Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1960)

frank talk to buyers of air media facilities The seller's viewpoint // has often been said that television creates its own markets. Owners of area tr stations point out this is particularly true of them. A vocal spokesman on this point is John W. Guider, president of WMTW-TV, Portland, Me., (Mt. Washington, N. H.). Guider naturally feels strongly about the fact that the com entional methods of market ranking do not take into account the specific coverage advantage that area stations have. According to Guider, of the 4r>0-odd commercial television stations in the U. S., only five are area types. 'YES, VIRGINIA, THERE ARE AREA STATIONS' ■ or a long time we have been pounding away at timebu\ers with statistics to the effect that there exist two types of tv stations. Those that serve metropolitan markets and are termed metropolitan stations and a group of stationthat are termed area stations, that do not serve one particular metropolitan market but serve a number of markets, both metropolitan and smaller. \\ e realize that there are a number of reasons for a misunderstanding of the terminology area station; mainly, we realize some of this misunderstanding stems from the fact that there are only about five stations in this country which are in truth area tv stations as against some 450 other commercial tv stations. However, the reason we stress the fact that we are an area station and not a metropolitan station should be obvious. Start out with the proposition "markets" and you can get a pretty good idea of the difference in our "market" and the "market" of a city serving a metropolitan area. Traditionally stations have been located in and for major cities, and their market has been generally accepted as the market of that city in the sense that the market has been defined by the Census Bureau, or by custom, or by the various agencies that list and give statistics for "markets." An area station has no such "market." Its market consists of a great many small towns and rural communities and farms, and in the past it has not been gathered togethei into any tidy little package such as exists for any station located in the first 200 cities (from a population standpoint) in the country. A Bloomington, III.; a Reno, Nev., or a Charleston, W. Va.j will find itself listed among the markets in a dozen places, but Mt. Washington, reaching a population several times greater than any of these places may not be found in some conventional market listings. Recentl) however, a television research outfit threw out it long-established concept of what constitutes a market and merely measured the actual area served by the varioi stations. For the first time Mt. Washington was listei not only for the first time as a market, but as the SOtf market in the country — an extremely important indicatio of the difference between area and metropolitan stations. The thing that we hope timebuyers will file away in thei minds for use in buying time in the future is that a majc population center can account for less than 15% of toti population coverage I in our case, for example, the city < Portland, Me.). Another example: by far the majority d our viewers are to be found in some 1,100 small town1 that lie within our primary service area. When a distributor or a marketing man speaks of Por land, he means the entire marketing area of Maine, Nc Hampshire, and Vermont. His distribution lines begin i Portland and cover the tri-state area. The advantages c an area station to advertisers of nationally or regionall distributed products are obvious. As an area station we encounter evidence every day ths all the rules are made for metropolitan stations and non of them ever considers its application to area station: Countless examples could be made beginning right with th FCC rules: provisions which make all the sense in th world for most stations are absurd when applied to are stations. Consequently, it is important that the termino ogy "area station" be more closely studied by the peopl who are investing an advertiser's money in the tv mediuit An area station is in a rather unique position. There i no other medium that can cover an area like a tv are| station. Neither by tv from "metropolitan" stations, radio newspapers, match boxes, billboards or any other form o advertising is it possible to reach such a large number o ( people without using a greater number of outlets. So in the future, when someone mentions area station and asks about them, I hope the answer will be "Yes, ^ in ginia, (and Miss and Mr. Timebuyer), there is suchr thing as an area station." W1 SPONSOR • 24 OCTOBER 196(1