WLAC, also in Nashville: Life And Causalty Insurance.
https://worldradiohistory.com/call_letters.htm
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Changes at WNSH 94.7
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WLAC, also in Nashville: Life And Causalty Insurance.
https://worldradiohistory.com/call_letters.htm
Yes, and considerably.
Persons Using Radio back around 2000 was in the 19 to 21 hour a week range, depending on the market. In the top 48 PPM markets, that declined instantly in 2009-2010 to around 12 hours a week with the PPM. And now, markets like NYC, Houston and LA are averaging around 8 hours a week of radio usage.
But reach has not declined. Overall, in 25-54, we have gone from 94% of people using radio weekly to 91% in the months before the pandemic.
It's not that radio has necessarily gotten worse... it's that there are more alternatives. And it's hard to compete with on-demand services that are customized to you alone when radio is a one-to-many service. On the other hand, radio is the easiest way to listen... no work, interesting variety, new songs I might like in some formats, pleasant or entertaining hosts. Each option has a plus and a minus column.
What is hard for some to understand is that radio is not in the transmitter and antenna business. If distribution changes to streams, we phase out over the air broadcasting. Radio is in the content business, and we simply put the horse out to pasture and buy a new Model T.
Nationwide Insurance owned Peoples Broadcasting, which started in the late 40's at WRFD in Columbus, Ohio. Herb Evans, the head of Peoples in the early 60's was the person who, through his church endeavors, got me a family to live with in Mexico in 1963.
In general, the insurance companies made good broadcasters because their mindset was long term, not "next quarter".
It's also hard for some in the radio business to understand that. In fact I'd say that outside of a handful of companies, most people in radio think only of on-air. For them the ceiling is getting lower. That's why I always say that radio companies need to always think in terms of multi-platform presentation.
I said on the Buffalo board that I believe these Entercom cuts are being made to redistribute the money to other platforms. That's what happed at iHeart. Entercom owns Radio.com and several podcast platforms. They haven't done much in these areas since buying CBS. I believe it's an under-developed area in the company, so I hope they go in that direction. They just hired a VP of News who has no radio background. Perhaps he'll utilize the resources of the news stations in some way beyond the stations themselves.
That's true only to an extent. The internet is virtually unlimited, anyone can start a stream. Where is the barrier to entry that a broadcast license afforded a station owner? Traditional over the air had a monopoly for almost 100 years on broadcasting. That's why, at one time in the not so distant past, a license from the FCC was a license to print money. Today, maybe not so much. But an FM in a major city is still worth more than one of the thousands of internet audio streaming services or podcasts out there.
Music royalties. A random hobbyist generally can't afford to keep going if they get any popularity at all.
That is true today, but the major radio companies are all looking at every streaming alternative for the future.
The resources, artist relations, talent and skills of many radio operations are greater than the moderated or programmed streams of the non-broadcast companies.
And having a station license was not always a "license to print money". Going back to the late 50's, the FCC annual financial reports showed that about half of all stations had no profit. And when those reports ceased to be required, the independent studies done to promote consolidation showed that after Docket 80-90 it was even worse.
The real issue is not competition, it is how to make money with a free, ad-supported service. The music rights fees on streams are higher than the profit margins of any traditional radio broadcasting company.
The story I had always heard about Nationwide was, when it was still the Ohio Farm Bureau, it realized it might be able to keep its claim costs down by letting people know when bad weather or other events were about to occur. If someone knew a severe thunderstorm was coming, he might be willing to put that tractor in the barn before it got damaged. It might also not have to pay that life insurance claim if a client knew to take shelter because a tornado was on its way. Radio was an easy way to get those alerts to its customers.
Radio tended to get its start as an add on to other businesses. Westinghouse reportedly originally used radio as a way to communicate between its various business arms and locations. Once people started getting actual radios, it started using its transmitters to reach them, too. I seem to remember several oil companies getting into radio, too. Not sure what the motivation for companies like Sigmor was, but they likely found radio was a way to steer their customers to their stores at a relatively low cost. What’s now iHeartMedia was originally a division of INSILCO, which I believe it got into radio as a way to promote its copper and cable business.
One of the best success stories is not even in the USA.
There was a guy from Mexico who, in the late 20's, made his living riding the connecting trains from Texas to Mexico City. He sold a variety of articles such as shoes. Eventually, he realized that there was money to be made in selling Victor branded radios. But passengers who were traveling deep into Mexico were less likely to buy sets because there was not much to listen to.
