Top-rated WGN, 'GCI remain above radio fray

The more things change, the more they stay the same -- even in an industry as turbulent as radio.

The last dozen years have been a time of immense change for radio, ever since the 1996 Telecommunications (so-called) Reform Act took effect. That triggered a frequency land grab by major media conglomerates, leading to downsizing and copy-cat cookie-cutter formats. More recently, radio has been as shaken as any other electronic medium by the changes wrought by the Internet, for instance having to fight off the impact of the ubiquitous iPod.

Yet look at the winter Arbitron radio ratings released recently, and it's still personality-talk WGN 720-AM and urban-contemporary WGCI 107.5-FM atop the rankings, just as it has been for almost every quarterly book since I've been doing this job (13½ years, for the record) and long before that. And all-news WBBM 780-AM in third has held that position as well more often than not over the years.

In fact, talk about stability: WGN-AM swept first place in all weekday time slots among listeners 12 and older, and that's without benefit of the Cubs. Spike O'Dell remains heir to the legacy of Wally Phillips and Bob Collins as king of morning drive, but just as clearly the swap of midday and afternoon time slots involving John Williams and Steve Cochran has to be considered a success. Station execs reportedly credited snow days and the Northern Illinois University shooting for keeping people tuned in, but snow days would figure to have an effect only in the morning, and it's not as if NIU was the talk of the town for three months.

That probably had more of an impact on 'BBM-AM, along with the endless rush of news -- both important and inconsequential -- from the campaign trail, which also did much to keep people tuned to WGN-AM.

Yet radio continues to be an industry that defies sweeping categorization. If the NIU shooting and the presidential campaign were beneficial to WGN-AM and 'BBM-AM, they couldn't keep all-talk WLS 890-AM from dropping to 10th. A media maven like myself can't resist the impulse to point out that comes hot on the heels of the station sacking much of its critical news staff.

Radio remains a treacherous business, and it's not as if there isn't abundant change represented in the ratings. Minority representation is up, with adult-urban WVAZ 102.7-FM joining 'GCI-FM in the top five, and with both being monsters in the 25-54 age demographic prized by many top advertisers.

More than that, Spanish-language stations have come to the fore in Chicago, not just longtime WOJO 105.1-FM and more recent WLEY 107.9-FM (remember when that frequency was a jokey nostalgic disco station?), but upstart WPPN 106.7-FM, which used its format of Mexican classics to climb into the top five, for the first time claiming the crown as the top Spanish-language station in town. In fact, 'PPN and La Ley were the two top stations in the highly coveted men 25-54 demo in middays.

The question is whether those ratings will hold when Arbitron finally imposes its people-meter methodology, long delayed but still expected to go online later this year. Minority stations in other markets have feared their audiences might be under-represented when Arbitron abandons diaries for the automated devices. We'll have to see, but right now minority stations have never been stronger in Chicago.

Yet WGN-AM and 'GCI-FM remain strongest of all. The more things change …