560

[TheBigA]

If broadcast radio is to survive as a business, they have to get back into content creation, not simply playing records or running podcasts.

But what if the audience only wants music or podcasts????

Radio companies ARE in content creation. Just not in the traditional sense. Broadcast radio is transitioning it's audience to streaming, podcasts, and on-demand content. That's where the audience is. Radio stations are starting to replace the broadcast money with digital money. Several radio companies are reporting more than half of their revenue is coming from digital.

Here's what we know: They're not coming back to broadcast. It's not because of the content. It's because of the concept of real time radio. Same with TV. Linear is dying, and it's being replaced with on demand. The future won't be like the past.

 

[PTBoardOp93]

The problem was there was no next generation of replacement audience. That's led to the situation now where there is no local talk in San Francisco. I think we're going to see the same thing in a lot of cities.

And again, comparing to New York. There was very little local talk on WABC, but that changed when Cumulus sold, and ratings increased commensurately. I don't know how much the money demos improved.

 

[TheBigA]

And again, comparing to New York. There was very little local talk on WABC, but that changed when Cumulus sold, and ratings increased commensurately. I don't know how much the money demos improved.

It's all over 65. Just like the owner. But it doesn't matter because the owner isn't running the station to make money. That's what's needed: More billionaires who own radio to play what they want and not satisfy investors. Maybe one will buy 560.

 

[SCMcKinney]

When you talk about "younger oriented talk," that still is over 50.

OK, I'll once again mention the unmentionable WTKS. I think they are getting younger people than 50. I'd bet the same is true for Tampa's WHPT. There is something that those stations do that Dallas' Eagle did not. Whatever it is, the people in radio should study it and start trying it in multiple markets. Younger oriented non-political talk is only one idea. Over many posts on other threads I have suggested possibilities. When I have asked for experienced radio people to chime in with ideas of their own, the cards snap close to the vest with comments like "trade secret" or "not suitable for discussion on public forums." But there have to be many on these boards like me who are not part of the industry or are retired from it who could expound with practical knowledge.

A replacement audience needs to be found for radio as a whole. Music, political talk, and maybe even sports are not going to do it. Those, a foreign language, or going dark are the only possibilities for a decently powered 560 in Market 4? The business can't evolve with an attitude like that.

 

[fybush]

The opportunity for youth oriented talk radio with college age hosts should be done by college/university radio like the above mentioned KALW. Are they doing that on 'Your Call'. Looking at their website, obviously not. So, the blame for not providing that outlet lies with public college radio by not providing that service to the students.

KALW is not a college station. Are you thinking of KALX at Berkeley?

 

[TheBigA]

OK, I'll once again mention the unmentionable WTKS. I think they are getting younger people than 50.

What did I say: 80% is over 45. So yes, they are getting younger people than 50. Just not very many.

A replacement audience needs to be found for radio as a whole.

Why? Radio companies license the frequencies. They don't own them. They'll run them as long as they're profitable, and then walk away. That may be happening with Cumulus in San Francisco. As I said, radio companies have found a new business model, and it doesn't involve transmitters and towers.

 

[KilowattKat]

KALW is not a college station. Are you thinking of KALX at Berkeley?

My bad, I thought KALW was with UC Berkeley.

 

[Gregg.]

OK, I'll once again mention the unmentionable WTKS. I think they are getting younger people than 50. I'd bet the same is true for Tampa's WHPT. There is something that those stations do that Dallas' Eagle did not.

That's the trouble. WTKS Orlando and WHPT Tampa have been Hot Talk for quite a while, WTKS since 1993, WHPT since 2012. Their audiences have been tuning in all these years. iHeart tried to create a Hot Talk station in Dallas. OK, I don't think they did it the right way. It was too dependent on Sports in a city where KTCK-AM-FM and KRLD-FM already have that audience sewed up. Still, it gets listed as a failed attempt.

Could someone start a Hot Talk station in 2025? It would take money and commitment, both in short supply. But I can state without hesitation, if it were on AM it wouldn't succeed. You could put the best programming of all time on an AM station and nobody who wasn't habitually tuned in for years would listen. Even if you want to point to WABC's success in recent years, it was already a talk station since 1982.

 

[TheBigA]

Could someone start a Hot Talk station in 2025? It would take money and commitment, both in short supply. But I can state without hesitation, if it were on AM it wouldn't succeed. You could put the best programming of all time on an AM station and nobody who wasn't habitually tuned in for years would listen.

