You can always tell how strong (or weak) a month (or quarter) is going for radio when you hear stopsets full (or empty) of car ads on a station. And while it's different from market-to-market there's no doubt that when car ads are in abundance, General Managers are much happier. The hope was a steady increase in auto sales through 2011 which would lead to a steady increase in automotive advertising for the radio industry. However, according to Automotive News a lack of consumer confidence and Hurricane Irene are putting a damper on any steady increase in automotive sales.
The paper says total automotive sales were flat in July compared to 2010 with approximately 1,059,000 vehicles sold. In the first 7 months of 2011 automotive sales are up 11% with 7.3 million units sold. Many analysts surveyed by Automotive News are now downgrading their annual projections for the rest of the year to about 12.1 million units sold. By comparison, The U.S. averaged annual sales of 16.8 million vehicles from 2000 to 2007, according to Autodata.
"With the economic woes, summer vacations and Hurricane Irene taking center stage, August may be a lost month for vehicle sales," said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power, in a statement. Irene interfered with auto deliveries in states that represent about 30 percent of the total U.S. sales, said Paul Taylor, chief economist at the National Automobile Dealers Association.
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Cumulus Senior V.P. Gary Pizzati sent in these photos taken by chief engineer Tom Morgan from the cluster of Cumulus stations in the New York state town of Poughkeepsie.