ WCTK), Raleigh (Curtis Media Group’s WQDR-FM ) and Columbus, OH (iHeartMedia’s WCOL-FM ). It commanded the top two positions in Charlotte (iHeartMedia’s WKKT, followed by Beasley Media Group’s WSOC-FM ) and San Antonio (Cox Media Group’s KCYY, followed by iHeartMedia’s KAJA). Country ranked second in a total of seven markets and placed third in five.
More on-demand, less live streaming at NPR. NPR’s online listeners are increasingly choosing what they listen to on demand, rather than going with scheduled programming. On public radio stations, total live streaming hours dropped 6% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to data from NPR Digital Services, which monitors 239 public radio streams. But on-demand listening, which includes podcasts and recorded segments that aired on NPR stations, is on the upswing. It now accounts for one-third of all digital listening hours for station content, NPR said. In April, NPR listeners downloaded about 2 million hours of on-demand audio content, according to an NPR study of 161 member stations. On average, NPR says users download 40 minutes of audio each month. The shift reflects a larger consumer trend in media, with users opting to control their consumption by choosing on-demand over scheduled entertainment. Radio stations with spoken-word content, like news, talk and sports, are well-positioned to grow their on-demand offerings. “People want to control the media they are consuming. They are able to in many other ways of their lives. Of course they’re going to want this when listening to audio as well,” Steve Mulder, NPR’s senior director of audience insights, told Nieman Labs. INPR’s digital portfolio also includes its NPR One app, which allows users to customize local and national content. As of April, NPR One counted about 150,000 users, with 75,000 returning users each month. While the app’s popularity is growing, it still trails NPR’s other digital options, including on-demand, station streaming and iTunes, in usage.
New NPR chief pushing for better content, promotion. The popularity of NPR’s podcasts is one of the many things that new NPR president & CEO Jarl Mohn wants his stations to spotlight. Public broadcasters can learn a few things from their commercial counterparts by establishing personalities and buzz, Mohn told the Associated Press. He’s challenging stations to increase promotions and draw attention to NPR’s unique offerings, including podcasts like WBEZ, Chicago’s “Serial,” and the network’s flagship shows “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He also wants stations to stage more live events, including ticketed shows with popular local personalities. “It’s basics,” Mohn told the AP. “It’s blocking and tackling that a lot of people may have forgotten just because year after year after year, things have drifted.” After years of recent tumult, NPR is set to break even in 2015 for the first time with its $190 million budget, Mohn said. The broadcaster has suffered annual deficits Jarl Mohn between $4 million and $6 million per year recently, as well as lost funding, resulting in layoffs and other cuts. NPR has also been rocked by executive turnover, with Mohr now the fifth acting or permanent CEO in six years. Mohr is a radio and TV veteran, a former DJ and founder of E! Entertainment Television, and spent 12 years on the board of Southern California Public Radio. NPR needs to grow its audience and funding, he told the AP. NPR’s audience is strong, with 28 million to 30 million, but time spent listening is down. Mohr says compelling content will drive listening and plans call for expanding international reporting, science news and other areas to strengthen the network’s appeal.
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O’Rielly lambastes FCC for excessive enforcement penalties. Calling the state of FCC enforcement “dangerously misguided,” FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly lambasted the agency for extracting excessive settlement amounts from companies in what he described as a display of self-aggrandizing fanfare. “The Commission seems more intent on obtaining newspaper headlines trumpeting accusations and eye-popping fines,” he said in a speech before the Federal Communications Bar Association. O’Rielly relayed conversations he’s had with a couple of parties potentially subject to enforcement actions. In trying to first discuss their issues with the Enforcement Bureau, O’Rielly says they were told any potential settlement would generate a penalty “in the multiple-hundreds of millions or billions and require an admission of guilt. “In the few settlements that have occurred, parties have told me that settling for unfair terms was just a better option than years of prosecution and having their Michael O’Rielly company name dragged through the mud,” O’Rielly said. The Republican commissioner accused the Enforcement Bureau of ratcheting up proposed penalties “beyond the original intent of the statute,” at times basing them, not on the actual violation, but a number that “seems to be picked out of a hat, loosely based on a company’s revenues.” Rather than gauging success on compliance with the Commission’s rules, O’Rielly said it’s now valued on how much can be extracted from fines and penalties. O’Rielly didn’t mention FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Travis LeBlanc by name but the former prosecutor has made it clear that he means business when it comes to enforcing agency rules, especially ones that involve public safety. Under his direction, the Bureau recently extracted $1.12 million from Viacom and $1 million from iHeartMedia in civil penalties for EAS violations.
