The Atlanta Hawks (including foward Paul Millsap) are helping fuel 92.9/The Game’s ratings. CREDIT: AJC.com
By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Another beneficiary of the Atlanta Hawks hot streak is sports talk station 92.9/The Game.
The station scored its best month ever by far in monthly Nielsen Audio ratings in January, hitting a 3 share for the first time ever, up from a previous high of 2.3 in December.
That’s more than double the station’s ratings in January 2014, when it drew a 1.4.
The Game, enjoying the arrival of the Atlanta Falcons and Mike Bell from what is now the stripped down AM 790/The Zone, is now riding the Hawks train to new heights and leaving rival 680/The Fan (and 93.7 on the FM side) in the dust.
For the fifth month in a row, the Game has beaten long-time market leader the Fan. I am not allowed to release the Fan ratings since they do not subscribe to Nielsen Audio but they are way down from what they were a few months ago and are not even close to the Game’s numbers.
This is clearly what CBS had hoped would eventually happen though it has taken longer than I’m sure executives expected.
The Game arrived in the fall of 2012, the first sports talk station on a metro-wide FM signal. (The Fan’s 93.7 signal isn’t nearly as strong.) Ratings for the Game were alarmingly anemic until last summer. Once people finally gave the station a sample in recent months, many have stuck around.
Ratings are strong all day long, with the mid-day time slot, which features Jamie Dukes and Rick Kamla, drawing the most listeners. On the Fan, Chuck Oliver and Matt Chernoff continue to be the highest rated show.
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We are now in the third month of the trio of classic hip-hop stations and nobody has blinked yet. They all arrived in late November on relatively modest signals.
The winner for the second month of ratings is OG 97.9, which is run by Atlanta-based Cumulus Broadcasting, with a 1.0 share, down from 1.2 in December.
Radio One’s Boom 102.9 has closed the gap, rising from a 0.5 to a 0.8.
Steve Hegwood’s Old School 99.3/AM 1010 lags behind with a 0.3, same as December.
The stations, with a collective 2.3 share, has taken bits and pieces out of other R&B and hip-hop stations in town. Year over year, Radio One’s Majic 107.5/97.5 has seen the greatest negative impact, with a 4.8 share vs. 6.3 in January. But the station has been down a bit for several months now.
V-103, which was No. 1 a year ago with a 7.4 share, brought in a comparable 7.3 share this past month. The station is doing better among younger listeners vs. a year ago but not so strong among 25 to 54 year olds. It ranked No. 2 overall behind News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB but was still No. 1 among 18 to 34 year olds and 25 to 54 year olds.
Fish 104.7 was No. 1 for the first time last month courtesy of Christmas. The Noel afterglow kept them in the top 4 with a 5.5 share. (Last year, the station averaged a 5 share.)
Power 96.1, which debuted in the fall of 2012, had its best month ever as well with a 5 share overall, beating Q100’s 4.5 but behind B98.5′ s 5.4.
