When they give out awards for being stupid, as they really should, Michelle Matts deserves top honors. The account executive for Entercom Madison, which owns a trio of Madison radio stations (WOLX, CharlieFM and Triple M), recently sent a prospective client a note touting the advantages of radio advertising.
Mats got just about everything wrong but the spelling of her name. Watchdog misspelled it just now, for good measure.
"Newspaper advertising in the Madison market is not beneficial for local companies," she asserted. "Capitol Newspaper recently stopped producing print format of their newspaper! Entercom reaches thousands more people daily than the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper!" And so on.
First of all, the company is called Capital Newspapers, and it did not stop "producing print format of their newspaper"; while the Cap Times went from six days a week to two weeklies, it still appears in print, even if nitwits like Matts don't read it.
And Entercom's three stations have a combined 13.1 market share in the last Arbitron rating; that means an estimated 13.1% of area radio listeners here are tuning in one of those stations. Arbitron reckons that the Madison metro area has 477,300 people age 12 or older. If every one of them were listening, which they aren't, that would total 62,500 people. (Entercom, without explanation, claims a listenership of 137,800 in its promotional materials.)
Cap News circulation guy Phil Stoddard says the State Journal has an average paid circulation of 103,000 during the week and 136,000 on Sunday, for estimated readership totals in excess of 185,000 and 275,000 respectively. (Isthmus' circulation stands at about 60,000, with an estimated readership of 150,000.)
Matts did not return a phone message. Probably too busy lying about the competition.
