Yes. Top of the hour ID is "An Audacy station."
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Because they had the Audacy to do it
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
Yes. Top of the hour ID is "An Audacy station."
Lol, this is I think the 4th or maybe 5th discussion thread about this same exact topic.
While they may be looking for a cross-platform brand, I still find this mostly a Wall Street maneuver which the average listener will just find confusing.
Using the owner's name on the air has little or no appeal to the average listener. I have always been rather vehemently opposed to station owners who want to have the corporate name attached to local station identities.
"WZZZ, Bigtown, Z-93, a Big Ego Broadcasting Station"
Who the whatever cares who owns the station? Nobody listens to a station because of its ownership; it's about the music, the content, the morning show. Nobody listens because of the owner.
This renaming is a perfect example of programming being made less attractive due to exaggerated egos and too much focus on Wall Street and not enough on the listener.
Yes, they may be developing a cross platform identity. But in that case, they should be identifying the platform in "ads" in the promotional spots, not out of the blue in the ID where it is confusing and distracting... yes, less a matter in PPM markets but still confusing.
If you want to use that logic, placing a company nameplate on a car destroys the appearance of that car for the ego of the company. Lots of examples. Look at the computer you're using. Why do I care who made it?
Branding has been integral in broadcasting since Westinghouse broadcast the election night results in 1920 on KDKA. They wanted to sell radios. Did the people in Pittsburgh care? No.
SpaceNews.com:"SAN FRANCISCO – Silicon Valley startup Audacy failed to attract the funding necessary to build an inter-satellite communications relay network and closed up shop in 2019."..."Audacy defaulted on debt"
spacenews.com
Audacy defaulted on debt, shut doors in 2019 - SpaceNews
Silicon Valley startup Audacy failed to attract the funding necessary to build an inter-satellite communications relay network and closed up shop in 2019.
spacenews.com
And what Corporations neglect to realize, is that their brand name can either cause positive or negative opinions of their company, and to the radio stations as well!
The River is a local station, but they aren't over the top about that at all. I do think that it is clear at the moment that "they are not for sale!" At least in this present time.
I don't think they neglect to realize it one bit. A great example is Disney. Everything they do is about promoting a positive image.
And listener research shows this kind of branding is generally confusing and non-productive and sort of like diamond mining in the Nile Delta.
Westinghouse stood for early electronics, but the new name for Entercom stands for nothing.
Like I said, either the brand name will conjure up positive impressions, or bad ones instead. I mean couldn't it be arguable that one of reasons that Entercom changed their name, is because they now have this reputation destroying good stations? Just saying is all.
But Disney created a positive image with one product, cartoons. They extended it to TV D then beyond to amusement parks and movies.
in the case of Entercom, the new name has no established image and the radio stations have been severely downgraded due to the reduction of radio revenue.
Entercom stands for nothing too. Nothing from nothing is nothing, according to Billy Preston.
If branding doesn't matter, then slogans don't matter. Just play the music.
But it is spelled as it is spoken, not an invented word.
and, IIRC, the Entercom stations Under Joe did not use the corporate name as an on air identity
insiders are asking “How do you spell this f’ing word? Audi like the car?“ as the name is not intuitive. Fine for a website but awful for a business that is 95% based on audio only.
Not the same thing.......you can do business as a consumer with Hyundai, or Dell. A consumer of radio engages with the singular station, not the company. As a matter of fact, most times, the consumer is confused when they call a certain stations front office only to hear "Hello, Entercom"
Depends on who you think the consumer is. The people who PAY for radio do business with the company.
The listeners get programming for free thanks to the advertisers.
Now, the listeners can engage with the company through audacy.com.
This is the critical problem with Audacy. I typed in the traditional spelling of "Odyssey" into my Google Play store. The Audacy app does not appear at all. That's not a problem with "Radio.com", but as BigA says that probably didn't have enough "new generation" appeal for certain upper management types.
And the local direct clients who pay for radio pay for the local station....they also don't care who the parent company is
The check they write is usually made out to the name of the company, not the station.
But the local stations are often incorporated under inherited names... so there is considerable confusion there.
But they only pay if the individual stations have a measurable audience. The listener is the product, and if the listener base declines, so does the revenue.
That's where personal contact with the salesman comes in. Assuming the advertiser chooses to work that way, and doesn't go with programmatic. The name changes, but the salesman is the same. Imagine the clients who dealt with WRKO's salesmen when it was owned by Entercom, and then had to change contacts for iHeart. This kind of thing happens.
One mention an hour isn't going to chase away an audience. Especially the sneaky way it gets done. If they beat you over the head, that's very different.
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