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A friend of mine in San Franciscio has an awesome bar called Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant on Geary Street in the Richmond District. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. Full of chips, salsa, guacamole and stiff margaritas, the night before the AFC Championship Game in 2001 we hung out there with more Ravens fans than the place can hold. I was there three weeks ago and have shot several video segments for wnsTV from Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant over the years.

Over the Bay Area’s largest tequila bar, my pal Julio Bermejo (the U.S. Ambassador & world expert on 100% agave tequila) has a bunch of fun signs with slogans and axioms.

Here’s my favorite:

“Tommy’s encourages you to visit our competitors!”

I just love that. Because it’s exactly how we feel at WNST.net. Go ahead and scan the dial, surf the web, Facebook and Twitter away with our competitors – you’ll come back to us.

It’s our solemn goal and daily mission to make it mandatory that you come back to WNST.net every day for your Baltimore sports news, information and conversation because we think our content and observations are the best in the market.

Take the WNST State of Baltimore Sports Media survey here for a chance to win a 50-inch Panasonic HD TV…

The sign at Tommy’s is a symbol of excellence and the ultimate statement of self-confidence in one’s own product/expertise/value. It ain’t bragging if you can back it up, right?

It says we’re so good, you’ll remember us — and you’ll be back because we have the best information, the most accurate information and the most informed opinion, analysis and insights in the marketplace.

Oh, and unlike the others who are being paid “hush money” to cough and look the other way by the teams that they’re ostensibly asked to assess, evaluate and analyze with “integrity,” you always know you’re always going to get the truth from us.

For the first time in the history of WNST as a company dating back to 1998, we’re finally getting a fair shake on the measurement of our product on the web to know just how many people really are “coming back” each day.

I’ve been doing sports radio for 18 years. I have never read an Arbitron report that says we have more than 500 listeners. Most times, it lists us as the 52nd radio station in the market and sometimes we’ve fallen to ZERO listeners in their antiquated and useless monthly surveys. One local advertising agent has spent the past two decades calling us a “little station with a ‘cult’ following.” (After 18 years, nothing could be more insulting or further from the truth.)

And if you check the latest Arbitron numbers – we lovingly call them the “arbitraries” – you’ll see that once again NONE of you seem to listen to WNST.

☺

Yep, we’re back at “zero point zero” – kind of like Bluto in “Animal House.”

But to the amazement of everyone in the Baltimore media world, suddenly, we’re so far ahead of the pack in every WEB measurement that it defies all of the “millions of dollars of research” that Arbitron has invested in proving that places like WNST-AM 1570 and brands like WNST.net aren’t effective.

But somehow, we have well over 40,000 people in our sphere here in Baltimore (at least that’s how many we’ve been able to account for so far) and displaced local sports fans across the country who’ve been kind and trusting enough to give us their email, mobile number, Facebook or Twitter access. We’ve got over 10,000 on our registration to the website and more 12,000 in our Facebook sphere alone! And there are certainly thousands of other folks who just “lurk” in our sphere, reading but never commenting, registering or playing any of our games for cash and prizes. Just like the thousands of you who have been listening to WNST-AM 1570 for years and have never received a dairy to fill out.

Every day thousands of you are coming regularly to WNST.net – via our website, Twitter, Facebook or a myriad of other connections — for any of the variety of media and information we offer.

Against the marketplace over the past dozen years, WNST has been cheated out of millions of dollars of market revenue but the game is “fixed” — at least as far as radio is concerned. Arbitron’s reporting is so fundamentally flawed and skewed that it’d be laughable if it didn’t cause me to fire people and lose money on a measurement system that is so antiquated I find it hard to believe that anyone could take it seriously.

For the first 17 years of my radio existence and as recently as last spring, Arbitron was sending out a paper diary in an envelope with a stamp via snail mail and the USPS to various (and random) home mailboxes with a $1 bill (and later $2) inside asking you to fill out this form and return it so they could figure out what you’re listening to at home, at work and in the car.

Yes, in 2009, they would mail a few hundred of these out “arbitrarily” to Baltimore households a few times a year and almost $200 million of local advertising money was spent with this as “research.”

It is – and has always been – a complete joke in my humble opinion.

But every agency radio buy in this marketplace is predicated on this system and it controls nearly $200 million of annual local money.

Arbitron is the sole possessor – a monopoly if there ever was one – of the business of the radio industry. It’s false. It’s fake. Everyone in the industry knows it and acknowledges that this entire industry is still funded via this “cloud measurement” system of ratings.

