WQDR Wins Radio Ratings
The 4th quarter Arbitron radio ratings book is out and WQDR (94.7 - country) finished first with a 7.4 rating. It was followed closely by WQOK (97.5 - Urban Contemporary) with a 7.1 and WRAL (101.5 - Adult Contemporary) with a 6.9. For the year of 2007, WQDR closely edged WQOK for first.
Surprising were the ratings for talk. WNNL (Contemporary Inspirational) finished 6th with a 5.4 while sports talk rivals WCMC (99.9) and WRBZ (850AM) finished with paltry 0.8 and 0.9 scores. 0.9 and 0.8 scores (17th and 16th overall).
Most interesting (and disturbing) is the year that 101.5 had. Their first quarter ratings were a poor 3.5 and slowly progressed to 5.1 for the third quarter. It wasn’t until they pulled their stunt of overwhelming Christmas music for over a month that they popped into the top 5. The message loud and clear here to WRAL is to play Christmas music as early as possible. Their strong 4th quarter rating of 6.9 is what it took to beat AM conservative talk radio staple WPTF for the year.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I suppose good for them, although it’s kinda funny to me. I know very few people who listen to traditional radio anymore. (Probably because the quality, at least in this metro area, is pretty bad unless you like country or bubblegum/top 40.)
I think the trend towards stations that better tailor to people’s diverse tastes—especially satellite, cable and internet radio—will continue to eat away at AM/FM.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Just came back here for sports ratings and noticed you listed WZTK-FM as 99.9 when it is 101.1, an all talk/news radio format. 99.9 The Fan is WCMC-FM and it came in just one spot behind 850theBuzz: 17th overall, 2nd in sports.
Musically speaking, Raleigh radio is horrendous but the Sports radio is coming along much nicer. Thanks to my Zune, I rarely listen to radio.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Thanks, Mike. You’re right.
I agree with you, Mike. Do you have an old Zune or a new Zune? If old, have you upgraded the firmware?
February 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Have the old 30GB one. The firmware is upgraded. It did bring some great features and improve performance of the handheld, but the software is borderline worthless now. I know they did a complete rewrite to abandon the WMP11 backend but that had a ton of features and it is going to take some time before they bring them back in to the new software. Still wouldn’t give up my Zune for anything and my wife wants to get an 8GB zune to replace her iPod Nano when it dies.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am
I have heard complaints from other cities that arbitron generally does their ratings via LAN line phone surveys thus excluding a huge, younger population that only uses cell phones. Which really doens’t help the crappy radio stations and lack of a good alternative station in the Raleigh area.