Arbitron ratings in; Stern’s audience drops
Apparently Howard Stern’s mind is elsewhere, because his listeners certainly seem to be. Soon Stern will be making the switch to Sirius, and his ratings are the lowest they’ve been in years, possible decades. One possible explanation is Stern listeners jumping ship from terrestrial radio to Sirius in anticipation of stern’s switch. Another is that since Stern won’t be on the radio much longer, he just isn’t trying hard to get listeners anymore. Or maybe his listeners are making a statement: You’re getting rid of Howard, so we’ll stop listening to your station.
Or maybe the King of All Media is just getting old. The proof is in the pudding as they say: the Sirius pudding. If Sirius meets their subscriber goals, we’ll know Stern’s still got it.
In other ratings news, a follow up on a SateLink post from a couple months ago. You may remember famed DJ “Cousin Bruce’s” switch to Sirius when his old NY station changed formats to… JackFM. The format is a DJ-less hitfest that spans genres and decades. It’s all automated, so costs are way down, and so are the ratings, apparently.
“I don’t think the Infinity folks understand the medium in which they are working,” says Robert Unmacht, a media consultant and founder of iN3 Partners in Nashville who used to live in New York. “There’s no human connection with people. If (former WCBS jock) Cousin Brucie showed up at a store, people would go out to the store to see him because he made that connection. Jack isn’t capable of doing that.”
Jack doesn’t have on-air personalities, and does not provide news, traffic or weather reports.
Infinity executives have said they have no fixed ratings goal for the station, which may help them explain the precipitous drop. With listeners 25 to 54, Jack dropped from a 3.1 share in the spring to a 1.9.
So there you have it. When it comes to ratings, Infinity doesn’t know Jack.
