WLW Wins Ratings, Loses Listeners

From John Kiesewetter's TV & Media blog at cincinnati.com

700 WLW-AM remains No. 1 in the monthly Arbitron rankings — as it has been since 2000 — but it has lost many  listeners.

WLW-AM had a “cume” of 439,000, representing the total number of different persons who tune to a radio station during the course of a daypart for at least five minutes.  (The rankings are based on average quarter hour listening, or the average number of persons listening to a particular station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period.)

Seven stations here recorded a larger cume (number of unique listeners): WUBE-FM, WKRQ-FM, WGRR-FM, WKFS-FM (KISS107), WREW-FM, WRRM-FM and WEBN-FM.

Another note on cume, which I don’t usually talk about:  In September and October, before WLW-AM fired Eddie Fingers/moved Scott Sloan to afternoons/hired Doc Thompson for the Sloan/McConnell morning slot, and when the Reds were hot, WLW-AM had more than a cume in the 600,000s, and a 13% audience share.

After the October changes, WLW-AM has been flat with a 10% audience share  – and the cume fell into the mid 400,000s — below other stations. Four stations (WKRQ-FM, WGRR-FM, KISS107.1, WREW-FM) had a bigger cume than “The Big One” in January and February.

WLW-AM’s cume drop from the October peak (672,100) was 34%. The drop from last April (536,700) was 18%.

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