R&R pulls ALL Cumulus stations from panels

[John77]

I gleaned this from the Country section, but they have pulled the spins from ALL formats for Cumulus owned stations until further notice... this the result of Cumulus' owner saying they will no longer report "add" and "spin" totals to the trades...

"Chart Note: Effective Jan. 26, 2006, all Cumulus monitored reporters have been temporarily suspended from their respective panels and all Cumulus Indicator reporters have been dropped from their respective panels until further notice. This week's charts will be calculated by removing the airplay of the Cumulus stations from last week's charts in order to provide an equal reporting panel between the two weeks and minimize unnecessary chart disruptions."

This obviously is a "power" move which is an attempt to keep the Cumulus owner in line with the rest of the industry...

[Slinky]

Yup, I just posted about this in the CHR chart topic as well. It's the reason all spins are down on the h1r charts.

[John77]

Worst thing is this seems to have affected the "rock leaning" CHR/Pop stuff more than anyhing else... Rob Thomas, Goo Goo Dolls, Relient K, Natasha Bedingfield and James Blunt all saw BIG dips today. :(

[Slinky]

Makes sense since the Cumulus stations are mostly in small markets, and those are the ones that favor pop/rock.

[John77]

Yup... I wish it had been the stupid Clear Channel stations that had tried to pull this...

[EvanJ]

Clear Channel owns so many stations that I don't know if they would be removed from the panel if they did what Cumulus did.  There are only one Top 10 market, four Markets 11-20, and three Markets 21-30 CHR-Pop stations on the panel not owned by Clear Channel.
I just noticed the CHR-Pop panel was down 8 stations and CHR-Rhythmic and Urban are down 2 stations each.
I only get one Cumulus station on the radio which is AC WEBE.

[Marv]

Does anyone happen to know how many CHR/Pop stations Cumulus owns in the top 20 markets?

It would be VERY interesting to see what size markets have been impacted the most by Cumulus's move, and how much weight those stations carry as it relates to the CHR/Pop chart @ R&R.

[EvanJ]

Cumulus owns no CHR-Pop stations in the Top 20 markets. The biggest market Cumulus CHR-Pop station was KCHZ Kansas City which changed to CHR-Rhythmic. Toledo (Market 84) is the biggest market with a Cumulus CHR-Pop station. If Cumulus buys Susquehanna like golden eagle boy said then that will give Cumulus two Top 10 market CHR-Pop stations, KRBE Houston and WWWQ Atlanta.

[botoxic]

From this morning's Billboard Radio Monitor report, the Mainstream Top 40 panel appears to have remained intact, and the weekly chart shows no aberrations from last week's totals - Cumulus apparently was not dropped from the BDS and Billboard charts. :)

[Matt4319]

Uh oh...

Cox To Cease Reporting Music Adds To Trades

On the heels of CUMULUS MEDIA's policy of not reporting music adds to trade publications (NET NEWS 1/23), a memo from a COX station has been widely circulated to National and Regional record label execs stating that: "Effective immediately, per COX, we cannot discuss research or report any adds to trade publications."

COX RADIO President/CEO BOB NEIL told ALL ACCESS, "The proximity of the our announcement not to report 'music adds' to the trades coinciding with CUMUMLUS is pure coincidence. We'd been talking about this for a while, and would have beat CUMULUS to the announcement, except that several key folks were on vacation. so we waited.

"We do an annual review of our payola and plugola policy and since most of our Country and AC stations were no longer reporting anymore for quite some time, we just determined that to stay above board would require a lot of administration. And, for so few stations reporting 'music adds,' it was more effort than it was worth. With so much of this data being available electronically, the process of 'adding' songs has become a cumbersome process when the airplay is verifiable. This move was not aimed at anyone or any trade in particular, but is simply updated policy we've put into place."

[John77]

botoxic said:

From this morning's Billboard Radio Monitor report, the Mainstream Top 40 panel appears to have remained intact, and the weekly chart shows no aberrations from last week's totals - Cumulus apparently was not dropped from the BDS and Billboard charts.

Billboard's airplay is monitored and they already said in their statement about this that the move wouldn't affect their charts as they don't use "reported info"... it's strictly the BDS monitored info that they use.

[John77]

admin said:

Uh oh...

Cox To Cease Reporting Music Adds To Trades

On the heels of CUMULUS MEDIA's policy of not reporting music adds to trade publications (NET NEWS 1/23), a memo from a COX station has been widely circulated to National and Regional record label execs stating that: "Effective immediately, per COX, we cannot discuss research or report any adds to trade publications." 

COX RADIO President/CEO BOB NEIL told ALL ACCESS, "The proximity of the our announcement not to report 'music adds' to the trades coinciding with CUMUMLUS is pure coincidence. We'd been talking about this for a while, and would have beat CUMULUS to the announcement, except that several key folks were on vacation. so we waited.

"We do an annual review of our payola and plugola policy and since most of our Country and AC stations were no longer reporting anymore for quite some time, we just determined that to stay above board would require a lot of administration. And, for so few stations reporting 'music adds,' it was more effort than it was worth. With so much of this data being available electronically, the process of 'adding' songs has become a cumbersome process when the airplay is verifiable. This move was not aimed at anyone or any trade in particular, but is simply updated policy we've put into place." 

Nice... pretty soon there just won't be an R&R then apparently... :(

[EvanJ]

So my local CHR-Pop station, WBLI Nassau-Suffolk may no longer be monitored. WBLI, KELZ San Antonio, and WAPE Jacksonville are the three Cox stations on the CHR-Pop panel although they are in bigger markets than the Cumulus stations that were removed. WAPE trails only WNCI Columbus and WKSS Hartford-New Britain-Middletown for the highest 12+ rating for a CHR-Pop station in a Top 50 market.
Cox owns 5 CHR-Rhythmic, 1 Urban, and 4 Urban AC stations on the panels.

[reception]

Old news from Feb. 20

Here at R&R, we've spent the last few weeks reviewing our add policies, and here is the official word on adds:

I. Effective the week of Feb. 13, 2006:
New Add Policy: Monitored stations that are not allowed to report adds per company policy (currently this is Cumulus and Cox Radio only) will remain as R&R airplay reporters. Their airplay will be monitored by Mediabase, and their plays will contribute to the primary R&R chart in their respective format. For these stations, the following add threshold levels will be used to automatically flag new songs as adds:
CHR/Rhythmic 15 plays per week for 2 consecutive weeks.

This is not a minimum airplay requirement for reporters in companies without corporate policy prohibiting them from reporting adds. Adds will still be accepted -- and are greatly encouraged -- at any level of airplay from programmers wishing to declare them.

II. Effective the week of Feb. 23, 2006:
There will be no more re-adds.

-Darnella Dunham
Radio & Records CHR-Rhythmic

[Arson]

Interesting, reception.

Effective the week of Feb. 23, 2006: There will be no more re-adds.

Does this mean songs can't be back up for adds, even if circumstances change (maybe after winning an award, or if another single does well and they want to go back to the preceding single)?