I don't think I like the sound of that...
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Radio - dead and loving it (sorry Mel Brooks)
- Thread starter howdareu
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I don't think I like the sound of that...
No the variety is down guys, you know that - corporations are about narrow uniformity not creativity.
They do not invent they maintain. And by the way the commercials are driving people away for certain, I don't know what the ratings people are doing with witchcraft & numbers these days but they will call anything #1. The insult "the devil is in the details" refers to that kind, like the drug addicts who calculate budgets for the feds
I recommend you get used to more bad answers, more bad commercials & more ratings voodoo because that's where this sideshow is going. And by the way TV IS doing better - more options than ever.
They do not invent they maintain. And by the way the commercials are driving people away for certain, I don't know what the ratings people are doing with witchcraft & numbers these days but they will call anything #1. The insult "the devil is in the details" refers to that kind, like the drug addicts who calculate budgets for the feds
I recommend you get used to more bad answers, more bad commercials & more ratings voodoo because that's where this sideshow is going. And by the way TV IS doing better - more options than ever.
You can believe whatever you want to believe, but it's wrong. The format variety is up, especially for minorities. The number of commercials at OTA radio has either held steady or dropped over the last few years, while the number of ads, and the nature of those ads, has increased for online radio. More pop-ups, more roll-overs, and more required viewing of video ads and pre-rolls. There are three times as many spots at Pandora. If commercials are driving people away, how do you feel about the video ads right here at RadioDiscussions?
If commercials bother you, pay $15 a month for Sirius. Plus you'll get 100 different commercial-free formats. If commercials and lack of variety is hurting radio, Sirius should be the main beneficiary. But people don't want to pay for radio. They want the variety of Sirius for free. That's not going to happen.
Huh? There are five different versions of AC, using five different charts. Consider how many types of urban formats there are. Cumulus has just launched a different approach to country, one that combines a larger amount of Gold with currents. In Seattle, you still have a classical station! That's pretty unusual. Two Christian stations. That format didn't exist at one time. You also have several talk stations on FM. The top story in radio is how Clear Channel is paying $3 million to a DJ in LA to lead a new urban format. But the format variety is aimed at the target demographic. If you're over 55, then there probably aren't a lot of formats for you. That's a personal problem, not a radio problem.
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Five versions of AC are still AC. Just different takes on the same format.
We have the same number of commercial Christian stations we had in the 1980's. The classical station has been there since the 1970's, and back then we had two of them. We lost our Active Rock, AAA, Smooth Jazz, and Oldies stations -- probably half of those are not "geezer" formats. The only classic country station is a rimshot AM. Our R&B oldies station is on the AM band.
I personally have no problem with what I hear on the radio -- I listen to news talk, sports talk, some business talk, KISW (mainstream rock), KBKS (pop/Top40), and sometimes KING-FM, and on rare occasions the alternative rocker at the end of the FM dial. But there was more variety in the 1990's than there is now on FM.
On AM here, it's reversed -- more variety now than there was in the 1990's. But as we all know, no one listens to AM anymore.
I realise the industry is going after the money demos. I get that. But that doesn't necessarily translate into greater variety.
Tell that to the people who listen. You wouldn't have five different versions if there weren't lots of listeners for each approach.
But this whole discussion about variety is a fake issue. It doesn't matter if you have 500 channels on cable if you only watch ten. Same with radio. The amount of variety doesn't really matter if all you really want is doo wop. And since that's no longer commercially viable, it's not available. Meanwhile, five different versions of AC is commercially viable. Why are there two country stations in Seattle? Because two companies think there's enough audience to sustain them. Simple. The way to get more variety is make a rule that prevents two stations in the same market from doing the same format. But that would eliminate competition. So which do you want? Variety or competition?
I'm not arguing with you about whether there is a reason for less variety. You have explained that reason quite well.
That doesn't change the fact that there is less variety on FM here than there used to be.
Maybe in Seattle. But radio is a whole lot bigger than one town. Local radio reflects the population of the local area. So Seattle radio has as much variety as the population can support. If the area could support a regional Mexican format, you'd have one.
I'm responding to a comment that paints a broad brush about "corporate radio killed variety." It really didn't. Changes in demographics and music taste has a whole lot more to do with it.
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If you will think of radio formats like a box of crayons, you'll recall there was the small box of just a few colors, the basic ones. The big box of 64 colors had many shades of color but they were all based on the box of the basic colors.