The millennial generation is not one to sit and listen to someone talk. If it's not interactive, they're gone. They are the empowerment generation. They love their parents, but they don't need a radio to hear them talk, and they don't need a radio to talk with their friends. They have their phones, and they interact with their friends all day. No radio required. Consider what we're doing right here right now. No radio required.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Taking that an unfortunate step further, who needs terrestrial radio when Gen Z has social media not constrained by the physics of radio?

Well, yeah.

For what it's worth, I don't believe radio will go away entirely. Yes, it will be diminished. But new business models will emerge; their outlines are beginning to emerge. Some of them will be based on vanity. Some will be based on value as a promotional channel. Some will be based on the desire to proselytize a belief system, whether political or theological or whatever. Some will exist as community-based outlets; in fact, that's a pretty old model.

If broadcast radio is to survive as a business, they have to get back into content creation, not simply playing records or running podcasts.

Playing records worked pretty well, and was cheap until the recording companies lost their income stream from consumables and started looking to radio to make it up. That's not the smartest place to look, but that's what they're doing. I guess they have to keep up their satin-jacket budgets somehow.

Talk hosts, if they are good, can't be found anywhere except on the radio or its streamed webcast.

Who's the most talked-about talker these days? I think there's a strong likelihood that it's Joe Rogan. Not on radio.

But letting all of the millions of dollars of radio broadcasting infrastructure rust away because nobody will evolve radio to a new future seems such a waste.

It seems to me that radio is evolving, just not in the way you want it to evolve. You also have to abstract the notion of content delivery away from reliance upon a set of single-channel one-to-many broadcasts. The new media are multi-channel one-to-one narrowcasts. Single-channel broadcasts work for big events with wide interest. Those don't come along every day, not even in the political field, exhausting though recent events may have been.

The notion of appointment listening (or viewing for TV) is mostly foreign to the generations coming up. They don't have to wait for content the way we did. Broadcast radio and TV stations can only do one thing at a time, and at a prearranged time in most cases. The new media are more flexible.

 

[TheBigA]

They might need some new money and new ownership groups to do it.

It's already happened. EMF has been buying commercial radio stations in big cities for years. They are the future. Non-profit radio companies because radio is not a profit-making business anymore. This isn't a new thing. Major corporations like General Electric and Nationwide Insurance got out of the radio ownership business more than 30 years ago because the margins weren't acceptable. The reason companies like EMF can buy radio stations is because radio is seen by the investment community as a bad risk. So that limits where companies can get "new money." They can't get it from banks or reputable institutions. There are "vulture capitalists" who swoop in looking for bargains. Then you have billionaires who use their own money. That can become a problem is the billionaire is named Soros. My point though is everything that you want to happen is already happening.

But letting all of the millions of dollars of radio broadcasting infrastructure rust away because nobody will evolve radio to a new future seems such a waste.

Once again, it's already happened. Radio has already evolved to a new future. Some users like you aren't there yet. But everyone else is. There is no format, no programming, no show that will cause young people to throw away their phones and buy radios. And there is no electronics industry that is building the next generation of AM/FM radios for people to buy. We have car companies that want to remove AM from the dashboard, and a lot of people on this very forum who don't understand why congress would want to mandate AM in cars. People think this is a radio company problem. It isn't. The radio companies have already moved on.

 

[cc333]

Just to play devil's advocate: How do you know they walked much of it back if you never went back?

Haha, good point!

I should clarify a bit, as I was rather vague and overly general. Cumulus lost me as a regular listener after the Purge, but then I'd check in every now and again to check it out and see if anything changed. I started listening again semi regularly to the likes of John Rothman (sp?) and Pat Thurston (who is a news anchor at KCBS now, or, rather, she was; I haven't heard her lately, so she may have been let go) until a year or two before the full execution of KGO as a proper radio station (that sports betting junk was little more than bottom-budget filler in my opinion).

Here's what we know: They're not coming back to broadcast. It's not because of the content. It's because of the concept of real time radio. Same with TV. Linear is dying, and it's being replaced with on demand. The future won't be like the past.

I demand my good, old fashioned linear TV back! The cable company stuck me with this Android TV-based TiVo box, and I can't say I like it. I will often let the TV go in the background, but it only does that for an hour or two before going into "standby mode". Why? I don't want standby mode! And it does this despite the fact that I actually turned that setting off. Either it's hardwired by the cable co, or the box's software is somehow defective.