Now they’ve graduated to “People Meters” at Arbitron, giving the folks in the radio business more back doors to cheat the system and falsify readings that begin with a flawed measurement system. In the industry, they’re called “PPMs.” I’ll just save my breath on the “science” of these things for a link here. That way you can make up your own mind.

Hmmmmmm??? I wonder which method is more accurate: a few hundred Arbitron diaries and PPMs doing random “drive bys” or the science of Google Analytics, which measures every click and interaction with a web site?

How about this as a simple, common sense proposition: I’m 41 years old and have listened to the radio my entire life – thousands and thousands of hours in Baltimore. From programming and producing WNST to the old WLPL, to B-104 to long nights of Jon Miller’s Orioles baseball and the dulcet tones of Phil Wood and Stan Charles late into the nights of the 1980s. I’ve been on the radio for more than 18 years, producing almost 250,000 hours of radio in my lifetime here in Baltimore. I’ve listened to more hours of Sarah Fleischer, 98 Rock, Mike Brilhart and Fran Lane than I care to admit. I listened to the Greaseman for thousands of hours in the 1980s. I listened to Howard Stern for 10 years in the 1990s.

I have NEVER, EVER been “counted” as a radio listener. I’ve never received nor filled out a diary. I’ve only seen one diary in my life, a few years ago, when a listener dropped by studio and asked me if I wanted him to “cheat” and say he listens all day, every day. (As it turns out, if he filled it out that way, Arbitron would discredit the diary and throw it out! How’s that for F%$#ed up? When a really passionate WNST listener actually gets one and is overzealous, it doesn’t it get counted!)

This isn’t as much an indictment of Arbitron – as a fundamental premise measuring radio listeners is like measuring clouds, it’s an IMPOSSIBLE medium to truly accurately measure – as it is an indictment of the businesses who still believe their fiction and make million-dollar decisions based on a few hundred diaries sent to a mailbox that I don’t even visit anymore.

So, if you were spending money advertising in 2010, how SHOULD you measure WNST.net?

As I stated earlier, we love honest competition and a level playing field. In radio, I’ve never had one.

I bought a little AM radio station on the right (or wrong? LOL) side of the dial for $1 million in 1998. If I had wanted to buy WBAL-AM in 1998 it would’ve cost at least $50 million. If I had wanted to buy 98 Rock it wouldn’t been at least $40 million. If I wanted to buy a TV station – say WBFF or WMAR – it would have been in excess of $100 million. And, if I had wanted to buy The Sun, it would have been several hundred million dollars.

Somehow – in 2010, in the only sphere that will ever matter again for eyeballs and the money of advertisers, the internet – we’re ahead of ALL of these entities (except The Sun) for tracking, registration, daily people visiting the site and the interactivity of social media on Twitter and Facebook.

The primary and fair-across-all-web-media measure system that we’ve used for the past two years has been www.alexa.com. We also can use Google Analytics. There are a variety of “web scientists” that will dispute the measurement systems of both of the aforementioned. (Not unlike my criticism of Arbitron.) And there are also systems of “pay for play” like Quantcast and Neilsen Net Ratings and plenty more you can research here.

The newest measurement system – real clicks, real traffic, real Google Analytics – have proven over the last year that WNST.net is the new market leader in covering real time sports in Baltimore. Arbitron (radio), Neilson (TV), Scarborough (print) reports – they’ve all been woefully unrepresentative of most industry brands if not a set of lies, damned lies and false statistics.

But here’s my reality as the owner of WNST.net even if you choose to dispute web science and legitimate, modern measurement statistics: every statistical tracking point – from registration to text service to Twitter to Facebook to daily traffic to Alexa – all point toward the same, inarguable conclusion. WNST.net is the fastest growing and most vibrant media website in the Baltimore community on a daily basis for sports

And as you can see at the bottom of every single page on our website, we do indeed invite you and encourage you to visit our competitors. We need them to work hard so it’ll make us better. We need them to continue to produce bad-to-mediocre corporate dog food for local sports media content so you know the difference between good and bad.

But right now, we’re not just giving them a run for their money or taking a few points off of their Arbitron numbers.

As of Feb. 1, 2010, we’re winning.

By a lot…

On a completely level playing field and method of of distribution, you can see it for yourself.

So, I’m sure you’re asking, what does that mean in terms of the future and the business of local sports media in Baltimore?

Well, no one really knows for sure. I’m going to try to address that on Friday. Things are changing so rapidly and the paradigm has been altered so seamlessly and quietly that anyone who calls himself an “expert” in this space is a liar. The truth: the medium hasn’t been in existence long enough for anyone to have a track record of success to deem anyone a prescient source for what’s in the crystal ball for the future of media in America.

