Weekly Spots

POSTED: August 23, 2010

(White Plains, NY) August 23, 2010 – According to Arbitron, Tampa, FL is the 19th largest radio market with a population of 2,379,300. It was the 18th market a year ago.

• The Tampa Bay area was once home to various native American cultures, including the Tocobaga and the Calusa. The word "Tampa" may mean "sticks of fire " in the language of the Calusa.
• Some of the companies headquartered in Tampa include OSI Restaurant Partners, WellCare Health Plans, Inc., TECO Energy, Walter Energy and Raymond James Financial. Also, MacDill Air Force Base remains a major employer in the area.
• Tampa’s major professional sports leagues: the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning and Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays (formerly the Devil Rays).
• University of South Florida, is located in Tampa along with the University of Tampa. The U of Tampa Spartans are the oldest active sports organization in the city, having begun play in 1933.
• Some famous faces born in Tampa FL include: Brittney Snow; actress, Steve Garvey; MLB great, Fred McGriff; baseball slugger, Evelyn Brent; actress, Tony LaRussa; St. Louis Cardinal manager, Nat Adderley; musician and Les Blank; filmmaker.

TAMPA SPOT TEN

The #1 advertiser in Tampa last week was GEICO with 964 spots. Coming in #2 was VERIZON with 740 spots, while MCDONALD’S was #3 airing 612 announcements. RICK SCOTT FOR GOVERNOR was #4, up from #83 with 566 spots. The US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION was #5 with 519 spots and THE HOME DEPOT was #6 running 514 ads. 1-800-411-PAIN was #7 with 465 commercials, while the FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH was #8 with 463 spots. PUBLIX (Groceries) was #9 with 415 spots and BP was #10 with 414 announcements.

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

PROLIXUS was #1 with 4,725 spots. BETA PROSTATE was #2 running 3,591 commercials, while ONE A DAY (Bayer) was #3 with 1,946 spots. CENTRUM (Pfizer) was #4 airing 1,706 announcements and ZENCORE PLUS was #5 with 1,633 spots. #6 was FOCUSFACTOR with 1,087 spots, while NEUROSTIN was #7 running 1,077 ads. NUTRISHOP was #8 with 999 spots and COMPLETE NUTRITION was #9 with 890 spots. NUTRITION MARKET was #10 with 760 spots.

NATIONAL SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

#1 once again this week in the USA was GEICO with 53,588 spots. THE HOME DEPOT was #2 running 35,660 ads, while VERIZON was #3 with 29,348 commercials. MCDONALD’S was #4 with 26,515 spots. AUTOZONE held at #5 airing 23,966 ads.

NOTE: Auto manufacturers that were in the top 100: TOYOTA at #15 with 12,830 spots, NISSAN at #17 with 12,450 ads, CHEVROLET at #20 ran 11,001, FORD LINCOLN MERCURY at #25 with 10,027 spots, MERCEDES-BENZ at #40 with 8,111 spots, HYUNDAI at #65 airing 5,130 spots, BMW at #76 with 4,559 spots, SUBARU was #81 with 4,307 and LEXUS at #83 with 4,250 spots. Noticeably missing from the list was CHRYSLER – DODGE – JEEP.

Posted: August 23, 2010

RadioShack Corporation operates a chain of electronics retail stores in North, Central and South America, as well as Europe and Africa.

The company was started as Radio Shack in 1921 in Boston, Massachusetts, by two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann, who wanted to provide equipment for the cutting-edge field of amateur radio.

Theodore and Milton Deutschmann opened a one-store retail and mail-order operation in the heart of downtown. They chose the name "Radio Shack," which was a term for the small, wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment.

After expanding to nine stores plus an extensive mail-order business, the company fell on hard times in the 1960s. Radio Shack was nearly bankrupt when Charles Tandy of Brownsville, TX and owner of the Tandy Leather Company bailed out the company in 1963. He saw the potential of Radio Shack and retail consumer electronics and paid $300,000 for the company. They renamed Radio Shack: Tandy Radio Shack & leather. Tandy eventually divested itself of its non-electronic product lines and changed the name back to Radio Shack.

During the 1960s through the 1980s, Radio Shack marketed its free battery card; a wallet-sized cardboard card, free, which entitled the bearer to free batteries when presented at one of their stores.

In 1994, the company introduced a service known as "The Repair Shop at Radio Shack," through which it provided inexpensive out-of-warranty repairs for more than 45 different brands of electronic equipment.

In 1995, they changed the name "Radio Shack" visually using CamelCase as "RadioShack.”

