from the NY Times
December 13, 2003
Corrections
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A sports article on Nov. 28 about the University of Vermont basketball coach, Tom Brennan, referred imprecisely to the relative popularity of early-morning radio shows in the Burlington area, including "Corm and the Coach," with Brennan as co-host. While that program, on WCPV-FM, is popular in the Burlington area, it rates seventh -- and behind the fourth-rated Howard Stern show on WIZN-FM -- among listeners aged 12 and older in the metropolitan survey area of Burlington and Plattsburgh, N.Y., as defined by Arbitron.
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from the NY Times
November 28, 2003
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Brennan is on the classic rock station WCVP-FM with Steve Cormier from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. weekdays, unless basketball gets in the way. "Corm and the Coach" crack wise on the day's news, deliver early-morning prank calls to opposing coaches in the America East Conference and crush Howard Stern and Don Imus in the local ratings.
from WCAX News
October 10, 2001
A hot dog eating contest in downtown Burlington this summer drew a crowd -- and the radio station that sponsored it hopes it draws a big audience too. Steve Cormier of the "Corm and the Coach" show on Champ 101.3 presided over a table full of young, hungry men who gobbled down hot dogs like the guy from Japan who won the national title. "Congratulations, the winning count was twelve hot dogs by Mr. Joseph Victory," Cornier announced. "I know your mom will be proud."
Promotions like this build audiences in a radio market that's profitable in spite of its small size, by national standards. Jim Furgeson, marketing director for Clean Channel's Vermont stations, including WCPV, observes, "This market does very well for radio. So as far as that goes, we're a much bigger market than we may appear on paper."
The more listeners a station has, the more advertising dollars. Corm and the Coach is among the top-rated, just ahead of Howard Stern's nationally syndicated show on WIZN (although two other stations, WOKO and WXXX, Triple-X, beat both in the overall ratings composed of all listeners age twelve and up). The latest survey by the ratings company Aribtron documents how many people and what kind of people listen. It shows all of the leading stations -- the top four -- are pretty close in terms of their audience shares.
But from now on, the ratings will cover a larger region. The so-called Metro area will expand from Chittenden and Grand Isle counties to include Addison and Franklin counties in Vermont, and Clinton and Essex counties in New York -- almost doubling the size of the market.
Arty Lavigne of WIZN Radio supports the broader market measure. "I think you're going to get a much more accurate view of the way people are actually listening to radio," he says, "and from the marketing standpoint it helps everybody, it's much more accurate."
Lavigne says the larger market size will attract more national advertising because it boosts the Burlington market from 229th in the nation to 138th. Breaking into the top 150 is bound to attract more regional and national advertising to the area.
Across town, WOKO is the number one rated station. But here, station manager Dan Dubonnet opposed the expanded market survey. "It came down to a vote and they had to have 75% of the subscribers agree to do it," Dubonnet explains. "I said right from day one that I would not do it... because they're going to charge me 35% more to do this." Dubonnet says the Arbitron survey already costs too much. He's been paying $80,000 a year for the three stations he manages for Hall Communications, WOKO, WKOL and WJOY. Arbitron will charge more for its expanded ratings.
The only other radio company that opposed the larger market survey area was WXXX-- Triple X, and WVMT. Each radio group has its own reasons, but the bottom line comes down to money."
WOKO and its sister stations will save big money -- a total of $130,000 -- by dropping Arbitron. Dubonnet isn't worried about competing stations that DO use the ratings to sell advertising. Stations are ranked whether or not they pay for the survey, but can't use it without paying for it. "I think it'll be pretty ludicrous when the top two radio stations, if we remain the top two, and quite honestly I think that'll happen -- aren't subscribing to a service that everybody else is trying to show how well they did in it," quipped Dubonnet.
Doing well means keeping your station near the top of a long list of stations. "It's always been a tough arena to compete in, there's no doubt about it," says Lavigne. "There are a lot of radio stations, there are a lot of newspapers to compete with, a lot of TV stations. Everybody's trying to market in different ways."
Now it will be a larger radio market -- at least as defined by Arbitron -- in which to compete.
February 8, 1999 - WIZN's Harry Jacobs (the station GM) called up Howard today to announce Howard has reached #1 in Burlington. The 25-34 age group is an 11.2 share. 18-34 is pulling an astronomical 18.9 share.
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