So much for positivity from tbolt....
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April Ratings
- Thread starter SirRoxalot
- Start date
I’m sure he would if he thought there was something to be positive about. Like some of us maybe he remembers better times. Radio. Was always a tough business but now it’s not much of a career choice.
This depends on your perspective. If "radio" is AM and FM, you are right. But if radio is redefined to mean the delivery of curated content to people, individually or collectively, by any delivery system available, then there is a very interesting future.
And if we consider the field of on-demand delivery to be part of radio in the form of podcasts, the horizon is even broader.
All of these are exciting areas and offer so many ways to give listeners what they want when they want it that it is quite exciting.
Montana calls itself "Big Sky Country" and I think that those of us in radio now have "Big Audio Country" with some pretty neat stuff already here and on the horizon. There are the challenges of the very crowded field and the almost prohibitive royalties and rapidly changing technologies, but the best of us will figure that out.
The biggest challenge is the speed of technology change. The basic "transistor radio" portable, the kitchen or bedroom radio and other variants were pretty much the same from the 50's to around 2009 and the advent of the smartphone... more than half a century. Now, we need a new cellular, a faster wifi with new techniques, and even a better "wired" vehicle every few years. We have to run pretty fast just to keep up with the crowd.
Point taken David and yes I was thinking about traditional AM and FM broadcasting.
Podcasts and wired alternatives don't deliver the same big stage. As you said the prohibitive royalties are a big problem and have been for years. You or I could start our own podcast or lets dream big our own streaming service (again those royalties get in the way). How would you stand out from the thousands of others?
Podcasts and wired alternatives don't deliver the same big stage. As you said the prohibitive royalties are a big problem and have been for years. You or I could start our own podcast or lets dream big our own streaming service (again those royalties get in the way). How would you stand out from the thousands of others?
I'm done reading 98% of these posts. Exactly what I and someone else in this chat said would happen a year ago with the ratings on WLKK and WBUF happened...
Now we're trying to back peddle to explain why the ratings are what they are.
Mildly put... the format sucks, not the signal...
Sometimes you can be too smart for your own good by thinking their is some extreme mathematical equation in generating a successful radio station whether it be the signal, the demographics of the listening audience etc etc.... paralysis through analysis...
NFL Football coaches for the most part are geniuses of their craft but whenever you hear of a Hall of Fame game plan i.e Bill Belichick's defensive game plan in Superbowl XXV against the Buffalo Bills, it's boiled down to a very simplistic approach.
Stop looking at it through a jaundice eye. Get rid of the terrible formats and realize why a certain HD-2 format registers a rating.
Now we're trying to back peddle to explain why the ratings are what they are.
Mildly put... the format sucks, not the signal...
Sometimes you can be too smart for your own good by thinking their is some extreme mathematical equation in generating a successful radio station whether it be the signal, the demographics of the listening audience etc etc.... paralysis through analysis...
NFL Football coaches for the most part are geniuses of their craft but whenever you hear of a Hall of Fame game plan i.e Bill Belichick's defensive game plan in Superbowl XXV against the Buffalo Bills, it's boiled down to a very simplistic approach.
Stop looking at it through a jaundice eye. Get rid of the terrible formats and realize why a certain HD-2 format registers a rating.
That person you are talking about must have been me. I said the exact same thing.
The signal is not the issue. Between 107.7 and the translator on 104.7, most, if not all, of the "money areas" are covered very well. Someone who knows what they are doing could do very well for themselves with that station.
You're missing the point. The Bridge is not going to get any significant ratings on HD. IF it were on 107.7, it just might. The abysmal results that the WBEN simulcast, Alternative, and Country delivered should tell Audacy something. Incompetent programming must be one of David Field's core values...
The Bridge is a non-commercial format owned by WNYPB. Audacy won't be putting it on one of their signals.
Once again, you base your opinions on 12+ ratings, and focus on one station in aa 7-station cluster. Four of those are in the Top 10. The money they make from those four make the other stations irrelevant.
Yes I know that The Bridge is not run by Audacy. The point is that 107.7 could be doing much better with a different format. Cluster ownership always means trying to protect certain stations. Competition is from outside and within. Audacy has rendered 107.7 irrelevant by programming blunders...
The point is that it doesn't matter. Not every station can be #1. So they have four stations in the Top 10. The rest don't matter.
Where will they take audience from? Are they going to attract new listeners to radio? Or are they just going to cannibalize the ratings of their existing stations? If 107.7 gets a 3 share, what does that do to the numbers that they have to sell to advertisers? Overall, that could hurt revenue.
You look at it from your personal preference. Unfortunately, it's a business, and that's how decisions are made these days.
That's what Buddy would do. That's why they'd be stupid to sell to him. Buddy is a sales machine. He would do whatever makes money, and it would take money away from the three other companies. The advertising pie isn't getting bigger. So none of them are selling to him, regardless of how bad the ratings get.
You rail about negativity, yet here you defend the indefensible. It's not about my preference. Look at the results. Radio is circling the drain because they DON'T try to get new listeners. Rolling out tired formats hasn't worked.
You just said they have no hope of growth. They're just trying to survive. That's a losing business model...
Meanwhile you look at the streaming charts, and people are streaming the same very small group of songs that get played on the radio. This is not a radio problem. It's a music problem. Music is built around a small group of songs and styles. They're what attract the audience. There is no new magic format. You just reorganize the same group of songs. That's why a lot of radio companies are looking at content beyond music. Right now there are too many radio stations for the amount of sellable music.