Data partnership links iHeart with Unified. With 858 radio stations and a suite of digital platforms, iHeartMedia produces a galaxy of data. Now it’s partnered with marketing tech company Unified to slice and dice the info to deliver richer insights to advertisers. iHeart has also made an investment in the data management start-up. The partnership with Unified comes as iHeart plans to offer programmatic ad sales to its clients in a partnership with tech company Jelli. The media company says that combining its audience data with Unified’s analytics technology will bring the power of attribution, audience identification, and impact analysis typically associated with digital marketing to the scale of broadcast media. Unified and iHeart plan to collaborate on assorted data products designed to help advertisers build more effective campaigns, reach their target audiences and monitor results. Among the products on the drawing table are new audience segments generated from meshing data from iHeart, its clients and other consumer behavior data sources. The companies say they will develop tools to gauge a campaign’s effectiveness and its impact on social media and create ad products that would reach a target audience across all iHeart platforms. In a statement, iHeartMedia chairman & CEO Bob Pittman said the partnership would allow his company “to leverage big data in new ways that make our portfolio of products, technology platforms, content and personalities the most powerful marketing vehicles available today.” There’s no shortage of audience data to pull from. Last week iHeart announced it had surpassed 70 million registered users of its streaming audio service. The company says it has 87 million monthly digital uniques, 75 million social media users and stages 20,000 annual events.
Internet advertising jumps 16% in first quarter. U.S. internet ad revenues topped $13.3 billion in the first quarter, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported on Thursday, a new industry high and a 16% increase from the first quarter one year ago, which was also record setting. (Given that the internet is still in a growth mode, almost all web-related figures are, in some way, unprecedented.) “Digital screens are an indisputable part of consumers’ lives,” said Randall Rothenberg, the IAB’s president and CEO. Added David Silverman, a partner at PwC US whose New Media Group independently prepares the report for the IAB, “The rise in year-over-year figures is the direct result of brand and media agencies’ increasing commitment to digital marketing.” But the first quarter data are just top-line numbers; the new report doesn’t break down revenue by various branches of the internet, so spotting more granular trends is not what this report is intended for. That more detailed tally is done twice a year by PwC and includes online ad revenues from websites, commercial online services, free e-mail providers and all other companies selling online advertising. For full-year 2014, the IAB has previously reported revenue was $49.5 billion, up 15.6% over the year before. The big gainer, not surprisingly, was mobile advertising, which
[email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 3 NEWS insideradio.com FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2015 grabbed $12.5 billion, up 76%; video commercials were worth $3.3 billion, up 17%, and search, at $19 billion, up 3%. Banner advertising had revenues of $8 billion, up just 1%. But if there’s any doubt who is the perennial belle of the internet ball, it’s mobile. From 2010-2014, mobile ad spending has grown at a compound annual rate of 110%.
More funding and subscribers for Spotify. That’s 10 million more subscribers than it had in May 2014, and 35 million more active users. While it took Spotify five and a half years to corral its first 10 million subscribers, it took only a year to add another 10 million. Speaking at last week’s Hivio conference in Los Angeles, Spotify VP of North American advertising Brian Benedik said its active users average 2.5 hours a day with the streaming service. All well and good – really well and good, actually – but the nascent Apple Music has a cushion of something like 850 million worldwide iTunes users that can easily sign up for its relaunched service. But nothing Apple Music is doing is something Spotify couldn’t, which was generally the critical vibe after Apple’s big announcement on Monday. “So while it’s easy to take the position that Apple Music may end up the eventual winner in the Streaming Wars, the fact of the matter is that Spotify still has a lot of fight left, which makes the outcome far from inevitable,” Music biz expert Bob Owsinski says on Forbes.com. At the same time, probably not at all coincidentally, Spotify announced the completion of another round of funding for $526 million with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund among the investors. That brings Spotify’s valuation to around $8.53 billion, more than double Pandora’s valuation of about $3.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Strassell joins Hubbard as SVP of programming. Veteran CBS Radio and iHeartMedia group programmer Greg Strassell has joined Hubbard Radio as SVP of programming. The company says Strassell will work with current programming SVP Greg Solk to lead the programming, brand and content strategies for its 28 radio stations in its seven largest markets. Strassell most recently was SVP of strategic services, national programming platforms for iHeartRadio, a position he left last December. Before that he spent ten years as SVP of programming for CBS Radio, based in Boston. He’ll relocate to Hubbard headquarters in Minneapolis/Saint Paul for the new gig. In a statement, Hubbard president & COO Drew Horowitz said the Strassell-Solk combo “gives us one of the most dynamic programming duos in the industry” and that Strassell’s arrival will strengthen the company for its multi-platform future. Greg Strassell Gainesville’s sports WRUF-AM expands to FM. Sports “ESPN 850” WRUF-AM, Gainesville-Ocala, FL will add an FM translator within the next three to four months at 95.3, putting the “Voice Of the Gators” on the FM band for the first time. The University of Florida-owned station will continue to combine ESPN programming with local sports news and talk produced by professional and student broadcasters. The school has also filed with the FCC to buy a construction permit for the Williston- licensed translator W274BT at 92.1 from Edgewater Broadcasting. Yesterday it announced plans to expand distribution of its classical/arts format, which currently airs on the HD2 channel of news/talk WUFT-FM (89.1) and streams online, to the 92.1 frequency. UF owns a total of four Florida stations, including country WRUF-FM, Gainesville-Ocala (103.7). Both WRUF-AM and WRUF-FM are operated commercially.
