Ratings Get Fuzzy Reception

Last week’s release of the quarterly Arbitron survey of radio listening in the Los Angeles-Orange County market produced a little celebrating, a little hand-wringing and a great deal of confusion up and down the dial.

“We don’t know what happened. We’re still trying to figure it out,” said a baffled Jeff Williams, director of research for Heftel Broadcasting, whose three Spanish-language stations all lost audience.

“We think we’re onto something,” countered Andy Mars, general manager for Liberman Broadcasting, which saw two of its Spanish-language stations--KKHJ-AM (930) and KBUA-FM (94.3)--soar in the ratings. “We’re very excited about it. I think we’ve laid the groundwork for success today and success tomorrow.”

But what the ratings book for the first three months of 1999 didn’t do, agree the winners, losers and even those on the sidelines, was produce any permanent changes. In fact, whether this was the start of a trend--as Mars hopes--or simply an aberration--as Williams prays it was--won’t be known for some time.

“Realistically, if you want to look at reports, you have to wait for four [quarterly] books,” says radio analyst Allen Klein of Media Research Graphics in Encino. “Most people don’t do that.”

Last fall, Arbitron, the company that tracks radio listenership, divided the L.A.-Orange County market into six zones. Each zone was to be surveyed and weighed based on its percentage of the overall market population. Arbitron argued that the new system would make its research more accurate and would better reflect the market’s growing ethnic diversity by providing six opportunities for balancing the results according to known demographic figures.

Station managers were less convinced--and with reason--based on the ratings book for the final three months of 1998, the first survey using the new system. Spanish-language listening, for example, was way up, with market leader KSCA-FM (101.9) and runner-up KLVE-FM (107.5) climbing nearly a full share point each. But in last week’s survey, while both stations remained atop the ratings, they saw those share figures fall dramatically. And several English-language music stations registered big gains.

“The problem is, we’re in the very early days of a whole new way of counting,” Williams says. “Was the fall right and the winter’s wrong? Or was the fall wrong and the winter right? Maybe this is true. Maybe this is what’s really going on in Los Angeles radio.

“We just don’t know enough yet.”

A likely scenario is that Spanish-language listening simply returned to normal. In the previous survey, Spanish-language stations that placed among the top 45 in the market combined to draw more than 24% of the audience, 2% higher than normal.

Laura Marella of Irvine-based Casanova Pendrill, the nation’s largest independent Hispanic advertising agency, isn’t concerned.

“Audiences ebb and flow,” she says, “and we try not to have knee-jerk reactions to the audience numbers as they come out. On a relative scale, it’s not that dramatic a difference.

“Independent of one particular book, the share of Spanish-language radio has exceeded 20 share points, cumulatively, over a long period. So it’s not causing us to shift our overall ad spending.”

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In local English-language talk radio, winners of this quarter’s Arbitron sweepstakes were Larry Elder, the afternoon-drive guy on KABC-AM (790); veteran Michael Jackson, centerpiece of the new talk lineup on KRLA-AM (1110); and CBS-owned KRLA itself.

Even a 1% showing, which KRLA got, is a victory for the first time out of the talk box, considering that the station had 0.6% share of audience under the old music-oldies format--a rise of 66%. By contrast, KIEV-AM (870), which has been at the talk game much longer and revamped its lineup last August, garnered only a 0.6% share in the latest ratings.

Jackson, the former KABC host who moved to KRLA in January, got a 2.7% share among listeners 12 and older in his first survey, beating KABC’s Dennis Prager (2.1%) in their weekday 9 a.m.-noon slot. Prager, however, had more than twice Jackson’s share among 25- to 54-year-olds, the group most advertisers target.

But then, Rush Limbaugh on KFI-AM (640) attracted more than both of them combined, with a 5.6% share in overall audience.

KRLA Program Director Ron Escarsega, indicating that Jackson’s showing clearly helped the station, said: “I predicted a 1.5 [share] with Michael [in the 12-and-older ratings], and I had no idea he’d crack a 2 share. We’re very excited.”

Among the losers were CBS-owned KLSX-FM (97.1) and its morning host Howard Stern, who plummeted from 4.7% to 3.6% in overall audience share. The station itself fell a half-percentage point to a 1.9% share. Sources close to KLSX suggested that Stern may be overexposed with his daily radio show, a weeknight TV show on E! Entertainment and another TV program Saturday nights on CBS.

With Stern dropping, Rick Dees of Top 40 station KIIS-FM (102.7) moved up to become the top English-language morning host with a 4.3% share of the audience--his first time in that position since the first quarter of 1995 (although Stern eclipsed him in the 25-54 demographic). Dees helped propel KIIS into a tie with KPWR-FM (105.9) for the lead spot among English-language stations and third overall.

While KABC stayed put at 2.4% for the second quarter in a row--its lowest audience in a decade--it moved up slightly in the 25-54 demographic and in its own preferred 35-54 demographic. “We’ve got to start somewhere,” said Erik Braverman, assistant program director. “For a long time, KABC was not relevant, but Larry Elder is putting us on the map. He’s clearly driving our train right now.”

Elder, whose 3.3% audience share topped the 3-7 p.m. field among talk stations, was up 38% over the previous quarter and 14% over the same period a year ago. He also showed substantial gains in the 25-54 and 35-54 demographics.

“I think it’s a pretty good show,” Elder, who has done afternoon drive since 1995, said this week. “These things take time. People are getting it and getting me.”

Al Rantel, KABC’s noon-3 p.m. host, also had improved ratings but still was well behind KFI’s Laura Schlessinger.

A major loser in the talk genre was the weekday 7-10 p.m. time slot: Audience declined on all five stations. KABC host Stephanie Miller suggested that the decline of the Monica Lewinsky story might have brought that about.

Stirring Things Up: While his ratings may be down locally, Howard Stern isn’t lacking for attention this week. The Colorado state legislature passed a resolution Tuesday asking the station that carries his show in Denver to drop it because of comments he made on the air in the aftermath of the massacre at suburban Columbine High School.

The legislators demanded an apology from Stern, who had asked on his nationwide radio program the day after 13 people were murdered if the two teenage gunmen had tried to have sex with female students.

At KXPK-FM in Denver, spokesman Joe Gaffoni, noting that the station has “an audience that wants” the type of programming Stern offers, said Wednesday that “as of now there are not plans to take the show off the air.” But he conceded that the Stern broadcast has put the station--which has several Columbine graduates among its employees--in an “awful position.”

“The station is not in any way tolerating or supporting those comments that were insensitive to the community here,” Gaffoni said. “We immediately recognized that there was a problem and followed up with apologies in every way we know how.”

Among the measures taken by the station: airing on-air apologies every other hour for three straight days, issuing printed apologies to all the local newspapers, drafting a separate letter to students and the school, and holding a blood drive and fund-raiser (it netted $20,000) to help the victims.

Gaffoni said the station contacted Stern’s producer immediately after the offensive broadcast to register its complaints. He said that “Stern himself later apologized on the air for the statements and the way they were interpreted” and on Friday’s broadcast offered a sincere eulogy to teacher William “Dave” Sanders, who was among those killed in the rampage.

Times staff writer Shauna Snow and Reuters contributed to this article.