The fact of the matter is you don't want radio to get new listeners. You want radio to play what you want, which is non-commercial music aimed at older, unsellable listeners. For you, there's The Bridge.
You don't want Radio to get new listeners. You stated it eloquently here. If someone else owned 107.7, they could get listeners and advertisers. But that would be BAD for the Corporate groups. Spin it any way you want, but the "Commercial Country" format on WLKK is another epic fail. It has nothing to do with the music I listen to. Many people gave up on Radio long ago because much of the content sucks. That's why there's no growth...
You're talking about two different things. In Buffalo, there really are no "new advertisers." The advertising market is what it is. They have ad budgets and each station gets a piece. If there was a new market to go after, they'd do it.
Buddy has already said what he would do if he got 107.7: Classic country. That would take money away from existing stations and formats. It's not really new money or new listeners.
But since you know so much, show me a package of untapped advertisers who could fund a $5 million radio format.
No, because it didn't play the specific songs they wanted. They want to control their own playlist, and they have the ability to do that.
Therein is the error in your analysis. Cluster ownership means using multiple stations strategically for the best sales results.
As the owner of a large cluster 30 years before clusters became legal in the US, I can say that everything I did was to make the most appealing buy options for advertisers.
I’m trying to figure out what this conversation is really about.
If the question is can radio make money, the answer is, to some, it’s a license to print money. It’s a trusted ad medium, like tv, paper, outdoor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s harder than it was 15 years ago for sure. More ways to get music and information, just a very crowded field. The key is localism.
I have tried hard to get a full power Buffalo FM. No matter how badly they are doing in ratings or revenue, they will not sell to me. I’ve offered more than a generous price. However, I ain’t stopping. I continue to try to buy at-least one of these Buffalo stations everyday. I know the players personally. I don’t know if it is because they don’t like me, or if they think I am going to compete against them. Many of these stations are losing money at a rapid rate, they have no localism, and their ratings have dropped dramatically. On top of that, younger demos are not listening to terrestrial radio.
It’s no secret I would love to have 107.7. I like it because I know the potential. I was telling Entercom for 20 years it should be country. Eventually they did it, but they did it the wrong way. The station should be Uber local, take a regional approach, and own the gold based country format. The format that took over just after “country western”. The biggest growth period for country was late 80s to early 2000. What the Wolf did was everything I would never do. They went up against a heritage playing the same music, with a worse signal, hardly any promotion, and not local.
As I predicted, they will never do well in ratings, however, they will make more money than they did with alternative, especially from direct clients. They will also use it to combine the bigger stations for agency buys
There is one station I am doing a work around with right now. I can’t say what it is, but it’s 50kw. We’ll see how that goes. At this point, WECK is doing so well, I could care less if another station happens or not. I would like it too, but who knows.
I will be at my house in Key West for the entire month of July. I feel very good about trusting the team I have hired to continue our growth. I really don’t worry as much anymore. It’s a good feeling.
That does not mean that the world is utopia. There come times where you need to make changes, for financial reasons, performance reasons, attitude reasons, etc. But for now, I could not be happier with what WECK has turned into. I’m very proud of everyone.
I have been very fortunate in my career. Taught by incredible people like J.P., Harv Moore, John Casciani, Ken Johnson, Larry Robb and Tom Langmyer. In each way, they all taught me something.
If the question is can radio make money, the answer is, to some, it’s a license to print money. It’s a trusted ad medium, like tv, paper, outdoor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s harder than it was 15 years ago for sure. More ways to get music and information, just a very crowded field. The key is localism.
I have tried hard to get a full power Buffalo FM. No matter how badly they are doing in ratings or revenue, they will not sell to me. I’ve offered more than a generous price. However, I ain’t stopping. I continue to try to buy at-least one of these Buffalo stations everyday. I know the players personally. I don’t know if it is because they don’t like me, or if they think I am going to compete against them. Many of these stations are losing money at a rapid rate, they have no localism, and their ratings have dropped dramatically. On top of that, younger demos are not listening to terrestrial radio.
It’s no secret I would love to have 107.7. I like it because I know the potential. I was telling Entercom for 20 years it should be country. Eventually they did it, but they did it the wrong way. The station should be Uber local, take a regional approach, and own the gold based country format. The format that took over just after “country western”. The biggest growth period for country was late 80s to early 2000. What the Wolf did was everything I would never do. They went up against a heritage playing the same music, with a worse signal, hardly any promotion, and not local.
As I predicted, they will never do well in ratings, however, they will make more money than they did with alternative, especially from direct clients. They will also use it to combine the bigger stations for agency buys
There is one station I am doing a work around with right now. I can’t say what it is, but it’s 50kw. We’ll see how that goes. At this point, WECK is doing so well, I could care less if another station happens or not. I would like it too, but who knows.
I will be at my house in Key West for the entire month of July. I feel very good about trusting the team I have hired to continue our growth. I really don’t worry as much anymore. It’s a good feeling.
That does not mean that the world is utopia. There come times where you need to make changes, for financial reasons, performance reasons, attitude reasons, etc. But for now, I could not be happier with what WECK has turned into. I’m very proud of everyone.
I have been very fortunate in my career. Taught by incredible people like J.P., Harv Moore, John Casciani, Ken Johnson, Larry Robb and Tom Langmyer. In each way, they all taught me something.
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