The Arbitron ratings have really caused a stir, which is not surprising since this is the first time we've seen any public ratings of any kind for Sirius and XM.
And of course, usual suspects are jumping all over it. This from Inside Radio:
Howard Stern then: 20 million listeners. Today: 1,225,100.
That's Stern's weekly cume according to Arbitron's first-ever report detailing listening to XM and Sirius. It shows his $500 million contract with Sirius buys the company an average 96,700 listeners in any given quarter hour. While his audience is just a fraction of what it once was, his "Howard 100" channel is satellite radio's top-rated, delivering more listeners than any other channel.
Now I'm not going to say it's "unfair" to compare satellite radio ratings with terrestrial ratings, but I am going to say that the comparison is useless. It's not about listeners, it's about subscribers.
That's part of the benefit of satellite radio. Not being dependent on ratings and constantly trying to boost your cume/AQH/TSL gives broadcasters artistic freedom and allows them to drop the gimmicks. That's part of the reason why the best broadcasters from terrestrial have made the jump to satellite.
And that's part of reason why we all subscribe, because the B.S. of regular radio - which is ultimately meant to drive ratings - is not prevalent on satellite radio.
I like all the radio business news. The blog is heading in a great media direction instead of a technology direction. Keep it up dude. Your blog has the potential to influence the sat radio business in certain ways.
3 rules in Real Estate - Location Location Location.
3 Rules in Media - Content Content Content.
so 1.2m out of 15m
so 8%.
not sure how that would turn into a "share" but i would assume that the population of listeners in the morning is less then 15m.
are the details anywhere?
1.2 mil is misleading on Howard 100. The entire west coast fan base is listening to the show in the morning on Howard 101.
Cue OA vs Howard flame war in 5...4...3...
With a combined market share of 4% for both XM and Sirius and the dilution of Howard's listeners from the loop and the West Coast broadcast on 101, I'd say Howard's numbers look pretty impressive.
Because of poor data collection methods, the Arbitron report just isn't very useful. To some extent is can be used to compare XM and Sirius, but to stretch this to terrestial numbers is just comparing apples and oranges.
This survey proves again that Sirius is primarily the Howard Stern delivery system. Without Stern, Sirius would be a faint shadow to XM. I'm amazed at the huge cume for XM 20 on 20. Arbitron's snap shot certainly paints the XM crowd as avid broadbased listeners compared to what appears to be Sirius testosterone: Stern, Nascar, heavy rock, etc. Interesting, but accurate? We can only wonder. The sample numbers seem really tiny as quite a few services have identical numbers or simply zero.
@ muscle13: Not much of a war it turns out, is it? 0.0....
My screen name is J-Dawg and I like to make werewolf movies.
Mark Ramsey weighs in
As I've noted before, Arbitron's analysis of satellite radio ratings is hopelessly flawed due to methodological circumstances which make these estimates closer to fiction than an episode of Bionic Woman.
I do believe there's some veracity in the proportions between the various channels, however. That is, the stuff that Arbitron shows as more popular is probably more popular in real life than the stuff they show as less popular. But do not under any circumstances believe these numbers beyond that.
While there is no question - nor has there ever been any question - that Stern's audience is down dramatically from its radio prime, the audience is certainly larger than this in real life (and I assure you both XM and Sirius have data indicating this).
That said, Sirius is and always has been making a terrible mistake by keeping Stern locked in the Karmazin Tower of London. All over the new media landscape those who own content are awakening to the notion that they cannot and should not erect barriers to that content, premium or otherwise. They are realizing the audience - and the advertisers - are their friends. In fact, if the content is "premium," that premium should come from the advertisers, thanks to the audience. More on that later.
I might add that Mr. Ramsey's firm has done audience research consulting work for both XM and Sirius in the past couple of years.
Maybe to the businessmen it's all about subscribers, but I would imagine to Howard the number of listeners is very important. Or at least it used to be, when he still cared about doing radio.
The Sirius in my car is always tuned to either 101 or 102, unless I'm giving my mom a ride somewhere. :D
WOW, O&A were suspended during the SO CALLED Sat Book, nice way to even up numbers for Siruis 100 and XM 202
So stern has about 6 times the listeners of O&A. Interesting.
"So stern has about 6 times the listeners of O&A. Interesting"
more then that if you count 100 & 101
By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Neither XM nor Sirius subscribes to Arbitron, fearing Arbitron may undercount satellite listeners, and XM spokesman Nathaniel Brown yesterday said this survey underscores that concern.
"The survey is a random sample of listeners, not subscribers," he said. "And when respondents did not specify whether they heard a show on satellite or terrestrial radio, terrestrial got the credit. That's a huge problem."
Arbitron had the listenership for XM's Major League Baseball channels averaging less than 400,000 a week, Brown said XM's own figures indicated that by July it was about 2.3 million.
FWIW, you cannot add the CUME of both Howard 100 and Howard 101 together when trying to figure out Stern's total CUME size. That's not how CUME works, as there is typically duplication of CUME between channels... meaning, a person can listen to both channels and be counted in the CUME of each channel. If you did combine them, then you could have one listener being counted twice.
Furthermore, Howard 101 is where Bubba is, plus other programming. Can there be some listeners that listen to 101 only -- and not 100? Probably, but the question is "how many?" I would not go so far as to say that there are 1.2M on H100 and 500K on H101-- so that means there are 1.7M altogether... the number is likely closer to 1.4M.
Just some food for thought.
I'm a fan of them, but I gotta say O&A really really got counted out on this one, because the samples, if you can even remotely call them accurate, got taken while O&A took a long vacation. There was that 2 weeks they took off, which I personally think was an incredibly bad idea...maybe only taking one week off would've been better, and then when they got back, they had the infamous broadcast that got them suspended from XM for 30 days. and while all that was going on, any and all mentions of O&A were removed from 202 so it was Ron & Ffez 24/7. The survey ended in mid June, O&A came back in Mid june. Coincidence? You decide...
I host a daily syndicated show that has been dubbed stern meets rush. You can get it online at gowolfe.com/espn. I am a born again Stern fan. The naked woman in the studio days are passed, thank god. A few years after the Sirius switch it just turned into porn radio. I think Stern's shows are better the past 6 months than ever. F bombs are injected as decoration, not the foundation as before. I subscribe to Arbitron, I own an ESPN station as well, and I do not believe the stats on this page. I do believe that you can merely estimate with the data that is avail, and that is where these numbers derive from. I also own a Ford and a Dodge dealership, both factories offering Sirius, not XM. GM is the XM dealer, Ford and chrysler Sirius. GM is going broke, and Sirius will overtake.
Local radio is in demand, yet satellite is a stronger product. I think the sat boys will overthrow the am/fm when they get serious about providing local stations on sirius (no pun). Talk is coming back stronger than ever, and satelite is such a superior delivery system. Instead of 200 channells I would like to see 200 market options, like a GPS, with chanell selections like streets for that market. Then Satellite will dominate.
John C Wolfe
www.gowolfe.com