It's pretty much one AM per market, right? So in Boston, that one station is WBZ.
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It's pretty much one AM per market, right? So in Boston, that one station is WBZ.
No wrong. and is it your contention that if RKO moved what is currently broadcast on 680 AM to FM lets say to 107.3 for the sake of this discussion would they then be a top 5 station or even a top 10 station. I doubt it.
Name a market where there are more than two AMs in the Top 10. Even in Chicago, WGN is #11. Detroit and New York have two.
One thing that hurts RKO is that it's a conservative talk station in a blue state. If you notice, conservative talk is also hurting in San Francisco. So I doubt very much that any owner would move conservative talk to FM in Boston. But there's not much else they can do on AM.
I guess we are talking the irrelevant 12 + numbers if you look at 25 to 54 adults I can name several markets with more than one AM in the top 10. Chicago is one for example. have you listened to Dan Rea he is pretty center right and he does fine. Was Boston less Blue or were Jerry Williams, Gene Burns David Brudnoy Pat Whitley et all pandering to the Blue State liberals when they consistently posted good numbers? Not to long ago, Jay Severin and Michael Graham had decent numbers ( they weren't good enough for Greater Media) oh but they were on FM.
You are all over the map, RKO is not doing well because they are an AM, There can only be one AM per market with good ratings, RKO's problem is Massachusetts is to liberal.
I promised myself I wouldn't continue this discussion.The last thing I am going to say is RKO would have more listeners and higher revenue if they made a little effort to put out a quality talk product regardless of ideology on the air.
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In 25-54, the highest rated AM is WSCR and it comes in at 15th. WMVP is 17th, and WBBM is 19th while WGN is 27th.
I can't think of a market where the large signal AMs do better in 25-54 than in 12+.
Logical. But couldn't the sales guys include some after-midnight freebies to augment their daypart buys? Might show better than a ton of PSA's.
It might not be up to them.
Those of us who actually work in radio have a name for such a practice: Devaluing the product.
I can understand how you might think that but in my mind seeing a flood of PSA's instead of commercials tells me business is very bad. In that respect offering some extra incentive to your customers seems the smarter move (perhaps dropping the per unit cost but upping the grand total sale).
Political talk can do OK but not as well as sports talk has been doing, or various forms of music. The practice of putting talk on FM (launching FM only stations, or simulcasting AMs) is part of the "most people especially younger stick to FM" theory.
WTKK did do fairly well in some ratings books but ultimately GM did change it to music (aging demos, etc) The complaints about AM--stations powering down or changing pattern at sunset, for example--can be valid and is one reason sports talk is going to FM in many markets. The thought was to try it for political talk too. But putting a pol. talk station on FM, whether it's conservative or liberal or whatever, will only get so-so results. (Note that the NPR stations in town do fairly well but they mostly have news and some talk)
In Boston WEEI did fairly well at 850 but there were the complaints about the signal after dark, especially to the west. They stayed on AM, and by '09 CBS decided to change 98.5 to all sports with the Pats and B's, and later the C's and Revs.
It did pretty well (sports talk getting broader demos including younger people) but for two years, Entercom stuck to their guns and stayed on AM with WEEI. "Maybe they can put it on 93.7" people suggested but they were doing OK with "Mike".
But by Sept of '11 losing out to Sports Hub was taking its toll and they did the simulcast on 93.7, followed by changing 850 to all ESPN. The 850 freq that used to do fairly well with sports (local hosts, Sox) now gets very miniscule ratings (national)...content is important.
93.7 has their stick in Peabody and covers a good portion of the Boston area and the other WEEIs, like 103.7 in RI, can cover other areas. Would Ent. change 107.3 and/or 97.7 to a WRKO simulcast, or move? No, as WAAF/WKAF makes money with rock. Suppose Ent. had a centrally located FM, like 98.5 (the old WRKO sister station, WRKO-FM then WROR) and put talk on there. It might do OK, but not well, again given the demos of political talk. 680 covers quite a bit of ground by day,
and after sunset, well listenership is down anyway...so they'll reach a lot of people with AM drive, middays, and PM drive
and then offer Levin, Bohannon and C2C to a more limited audience.
WTKK did do fairly well in some ratings books but ultimately GM did change it to music (aging demos, etc) The complaints about AM--stations powering down or changing pattern at sunset, for example--can be valid and is one reason sports talk is going to FM in many markets. The thought was to try it for political talk too. But putting a pol. talk station on FM, whether it's conservative or liberal or whatever, will only get so-so results. (Note that the NPR stations in town do fairly well but they mostly have news and some talk)
In Boston WEEI did fairly well at 850 but there were the complaints about the signal after dark, especially to the west. They stayed on AM, and by '09 CBS decided to change 98.5 to all sports with the Pats and B's, and later the C's and Revs.
It did pretty well (sports talk getting broader demos including younger people) but for two years, Entercom stuck to their guns and stayed on AM with WEEI. "Maybe they can put it on 93.7" people suggested but they were doing OK with "Mike".
But by Sept of '11 losing out to Sports Hub was taking its toll and they did the simulcast on 93.7, followed by changing 850 to all ESPN. The 850 freq that used to do fairly well with sports (local hosts, Sox) now gets very miniscule ratings (national)...content is important.
93.7 has their stick in Peabody and covers a good portion of the Boston area and the other WEEIs, like 103.7 in RI, can cover other areas. Would Ent. change 107.3 and/or 97.7 to a WRKO simulcast, or move? No, as WAAF/WKAF makes money with rock. Suppose Ent. had a centrally located FM, like 98.5 (the old WRKO sister station, WRKO-FM then WROR) and put talk on there. It might do OK, but not well, again given the demos of political talk. 680 covers quite a bit of ground by day,
and after sunset, well listenership is down anyway...so they'll reach a lot of people with AM drive, middays, and PM drive
and then offer Levin, Bohannon and C2C to a more limited audience.
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There are a lot of PSAs out there. There's no excuse for repeating the same ones ad nauseum, or the same spots.
CBS streams are pretty bad. The worst I've found is Hulu - even when you pay to view. You watch a show and they put in more breaks than ever were in a broadcast version, often three spots per break and often repeating the same spots, not only within a show but within a break. Now, some ad research suggests it takes five exposures for a spot to really sink in and be recalled. Maybe that's what they are trying for. But if those exposures occur in less than a week, the ad can completely alienate a viewer or listener. Of course, the industry doesn't do research on alienation.
CBS streams are pretty bad. The worst I've found is Hulu - even when you pay to view. You watch a show and they put in more breaks than ever were in a broadcast version, often three spots per break and often repeating the same spots, not only within a show but within a break. Now, some ad research suggests it takes five exposures for a spot to really sink in and be recalled. Maybe that's what they are trying for. But if those exposures occur in less than a week, the ad can completely alienate a viewer or listener. Of course, the industry doesn't do research on alienation.
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Those of us who ALSO work in radio work in radio would have canned your @ss a while ago. If I were a PD, and I found out that you were constantly berating people on an industry message board via anonymity, swift action would have been taken on you.
Seriously, I can do this all night with you.
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