It's not just KRTH, and not just Los Angeles.

[michael hagerty]

Well...which is it...is Radio viable, or isn't it? Lol. And my point is about 55-74, not the typical 25-54 listener.

Okay. Let's take this bit by bit.

Make the business case for a format (not conservative talk---already being done) that targets the 55-74 listener. Where's your revenue coming from? Forget whether it can bill in the mid-to-high $20 million dollar range (as KRTH does now). Can it pay the bills?

We're skeptical because it's been tried and failed a few dozen times, resulting in jobs lost, formats changed, and in some cases stations gone dark.

Wow us.

(Which also means your first statement helps to fly in the face of poster Haggerty's post, claiming that "not all 30-40-somethings are poor." Sure, maybe a handful aren't.)
Except that 60% of Americans earn annual salaries of $40k or less, and the cost of living in LA is even worse compared to what was once considered "middle class" income levels, so...guess again.

A handful?

Are you honestly suggesting that most of the 86 million adults in the U.S. between the ages of 30 and 50 are poor?

Who's buying houses, cars, appliances, paying tuitions?

For clarity, the median annual salary for men in the U.S. last year was $50,391. For women, it was $37,726 (and we need to fix that).

45% of American adults 25-54 are married and a chunk of those who aren't are living together, so household income is actually a better barometer (it also includes single-person households). Nationwide, that number was $70,784 . In the Western U.S., it's $79,430.

And there are 70 Los Angeles-area cities and suburbs that outperform that Western U.S. average:

Median Income Ranking - Mapping L.A. - Los Angeles Times

Mapping L.A. is the Los Angeles Times’ resource for maps, boundaries, demographics, schools and news in Los Angeles County.

maps.latimes.com

Almost always overlooked in any conversation about the higher cost of living in California are the higher wages paid.

Radio still caters to The Poor because IT IS FREE.

Wonderful. How does it make money to pay salaries, benefits, fees, power bills, etc. from that?

Radio is popular because it's not a pay service like Sirius/XM. This is a Radio board. People who pay for Sirius/XM have already given up 20mins of commercials an hour on commercial radio and don't care what goes on on terrestrial radio, or on here. Those who remain are likely not high-income earners.

You're making a huge leap of logic---thinking that everyone with money is buying SiriusXM and thus is no longer listening to OTA radio.

SiriusXM has 34 million subscribers---one-tenth the U.S. population. And as David would tell you if I didn't, that number is inflated by the number of new cars whose subscriptions will expire 90 days after the car drives off the lot.

Baby Boomers are the last living generation to have earned money to raise families, go on vacations, send kids to college, live comfortably, and save for retirement, and receive regular pensions, when money went far enough for them in the '80s to allow them that.

Nonsense. No question we had it easier (largely unburdened by student debt, for starters), but honest to God, if what you said was true, there wouldn't be kids in college, Disneyland would be out of business, home sales would have cratered.

You're right about pensions, and that's another conversation about the importance of unions.

Despite that, Radio gave up on them 20 years ago.

No, advertisers did that. Again, radio would LOVE to be able to program to everyone. It just broadens the potential revenue streams.

 

[davideduardo]

Well...which is it...is Radio viable, or isn't it?

Yes, if you program your station to meet the demands of advertisers. Otherwise, explore going non-commercial and asking for donations such as NPR affiliates and EMF do.

This is no different than an outfitter store in Anchorage selling different merchandise than one in Phoenix. You don't offer that which has no demand

And my point is about 55-74, not the typical 25-54 listener. (Which also means your first statement helps to fly in the face of poster Haggerty's post, claiming that "not all 30-40-somethings are poor." Sure, maybe a handful aren't.)

No, it does not. The fact is that major advertisers do not target seniors because it costs much more to make the sale, thus erasing any profit.

Except that 60% of Americans earn annual salaries of $40k or less, and the cost of living in LA is even worse compared to what was once considered "middle class" income levels, so...guess again.

But the cost of living in LA is not entirely realistic, as there is a huge percentage of recent immigrants who live in extended family dwellings with as many as 8 to 10 people in the home (having three generations in one household is common and socially acceptable in much of Latin America) so you have 5 or 6 people or more in a home all bringing in that $40k and the household income is suddenly $250,000. You are using pure white gringo thinking in a city that now only about 30% non-Hispanic white.

