Now that this former TV station client has worked at ShareBuilders for a few months, I wanted to talk about another helpful tool in our toolbox – holding capacity. How can this help you? There are a myriad of ways. But if you ever asked yourself these questions then digging into holding capacity will be helpful:

• Is my station’s revenue maximized in each daypart given our ratings, and is it performing to its absolute potential?
• How do I measure shares and performance for us and my competitors if our market does not receive quarterly market reports?
• What stations traditionally underperform and overperform in a given quarter?

If you answered yes to any (or all) of these, then holding capacity reports will be valuable. Stations love them, especially when preparing for mid-year or yearly reviews.

One of the more useful tools is our performance index. It illustrates how your station is performing based on the relationship between ratings and revenue. This can be broken out for local, national and political. If your station is averaging 20% of the revenue in your market and the HC ratings share is an 18 . . . your performance index will be over a 1.0 (or 100%). When you have an 18% revenue share and hold 20% of the audience, the performance index will be less than a 1.0. The snapshot we take of the data makes it easy to see quarterly trends for all stations. It can also project out and give you the knowledge of whether your station will be in a position of strength, or if you need to be more aggressive given any upcoming challenges for the next quarter. And as all station sales managers know. . . . . you’re only as good as your last quarter and last market report!

Another great feature is the ability to see your TRP shares by daypart. One-click and you can see trends for your station and its competitors. The data can be pulled quarterly or yearly. This is useful when strategizing pricing – and understanding where your strengths and weaknesses are. Those insights make it easier to make decisions on where you need to play ball and where you need to stick to your guns.

With all reporting, we can easily export to excel and/or provide graphs that can be integrated into a station’s presentation.

I may be a little simplistic here, but I can’t give away all the ingredients that make holding capacity such a valuable tool!

I am slowly peeling back the many layers on how ShareBuilders can be used to a station’s advantage, but I will spare giving you another long reading assignment! Stay tuned for more confessions throughout the year.