While I've been in radio we have gone from the basic to the 64 colors box, in my opinion. At one time there was top 40. From that came the stations that played the album tracks and became known as AOR. You had top 40 stations that leaned rock, leaned rhythmic, soft, etc. There were those shades of top 40 that added oldies and such. In fact, when the oldies stations began they were typically about 50% hits and 50% oldies and from there the percentage of hits kept going down until you had 100% oldies. Even Adult Contemporary came about and not by combining MOR and Top 40 but stations that dropped the hard edge of top 40 at the time (KBIL in Kansas City at one point and KVIL in Dallas as an example). Many MOR stations morphed to Adult Contemporary as new product dried up and demographics skewed older and older.
As for classic rock and other formats, I think time will evolve them. Of those of us in a certain era of music, we will likely balk at a label of classic. The oldies stations once played primarily pre-1965 music. Now the format does not include 1960s oldies for the most part. In a few years the 1970s will become less and less.
For those of us out of the money demographics, we will be pretty much ignored by radio as radio is a slave to money like any other business and the truth is the older demographics isn't what the advertising agencies and many businesses that control their buying want. We can talk 'serving' but the problem is it takes money. You might hate your job but you go there daily and do it right because you must have money to live. The same is the fact of radio. The owner of the station might want to do something different but when the factors that control his business hold the purse strings, you can't reinvent the world, so you march in line with the others.
So, I think we do have more variety, as in the same root format in several different styles to target all the factions of a specific music type. That's not smooth jazz or country hits of the 1950s and 1960s, etc., but what the advertiser wants as far as audience goes. Depending on how far back you want to go.
I remember in the late 1960s there were about a dozen stations on the AM dial all playing what was called MOR at the time. Some skewed younger, some softer, etc., but the playlist was likely 75 to 80% the same. On the FM dial there were at least a dozen Beautiful Music stations. There was little difference between one and the other. Still one station might shy away from the more current covers while another station might play fewer 'timeless classics' or one station might play a vocal every quarter hour while the next station didn't. The playlists/artists overlap was a very high percentage. Easily I could say there was less variety on the radio then. It was a field day for my parents but they were the prime demo at the time while I was just a kid with a working transistor radio.
It would be fun to play what the want on radio but I have never been in that situation in almost 40 years. Granted I did a volunteer show at a community station in the mid-1970s where you picked the playlist but even they had rules and didn't like me even cueing up records...it sounded too much like commercial radio in their minds. Radio is a business and follows business as a result. It goes where the money is just like any other business and just like any individual that must work for a living. And that community station went under. I knew it would even back then.
While I've been in radio we have gone from the basic to the 64 colors box, in my opinion. At one time there was top 40. From that came the stations that played the album tracks and became known as AOR. You had top 40 stations that leaned rock, leaned rhythmic, soft, etc. There were those shades of top 40 that added oldies and such. In fact, when the oldies stations began they were typically about 50% hits and 50% oldies and from there the percentage of hits kept going down until you had 100% oldies. Even Adult Contemporary came about and not by combining MOR and Top 40 but stations that dropped the hard edge of top 40 at the time (KBIL in Kansas City at one point and KVIL in Dallas as an example). Many MOR stations morphed to Adult Contemporary as new product dried up and demographics skewed older and older.
As for classic rock and other formats, I think time will evolve them. Of those of us in a certain era of music, we will likely balk at a label of classic. The oldies stations once played primarily pre-1965 music. Now the format does not include 1960s oldies for the most part. In a few years the 1970s will become less and less.
For those of us out of the money demographics, we will be pretty much ignored by radio as radio is a slave to money like any other business and the truth is the older demographics isn't what the advertising agencies and many businesses that control their buying want. We can talk 'serving' but the problem is it takes money. You might hate your job but you go there daily and do it right because you must have money to live. The same is the fact of radio. The owner of the station might want to do something different but when the factors that control his business hold the purse strings, you can't reinvent the world, so you march in line with the others.
So, I think we do have more variety, as in the same root format in several different styles to target all the factions of a specific music type. That's not smooth jazz or country hits of the 1950s and 1960s, etc., but what the advertiser wants as far as audience goes. Depending on how far back you want to go.
