Radio companies have known this for a long time. It's why they invest less in their AM & FM platforms and more in things that are on-demand and online. It's all about diversification, and providing lots of options.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Saving AM Radio
- Thread starter BruceB
- Start date
Radio companies have known this for a long time. It's why they invest less in their AM & FM platforms and more in things that are on-demand and online. It's all about diversification, and providing lots of options.
Radio will just have to adjust. Like the Horse industry of sellers, groomers, black smiths and companies that sold saddles, and horse shoes had to adjust to Henry Ford and his Model T.
You can still buy a horse and saddle and there are still black smiths and vets to take care of them just not nearly as many as before Ford.
I believe there will still be radio stations broadcasting over the air in 30 years just far fewer than now.
As for the arguments here, isn't that part of the point of forums like this?
There is a reason this thread has more than 1200 posts. People enjoy debate.
It's already happened. Once again, it's why you see less investment in the broadcast signal, more investment in online and podcasts.
Nielsens will be less relevant as fewer people use traditional media. They are looking at that situation, and also making adjustments.
The FCC will seek to broaden its role, so it can regulate the internet. The incoming chairman has already said as much.
No kidding. Reading some of the first pages of posts and arguments, and it's the same ones being made now, after 63 pages!
Of course, change is everywhere affecting every industry.
If automakers don't like a product, no law should force them to include it. Same with FM or anything else.
"Let the market decide!" use to be the credo of the "big gubberment conservatives" who like to use the government to fulfill their own wishes, but somehow, it's always wrong for the other side...
Let's see how well conservative talk radio "walks its own talk" and abides by what it advocates for others...
Our '76 Ford Granada did not have FM. When we bought my grandparents' '78 Chevy Malibu it had FM, but for some reason there was no interference on the AM and the signals were about like nighttime signals on the stations that were once daytime only.
In fact, around 1950 there were 1,000 operating FMs. But the lack of attractive programming, no AFC in radios and their high cost, by 1969 there were just 700 total stations.
The advent a couple of years later did not have an immediate effect, and adoption by stations was slow. It took the technification and perfection of the Beautiful Music format; the development of FM rock and the probibition of most simulcasting with AM to push FM into a competitive position.
But during that period of the 60’s quite a few broadcasters sold FMs as “never profitable” and got out. Or, like Todd Storz, never got in.
FM achieved parity ratings with AM in 1978 (national average) even though the first stations began broadcasting 40 years before!
At that time AM was making money and kept their transmitting plant in class A condition. The land the tower was on didn't have the encroachments that happened over the years. The number of electronics which caused electronic noise was not as great. AM sounded fine then. Today it is difference and if you still had that old Malibu with the same radio, you would hear mostly noise on the AM band.
I'll bet not, because with our other cars, we could actually get good signals, even if they came with interference once the distance was far enough away. There was something wrong with that radio.
That's what I meant with my original post, which someone (technically) corrected. My point was accurate. No one (almost) was listening to FM.
Of course, there were FM stations, just like some TV stations broadcast in color, though almost no one had color sets.
And yes, some electronic geeks had great stereo set-ups (Elvis in 1959 sang "I'll keep the hi-fi high and lights real low"), but most 45 recordings were MONO, to match AM, which was king until the late 70s.
Paraphrasing Adolf Hitler now, are we?
Huh? Just stating a fact that AI picks up a profusion of inaccuracies and “thinks” it is true. This is one of the reasons I continue to build my website so that actual data is available.Paraphrasing Adolf Hitler now, are we?
Generally, at the point where Hitler is mentioned, rational argument is over.
But isn't the big money in all of those options with the OTA products? I can stream ABC, NBC and CBS news channels on my Roku, but it seems to me the advertising that runs on the broadcast news is from higher profile businesses or products. On the NBC Now stream, they rerun the Lester Holt Evening News without commercials between segments. I've been told that Tractor Supply paid a decent amount to be the sponsor of internet Country station Big615, but is it as much as a well-executed broadcast FM Country station would bill? Do Podcasts earn as much as a Talk Station can do? If OTA is where the money is, doing whatever is necessary to get and retain younger ears on THAT platform ought to be Job 1.
Only because the audience is still there in enough quantity to justify advertising. But the audience isn't growing, and neither is the advertising. That's why stations are laying off staff.
The product they want is free on-demand music. Broadcast radio can't supply that need. The best broadcast radio can do is what it's currently doing. But as we said, that audience isn't growing.
Thanks for including Beautiful Music as a factor in FM listening growth.
Too often, the story of FM among historians is all about how album rock is what made the band successful. But in reality, if you look at Arbitron numbers from the early 1970s, it is almost always a Beautiful music FM that was the first in a market to have good ratings.
The only ARB numbers I have seen from 1970-1975 are the ones printed in TV/Radio Age (just the top 5) and those in R&R. With the rare exception of a handful of rock stations like the ABC Rock N Stereo FMs or a few early FM CHRs like KSLQ or WPGC, few AOR stations had mass appeal until Lee Abrams and others fine tuned the format. Even legendary stations like KMET or KSHE were not market leaders until the late 70s.
ARB did a notoriously bad job of measuring the audience of the early Progressive Rock stations.
When KMPX-FM did a free concert at the Filmore that was only promoted on the station, they had to turn away hundreds because of Fire Marshall regulations.
But according to ARB , KMPX had no measurable audience.
This was the diary era. However, the Fillmore West capacity was only 3000 people.
Understood but if you figure that not every listener went to the concert their audience was considerably more than 3000.
But no numbers at all?