Saturday, May 14, 2011

No, sorry, it's not an urban thing ...

PPM takes “about a year for things to cycle and normalize.”

Radio One’s Barry Mayo patiently explains the reality for one analyst – with the introduction of PPM to a new market, “the first thing that happens to urban stations is, you take a hit in both rank and share.” For urban and Hispanic stations, the drop could be as severe at 40-45%, though CEO Alfred Liggins says the revenues don’t see the same degree of shock. Four of Radio One’s markets (Indy, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati) are still in the middle of that one-year cycle, which affected their revenues in Q1. In the Indianapolis market, Mayo says Radio One “suffered a 50% AQH loss at two of the three FMs when PPM went live.” But look at the April Miller Kaplans, where the cluster out-performed the market by 6%.

Make your own judgements.