Day 2: November PPMs Out for DC, Boston, 10 More Markets

Nielsen on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 released the second batch of November 2019 PPM data for the following markets:

    7  Washington DC

   10  Boston

   11  Miami-Ft.Lauderdale-Hollywood

   12  Seattle-Tacoma

   13  Detroit

   14  Phoenix

   15  Minneapolis-St. Paul

   16  San Diego

   18  Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater

   19  Denver-Boulder

   21  Batimore

   24  St. Louis

Click Here for topline numbers for subscribing Nielsen stations.

Billboard Issues New Rules For Merchandise/Album Bundles

Following a year in which artists gunning for a No. 1 album hawked hoodies, lawn signs and nutritional supplements together with CDs and digital-download codes to boost their sales numbers, Billboard is seeking to bring order back to its flagship albums chart, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The sale of branded merchandise—from sweatshirts and T-shirts to fanny packs and beanies—has become an increasingly popular and lucrative business for many artists, particularly rappers. In recent years, with rising demand for such novelty items, artists have been tying the sale of a CD or digital download to those items. Those so-called bundles have led to what some in the industry call skewed chart results by reflecting fans’ desire for memorabilia rather than for an album.

Many in the music business have questioned the legitimacy of such sales counting toward an artist’s ranking on the charts, as a fan who bought various merchandise items may not have otherwise purchased multiple copies of an album. And, with third-party sellers snapping up merchandise bundles from an artist and listing them for sale on other sites, the process of tracking sales to fans has become clouded.

Under the new rules, for the sale of an album contained in a bundle to count, all of the items in the bundle must also be available at the same time individually for purchase on the same site. That, Billboard says, will help better gauge whether a fan intends to purchase the music or not. Further, the merchandise-album bundle must be priced at least $3.49—the minimum price of an album to qualify for the charts—more than the merchandise item alone. As such, if a sweatshirt is listed for $40 alone, a bundle with an album must cost at least $43.49.

Additionally, only merch bundles sold through an artist’s direct-to-consumer website will count.

The attempts to sell more copies of albums through merchandise bundles come as actual sales of music continue to decline. Streaming music on services such as Spotify and Apple Music accounts for more than 80% of consumption, according to Nielsen Music. (Billboard’s albums chart measures consumption as a mix of sales and streams.)

TV Ratings: Inquiry Hearings Score For Cable News TV

The five days of impeachment hearings were a boon to programmers and accountants at the cable news networks. For the big broadcasters, not so much.

The daytime hearing audience ranged from a high of 13.8 million on opening day to a low of 11 million on the third day, reports The Associated Press citing Nielsen data.

CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC showed every minute of the hearings, even the two times it stretched into the evening. And they were rewarded: Fox (2.5 million viewership average over five days), MSNBC (2.48 million) and CNN (1.68 million) each had more people watching the hearing than would tune in on a typical day. In the cases of MSNBC and CNN, the networks more than doubled their daytime average, Nielsen said.

This interest had residual benefits elsewhere; both the Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson prime-time shows on Fox had their most-watched month ever in November.

The picture is different on the broadcast networks. CBS’ average of 1.82 million viewers for the hearings was better than ABC and NBC, but it was still lower than the 3.3 million people that CBS’ top-rated daytime programming gets on a typical day. While there was time for some commercials during breaks in the hearing, there were far fewer ads than are usually run.

NBC returned to the top of the primetime rankings last week with a strong Sunday night football matchup between Green Bay and San Francisco. The network averaged 7 million viewers for the week, Fox averaged 6.1 million, CBS had 5.9 million, ABC had 4.4 million, Telemundo had 1.5 million, Univision had 1.3 million, ION Television had 1.2 million and the CW had 750,000.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.8 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 8 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.6 million viewers.

Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.92 million viewers in prime time. ESPN had 2.63 million, MSNBC had 2.4 million, Hallmark had 1.59 million and CNN had 1.15 million.

FNC’s morning show Fox & Friends marked 217 months as the No. 1 cable news morning show in total viewers, according to TV Newser.