Radio still caters to The Poor because IT IS FREE. Radio is popular because it's not a pay service like Sirius/XM. This is a Radio board. People who pay for Sirius/XM have already given up 20mins of commercials an hour on commercial radio and don't care what goes on on terrestrial radio, or on here.

I have satellite for use when here in the Palm Springs market, as the FCC in it brilliance has given us about 50 stations and translators in a market with less than $10 million in gross radio revenue. So local stations, with such a fragmented audience, are not terribly good.

But when we go to LA, I never use satellite as the satellite programming, compared to any of the stations I like, well, simply sucks. I'll take the ads in exchange for much better music lists, good talent when appropriate and vastly better music flow and feel.

Those who remain are likely not high-income earners. Baby Boomers are the last living generation to have earned money to raise families, go on vacations, send kids to college, live comfortably, and save for retirement, and receive regular pensions, when money went far enough for them in the '80s to allow them that. Despite that, Radio gave up on them 20 years ago.

You are "awfulizing" based on statistics. If you have an average income and live in Kansas City or Meridian or Tuscaloosa or Tallahassee, you do wonderfully well. Just don't move to LA or San Francisco or New York or Boston.

And those multiple low income "consolidated" families in the big cities actually do rather well with nicer cars, their own home and the like. You just have to stop looking at the Cleaver family as the typical family unit in America now.

Start looking at LGBTQ+ families with adopted children, or multi-generational immigrant families or live-at-home children who are starting their career and supplementing the parent's income or retirement funds.

And a large percentage of radio's agency business is for goods and services that everyone can afford, whether it is McDonalds or basic car insurance or a nice new car with 0% interest or a sale at a retailer.

 

[davideduardo]

6+ has been the total audience measurement for a couple of decades now.

But only in the top 50 markets (more or less). The rest still use 12+.

It replaced 12+. Nobody markets and promotes that number, but it's the only one that Nielsen (which replaced Arbitron---or Pulse---or Hooper, depending on how old you are) distributes to be published for free.

When the PPM was in development, the effort was intended to be a joint Nielsen and Arbitron project. In the early meetings around 2002-2003 that I attended, there were both Nielsen and Arbitron people there. And since TV required 6+, the system was set up that way.

And now that Nielsen bought Arbitron, and Nielsen wants to expand the meter to cover all electronic media, 6+ is required.

We also get sales demo rankings, and as you know---but ignored---18-34 and 25-54 are key sales demos.

And that is why we look at our target demos when we get the weeklies via xTrends and ignore the 6+ and 12+ and 18+ and 55+ and the other ages we do not sell to.

Also, since you're new---this isn't a place where old guys come to crap all over radio stations they either don't like or don't understand. This is where we discuss what's actually happening in radio at the moment and why. If that's not appealing to you, there are a lot of Facebook groups where ignorance is not a problem.

Bravo! Encore!

 

[davideduardo]

"6+?" Are kindergartners wearing Nielsen sensors to school these days?? Lol. Yeah, let's market and promote doing well with 6 year olds. They listen to so much radio advertising and spend so much money.

6 to 11 has a different "wear" requirement that is basically "at home hours".

And as I explained before, the original concept of the PPM was to be a joint Nielsen TV and Arbitron radio venture. TV requires 6+.

Advertisers look at the tables that cover their marketing target. They don't have anyone forcing them to look at demos they don't want, need or use.

 

[johndavis]

Also, since you're new---this isn't a place where old guys come to crap all over radio stations they either don't like or don't understand. This is where we discuss what's actually happening in radio at the moment and why. If that's not appealing to you, there are a lot of Facebook groups where ignorance is not a problem.

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, rant on Facebook.

 

[vchimpanzee]

People who pay for Sirius/XM have already given up 20mins of commercials an hour on commercial radio and don't care what goes on on terrestrial radio, or on here.

I have another theory. People have to pay extra to have a receiver inside the house and inside the car. Or maybe they solve that problem by listening online to Sirius/XM channels. But one reason I didn't spend the money, aside from the fact that I'd have to have a receiver put in an old car I likely wouldn't be using much longer, was that I found out I would have to pay for a second subscription to listen at home.