But the media sources like The Sun and billboards and virtually every print medium who were just taking money from sponsors, agencies and businesses based on “number of eyeballs” is rapidly changing as well because now their customers and funders can all measure a return on investment – for better or for worse. The old advertising adage remains true: half of all of your advertising is wasted in traditional, dinosaur media. Now, with the web model, you KNOW what half is being wasted and that scares the hell out of just about everyone in the media world – agencies and media entities alike.

Have you picked up The Sun lately and seen how many ads there are in the printed edition? Like, NONE (outside of a few massage parlors) most days. That’s not a sustainable business model, which is why they’re in bankruptcy. The reason isn’t just the lack of integrity, content and distribution (that’s our theme of tomorrow’s blog) but the lack of proof of distribution and return on investment for the advertiser.

With the power of the internet, every click is registered, every story read is registered, every minute spent on every web page is identified, every subscriber is accounted for, every sponsor’s lead is justified. And every call to action can either be seen, acted on or ignored.

What you need to know is that the money of the advertisers is going to go to the world of the web where measurement of their message’s reach is self evident – not “guess-timated” or “diaried” or “sourced.”

So, today I thought I’d throw some hay makers as well as some facts your way about the immense growth of WNST.net over the past year on the internet using REAL stats, REAL hits, REAL verified data that indicates that you are not alone in using WNST.net’s many, many tools to make your Baltimore sports fan experience better.

If you want a “guesstimate” turn to Arbitron or Ray Frager’s old column in The Sun or the mindless, dinosaur data that most of our competitors are giving to businesses and marketing people to continue to steal money.

But, if you want inarguable facts, consider the following:

Here’s the Alexa report for TODAY. It’s based on a 90-day aggregate.

Baltimoresun.com 3,283

BaltimoreRavens.com 28,415

WJZ.com 45,932

WBALTV.com 46,287

WNST.net 65,743 (our highest number ever!)

Because this blog is already long enough, I won’t even bother to put anyone else — any TV or radio station or local entity here that are below us. You can research them on your own. Just go to www.alexa.com and have fun! Just rest assured, all of the rest are so far behind that putting their web traffic stats here would only serve to embarrass them.

Here’s the current chart path of WNST.net on Alexa over the past two years:

Our Twitter feed is the best and most referred in the market, our Facebook friends and the tentacles of all that represents about 12,000 people and we could brag about our 5,200 WNST Text Service subscribers (and these are all people who trust us with their mobile phone numbers). There are also thousands of you who are registered to our site, subscribed to our newsletter and playing our fantasy games as well.

Whether it’s real-time news, the text service, the Prize of Today, our blogs, our radio, our videos, our audio vault – we’re very happy that you love our company at WNST.net as much as we love Baltimore sports. And we really sincerely appreciate the interest and traffic and it helps us grow our company and feed our families.

Here’s one more nugget if you really want the post-graduate course on where the growth lies in Baltimore sports media: one of the greatest sports resources that is untapped is the female market.

Here’s a great example of what growth we’ve made in that area as a brand in Baltimore over the last 10 years. I’ve done three data surveys since 2000 – all as an “old man AM radio brand.” In every one of these, all of our demographics said that we were precisely 93% male and 7% female.

In 2010, here’s the data for our male/female ratio of our audience with a full-service web brand that comes into everyone’s home and mobile device with “level distribution”:

Registation is 82% male, 18% female
Facebook 68% male, 32% female
Twitter 72% male, 28% female

Our old stand-alone medium of AM 1570 radio was not as appealing to the female demographic for sports because its emphasis on rules, strategy, 3-4 defenses and salary cap talk wasn’t what women were really interested in during their afternoon drive time.

Women love sports. They just love it for a different reason than a 41-year old white guy like me who was born reading the standings, box scores and collecting Topps baseball cards with statistics on the back.

Women don’t want to discuss Hall of Fame credentials or compare Joe Flacco to Johnny Unitas. They just don’t!

There is a movement afoot to take advantage of what women DO love about sports: beefcake guys, tailgates, beer drinking, family gatherings, fantasy sports, gambling on games, water cooler talk that helps them communicate with the other men (and women) in their world who are interested in sports as well.

Oh, and if they want some information on the NFLPA or the collective bargaining situation, we can provide that, too.

But now we do it in the palm of their hands via WNST.net. No on some old-man AM radio station that powers down after dark and has to compete in the same medium with Lite 102 and Mix 106.5.