FNC’s early evening and prime time programming delivered yearly highs for the month of November, and won their respective timeslots. The Five delivered an average of 3 million viewers and 454,000 in the demo, No. 1 in its time slot. Special Report with Bret Baier averaged 2.6 million viewers and 418,000 in the 25-54 demo. The Story with Martha MacCallum at  7 p.m. delivered 2.3 million viewers and 376,000 with A25-54.

At 8 p.m. ET,  Tucker Carlson Tonight delivered its highest-rated month in program history with 3.4 million viewers and 551,000 in the 25-54 category, No. 2 in all of cable news.  At 10 p.m., Laura Ingraham‘s and The Ingraham Angle beat CNN and MSNBC across the board.

On Saturdays, Fox News’ opinion slate of Watters World, Justice with Judge Jeanine and Greg Gutfeld Show won their respective hours across the board. On Sundays, media analysis program MediaBuzz hosted by Howie Kurtz beat the 11 a.m. ET cable news competition in total viewers and adults 25-54.

Trivia titan James Holzhauer won Jeopardy’s Tournament of Champions in the session ending Nov.17 and propelled the game show 7% to a new season-high 7.2 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating, its highest rating since the week ending June 2.

Meanwhile, most of syndication was flat to down after running into heavy preemptions for the impeachment hearings.

Nancy Grace Joining Fox Nation

Former CNN mainstay Nancy Grace is signing up for a crime show on Fox Nation, an illustration of how Fox News’ streaming service has evolved counter to expectations one year into operation.

According to USAToday, cameras will show her delivering her podcast and SiriusXM radio show, “Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,” five days a week. The program is modeled after her popular television series that ran on the HLN network for many years.

“We spotlight breaking crime and justice news, help find missing people, especially children, solve unsolved homicides and analyze clues left behind,” Grace said.

Nancy Grace

Fox Nation, the streaming service available for $65 a year, will begin offering “Crime Stories” in January.

The on-demand service recently announced that former CBS News correspondent Lara Logan will host a documentary series on media bias, immigration and other issues, and said more signings are in the works.

When Fox Nation began late last year, it was positioned as a place where potential subscribers could go if they didn’t feel they were getting enough opinion programming on Fox News Channel. Instead, users were apparently getting their fill.

“In a weird way, what the traditional Fox audience wants is complementary to the channel but not more of the same,” said John Finley, the Fox executive vice president who oversees the streaming service.

Lara Logan

Perhaps the political climate has exhausted them, he said. Instead, he’s found a hunger for “programming with Fox values but not necessarily politics,” he said. That encompasses history, crime and lifestyle programming.

“What Made America Great,” where “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade visits historical sites across the country, is one of the service’s most popular programs. So is “Scandalous,” a documentary series on controversial incidents in history. Abby Hornacek is a popular host, both with the series “PARK’D” where she visits national parks, and “Ride to Work,” where she accompanies Fox personalities in a show that recalls Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” only without coffee stops and without the jokes.

Finley said Fox is happy with the number of subscribers Fox Nation has after one year, although the company won’t release any statistics. The market research firm Parks Associates estimates that it has between 200,000 and 300,000 subscribers.

The Drudge Report Falters..Upstarts Smell Blood

The Drudge Report is still the king of conservative aggregator websites, but its rivals are gaining ground, reports The Washington Times.

Five right-tilting upstarts — Whatfinger News, Liberty Daily, Rantingly, NewsAmmo and Gab Trends — increased their average monthly traffic and engagement, as measured by average visit duration and average pages per visit, from September-October 2018 to 2019, according to SimilarWeb, which shared its data with The Washington Times.

At the same time, the marketing-intelligence company found traffic to the Drudge Report during that period declined by 15%. From July to October, Drudge dropped from 96 million total visits to 77 million, prompting recent headlines such as True Pundit’s “Drudge Bleeds Out as Conservatives Flee.”

The Drudge Report has stoked alarm on the right for appearing to pivot on its support for President Trump, increasingly linking to stories that are critical of the administration and to media websites that are accused of having an anti-Trump bias such as CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The same cannot be said of Whatfinger, the largest of the Drudge rivals, which favors links to conservative news and opinion websites such as Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Signal, Daily Wire, Western Journal and WorldNet Daily.

