After major upheaval last summer involving on-air personnel and music programming at several of Cumulus Inc.’s nine local stations, the winter radio ratings were much the same as they’ve always been.
Country station WKKO-FM 99.9 (K100) remained the leader in most demographics and numbers overall — particularly in the 6-to-10 a.m. weekday drive-time with ever-popular Shores & Steele.
That’s the good news for Cumulus Media Toledo’s regional vice president and market manager, Andy Stuart, who was hired more than a year ago to essentially turn around the company’s cluster of northwest Ohio radio stations.
Stuart, who ran Clear Channel’s local stations for years, beginning in the 1990s, was the obvious choice for the job. He intimately knows the market. He had great success while here. And perhaps there was a small part of him who wanted to best his former company, just as most of us would after leaving one company for its neighboring rival.
Stuart turned to some of his former radio personnel to make his work at Cumulus easier, including hiring two morning-show jocks, Denny Schaffer and Johny D., from his Clear Channel days.
Schaffer left the Toledo market nearly a decade ago and most recently was broadcasting on drive-time mornings in New Orleans. After a yearlong stint with an afternoon talk show on WSPD-AM, 1370, Johny D. was handling mornings at WPFX-FM 107.7 (The Wolf).
Now both are on WWWM-FM 105.5 (Star 105): Schaffer from 6 to 10 a.m. weekdays and Johny from 3 to 7 p.m. (Full disclosure: I appear Friday mornings on Schaffer’s show for a movie review and pop culture segment.)
And the results from the Nielsen — formerly Arbitron — trend report for winter suggest listeners are slow to warm up to the new but familiar station line-up.
WWWM’s average rating in the morning — the percentage of all people in an age group listening to the station during any 15-minute period — was up slightly in the 25-to-54 demographic, from 0.5 to 0.7, which places the station in a two-way tie for eighth-place with WJZE-FM “Hot” 97.3. In the weekly cume — the total number of people in a demo who are listening — Star 105 drew 15,000 listeners in winter, 2014, compared to 14,400 listeners this winter.
And in the 18-to-34 demographic, the station was slightly up with Schaffer than without him: 0.5 to 0.4.
So, Schaffer’s return has been flat to a slight increase in listenership.
Meanwhile, Johny’s average rating in the 25-to-55 age demographic in the winter was the same as the winter, 2014, without him: 0.7. He was down slightly — 0.9 to 0.6 — in the 18-to-34 demographic. Clear Channel’s WVKS-FM, 92.5, ranked tops in the 18-to-34 age demo in average rating and in the weekly cume persons.
In total listenership, meaning ages 12 and older, WKKO-FM had the highest rating (1.6) and WIOT-FM had the second highest rating (1.2). Tied for third with a 1 rating were WIMX-FM, WRQN-FM and WRVF-FM.
So what does all of this mean? Nothing, really, other than to follow along the ratings rule that big changes to a station typically take a while to bear fruit.
Stuart certainly isn’t worried, saying that he was “very pleased” with Cumulus’ overall performance in the winter rating period — particularly with WKKO, WXKR, and WRQN — and that the numbers will improve for WWWM.
“First of all, it will,” he said. “We’re going to be patient for a very long time. We think it’s a very great brand with a great future. We could be patient with it for years.
“Denny’s a great talent, Johny’s a great talent. These guys are really exceptional people. Not only do they have great talent but a tremendous work ethic. They don’t need any hand holding, they just need support. Time in service will take care of it, I’m quite certain of that.”
Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.
First Published June 26, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
