TSL…. It’s Not Who, But How Long!
By David Kidd, BPR
Time Spent Listening (TSL) is the second variable, together with cume, involved in determining market share.
Cume and TSL combine to provide a station’s Total Listening as well as the market Total Listening.
Share is “your station’s total listening” ÷ “total market listening”.
TSL Definition: TSL is an estimate of the length of time that a station’s cumulative audience spends listening during a specified time period expressed in hours and minutes.
TSL is correctly referred to as Average TSL.
To use a very simplistic example, if a station has 2 listeners and a TSL of 8 hours, the reality
could be that one person listened for 12 hours and the other listened for 4 hours ……NO ONE actually listened for 8 hours.
So your station loses TSL. What do you do? Panic? No………..not yet!
First ……look at all the variables.
In the example below, the five new “light” listeners gained in survey 2 have increased cume to 15 but diluted TSL….remember its an average. However, Total Listening has increased to 125 hours and these light listeners have the potential to become “heavy” listeners.
| Cume | TSL per Listener | Average Station TSL | Total Station Listening | |
| survey 1 | 10 listeners | 10 hrs | 10 hrs | 100 hrs |
| survey 2 | 10 listeners | 10 hrs | 8h 20m | 125 hrs |
| 5 new listeners | 5 hrs |
Conversely, a station could lose cume but increase TSL because the loss in cume was due to Light listeners. The bad news is that total listening is also down.
| Cume | TSL per Listener | Average Station TSL | Total Station Listening | |
| survey 1 | 10 listeners | 10 hrs | 8h 20m | 125 hrs |
| 5 listeners | 5 hrs | |||
| survey 2 | 10 listeners | 10 hrs | 10 hrs | 100 hrs |
Final Note
Understand both variables – cume and TSL.
What percentage of your cume are Light, Medium or Heavy listeners?
Find out what is driving any losses or gains in both cume and TSL.
Always look at the overall picture.
Discussion
No comments on this post yet, start a discussion below!