Who woulda thunk that CL King’s Jim Boyle was overly optimistic the other day when he predicted that radio was going to drop 8%-9% year-over-year for August? Well, he was. The gruesome numbers from the Radio Advertising Bureau and Miller Kaplan Arase & Co. included double digits in all categories. Local was down -11%. National was down -14%, for a total spot loss of -12%. Off air, the category formerly known as non-spot, enjoyed a positive double digit gain of +10%, but due to its relatively low volume, it was only able to shave 1% off of radio’s total loss, bringing the month home at -11%.
RBR/TVBR observation: We remember back when we were just children. In the market where we grew up, Washington DC, WMAL-AM owned our dad. Owned him. From Harden and Weaver during AM drive through Bill Mayhugh overnight, and in every daypart in between – and he was awake at one time or another through all these dayparts – the radio was tuned to WMAL. Us kids were probably around for enough of this to qualify as very young P1s ourselves. You’d think Washington would be one of the toughest places to do this, with so many people coming in and out of town with the ever shifting political winds. Is anybody out there building this kind of a radio community anywhere these days? Or is it a relic to be put in the museum next to the town crier?
