Maybe you need to find something new to listen to.
I find it funny that you're willing to believe the talk show hosts, but not the commercials.
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Should WABC Go to Oldies on the Weekends ?
- Thread starter xmradiopro
- Start date
Maybe you need to find something new to listen to.
I find it funny that you're willing to believe the talk show hosts, but not the commercials.
That’s not how it works.
I know how selling ads works. If stations are resigned to running crappy infomercials that nobody listens to instead of developing quality programs that can attract a marketable audience and then sell that audience to advertisers, those stations deserve their demise.
If nobody listened to the infomercials, the station would be unable to sell time to the marketers. Sadly, like the telemarketing plague, it doesn't take many responses, percentage-wise, to make buying infomercial time profitable for the marketer and the station.
Your assumption is there is a market for these ads. If there is no demand...."better salespeople" won't matter.
Adding to wimmex's excellent point:
If by "decent companies" you mean well known brands, services and retailers, you should know that such businesses in the NYC are have marketing departments and an ad agency. They focus on reaching consumers who will patronize the businesses they represent.
Were WABC to run 60's-centric oldies on the weekend, they would reach consumers in their mid to late 60's for the most part.
That is a consumer group that essentially no radio advertiser spends money to reach. The return on investment is low, as older consumers are more cautious consumers and it takes too many ad impressions to make them buy. Those impressions cost more than the profit on a sale.
Senior-specific accounts mostly use national media and want images of their product affording a happy lifestyle despite incontinence, arthritis, inability to go up stairs, bad teeth and the like. There is no local radiomoney for Depends and Fixodent.
The most talented seller can not get an agency to buy what their client told them not to buy.
And agencies generally do not buy nights and weekends, so there is even less money out there for what you think WABC (or WOR, for that matter) could do. And the idea of buying a music weekend on an AM station is a fairly poisonous concept.
I've spent 60 years in radio and most were in program management, general management and sales management positions. And most of those years were in competitive major market situations, including NYC and LA and a couple of even bigger markets than those. If I can distill my experience into the most simple terms, radio has to create an audience that someone wants to advertise to. The first step in programming is determining if there is an ad sales market, and then designing a product to reach it. What you suggest does not satisfy that mandate.
So, given the lack of AM listening, the lack of night listening to radio and the lower listening during much of the weekend, WABC likely has its best opportunity in selling infomercial time as there is no other revenue source.
You are talking about selling ads at night and weekends. That is not what most advertisers tell their agencies to buy.
Sort of a further point. The specialty shows that used to fill lots of weekend hours on news/talk radio (gardening, home repair, technology, cars, boating, whatever) are almost non-existent now. Most of that how-to stuff has moved online, because taking callers for two hours asking about everything from tomatoes to roses attracts about as much audience as Dr. Lieberman.
So, companies and their ad agencies don’t want to advertise on Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and before them, Letterman and Johnny Carson because of late night time slots?
Talk about apples and oranges! Local radio and network television are completely different. People watch late night network TV in numbers far greater than listen to late night local radio. That was true back in the sepia-toned days of your nostalgic imagination, too. And the people watching Carson were much more attractive to advertisers than the audience for Nebel. Advertisers and agencies are much more savvy today, thanks to research tools unavailable in the "good old days." They're not going to waste money trying to sell ANYTHING to a bunch of graveyard-shift radio listeners.
A previous post stated that advertisers and agencies don’t want to advertise at night. Clearly, that statement is incorrect. Now, you chime in with another absurd statement, obviously also demonstrating a lack of knowledge of the media industry.
David was clearly writing about radio. Cool it with the ad hominem attacks, please.
The context for this discussion is WABC (and, perhaps, WOR) so the broad theme is radio. Advertisers and agencies do not like generally buy nights and weekends on radio. Particularly, they seldom buy outside of 6 AM to 7 PM Mon-Fri on AM talk stations.
Yes, there are ads on at night and on weekends. Some are paid, at much lower rates. Some are "bonus" spots given by the station to meet the daytime CPP goals. On talk stations, many are PI spots used to fill stopsets in syndicated shows. And some are BTA spots that only run in fringe times when the station is sold out elsewhere.
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As mentioned above, the context of this discussion is "Should WABC Go to Oldies on Weekends". We are not talking about TV, Cable, OTT viewing, pay per view, streaming, etc. We are talking about Radio and specifically an AM station in NYC.
In the same post you criticize unjustly and out of context, I said "That is a consumer group that essentially no radio advertiser spends money to reach". What part of "radio" being the subject of the thread don't you get?
When Kimmel and Falon and Letterman and Carson appear on WABC AM 770, drop me a line.
For the moment, re-read the header for this thread.
For anyone that has done RADIO sales and dealt with agencies, if you're lucky they'll buy a couple of 10 to 3 pm Saturday units, otherwise it's 6 am to 7 pm weekdays. You use nights and weekends to bonus spots to lower cost per thousand where you can in order to meet their price point. In major markets virtually every business of any size has an advertising agency representing them. Direct buys are in the $200 to $300 a month range and usually don't stick around month after month.
By the way, an agency might buy a percentage of avails over a weekend at a small percentage of the spot rate. Lots of night spots but plenty of daytime spots too at about 10-12% of the per spot rate. If you're listening to a station that has the same advertiser in almost every commercial break, this would explain why.
Now pretend you are a Appliance Dealer selling the major brands. Who do you want to get as a customer: the 27 year old with a couple of young kids just establishing their lifelong buying habits who will buy several appliances you sell over the consumer's lifetime if you make it a good experience for them, OR do you want a 65 or 70 year old who has a brand they already like and will not be buying several more appliances over their lifetime? You own the business and are spending the dollars: who do you advertise to?
By the way, an agency might buy a percentage of avails over a weekend at a small percentage of the spot rate. Lots of night spots but plenty of daytime spots too at about 10-12% of the per spot rate. If you're listening to a station that has the same advertiser in almost every commercial break, this would explain why.
Now pretend you are a Appliance Dealer selling the major brands. Who do you want to get as a customer: the 27 year old with a couple of young kids just establishing their lifelong buying habits who will buy several appliances you sell over the consumer's lifetime if you make it a good experience for them, OR do you want a 65 or 70 year old who has a brand they already like and will not be buying several more appliances over their lifetime? You own the business and are spending the dollars: who do you advertise to?
CTListener responded with far more facts and a far deeper understanding of the media industry than many other comments made in ongoing and repetitive rants about a couple of talk stations.
There was a time when stations were not so overloaded with debt that the entire overnight Midnight-6am had only one or two sponsors, if that. I worked overnight in a large market large station that had no commercials overnight.
Infomercials = another nail in the coffin of commercial radio. Who is going to listen to that junk and how does it serve your city of license?
I would love that. In the 70's WABC was the best. The music and announcers were great.
Who else will pay for radio? This has nothing to do with debt. There are debt-free stations that run infomercials.
How does it serve your community? It keeps the transmitter on.
Lack of money = final nail in radio. An entitlement generation who wants to get something for nothing.
They're killing the music industry, newspaper industry, and the radio industry.
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