At any rate, I miss the times where I could just switch the TV on, set a channel, and expect it to carry on more or less indefinitely without interruption until I changed it. and this wasn't just analog: at our old house, the cable box we had there was of the more traditional type, and with it's highly advanced electronics managed to master that simple concept. Why can't this box do the same?

It feels like a giant leap backward, if you ask me. I'm not arguing that Internet-based On Demand is the future, but can't they at least get it right?

c

 

[Gregg.]

The millennial generation is not one to sit and listen to someone talk. If it's not interactive, they're gone. They are the empowerment generation. They love their parents, but they don't need a radio to hear them talk, and they don't need a radio to talk with their friends. They have their phones, and they interact with their friends all day. No radio required. Consider what we're doing right here right now. No radio required.

Well, talk stations have never done that well with young audiences, with the exception of Howard Stern and his imitators.

That said, eventually, we all want to hear talk as we get older. I don't think Gen X or later generations will think their need for human discussion will be satisfied by social media. You can't use social media while driving or doing work or chores that deserve most of your attention.

The best talk stations of past years all aimed older. Young people want the hits. Older folks, especially empty nesters, want to hear voices talking. Maybe regular talk radio will fade and podcasts will satisfy most of this interest. Except podcasts are, by their nature, recorded. As good as they may be, some may find they also want live talk as well.

 

[SCMcKinney]

Radio companies license the frequencies. They don't own them. They'll run them as long as they're profitable, and then walk away.

But walking away means abandoning a lot of investment in hardware. In the case of AM, sometimes there will be valuable land to be sold. But for a lot of FM, isn't a significant piece of the investment in the license? If its value goes down, there may not be a way to walk away without taking a haircut. That is probably going to be the end result with Emmis and New York 98.7.

If all the growth and interest in audio entertainment is now with on demand platforms, does that mean FM has topped out in terms of significant revenue increases? Money making music FM is on a terminal decline, and no combination of nothing can reverse the trend? That's pretty grim.

 

[TheBigA]

But walking away means abandoning a lot of investment in hardware.

That's business. In San Francisco, they don't own the tower land. They will try to sell the frequency if they can, but in some cases, it just makes sense to turn the license in.

If all the growth and interest in audio entertainment is now with on demand platforms, does that mean FM has topped out in terms of significant revenue increases? Money making music FM is on a terminal decline, and no combination of nothing can reverse the trend? That's pretty grim.

I think so.

 

[Mark Roberts]

But walking away means abandoning a lot of investment in hardware.

But there's a magic little word missing: depreciation. This accounts for the loss of value over time. It's also likely that some assets are shared with other stations in the cluster. Equipment can be repurposed and efforts refocused.

That's business. In San Francisco, they don't own the tower land. They will try to sell the frequency if they can, but in some cases, it just makes sense to turn the license in.

As you know, businesses write off losses all the time. They take the short-term hit to the balance sheet to improve long-range prospects.

There's also the possibility that the station would eventually get kicked off the land. The Port Authority did that to KEST a few years ago. Any eventual buyer (or donation recipient!) should be doing the due diligence on that and other risks of a license purchase.

 

[TheBigA]

As you know, businesses write off losses all the time. They take the short-term hit to the balance sheet to improve long-range prospects.

They've owned the Citadel stations for 14 years. They bought Susquehanna almost 20 years ago. Lotta time to depreciate.

Four AMs in one market is simply too much of a drag on the cluster.

 

[SCV_Ears]

Still going when I stumbled onto 560 this afternoon. They must be torturing crime suspects with it ... yeah, that makes sense.

 

[davideduardo]

That's business. In San Francisco, they don't own the tower land. They will try to sell the frequency if they can, but in some cases, it just makes sense to turn the license in.

That facility is perhaps the 4th or 5th best AM in the market after 610, 740 and 810. One of the lesser facilities would be wise to buy it and simply close their old facility, such as 910, 960, 1260, etc. and using their existing transmitter site for the better station.

 

[semoochie]

That facility is perhaps the 4th or 5th best AM in the market after 610, 740 and 810. One of the lesser facilities would be wise to buy it and simply close their old facility, such as 910, 960, 1260, etc. and using their existing transmitter site for the better station.

Better than 680, really?