Weekly Spots

POSTED: February 27, 2012

(White Plains, NY) February 27, 2012 – According to Arbitron, Knoxville, TN is the 72nd largest radio market with a population of 686,100.

• Knoxville is the third-largest city in Tennessee and was originally hunting grounds of the Cherokee Indians. James White, the founder of Knoxville, established his home here in 1786 as a fort and cluster of cabins.

• By 1791, the community was renamed Knoxville and enjoyed status as the capital of the Southwest Territory. By 1794, the town was home to Blount College, known today as the University of Tennessee. Their mascot is a “Volunteer.”

• After the civil war, Knoxville rebuilt its economy through commerce, industry, and natural resources that included lumber, coal, and marble.

• Natural resources and river-generated power helped establish Knoxville as a city and headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

• In 1982, Knoxville hosted the World's Fair, where 11 million visitors experienced the theme, "Energy Turns the World."

• Knoxville's culture and history can be explored and discovered in its 20 museums, numerous performing arts venues, and its historic neighborhoods.

• Knoxville is home to the main campus of the University of Tennessee. It is also home to: Fountainhead College of Technology (formerly Tennessee Institute of Electronics), Johnson Bible College, Knoxville College, Pellissippi State Technical Community College and South College (formerly Knoxville Business College), but most people bleed orange in Knoxville meaning they all follow the Volunteers of U of T.

• Famous people from Knoxville: writer Nikki Giovanni, MLB’s Todd Helton, country singer-songwriter Con Hunley, director Quentin Tarantino, alternative band The Judybats, Comedian Henry Cho, and former Dallas Cowboy Dwight Douglas “D.D.” Lewis.

KNOXVILLE SPOT TEN

Last week in Knoxville the #1 radio advertiser was BLUE STAR PRODUCTIONS with 820 spots. GEICO came in #2 airing 400 announcements, while WEST CHEVROLET leaped into #3 with 299 spots. SEARS exploded from #48 to #4 with 202 commercials and ADVANCE AUTO PARTS parked at #5 with 194 spots. MCDONALD’S moved from #22 to #6 with 188 ads, while TAMIFLU flew into #7 with 186 spots. RESTORE OUR FUTURE (Pro-Mitt Romney PAC) forged into #8 with 184 spots and WATERS EDGE PROPERTIES took #9 with 177 ads. And in at #10 was RUSTY WALLACE TOYOTA with 175 spots.

SPORTING GOODS SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

In the category of Sporting Goods, REI took the lead with 502 spots nationwide. SPORT CHALET came in #2 with 282 commercials, while NBA STORE bounced from #8 to #3 with 212 spots. JUST GUNS shot from #9 to #4 with 209 spots and JOHNNY MAC’S moved from #66 to #5 airing 205 spots. TODD & MOORE appears at #6 with 199 spots, while SKI WORLD shows at #7 running 175 spots. MOUNT EVEREST climbed from #71 to #8 with 171 spots and AMMO BROS comes in #9 with 137 ads. PPK ARMS reloads at #10 running 131 spots.

NATIONAL SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

On the national scene, GEICO maintains #1 with 51,034 spots. MCDONALD’S makes its move into #2 with 26,797 spots, while ADVANCE AUTO PARTS is back in the big time with 22,230 spots making them #3. STATE FARM was #4 airing 19,084 commercials and LOWE’S was #5 running 18,103 spots last week.

Posted: February 20, 2012

Cox Communications, a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc., was founded in 1898 by Ohio school teacher turned Governor, James M. Cox, and has gone on to become the third largest cable entertainment and broadband services provider in the country.

James Cox served three terms as governor of Ohio and eventually ran in the 1920 U.S. presidential election as the Democratic nominee and was part of an historic radio broadcast. On November 2, 1920, station KDKA in Pittsburgh made the nation's first commercial broadcast of the results of the Harding-Cox presidential election. Harding won.

Governor Cox laid the foundation for the Cox Enterprises media company by purchasing his first newspaper, The Dayton Evening News. In 1934, Cox entered the broadcasting arena and created Dayton’s first radio station, WHIO.

In 1948, Cox established the first television station in the southern United States, WSB-TV in Atlanta, as well as the first southern FM radio station, WSB-FM.

In 1957, James Cox passed away and was succeeded as leader of his company by his son, James Cox Jr. By 1962, they were one of the first broadcasting companies to venture into cable television systems in Lewistown, Pennsylvania followed by additional ones in California, Oregon, and Washington.

In 1982, Cox Broadcasting changed its name to Cox Communications, Inc. Three years later in 1985, Cox Communications merged with Cox Enterprises Inc (newspapers) and it became the country’s 13th largest media company. By the end of the decade the Cox cable group had surpassed 1.5 million customers.

By the early 1990s, Cox Enterprises consisted of four main operating companies: Cox Newspapers, Cox Cable Communications, Cox Broadcasting, and Manheim Auctions (the auto auctions business). The 90s were a decade of major growth for Cox Enterprises with the testing and development of cable-based personal communications services (PCS) in 1991, the acquisition of Rysher Entertainment in 1993, and the purchase of cable operations of the Times Mirror Company in 1995 making it the 5th largest cable company in the nation.

In 1996, Cox Radio, Inc. became a publicly traded company generating $120 million. The same year Cox Interactive Media, Inc. was formed to produce and manage the company’s interactive web products. By mid-1997, Cox Radio owned 49 stations, making it the ninth largest radio group in the country.

