[Ratings] August 18 - September 14

[CAwasinNJ]

Top 'o the heap again this month was KNRS, setting what I'm told is another station record.

KSOP-FM has mostly been trending downward all year and that continued this month. Meanwhile, The Eagle has been mostly trending up all year, though it's still way behind KSOP and The Bull.

After showing some impressive gains in the spring and early summer, Bob has given most of it back over the past couple of months.

Is The Beat showing some signs of improvement? They posted the best numbers on that frequency since June of last year. Might the tweak be starting to catch on?

And the surprise of the month - Business 99.1 actually showed in the ratings. Guess the crazy economy got a few more people listening.

[henry]

Impressive 6+ figure for KNRS, though I'd love to know the ratings breakdown. For my peers, the shows on KNRS are pure poison for an audience under 40. All I can figure is they are REALLY serving the "old" (50+) crowd VERY well at the moment.

I'm not in SLC. Are Broadway spending money on outdoor ads for The Beat?

[Terry]

Oct 13, 2022 13:49:36 GMT -6 henry said:

 For my peers, the shows on KNRS are pure poison for an audience under 40. All I can figure is they are REALLY serving the "old" (50+) crowd VERY well at the moment.

Au contraire, there are plenty of intelligent, educated, informed people under 40. Admittedly many younger people sometimes take years of life experience and contemplation to clearly see the forces affecting their lives.

This next election will be entertaining. I’m sure that’s part of why conservative media has recently gained more attention. 

“May you live in interesting times”. Oh, yeah.

[CAwasinNJ]

Let's keep politics out of this discussion. If you want to hash that out the General Talk board is down the hall.

The anecdotal information I've heard for many years is that opinion talk skews heavily older. That wouldn't mean that there aren't younger listeners. I'm sure you can find hip-hop listeners who are in their 70's, just not that many. I took a quick look to see if I could find reliable information about the demos but came up empty. If anyone can find some I'm sure a lot of us would be interested in seeing it.

[henry]

It's not politics, Terry. (Well, actually it TOTALLY is -- but that's another discussion)...

It's overindulgence by talk radio to superserve its audience at the expense of reaching out to younger demos. That's why the entire OTA talk industry is toast. Just look at the ages of the KNRS lineup:

Glenn Beck -- Age 58
Sean Hannity -- Age 60
Rod's career pegs him about the same age

(To iHM's credit, the Clay and Buck show do have a couple of young 40s guys. That helps. But had Limbaugh not smoked, they would still have ANOTHER sixty-something in that timeslot.

I'm sorry, but talk radio has a BAD business plan for once the boomers age out. Talk is doing amazing -- as PODCASTS. And most are not political. It turns out people my age are sick and tired of the Limbaugh-era (and, briefly, Air America) hyperpartisan content and actually want to talk about the million other things that exist in this world besides political party propaganda barely masquerading as "talk radio."

Hence my original comment:

I'd love to know the ratings breakdown. I'm guessing KNRS is hella old. (It's not like I'm exactly young, either).

[David]

I'm part of the talk radio demo for KNRS described by henry (59), but the talk format has never really interested me. I do listen to Kim Komando and Bill Handel's shows on weekends, but that's about it. Art Bell was the only talk radio host that I ever really liked, and unfortunately KVNU dropped Art's "Somewhere In Time" program from their schedule about three years ago. Don't even get me started on sports talk. IMO, that's even more boring than "regular" talk radio!

[henry]

Bill Handel is great. His local show here in CA is one of the few "political" shows I can stand, partly because he's all over the road -- sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal. It's refreshing to get more of a "middle of the road" view on stuff, so to speak. His weekend show is hilarious.

Side note: KFI dumped Limbaugh in the 2010s and hyper-focused on LA content. Not sure if it's working from a business standpoint, but I enjoy hearing about local current events (which are not inherently Republican nor Democratic). It's more like, "We have this local issue, so what's working and what's not?" And a lot of celebrity gossip crap, but hey, it's LA.

KSL seems like a budget-version of KFI. The new guy (Inside Sources, Boyd Matheson?) took over after I moved away, and I find the show pretty refreshing. Again, not overtly partisan -- just some interesting talk. In both cases, I can't help but feel KSL (and KFI) would have (at least *slightly*) younger demos than KNRS.

But in the end -- do I listen to the AM? Nah. I'm grabbing Handel's podcast. And the KSL podcasts...