My bet says our current “State of Baltimore Sports Media” survey will show us to be at least 20% female as a medium. That’s a HUGE, HUGE increase in a core audience. This simple fact is also inarguable: women love the Ravens. The NFL marketing folks will tell you that the Ravens have the largest female fan base in the league.

And WNST.net is doing our best to serve the female audience with the same credible information that we were only offering on the radio just three years ago in a sphere where women didn’t feel as comfortable or welcomed in accessing the information.

We’re going start our own “Ladies of WNST” club in 2010 and start doing some fun outings for our female audience. I’ve been desperately trying to find a female personality who would be a great fit in our web model. Molly Dunham, my former boss at The Evening Sun, has politely declined my offer for participation. But she’s the best I’ve ever seen in Baltimore — hands down. If you’re not as good as Molly, don’t bother. I want a rock star, not a porn star. I want a sports analyst, not a jock sniffer. I want meat and potatoes, not meet and greet.

You need to be as a good as her — and that’s a high, high bar in my opinion!

(If you know of anyone, send her along! My email is nasty@wnst.net. We’ll also be doing another Coors Light King of Baltimore Sports Media competition this spring to find more young talent of any gender.)

If you’ve made it this far through my Opus on Baltimore sports media, chances are that you at least like and respect some aspect of what we do at WNST.net. (At least that’s a fair assumption given the time you’ve spent this week reading this series.)

So, you’re probably one of the ones who wants to HELP us get better. People always say the nicest things to me on the streets of Baltimore and when we do trips about “wanting to help.”

So, today I’m going to pull back the curtains on what you can do to help us (or any of our competitors for that matter):

Come to our website. Participate. Register. Play our games. Comment on our blogs. Write your own blogs. Subscribe to our blogs on RSS. Follow us on Twitter. And by all means, be our Facebook friend!

And when you’re considering buying an item in Baltimore, consider using our sponsors and visit their websites through our platform so we get the “credit.”

There’s nothing that helps us more when we go to sponsors to try to improve WNST.net than when you’ve been on our site participating in some way.

So, if you take nothing else out of this lengthy missive, here’s the biggest “secret” in the media industry. When you CLICK on WNST.net you help us stay in business, feed our families – and hopefully – GROW our business so we can serve you better.

If you like WNST.net, tell your friends. Share our content. Join our clubs and services. They’re all FREE – and in this day and age, what more could you ask for? Our sponsors pay for them to market you and we get to feed our families and you get the best, most authentic sports coverage in the marketplace anytime you want it.

We’re very, very serious about being the ULTIMATE resource in Baltimore sports media on the web. I’ve dedicated my life to it. So has everyone on my team at WNST.net.

So, while we’re winning in the only measurable stats that I believe, we’re still “losing” per Arbitron.

And let’s get this outta the way now: first things first, we don’t like “losing” at WNST. It’s one of our many “pet peeves” with the Orioles. Last place is unacceptable. Accepting any defeat is unacceptable.
It’s just not who we are.

We like to compete and we like to be measured properly.

But the tangible results and numbers don’t lie – WNST.net has usurped a wide swath of the market share via our web reach, content, accuracy and integrity.

Every radio station in the market is desperately trying to get you to go to their websites so they can show their “reach.” Well, it turns out, this hasn’t gone so well for virtually all of them because their product on the web sucks.

What they claim their audience is – and the actual impact that message has for an advertiser – is diminishing every day with many people reaching to the web and Facebook and Twitter for recommendations and advice and “leads.” In every facet of life, this is true.

EVERY single time you click on my website, you are measured. Almost EVERY time you listened to WNST-AM 1570 you were NEVER measured.

And, right now, more of you are coming to us. And we can prove it. It’s inarguable at this point.

Over the next few days we’ll discuss the changing climate of the local media and how the distribution of content and information has been forever changed by this wonderful medium known as the internet.

We’ve been asking you all week to JUDGE FOR YOURSELF what’s working for you, personally, in Baltimore sports media in 2010. Where do you go for your sports news, information and daily conversation?

Take the WNST “State of Baltimore Sports Media” survey here for a chance to win a 50-inch Panasonic HDTV…

Feel free to share this with a friend in your life who doesn’t listen to or read WNST.net. I’d love to know why they listened to Anita Marks or read The Sun instead of coming to WNST.net.

We want to make WNST better for you into the new decade and beyond.

And just like Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco, we DO ENCOURAGE you to visit our competitors! If we’re doing our job properly, you’ll be back – again and again.

And the more often you come back the better we can make the product.

Wednesday’s class: content and distribution and the level playing field of the world wide web.