Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 07, 2008 at 10:05:09:
In Reply to: New Chicago October 2008 PPM Ratings Released posted by chicagomedia.org on November 05, 2008 at 19:55:16:
WBBM wins big with October ratings
November 7, 2008
LEWIS LAZARE Media & Marketing columnist
Rod Zimmerman is a happy guy. On Wednesday, Zimmerman, market manager for all-news WBBM-AM (780) and six other CBS-owned local stations, got his first look at the October Arbitron numbers for the Chicago radio market, and his all-news station is the big winner.
The October book showed WBBM pulling in some 2.2 million listeners a week, a whopping 30 percent of the entire metro Chicago radio audience. The all-news station grew its audience by 500,000 listeners just since the September book. Zimmerman also is elated because he believes the October numbers are far more representative of listening habits than the ratings were when listeners manually recorded their listening information in diaries.
"This is a validation of what we've known about our station for a long time," said Zimmerman. Since July, the radio ratings data in Chicago has been collected automatically via electronic portable people meters, so the results are less likely to be impacted by human error. Aside from the new method of collecting data, Zimmerman attributes WBBM's surge to several factors, chiefly interest in political and economic news and the start of the Chicago Bears season. WBBM broadcasts all Bears games.
Top 40 WKSC-FM (103.5) was second in the October book with 1.9 million listeners per week, and classic hits WDRV-FM (97.1) and top 40 WBBM-FM (96.3) tied for third with about 1.7 million listeners. Of course, it's impossible to predict just how long WBBM-AM can ride this huge wave of popularity, but Zimmerman intends to enjoy the surge and use it to the station's advantage for as long as possible.
Hawks' also score
They're hardly huge, but the ratings for the first month of Chicago Blackhawks games on Comcast Sportsnet were still much bigger than the Nielsen numbers for the team's games on the cable sports channel a year ago. The ratings averaged a 1.0 for October vs. 0.4 a year ago, a 150 percent increase. The rating among men 25 to 54 soared to 1.3, compared with 0.3 a year ago, a more than quadruple increase.
(Lewis Lazare, Chicago Sun-Times)