Murdoch Stepping Down at Fox. Rupert Murduch, the 84-year-old chief executive and controlling shareholder of 21st Century Fox, is preparing to step down as CEO and hand leadership of the Fox media empire to his son James, according to published reports. The resignation is part of a larger management shakeup at the parent company of Fox News Radio, Fox Sports Radio and several syndicated talk radio shows. Rupert Murdoch will continue to be the executive chairman of Fox, according to CNBC, and his son Lachlan would become an executive co-chairman of the company. Chief operating officer Chase Carey is also expected to step down and become an advisor to the company. Although James Murdoch would take over the day-to-day management of Fox, CNBC says he’ll work closely with his brother Lachlan and his father in what’s being described as a “partnership.” — Get more news, people moves and insider extras @ www.insideradio.com. —
[email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 4 CLASSIFIEDS insideradio.com FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2015 SENIOR VP OF SALES, SALES OPPORTUNITIES - FLORIDA ALBANY NY Live, play and work where millions PAY to visit every year -- the sunshine state of Florida. Are you a top performing sales iHeartMedia is seeking a professional looking to join a growing media company that offers dynamic sales and business career progression and is attracting some of the best talent in the development leader on the business? Did you make a commitment to yourself that you wouldn’t East Coast to take media and spend another Winter shoveling snow? Or, do you desire to be in a entertainment markets to the market where the economy is thriving? Cumulus Media is currently next level. searching for recognized performers to drive sales in our Florida
markets…Melbourne, Fort Walton Beach/Destin, Tallahassee The SVP Sales is responsible for and Pensacola. As a sales person for Cumulus, we provide our revenue growth for iHeartMedia teams with a great product to sell, superior training, and a “best in broadcast, digital, and live class” sales system that supports business development and rewards entertainment products. The performance. Please submit resume to: ideal candidate will drive and [email protected] manage the short and long All submissions will be kept term strategy, new business in the strictest confidence. development and account Equal Opportunity Employer. service efforts via aggressive account development strategies and capabilities. MARKET MANAGER DESI 1250 is coming to Seattle! The successful candidate will focus on short and long term Universal Media Access seeks a manager to run operations and sell strategy, communicating and marketing solutions. Candidates should have a minimum three years executing the vision, forecasting broadcast experience, three years sales experience and a strong trends, capitalizing on new knowledge of the local community. and future opportunities, new business and revenue growth Resumes in confidence to: including leading and developing [email protected] a strong sales and sales EOE management team. LOCAL RADIO SALES $100,000 PLUS Are you happy with the money and commissions you are making so far this year? If not, let me introduce to you to Direct Media Power, Inc. (DMP). DMP partners with every major national radio network and 1000s of local radio stations nationwide to liquidate millions of dollars of their unsold commercial radio airtime. And we are currently looking for aggressive, local area Account Executives who want to work a proven inside sales system from our suburban Qualified candidates, Chicago location and make $100,000 plus. We are, however, NOT CLICK HERE to apply. looking for sales people who are content with making $60K/year. iHeartMedia is an Equal With DMP you have the potential to earn a high income within 30- Opportunity Employer. 60 days of employment, with no territory boundaries (you will be selling to national clients) and no caps on commissions. In addition, you will work for a growing and entrepreneurial company. This is a radio salespersons dream job! We are looking to add 4-6 salespeople to our growing team in June.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity. For immediate consideration, please email your cover letter and resume to: [email protected], or, just give her a call: 630-256-8600 ext 7031. EOE
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