Then I got a newer car but still didn't spring for a receiver or a subscription.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, rant on Facebook.

Yes, we do. I belong to a group where the attitude toward old people's music is very different from here (also, to us it's not just old people's music, but there aren't enough younger people enjoying it to interest advertisers).

We want it, and we believe it can work. Some of the members program their own stations (most if not all are online) and somehow make the money to keep them going. We talk about the various places we can find good music. Youtube videos sometimes run an hour or more.

 

[cc333]

Yes, we do. I belong to a group where the attitude toward old people's music is very different from here (also, to us it's not just old people's music, but there aren't enough younger people enjoying it to interest advertisers).

Agreed. Just because formats like Beautiful Music are dead on commercial AM/FM radio doesn't necessarily mean there isn't an audiencefor it, but rather it means advertisers lost interest when the majority of the audience aged out of their target demographic, and when advertisers lost interest, stations carrying the format had to do things to stay afloat, which, unfortunately to those of us who are younger and actually happen to like this "old people's music" format, meant that those stations had to flip to formats that attracted larger, younger audiences, and thus advertisers.

To me honest, I wish it didn't work like this, but it does.

We want it, and we believe it can work.

I agree here also. I would love to be able to walk into the local supermarket and hear "elevator music" instead of that modern mainstream trash they call music nowadays that often plays.

As for incomes and such, I will say that while it's not as grim as RayydioLA says, he is on to something, in that things are much harder for Millennials and Gen Z, largely because of things like the 2008 recession just as Millennials were preparing to graduate from school and begin their careers, and in 2020 when the COVID pandemic did the same to Gen Z as it shut everyone down, thereby throwing the economy into such chaos that we're still suffering the consequences on some levels three years later (to name one that seems indisputable: astronomically high housing prices that make owning a house prohibitively expensive for many people). It seems there's some light at the end of the tunnel for some (mainly those who were foresighted enough to have lots of money to dump into the stock market during March and April of 2020, when most stocks still had reasonable values), but it's too soon to say for sure what will happen next.

Boomers, in general, have been lucky. They did have that awful stagflation in the 70s and Vietnam in the 60s (not to mention the Cold War and the specter of nuclear annihilation that hung over them, practically from birth, like a thick, black storm cloud), so they have had more than their fair share of hardship, but at least their suffering seems to have paid off, so to speak?

The future of Millennials and Gen Z seems more bleak and depressing, but it's not necessarily hopeless, and perhaps some as-yet unforeseen event will change things and actually allow them to prosper and meaningfully grow their wealth as the Boomers were fortunate to be able to do in the 80s. Until then, however, who knows what will happen....

c

 

[davideduardo]

Agreed. Just because formats like Beautiful Music are dead isn't necessarily because there isn't an audience, it's because advertisers lost interest when the majority of the audience aged out of their target demographic, and when advertisers lost interest, stations carrying the format had to do things to stay afloat, which, unfortunately to those of us who are younger and actually happen to like this "old people's music" format, those stations had to flip to formats that attract larger, younger audiences, and thus advertisers.

No, not only did the audience age out, that audience "moved on" and away from instrumental music in general and in practically all genres.

In the case of Beautiful Music, even the record labels stopped recording instrumental music because it did not sell to any age group. It had simply died.

To me honest, I wish it didn't work like this, but it does.

Sometimes formats die. Smooth Jazz died, because, sort of like disco, a lot of the content just died off. Same with disco itself.

I agree here also. I would love to be able to walk into the local supermarket and hear "elevator music" instead of that modern mainstream trash they call music nowadays that often plays.

But the content providers know that "contemporary instrumental music" died in its appeal and would not have positive reaction by customers in stores or listeners in general.

As for incomes and such, I will say that while it's not as grim as RayydioLA says, he is on to something (things are much harder for Millennials and Gen Z, largely because we had to deal with the 2008 recession just as Millennials were preparing to graduate from school and begin their careers, and in 2020 when the COVID pandemic shut everyone down and threw the economy into such chaos that we're still suffering the consequences on some levels three years later (to name one that seems indisputable: astronomically high housing prices that make owning a house prohibitively expensive for many people).

