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Keep an Eye on Weekly Cume Rating

Under PPM, ‘Cume far more than TSL ... truly separates the high performers,’ Coleman finds

Weekly cume rating takes on new importance in the world of PPM.

That’s a key conclusion from a study released during the recent NAB Radio Show by Coleman Insights. It is part of Coleman’s series “Mapping the DNA of PPM.”

“Weekly cume rating is the measure that most often differentiates American radio stations that are highly successful in Arbitron’s Portable People Meter radio ratings service,” it concludes.

Stations that do well under PPM “obviously benefit from higher-than-average cume and TSL levels,” stated Vice President John Boyne. “However, what our study reveals is that it is cume far more than TSL that truly separates the high performers from the rest of the pack.”

The company concludes that radio stations “need to recognize the importance of awareness, positioning and branding, because weekly cume is a far stronger differentiator of high-performance stations than any other characteristic.” It said a station can significantly improve its ability to achieve a high cume with a strategic marketing and advertising plan.

It also found that stations “are best served by trying to get listeners to listen to a station on more occasions rather than attempting to get them to listen for longer periods of time”; that radio programmers should understand that P1 listeners remain vitally important under PPM; and that programmers “should not overreact if their station does not conform to the listenership measure norms reported in the study. Market conditions may dictate differences in success strategies for specific radio stations.”

Dig into the details here (PDF).

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