August 9, 2009, RadioShack changed its brand name to THE SHACK™, which caused such uproar among advertising “experts” and critics. Based on the fact that the store sells laptops, wireless phones and a lot of things that wouldn’t be construed as radio, RadioShack felt that this would help reposition the store. However, none of the stores have changed their signage, thus rendering logo THE SHACK to nothing more than a nick-name.

In 2009, RadioShack produced revenues of $4.28 billion with a net income of $205.00 million growing in sales by 1.2%. They have 34,800 employees.

It appears that RadioShack has some kind of month to month plan going on here. They ran 132,937 spots in the last 12 months on Cable, but hit the months of August (31,660), November (26,330) and December (22,406), then only a small increase in June (16,940).

Radio seemed to be a natural for RadioShack, until the hit the month of January. They ran in the 3,000 spots per month range until they hit 2010. This last June, they bumped only into the 534 spot range for the month.

TV looks like Cable. Last November (13,313) was the high, but they ran no spots in October. This most recent June, they came back a bit with 3,628 ads.

POSTED: August 23, 2010

Time Warner Inc. is the world's third largest media and entertainment conglomerate by market capitalization and is headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City.

Time Warner Cable was formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc.'s cable television company, American Television and Communications Corp., and Warner Cable, a division of Warner Communications. It also includes the remnants of the defunct QUBE interactive TV service.

In late 2005, TWC formed a venture with Sprint Nextel. This joint venture enables Time Warner Cable customers to receive a full suite of products, linking in-home and out-of-home entertainment, information, and communications services.

In the summer of 2006, Time Warner Cable and Comcast completed a deal to purchase practically all of Adelphia's assets for $17 billion Time Warner Cable gained 3.3 million of Adelphia's subscribers, a 29 percent increase, while Comcast gained almost 1.7 million subscribers.

As Comcast and Time Warner were working out the details of stock, they agreed to exchange subscribers to consolidate in certain markets. For example, in LA Time Warner gained the market, but in Philadelphia, Comcast took the market.

The Time Warner bundle includes: Digital Cable, High Speed Online and Digital Home Phone.

Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) (formerly Warner Cable Communications) operates in 27 states and has 31 operating divisions. They have 45,600 employees. Last year they had revenues of $17.87 billion with a net income of $1.07 billion.

Comcast was originally formed as American Cable Systems in 1963 and was founded by Ralph J. Roberts, Daniel Aaron, and Julian A. Brodsky. They started with their first cable system in Tupelo, Mississippi.

The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1969, under the new name Comcast Corporation. The name "Comcast" is a portmanteau of the words "Communication" and "Broadcast.” They headquarter in Philadelphia.

Fully- or partially-owned Comcast programming includes: Comcast Newsmakers, CN8, Comcast SportsNet, SportsNet New York, MLB Network, Comcast Sports Southeast/Charter Sports Southeast, E! Entertainment, Style Network, G4, Versus, The Golf Channel, AZN Television, and FEARnet. Comcast also has a variety network known as Comcast Network, available exclusively to Comcast and Cablevision subscribers.

Xfinity is the name for the re-branded triple play services in Comcast's 11largest markets, which will include the company's digital cable, cable Internet access, and cable telephone services. Smaller markets will retain the Comcast branding for all services until they have been upgraded to full digital services. Although some self-proclaimed marketing experts and pundits have made fun of the new name, it is an attempt to “bundle” all the services under one brand. This is similar to how Cablevision used Optimum to do the same.

At present, Comcast has more than 47.1 million cable, Internet and telephone customers. The company is waiting for an answer from the FCC as to whether they can merge with NBC Universal.

Comcast delivered revenues of $35.76 billion last year with net income of $3.64 billion. They grew by 4.4% in 2009. They have 107,000 employees.

For the purpose of these comparisons, we looked at all spots run under the Time Warner Cable Bundle campaigns against the Comcast Bundle and Xfinity spots:

On Cable, a place that both companies know well, it is Comcast Bundles that are hitting hardest. Comcast ran 416,230 spots in the last 12 months against Time Warner that ran 213,218 spots for their bundled products.

On the Radio, Comcast tops Time Warner. Comcast ran 307,473 spots to Time Warner’s 213,218 ads coming in at 69% of Comcast’s budget for the medium.

On TV, Time Warner ran 97,324 spots for their bundled services, while Comcast Xfinity ran 142,331 ads for the same 12 months. Time Warner’s biggest months were June and July of this year, while Comcast ran hot in July (19,614), last August (17,295) and last November (16,441).

Posted: August 23, 2010

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