So the peddler, named Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, started a station in Monterrey and then one in Mexico City. The Mexico City outlet was XEW, and it grew to be a 250,000 watt AM station with shortwave and simulcasts in Monterrey, San Luis and Guadalajara. When TV arrived, he co-founded Televisa, the largest TV group and program provider in Latin America.
And it started because a guy wanted to sell radios to train passengers!
I'll add another to that: The ability to get people to find your radio station from among the ten million other ones on the internet. Right now, that may be the biggest obstacle. The things that keeps people listening to AM/FM is it's easy and it's cheap. No subscription.
Comments like this always amuse me. That's because so many radio people forget that you don't have to pay a third party to continuously operate your transmitter and antenna. Yes, there's electricity, maintenance, etc. etc., but compared to streaming there's no per-byte cost. So when the next internet outage occurs - as they have - and the streamers are offline - what will be there? OTA radio.
Wonderful. But the consumer does not want traditional radios... they want to tell Alexa what to listen to.
I recently realized that I have no installed radio in the whole house. I have 4 Amazon devices, and we have iPhones and iPads that play music, too. The only working radios are two emergency ones placed with two different emergency kits in separate parts of the house. Every 9 months, I put in a new pack of batteries and use the old ones; one of the radios has a crank to run it without batteries.
But that is it. If we plug in a radio, the noise from all the electronics makes every AM except a nearby all-religious one unlistenable. We are behind a mountain, so most of the good FMs don't come in, either. But I can stream all the ones I actually like.
Tell me again why I'd want radios in the home?
There really isn’t a compelling reason to have a radio in the home beyond an emergency kit. Smart speakers can play any station in the world (in addition to podcasts, audiobooks, controlling smart devices) simply by speaking into the air. There’s no fiddling with tuning to the exact frequency, overcoming electrical noise, etc. It’s very intuitive and it just works. At a starting price point of $25, it’s hard to understand how anyone would choose a traditional AM/FM radio anymore.
I still think we need to think multiple times before we gleefully allow the free over-the-air broadcasting system to go away. As a "station", will VerizonAT&TCharterCast controlling all audio content be better than the FCC? TV mostly ceded its distribution to cable, and now maintains expensive transmitters and towers for a small percentage of the audience. We still are a long way from universal high-speed internet. I had trouble even streaming a podcast in Little Rock a couple of years ago.
If OTA broadcasting goes all-internet, it won't be that guys in their basement playing obscure indie bands will obtain mass audiences. He who has the promotional bucks will still win. See what's happened with podcasting in 5 years.
If OTA broadcasting goes all-internet, it won't be that guys in their basement playing obscure indie bands will obtain mass audiences. He who has the promotional bucks will still win. See what's happened with podcasting in 5 years.
This is a gradual process, but radio has to be ready for a new environment as more and more people use new devices for entertainment and don't want single-purpose radios.
The radio industry is certainly to blame for much of this... when Jeff Smulyan tried to get all broadcasters to support FM on every cell phone, he got tepid response. That would have made the majority of multi-purpose "smart" devices into radios.
It gets more challenging than that.
If the internet goes down, and it does frequently, down goes all of your entertainment, information, and conveniences. AM/FM/OTA-TV is not dependent on a bunch of "hops", every one of which has to operate perfectly in order to satisfy the wants and needs of the listener or subscriber.
I do not rely totally on OTA nor do I rely on internet.
Due to "upgraded" signal, I have been unable to receive a radio station I want for about 20 years. Add the additional interference, and it is not even there anymore. I listen to it by way of a Grace internet radio, into a small 5w FM transmitter and then, I can listen to it any parts of my house, but it is single channel. My goal is to be able to send a full band signal, since the programs I like are on different stations.
Forget the car. Remember the 20 years ago? Yup! Gone!
The AM iBOC was more annoying than it was worth with the switching back and forth. I'm looking forward to a trip to New Jersey later on next month to see if iBOC and no analogue is any better. I still have a Jump in the car, just because, and, besides, we have to monitor a local HD for the EAS for the radio stations I am associated with.
