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The view from Olympia...

R

Rob Piotrowski

...the sales view, that is, from KGY/KAYO courtesy of board denizen Jackson Dell Weaver: http://eepurl.com/ckWnK1

Some excerpts:

"Regarding Christmas revenue - in our market, it seems the big-boxes have sucked up most of the retail and they don't spend money locally. Most of the remaining local retail is small boutique retail (lovely to look at, lousy for ad business)."

"As a medium/small market, if we continue to focus on new categories, develop better integrated digital programs and sell the value of local radio, I think 2017 will be up 5% to 8% over 2016.”
 
I don't understand the lay of the land very well ... confused about how KGY-FM can be an AM Translator station when the AM KGY no longer exists. Is 95.3 no longer considered a translator? Creative that they keep it going, though!!!
 
It's the HD2 of KYYO-96.9. Translators can relay HD2/3s. KRXY is HD and mucks up a couple of channels for their HD2/3s in analog.
 
How about we not this get off track to an engineering discussion or what format your favorite station should or shouldn't be or or even god forbid why 'kokamo' was a hit song and stay on the sales topic?
From my view, ancillary market stations have always had a tough time getting revenue from 'larger' advertisers. I define ancillary as stations like Olympia that technically are in the Seattle DMA and so advertisers think 'we can just buy seattle' and then those markets are covered. Maybe they are but often in radio they are not.
I will challenge my good friend Jackson to elaborate as to why he thinks local radio will be up 5-8% in 2017? While I'd like him to be right, I do not feel that will be the case for a number of reasons. And if anything I think digital will HURT small market radio, not the other way around.
Bring it on my friends.
 
If by "digital" you -- or the man in the article -- meant "streaming", I agree. Obviously streaming costs the stations money because of higher royalties. That's why the bigger market stations geo-block -- and they've got bigger budgets (at least I would think) than small market stations.
 
There are three disciplines needed in order to "develop better integrated digital programs and sell the value of local radio", investment, staffing and patience. Those three words have been foreign concepts to radio for a very long time. And that's on a national or large market level, how in the world is a medium/small market station or group going to manage that?
 
AQH said:
There are three disciplines needed in order to "develop better integrated digital programs and sell the value of local radio", investment, staffing and patience. Those three words have been foreign concepts to radio for a very long time. And that's on a national or large market level, how in the world is a medium/small market station or group going to manage that?
Click to expand...

Good point. But the ultimate question is will it work again? Or have we gone too far?

One can never know unless it's tried. And at this stage, everything's on the table.
 
Radio is Oly Town...

CarAgencyGuy said:
How about we not this get off track to an engineering discussion or what format your favorite station should or shouldn't be or or even god forbid why 'kokamo' was a hit song and stay on the sales topic?
From my view, ancillary market stations have always had a tough time getting revenue from 'larger' advertisers. I define ancillary as stations like Olympia that technically are in the Seattle DMA and so advertisers think 'we can just buy seattle' and then those markets are covered. Maybe they are but often in radio they are not.
I will challenge my good friend Jackson to elaborate as to why he thinks local radio will be up 5-8% in 2017? While I'd like him to be right, I do not feel that will be the case for a number of reasons. And if anything I think digital will HURT small market radio, not the other way around.
Bring it on my friends.
Click to expand...

My prediction is for our stations alone - the entire market of Seattle I am too far removed from to speculate on. But we have 300,000 in Thurston County and more than a million in KAYO's coverage area. There are four saleable stations - we have two. Adding new sales people, bringing in a new DOS and focusing on the basics...well, we ought to be able to make it happen.

Digital has hurt local radio - Google Adwords, Pandora, SEO, etc. have all taken a bite. But both the newspaper and directories have all but vanished. Furthermore, a backlash is beginning...the promised returns and ROI for digital often are not there. And let's face it...the glut of inventory and sleazy metrics have gotten out of hand. It's always an entertaining business...
 
KGY is pure brand. Equivilent of Kiss or The Bull or The End. But with 90+ years of heritage we moved all the business and legecy to a new station at 95.3. Funny thing happened...on FM people actually listen. Superior coverage to the AM with full Thurston County coverage...all we need for the core business community. KGY has long been the station everyone knew and no one listened to. Now...they know and listen. FM saved our butt...and for AM stations there is no turning back. The slope just gets slipperier from here....
 
KGY FM covers to about Maytown on I5, exit 95. Not really full coverage of the county. The AM sale was a ATM to start up the FM. It does sounds better on FM, when in town, within distance of Tumwater Hill
 
as far as ad spend, digital has taken all the print money and then some. while there are performance issues, I don't see this spend decreasing anytime soon. Local TV is holding it's own (barely) and on line video is starting to make more sense on a local level. Radio, as usual, gets less share of the dollars than it should instead of being the ugly stepchild to print, now it gets to be the ugly stepchild to digital. The attempts on the part of local radio to create any effective digital product are pretty miserable and stations have turned instead to becoming essentially media agencies trying to sell ad words, SEO and like. TV stations have their own local websites, beyond that it falls off pretty quickly. Most of the digital money is not being spent with local media much to chagrin of the industry. I can't imagine it's much different on a local level, if you are a local news station maybe you get some action on your website. so like I said, radio gets less than they deserve but that's pretty much the way it's always been. radio kind of does to themselves in some ways from the way they compensation their sales people (cut the agencies out and get paid more commisson on directs) to the poor self promotion they do as an industry. small market stations fare better since they have the local news and a hyper local focus on their communities, in theory (many of them are just jukeboxes or really syndicated content on a local level). My biggest issue with local small market stations is lack of any ratings metrics to justify buying them.
 
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