If ratings aren’t accurate, and haven’t been since the introduction of PPMs, that could have cost the industry billions of dollars by artificially shrinking its audience - an audience that remains immense but is listening far less than it used to, according to Nielsen’s numbers. Radio ratings determine how profitable different radio genres are, which in turn determines what commercial stations play and what options you have when you tune your radio. When The New York Times Magazine reported on the new meters in 2005, it wrote, “In all likelihood, the Houston trial will show that people are exposed to far more media and advertising than they think, or remember.” Arbitron sold the technique as a way to help radio stations accurately measure their audience, producing numbers their advertisers would believe when paying for placement. This was what was supposed to make Arbitron’s technology better suited for the 21st century compared with the old method, in which people had to recall what they’d listened to and enter it into diaries.
Smooth-jazz stations struggled to attract younger listeners. Advertisers buy radio like they buy television, paying more for the 25-to-54 demographic. But as to what killed it … that’s a mystery that’s bedeviled the radio industry. That question is easy enough to answer: Yes, smooth jazz is essentially dead on major-market radio. Jazz Times asked, in 2012, “Is Smooth Jazz Dead?” cities,” wrote the Seattle Times in 2011. “Smooth jazz stations already have been shuttered in most major U.S.
“‘Smooth jazz’ outlets across America have been tumbling like redwoods after an earthquake,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 2010. Station owners ditched the format, at WNUA and in just about every other major market. Ratings fell, sometimes sharply - down 20 percent for WNUA from the spring period. “The arrows for WNUA were still pointing up,” said Rick O’Dell, a former host and program director at WNUA.īut by July, arrows for WNUA and other smooth-jazz stations started pointing down, seemingly overnight in some cases. The smooth-jazz station ranked in the top five in the city in listeners age 25 to 54, and its research showed that the station had a passionate, loyal, engaged audience. At the start of 2008, everything was going well at Chicago’s WNUA 95.5-FM.
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