Nielsen Leaving BC

[Qs23]

http://www.insideradio.com/free/nielsen ... a569d.html

Who's it going to hurt more? Townsquare or Midwest?

[TC Talks]

None of the above. They are probably leaving because too few parties are willing to pay for the comprehensive ratings data.

Marquette County has far more local radio stations than Calhoun County, and they seem to function just fine despite not being a surveyed market.

I thought Marquette was using another Survey Company.

[ftballfan]

Nielsen should have just merged Kalamazoo and Battle Creek into one market

[innate-in-you]

Nielsen should have just merged Kalamazoo and Battle Creek into one market

I was surprised to learn, several years ago, that GR and Kazoo were separate radio markets - yet one television market.

Perhaps this is a relic of the days when most receivers were AM-only. The miserable soil conductivity of Southwestern Michigan essentially rendered a 5kW AM station the same coverage of a 1kW FM on a 100' tower.

[ChrisWL1980]

The vast majority of GR-based FM signals have terrible reception indoors in the K'zoo area (and often mediocre reception in vehicles) and vice versa. It would have been completely impractical to combine the two metros into a single radio market.

Even if both markets' stations could be heard well in the other market, it still would have been largely senseless. Most Kalamazoo advertisers don't care about reaching a disproportionately Grand Rapids audience and vice versa, mainly due to driving distance.

All the important TV stations in the market with the exception of WZZM and WGVU intentionally located between GR, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek to provide city grade or near city grade service to all three cities.

On the FM dial, only WOOD-FM, WBCT, WVGR and to a lesser degree WVFM fall into that boat. WGRD is only 36 miles from downtown Kalamazoo, yet often has mediocre reception just to the south along I-94. WGRD's transmitted wattage is nowhere near modern-day Class B limits, primarily because of the need to "protect" WJLB in Detroit and potentially WKCQ in Saginaw and what used to be WLUP-FM in Chicago. Also, I think some engineering nuances may have been made to WGRD's antenna to maximize the signal that gets beamed over Kent & Ottawa Counties, to the detriment of areas to the south.

Another thing to remember - the typical VHF TV station, at least in the analog days, had useful reception out to 60 miles, sometimes more. City grade contour extends 25 to 35 miles from the TX site usually.

For a 50,000 watt FM station under modern-day limits, city grade contour only extends 20 miles. If we're talking a Class A station (capped at 6,000 watts from 100 meters' antenna height), the city grade contour only extends 11 miles.

102.1 WMUK also gets a 60 dbu signal into G.R. although their tower is farther south than the other stations mentioned. Aside from them and WVFM, no other K'zoo FM gets into G.R. that well. When I went to Aquinas in the late '90s, I had a hard time picking up WKFR on my Walkman thanks to what was then WFUR, which bled all over the dial on cheap radios. For the most part if I wanted to listen to WKFR, I had to use my Drake SW8 in my dorm room. With that receiver I could also pull in what was then 92.3 in Allegan (I forget what the calls were then) and 100.9 WQXC (both actually Allegan County signals), and 107.7 WRKR, and that was it except for the big two (then-WQLR and WMUK). That was it on FM, and 590 (and to a much lesser extent 980 and 1360) was the only one with a usable signal on AM.