Posted by chicagomedia.org on December 03, 2009 at 18:27:15:
V103 alone atop radio ratings
Harvey's morning drive show moves up five places
December 3, 2009
LEWIS LAZARE | Chicago Sun-Times Media & Marketing columnist
Clear Channel Radio Chicago's urban adult contemporary WVAZ-AM (102.7) found itself in clear control of the No. 1 position overall in the key 25-to-54-year-old adult demographic in the November Arbitron book that ended Wednesday.
In October, WVAZ tied for first place with hot adult contemporary WTMX-FM (101.9) and classic hits WDRV-FM (97.1). In November, WDRV moved to second and WTMX came in third.
WVAZ showed strength in the November book throughout all its day parts. Steve Harvey's syndicated morning drive show, which replaced Tom Joyner's program last spring, soared to third place among adults 25 to 54, up from a tie for eighth place in the October book. In November, WVAZ was in first place in both afternoon drive and in the evening time periods.
Derrick Brown, director of urban programming at Clear Channel Radio Chicago, said morning host Harvey's significant investment in Chicago in recent months as a major reason for WVAZ's strong showing in November. "Steve was here twice in recent weeks, and we have invested more in marketing him and his show in Chicago," Brown said. Harvey is based in New York.
Meanwhile, WTMX's super hot morning drive team Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart were, once again, at the very top of the morning-drive ratings heap.
In his last month on the air at classic rock WLUP-FM (97.9), Jonathon Brandmeier's rating did not change from the October book, though his rank inched up from 21st to 19th.
And the news in the November book was not good for Roe Conn, another of Chicago's $1 million radio talents. Conn's afternoon drive show on news/talk WLS-AM (890) slipped to 26th place in the rankings from a tie for 24th in October, leading some observers in the local radio market to speculate the high-priced WLS talent might not be able to hold on at the station much longer.
Elsewhere, country WUSN-FM held on to fourth place overall in the November book among adults 25 to 54. Perennially strong Hispanic outlet WOJO-FM (105.1) was fifth, and all-news WBBM-AM (780) climbed a notch from seventh to a tie for sixth with adult rock station WXRT-FM (93.1).
Two more heavily music-oriented stations tied for eighth place: Bonneville's WILV-FM (100.3) and CBS Radio's WJMK-FM (104.3). That put all three of Bonneville's Chicago outlets among the top 10 stations in the market.
Rounding out the top 10 stations in the market were the city's two sports talk outlets, WSCR-AM (670) and WMVP-AM (1000), which tied for 10th place overall in the November Arbitron book. Their strong showings support the theory that no matter how bad our local professional sports teams perform (and several have performed pretty badly in recent months), large numbers of local sports fan still like to tune into hear opinionated sports talk hosts do their thing on radio.