Remember how I used to publish the local sports talk radio ratings? I stopped because they were always the same. KNBR would cruise from a 4.0 or so during the baseball offseason to anywhere from 5.5 to 9.0 from April to October. Meanwhile, 95.7 The Game’s overall rating (all times of day, all ages, both genders) would hover between 1.0 and 1.9.
Longtime readers know the story from way back, when Jason Barrett, 95.7 The Game’s former Program Director, invited me out for lunch. The lunch was more of a two-hour lecture about the ratings process, how sports talk stations only care about one demographic for advertising purposes: men age 25-54. However, those ratings aren’t seen by non-radio folks.
Is there any way you can send those demo numbers to me, Jason?
No way, they’re secret. We aren’t allowed to give those out. Nielsen will lock us up and throw away the key. But you should stop posting the ratings that make us look bad. Seriously, I’m dyin’ here.
(Disclaimer: This conversation probably went a little differently at Zero Zero after we shared our Margherita pizza. But that’s pretty close to how it went down.)
It’s not clear what Barrett is doing these days, other than blogging. And he posted something fairly interesting yesterday: radio ratings from around the country. And not just any ratings, but the 25-54 male demo numbers that supposedly aren’t available to the general public (hat-tip goes to @beandoggerel for pointing this out).
Barrett went through the December ratings for nine different metro regions, but we’ll focus on San Francisco.
Overall 6+ Mon-Sun (ratings available to the public)
KNBR 680: 3.9
95.7 The Game: 1.9
Overall (Men 25-54)
KNBR 680: 4.8
95.7 The Game: 3.8
Morning (Men 25-54)
Murph & Mac: 6.1
Chad, Joe & Lo: 3.9
Mid-Morning (Men 25-54)
Gary & Larry: 3.5
Haberman & Middlekauff: 3.0
Noon-to-3 (Men 25-54)
Fitz & Brooks: 3.1
Papa & Lund: 4.2
Afternoon Drive (Men 25-54)
Mr. T & Ratto: 5.3
Damon Bruce: 3.0
Barrett didn’t include ratings figures for the evening shows.
If the numbers he posted are correct, 95.7 The Game is doing pretty well from 10 am until 3 pm, while KNBR has a significant edge during heavy commute hours. However, KNBR might not worry at all about any of these numbers, seeing as the Giants were big players in free agency and their ratings should spike across the board in April.
Several in the industry are wondering when 95.7’s current PD, Don Kollins, is going to make a move. Perhaps he’s hesitant to kill the station’s momentum if he’s seeing his current lineup making inroads, or he’s waiting until 2016 to make changes. I probably won’t post anything else on the “Radio Wars” unless something newsworthy occurs … or Barrett continues to post the ratings we weren’t allowed to see until now.