But this has no effect on people's taste in music and entertainment in general. We've had upturns and downturns with relative frequency in all the Post WW II decades, including recessions, stagflation, foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the Taliban in multiple locations as well as armed interventions in Grenada, Nicaragua and Panamá and clandestine interventions in the Dominican Republic, Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Ecuador). There have been economic downturns in every decade to some extent, and several were more severe than the 2008 downturn.

Boomers, in general, have been lucky. They did have that awful stagflation in the 70s and Vietnam in the 60s, though, so they have had more than their fair share of hardship, but at least their suffering seems to have paid off, so to speak?

What does that have to do with radio? I've owned stations where we went through actual armed revolutions and that did not effect radio revenue or listener interest for more than a few weeks.

The future of Millennials and Gen Z seems more bleak and depressing, but it's not necessarily hopeless, and perhaps some as-yet unforeseen event will change things and actually allow them to prosper and meaningfully grow their wealth as the Boomers were fortunate to be able to do in the 80s. Until then, however, who knows what will happen....

And, if anything, this should benefit free ad-supported non-subscription radio.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

No, not only did the audience age out, that audience "moved on" and away from instrumental music in general and in practically all genres.

In the case of Beautiful Music, even the record labels stopped recording instrumental music because it did not sell to any age group. It had simply died.

Sometimes formats die. Smooth Jazz died, because, sort of like disco, a lot of the content just died off. Same with disco itself.

But the content providers know that "contemporary instrumental music" died in its appeal and would not have positive reaction by customers in stores or listeners in general.

But this has no effect on people's taste in music and entertainment in general. We've had upturns and downturns with relative frequency in all the Post WW II decades, including recessions, stagflation, foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the Taliban in multiple locations as well as armed interventions in Grenada, Nicaragua and Panamá and clandestine interventions in the Dominican Republic, Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Ecuador). There have been economic downturns in every decade to some extent, and several were more severe than the 2008 downturn.

What does that have to do with radio? I've owned stations where we went through actual armed revolutions and that did not effect radio revenue or listener interest for more than a few weeks.

And, if anything, this should benefit free ad-supported non-subscription radio.

Science tells us there is a natural end to everything. Just not this thread.

 

[Weiserguy]

Science tells us there is a natural end to everything. Just not this thread.

Review the wit, wisdom and song titles of George Harrison. All things must end.

 

[rparky54]

Science tells us there is a natural end to everything. Just not this thread.

Closing time you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

 

[michael hagerty]

We enter a new phase of the conundrum…each clever line about ending the thread only extends……

(self-awareness kicks in)

DAMMIT!

 

[CTListener]

Sing it, Dandy Don ....

 

[rparky54]

 

[Weiserguy]

We enter a new phase of the conundrum…each clever line about ending the thread only extends……

(self-awareness kicks in)

DAMMIT!

Is it truly a problem though? The Song Name Game is on page 1254, and the Word Game is on page 2201. Your pithy observation is only message #293. This dog might hunt for a bit longer.

Suggested branch in the road: from the original class of KRTH jocks, who's still dead?

 

[michael hagerty]

Is it truly a problem though? The Song Name Game is on page 1254, and the Word Game is on page 2201. Your pithy observation is only message #293. This dog might hunt for a bit longer.

Well, fine---it's not the MOST off-the-rails thread (not by a long shot) on this board. Still.

Suggested branch in the road: from the original class of KRTH jocks, who's still dead?

Well, that requires some definitions be set. KRTH began automated and....


.....DAMMIT!

 

[ercjncpr]

Remember that “oldies” are different to a 25 years old than they are to a 65 year old.

 

[fordranger797]

I think we’re starting to see bigger issues plague radio than a song or two we may not like. Today’s CHR could be very problematic for radio going forward, as so much of it sounds the same. There are exceptions, and many artists still make good music (which will stand the test of time), but there’s a lot of junk to weed out too. I guess that’s always been true, but it will give tomorrow’s programmers some extra work.

 

[CTListener]

I think we’re starting to see bigger issues plague radio than a song or two we may not like. Today’s CHR could be very problematic for radio going forward, as so much of it sounds the same. There are exceptions, and many artists still make good music (which will stand the test of time), but there’s a lot of junk to weed out too. I guess that’s always been true, but it will give tomorrow’s programmers some extra work.

True, and audience research will let tomorrow's programmers a good idea what they should and should not be playing, both as currents and as gold.