Floating Your Boat

The available TSL for a given demographic in any market is a zero sum game. Every station is fighting over a finite amount of listening from a given demo in the current meter panel or diaries.

Try as you might you cannot increase a market’s TSL.

You can play with increasing occasions and durations on your station but you are still working from a set number of quarter-hours.

That is why it is so important to track how market TSL is trending – especially in your core demos. A programmer’s natural reaction to a decline in TSL is to try to fix the product. But, maybe, the fault is not in your rotations but in how the current Nielsen panel is using radio.

Compare any fluctuations in your station’s TSL with what is going on in the market. You lost a quarter hour with W25-54? Is that because your competitor stole it or market listening shrank?

The Ratings Experts from Research Director, Inc. provide our clients with two different monthly reports that can track these numbers. They are called INSTANT ANSWER and FORMAT TRACKER (PPM only).

We would love to show you how these accurate and timely reports can aid in your decision process … and save you valuable time.

If you have the time (see what we did there?) just fill out the form below.