Whatfinger grew by 40.8% year-over-year, increasing its traffic from 2.23 million to 3.2 million. The next largest site, the Liberty Daily, grew by 72% as its average monthly visits grew to 1.72 million, according to SimilarWeb.

Mariah Carey Honored With 3 World Guinness Records

Guinness World Records honored Mariah Carey with three records Monday for her 1994 hit holiday track “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

According to The Tampa Bay Times, the trio of certificates includes highest-charting holiday (Christmas/New Year) song on the U.S. Hot 100 chart by a solo artist, most-streamed track on Spotify in 24 hours (female) and most weeks in the U.K. singles top 10 chart for a Christmas song.

The pop star celebrated the news on Instagram on Monday with photos of herself clad in an appropriately sparkly “Nutcracker” ensemble and flanked by her two kids, looking equally festive in their red and green attire. She received the awards during a show in Las Vegas on her “All I Want for Christmas Is You” tour.

Thank you so much Guinness World Records for honoring me with three records in the 2020 book! Michael from @GWR presented me with a certificate on stage, so naturally, I asked him to join us for the #AllIWantForChristmasIsYou finale! 😉🎅💝 pic.twitter.com/fDC8OfZj8b

— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) November 25, 2019

Carey’s achievements will be recorded in the “Guinness World Records 2020 Edition” book. She also holds the record for most U.S. No.1 singles by a solo artist after 18 of her tracks topped the American charts, putting her one ahead of Elvis Presley, who has the most U.S. No.1 singles by a male solo artist. The organization has crowned her the “Songbird Supreme” for her famous vocal chops, which boast a rare five-octave range.

Earlier this month, Carey delivered the first gift of Christmas with a new music video for her seasonal classic, featuring previously unseen footage from her original winter wonderland shoot. She wasted no time assuming her Christmastime reign, dropping the video just one day after Halloween in honor of the jingly earworm’s 25th anniversary.

Boston Radio: Ted Staskiewicz Named Digital PD For Beasley

Ted Staskiewicz

Beasley Media Group announces Tim Staskiewicz has been promoted to the position of Digital Program Director on behalf of the company’s Boston radio cluster. He will begin his new role immediately.

Staskiewicz most recently was responsible for managing the digital programming efforts on behalf of 98.5 The Sports Hub/WBZ-FM and Country 102.5/WKLB-FM over the past two years. In his new role, he will add similar duties for HOT 96.9/WBQT-FM, 105.7/WROR-FM, and ROCK 92.9/WBOS-FM.

Prior to joining Beasley Media Group, Staskiewicz spent 6 years serving as the Digital Content Director for CBS Radio Boston and 3 1/2 years as the Online Content Director for iHeart Media’s Washington, DC and Baltimore radio clusters.

Ty Bentli Show Airs 'Family Invasion'

CUMULUS MEDIA’s Westwood One charged into the holidays today with its internationally-syndicated The Ty Bentli Show hosting a ‘Family Invasion’ with ACM Artist of the Decade Jason Aldean.

The whole morning was spent with Ty, TJ, and Chuck Wicks sharing a behind the scenes look at Aldean’s personal and road life, as he prepares to spend Thanksgiving at brother-in-law Chuck’s house!


The Ty Bentli Show’s listeners learned that even country stars have to rely on their friends in times of need, as Aldean opened up about their current residence – a home offered up free of charge by another country megastar.  One of the true heartfelt moments came as Aldean fans learned who among them has made the most lasting impression on the Georgia native.

Amidst sharing incredible stories from backstage at Rascal Flatts concerts, to comparing his childhood to those of his own kids, Aldean also brought the room to stitches when facing off with his own brother-in-law in the show’s Are You Smarter Than Wicksipedia - he was NOT…but it was funny!



Fans also learned the backstory to some of the songs that have helped carve out the path for Aldean’s new album.  Aldean shared the importance of hits like “She’s Country,” “Hicktown,” “Big Green Tractor,” and his latest “We Back.” His new album, 9, is now in stores.

