For Immediate Release:

Monday January 30, 2006

Oldies Listeners Scatter

In June 2005, Infinity Radio made a bold move by converting New York City's beloved oldies music outlet WCBS-FM to the JACK format which had shown exceptional early success on KCBS-FM, Los Angeles.

After years as the industry icon for Oldies radio in many ways, over a million station listeners were faced with a choice: stay and give JACK a chance or go elsewhere to spend their listening hours.

Bridge Ratings which has been measuring audience behavior in New York since 2004, began tracking WCBS-FM listeners once the format change took place. The purpose of this ancilliary study was to find out just how many listeners stayed with the new format and how many had left and, if they had left, where were they spending their radio listening time now.

Bridge Ratings developed a panel of 3400 WCBS-FM listeners who had considered the station their FAVORITE, the one they listened to most. The panel was formed in order for us to question the same listeners over a period of time and to determine consistency of listening behavior. The information included in the charts on this page represents interviews conducted between September 2, 2005 and January 15, 2006 after WCBS-FM's change to the JACK format.

Chart A shows the general response to the question "Now that some time has passed since WCBS-FM changed its music from Oldies to the JACK format, are you a) listening to JACK as your favorite station or b) is another station now your favorite?"

Chart A

78% of those listeners who considered WCBS-FM their favorite station prior to the change to JACK, now consider some other station their favorite.

Chart B represents responses from the 22% of new JACK listeners when asked, "Are you listening to 101.1 JACK FM More, The Same or Less than you were three months ago?"

Chart B

Chart C shows the results of responses to the question "If you have a new favorite station, what is the station's name, call letters or frequency?"

Chart C

Of the stations mentioned, WLTW-FM (AC), WAXQ-FM (Classic Rock), and WINS-FM (News) rank as the new favorites for former WCBS-FM Oldies listeners.

So, where are New York's Oldies fans getting their Oldies fix?

Chart D

53% are not getting their oldies, 28% have found them recorded on CD's or their MP3 players.

Sample: 3400 WCBS-FM listeners in the New York Area. Sample error = +/- 1.7%

The Bridge Ratings "Audience Migration X Ray" study analyzes listener behavior behind the quantitative. Panels of audience members of a single station are tracked over time.