I remember in the late 1960s there were about a dozen stations on the AM dial all playing what was called MOR at the time. Some skewed younger, some softer, etc., but the playlist was likely 75 to 80% the same. On the FM dial there were at least a dozen Beautiful Music stations. There was little difference between one and the other. Still one station might shy away from the more current covers while another station might play fewer 'timeless classics' or one station might play a vocal every quarter hour while the next station didn't. The playlists/artists overlap was a very high percentage. Easily I could say there was less variety on the radio then. It was a field day for my parents but they were the prime demo at the time while I was just a kid with a working transistor radio.
It would be fun to play what the want on radio but I have never been in that situation in almost 40 years. Granted I did a volunteer show at a community station in the mid-1970s where you picked the playlist but even they had rules and didn't like me even cueing up records...it sounded too much like commercial radio in their minds. Radio is a business and follows business as a result. It goes where the money is just like any other business and just like any individual that must work for a living. And that community station went under. I knew it would even back then.
In my brief time on the air in Seattle during the late 70's and 80's at KING, I too recall the very limited number of music formats (Top 40, MOR, Classical, Country, AOR, BM). Three Seattle stations all had the same Top 40 playlist, just different jocks, promotions and jingles. With radio back in the day, the criticisms I vividly remember, or at least the two most common ones were: "You guys just repeat the same songs over and over". Yep, we did! Every 90 minutes you could count on hearing Lido Shuffle, Hotel California, Horse With No Name, etc. Those songs were popular then, and they still are today. And my favorite: "KJR plays better variety than KING does." And yet, we had the exact same playlist! But as I've found in this argument, don't confuse history with the facts.
It's not a one-or-the-other thing. Studies (even those done by Spotify) show that people are doing both.
AM is definitely variety that no one wants but FM? Like what, 9 AC channels? No that is all bad ideas.
What should have happened in the 90s was REAL COMPETITION - as in DON'T let everyone buy everything but let the weak fail, clean the band for all the trash that can't pay the bills and the strong would be stronger. Instead they just automated everything and fired people to pay the bills and put dreck on the air that PPM magically detects whenever a radio is nearby thus ALLEGEDLY a listener. Already know of industry talent who considered suing Arbitron for their messy science when that came out & their excuses on how it works were utterly bizarre.
Consider 2 households in error for Los Angeles changed the "ratings" recently. Right. That's not the emperor wearing no clothes.
Sometimes the excuses just don't work no matter how corporate speak they have to be, they can be wrong.
What should have happened in the 90s was REAL COMPETITION - as in DON'T let everyone buy everything but let the weak fail, clean the band for all the trash that can't pay the bills and the strong would be stronger. Instead they just automated everything and fired people to pay the bills and put dreck on the air that PPM magically detects whenever a radio is nearby thus ALLEGEDLY a listener. Already know of industry talent who considered suing Arbitron for their messy science when that came out & their excuses on how it works were utterly bizarre.
Consider 2 households in error for Los Angeles changed the "ratings" recently. Right. That's not the emperor wearing no clothes.
Sometimes the excuses just don't work no matter how corporate speak they have to be, they can be wrong.
Look, you're just upset that you can't find what you want. Someone moved your cheese. Sorry.
I've seen a report of at least one study showing that the Spotify and other non-radio streaming usage is greater than the radio listening by a significant amount each day.
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2015/02/is-broadcast-radio-losing-american-teens.html
I don't think I'm breaking any news when I say that teens use media (and other things) very differently than working people in their 20s. It's amazing how many people discover OTA radio after they graduate college. Just as they enter the target demo.
We'll see how much teens like Spotify and Pandora when their subscription prices rise and free services are cut due to rising music royalties. Neither company has turned a profit. Both are mired in debt. We'll see if either is still around in five years.
Just saw Pandora stock was down 20% today. Things are tough all over.
We'll see how much teens like Spotify and Pandora when their subscription prices rise and free services are cut due to rising music royalties. Neither company has turned a profit. Both are mired in debt. We'll see if either is still around in five years.
Just saw Pandora stock was down 20% today. Things are tough all over.
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And if you look at the annual ad sales for Pandora, they are less than the aggregate radio billing of Los Angeles. And the earnings report stated that sales were slowing... so Pandora's total ad billing is about 4% of that of terrestrial radio, despite having 75 million active subscribers.
That does not sound like a working business model. I think they survive by hoping that copyright legislation and royalty fees will be adjusted so that streaming is viable.
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