CC Radio Houston Moving from 3 to 2 stopsets per hour

It’s all part of upping the numbers with PPM. We’re getting information, but couldn’t confirm with CCU, that CC Radio Houston sent out an email to agencies and clients last week indicating reasons for moving all five of its FM stations there from 3 to 2 stopsets per hour. Here’s one of them, from one of our sources: "Effective Immediately Clear Channel Houston Radio is moving from 3 stop sets per hour to 2 stop sets per hour.

In order to increase our PPM numbers even more. Below are more specifics, the great thing about PPM is we will see the benefits of this much more quickly than we were able with the old diary method.

Thanks Joe
* PPM Changes have brought on new opportunities for ratings growth. In order to get better ratings, 
* We are programming longer music sweeps and moving from 3 breaks to 2 per hour. 
* We are not adding minutes or units to any hour.  
* Research with PPM shows us that people are listening through the commercial breaks
* AM drive is not included in the changes – it will remain the same.
* It’s only one more minute per break (was 4 min. max now 5 min. max)
* Typically the stop set won’t make it to 5 minutes, closer to 4.5 
* We are reducing station promos to one minute per hour – this means one more minute of content added to ALL dayparts.
* This change takes place immediately on all 5 FM stations.  The AM stations are not affected."
We received one breakdown a couple stopsets for KTBZ-FM.

See how they were organized

RBR/TVBR observation: RBR left messages with both Joe McGee and Joe Brower in CC Radio Houston Sales, along with GM Eddie Martiny to discusss, but had not heard back at deadline. Other companies have been moving their stopsets around trying to figure out the way to counter-program. Now it seems this is the only way-to get rid of a stopset. 8-12 units per stopset will be interesting at best-and let’s see how the advertisers react. Listeners may react by just turning the dial. Remember that Cox there had been running two stopsets and a max of 10 minutes per hour. It’s going to be a learning experience, programming for a PPM world. Let’s see who gets it right and go with that.