It was also in 1997 that Cox Communications became the first cable provider to offer three-product “bundle” of telephone, high-speed Internet and digital cable television over a single broadband network. By decade’s end, Cox Enterprises, as a whole, brought in $6.1 billion.

In 2004, Cox Enterprises bought back stock in Cox Communications which amounted to a $6.6 billion tender offer and for the second time Cox was taken private by Cox Enterprises.

Cox serves more than 6.2 million customers, including 2.9 million digital cable subscribers, 3.5 million Internet subscribers, and 2.2 million digital telephone subscribers and is headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. They have over 22,000 employees.

On Local Cable Cox Communications ran a total of 571,009 spots in the last 12 months. Their strongest month was January of 2012 with 53,078 and last March 2011 was also big with 52,385 ads. 53.54% of all their spots ran on Cable.

On the Radio, Cox Communications ran 250,207 spots in the last 12 months with last November being the biggest with 32,701 spots.

On TV, Cox ran 245,315 spots in the last month with the largest bundle delivered last month January with 53,078 spots.

POSTED: February 27, 2012

Wells Fargo & Co. was founded in 1852 by Henry Wells and William Fargo. The new company offered banking (buying gold, and selling paper bank drafts as good as gold) - and express (rapid delivery of the gold and anything else valuable).

Wells Fargo opened for business in the gold rush port of San Francisco and soon had agents in the other cities and mining camps of the West.

By 1918, Wells Fargo was part of 10,000 communities across the country. That same year, the federal government took over the nation’s express network during the First World War, as part of the “war effort”, and Wells Fargo was left with just one bank in San Francisco.

Throughout the 20th Century, Wells Fargo rebuilt from just one office in San Francisco. And in the 1960s, Wells Fargo became a northern California regional bank with branch offices everywhere.

In the 1980s Wells Fargo expanded into a state-wide bank and became the seventh largest bank in the nation. It also launched an online service.

By the 1990s, Wells Fargo was back into their original areas throughout the Western, Midwestern and Eastern states. But it was the financial crisis of 2008 that gave Wells Fargo their biggest expansion plan.

In October of 2008, Wachovia agreed to be bought by Wells Fargo for about $14.8 billion in an all-stock transaction. Citigroup then announced that they would buy Wachovia for $2.1 billion. Citigroup protested Wachovia's agreement to sell itself to Wells Fargo and threatened legal action over the matter. However the deal with Wells Fargo overwhelmingly won shareholder approval since it valued Wachovia at about 7 times what Citigroup offered.

There were many court maneuvers and negotiations that ended in Wells Fargo winning the deal. But, they then got bail-out money from the government to make the deal work and they paid it back. As part of the redemption of the preferred stock, Wells Fargo also paid principal and accrued dividends of $131.9 million, bringing the total dividends paid to the U.S. Treasury and U.S. taxpayers to $1.441 billion.

Today, Wells Fargo has more than 10,000 bank branches and mortgage and consumer finance offices nationwide. They just went through the largest conversion of their Wachovia branches which now brings all 6,239 retail banking stores under one platform. They have 260,000 employees. According to their latest annual report they produced revenues of $87.60 billion with a net income of $15.87 billion.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is one of the oldest financial services firms in the world. It has operations in 60 countries. It is a leader in financial services with assets of $2 trillion, and the largest market capitalization and third largest deposit base U.S. banking institution behind Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

The rich history of JP Morgan is amazing. JPMorgan Chase, its current structure, is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies over the last decade including Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Bank One, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Going back further, its predecessors include major banking firms among which are Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, First Chicago Bank, National Bank of Detroit, Texas Commerce Bank, Providian Financial and Great Western Bank.

The heritage of the House of Morgan traces its roots back to the partnership of Drexel, Morgan & Co. which in 1895, was renamed J.P. Morgan & Co. Arguably the most influential financial institutions of its era, J.P. Morgan & Co. financed the formation of the United States Steel Corporation, which took over the business of Andrew Carnegie and others and was the world's first billion-dollar corporation.

The Chase Manhattan Bank was formed upon the 1931 purchase of Chase National Bank (established in 1877) by the Bank of the Manhattan Company (established in 1799), the company's oldest predecessor institution. The Bank of the Manhattan Company was the creation of Aaron Burr, who transformed The Manhattan Company from a water carrier into a bank.

During the banking crisis and financial meltdown in 2008, JPMorgan Chase was in the middle of it with their purchase of Bear Stearns. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided an emergency loan to try to avert a sudden collapse of Bear Stearns. The company could not be saved and was sold to JP Morgan Chase for far below the perceived market value. The company no longer exists.

According to the latest annual report, JPMorgan Chase & Co. produced revenues of $110.84 billion with net income of $18.20 billion. They have more than 260,000 employees.

On Local Cable, Chase is well out in front of Wells Fargo. JPMorgan Chase ran 588,974 spots in the last 12 months, while Wells Fargo ran 97,801 spots. The biggest month for Chase was November 2011 with 78,015 spots against Wells Fargo’s biggest month, last March 2011, when they ran 17,504 ads.

On Radio both banks are running close. Wells Fargo ran 385,098 spots in the last 12 months, while Chase ran 425,158 in the same period. Wells Fargo’s biggest month was last March 2011 (when they were going through many of their conversions from Wachovia) with 58,618 ads. Chase ran hot in August with 62,483 spots.

On TV, they seem to be chasing what matters on TV with 237,803 Chase spots against Wells Fargo’s 60,836 spots in the last 12 months. Chase ran the most spots in October with 32,703 ads, while Wells Fargo ran the most in July with 10,266 spots.

Posted: February 27, 2012

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