Stations interested in learning more about The Ty Bentli Showcontact Country@WestwoodOne.com..

Twin Cities Radio: WCCO Radiothon Raises $342K

WCCO morning show host Dave Lee and a guest resident of the Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities
(Photo Courtesy of Entercom)

Entercom's WCCO 830 AM raised over $342,000 to benefit Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities during its “2019 Union Gospel Mission Hunger Radiothon.” The amount raised during the 17th annual radiothon brought the overall fundraising total to over $3 million since 2003.

“Entercom Minneapolis and 830 WCCO are proud to support the Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities and its local efforts to fight hunger, homelessness, and addiction in Minnesota,” said Shannon Knoepke, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Entercom Minneapolis. “I’m incredibly proud of the selflessness and generosity of our listeners who stepped up to the plate to help us deliver another successful radiothon.”

The radiothon was broadcast live from the Mall of America beginning at 6:00 a.m. through 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 18. Programming from the station’s weekday shows included stories from mission residents and former aid recipients of mission programs.

Founded in 1902, Union Gospel Mission (UGM) is a Christian ministry dedicated to serving people facing homelessness, poverty, or addiction in our community. The mission helps people rebuild their lives by providing safe shelter, nutritious food, medical and dental care, and a broad variety of life-changing programs for children and adults.

Listeners can tune in to 830 WCCO (WCCO-AM) in Minneapolis on air, as well as nationwide on the RADIO.COM app and website. Fans can also connect with the station on social media via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

R.I.P.: Dan Moon, Former Charleston S-C Radio Personality

Newsradio WTMA 1250 AM morning personality -- and Charleston, SC broadcasting legend -- Dan Moon has died.

Dan Moon

He was 77-years-of-age, according to ABCNews4.

Dan was at WTMA from 1988 during the station's short-lived country music format through the first 14 years of its talk radio life.

Besides his time in AM drive encouraging Charlestonians to "turn their telephone into a microphone" Dan is fondly remembered for helping the Lowcountry get through the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

After Dan retired from radio in 2006, he served as Public Information Officer for the Berkeley County Sheriff's office for a number of years.

WTMA will remember Dan Moon by playing back some of his past shows Thanksgiving morning between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

R.I.P.: Robert F X Sillerman, Entertainment Mogul

Robert F.X. Sillerman, the entertainment entrepreneur who helped shape the modern concert industry, has died at 71 due to a respiratory illness, according to Variety.

Robert F X Sillerman

Sillerman made his name in the music business by buying up a series of regional promoters, including Ron Delsener’s New York operation, San Francisco-based Bill Graham Presents and Florida’s Cellar Door Concerts, consolidating the entities under his SFX Entertainment banner and later selling the company to Clear Channel Communications in 2000 for a reported $4.4 billion. That created what became known as Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 after much government scrutiny, and today is valued at nearly $15 billion. Fourteen years ago, Forbes listed Sillerman on its list of the 400 richest individuals at number 375 with a net worth of $975 million.

With famed radio personality Cousin Bruce Morrow, he bought a pair of upstate New York radio stations, then began acquiring a series of radio frequencies and TV stations on the East Coast and Atlanta. In 1985, he partnered with Carl Hirsch’s Legacy Broadcasting to acquire radio stations in Los Angeles, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Houston, Philadelphia and New York. The company merged with a unit of Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1989 in a transaction worth a then-record $727 million.

In forming Capstar Communications, Sillerman was able to apply to operate more than one class of radio stations in the same market. This, in part, led to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which cleared the way for SFX Broadcasting to consolidate ownership of radio stations, just as he would do for concert promotion, selling his 71 radio stations for $2.1 billion in 1998.

At that point, the renamed SFX Entertainment held on to a pair of small concert promoters, eventually turning the company into the world’s largest producer and presenter of live entertainment, selling the company to Clear Channel for $4.4 billion in 2000.  He was also an investor in Mel Brooks’ profitable Broadway musical, “The Producers.”