Internet listening in the car, is still in its infancy. If you listen on your phone paired to the Uconnect, etc., and you have any kind of an alert, you have lost your connection. Very few factory radios are internet compatible. It relies on the umbilical of the phone. And that is a problem. It wasn't until FM was in the car from the factory that it took off. And then, the stations started to upgrade their signals accordingly.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
If the internet goes down, and it does frequently, down goes all of your entertainment, information, and conveniences. AM/FM/OTA-TV is not dependent on a bunch of "hops", every one of which has to operate perfectly in order to satisfy the wants and needs of the listener or subscriber.
I do not rely totally on OTA nor do I rely on internet.
Due to "upgraded" signal, I have been unable to receive a radio station I want for about 20 years. Add the additional interference, and it is not even there anymore. I listen to it by way of a Grace internet radio, into a small 5w FM transmitter and then, I can listen to it any parts of my house, but it is single channel. My goal is to be able to send a full band signal, since the programs I like are on different stations.
Forget the car. Remember the 20 years ago? Yup! Gone!
The AM iBOC was more annoying than it was worth with the switching back and forth. I'm looking forward to a trip to New Jersey later on next month to see if iBOC and no analogue is any better. I still have a Jump in the car, just because, and, besides, we have to monitor a local HD for the EAS for the radio stations I am associated with.
Internet listening in the car, is still in its infancy. If you listen on your phone paired to the Uconnect, etc., and you have any kind of an alert, you have lost your connection. Very few factory radios are internet compatible. It relies on the umbilical of the phone. And that is a problem. It wasn't until FM was in the car from the factory that it took off. And then, the stations started to upgrade their signals accordingly.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
I like the idea of FM on a phone and AM, but, as a practical device, because of bluetooth, there is no antenna and the swamping of the signal severely limits its range. I've got a CC Witness and it has AM and FM recording, but, not very good range.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
There have been several attempts at adding FM radio to cell phones. Many of the early Android devices from Motorola, LG, and Samsung had FM chipsets. Several iPods had FM and the Microsoft Zune HD had HD FM. Blackloud developed a set of earbuds that added FM radio capability to the iPhone. Speaking from personal experience, the poor FM reception made these devices unusable. The headphone cable functioned as the antenna. So, I would hear static anytime I moved around, even on local stations.
Why does it have to be one or the other? Lots of people still like to have both.
Just today, I saw an article in Wirecutter headlined, "What a Wirecutter Editor (and Former Designer) Can’t Live Without at Home". At the very top of the list is the Sangean WR-11 AM/FM Analog Wooden Cabinet Radio. The author praises it saying, "in this age of devices that you can operate only via an app, I love the simplicity of accessing the news, jazz, classical music, or various ranchera stations at the turn of a dial." And this is not an elderly person writing. It's a website that primarily targets a millennial audience. So, there are still people out there who appreciate radios.
In my home I have an Alexa/Sonos smart speaker sitting right next to a Boston Recepter radio. For local stations I always go to the actual radio. It turns on instantly without the delay of a voice command, voice reply, pause, and then pre-roll ad. Switching stations is much faster on the radio than on the smart speaker. It's easier to flip around the dial to see what's on the radio instead of having to think of the name of each station you want to hear and tell the speaker to go there, starting the whole clunky connection process over again with each change of station. And the radio experience is much more satisfying with smooth transitions between breaks as opposed to the smart speaker where the transitions are abrupt, content frequently gets clipped off, the volume level often maddeningly spikes for the ads, and the ads themselves quickly become intolerable due to the same ones (often PSAs) running over and over again, every single break.
I also still use a clock radio (a nice one) to wake up to the local news station each morning. It's completely reliable, not relying on internet connectivity which still presents too much risk of flaking out overnight. It sounds way better than the speaker in my phone when considering what device to choose to wake up to. And the same comments about pre-roll ads and the poor listening experience still applies.
We all know radio usage is getting supplanted by smart speakers in lots of homes now. But not everyone buys into that, even some tech industry people. There are still lots of reasons to appreciate a good radio, and honestly the radio industry still has a lot of work to do before the streaming experience is as good as what you get over the air in most cases.
Earlier in this thread, we talked about insurance companies that owned radio stations. But there also was a time when electronics companies owned radio stations. AT&T once owned a radio station in NYC called WEAF. They ultimately sold it to NBC. But RCA, GE, Crosley, and Westinghouse are just a few of the companies that once owned radio. The fact that they don't is partly why Amazon is determining how we listen to radio.
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