92.7 WGMD's Dan Gaffney Challenges Clueless Radio Execs over FM Talk Reticence

[FTL_Ian]

In his latest blog post entitled, "Talk Radio on FM; What Are We Waiting For?", 92.7 WGMD program director Dan Gaffney calls out clueless radio executives and attempts to slap some much-needed sense into them:

http://thetalkradioreport.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/talk-radio-on-fm-what-are-we-waiting-for/

 

[FTL_Ian]

Re: 92.7 WGMD's Dan Gaffney Challenges Clueless Radio Execs over FM Talk Reticen

I'm reposting my response here:



Dan, thanks for reaching out to slap radio execs across their internet faces. Wake up, guys!

Execs have really said, “listeners wouldn’t go for it on FM”? ???

That’s just madness! This has always seemed like such a no-brainer to me:

Take your least performing music FM and flip it to mono, and simulcast your AM talker! Less programming time required, no music licensing costs, more sales opportunities, and LISTENERS LOVE FM! Besides, some listeners barely know AM exists, namely younger listeners and females.

Real life proof, for those doubting execs:

My 24 year old girlfriend is fine with listening to talk, but not to even a slight amount of static. Unlike the 65+ crowd, she grew up with CDs, and is used to good quality audio. The AM band doesn’t deliver for listeners like her. (And almost every AM HD station I’ve heard sounds like garbage with the upper frequencies of the audio being “simulated” by the codec. Yech.)

Talk on FM sounds great and attracts a new listener set. No one is saying turn off your AM, but not bringing talk to FM is leaving money on the table.

 

[jmtillery]

I agree that Talk and News-Talk on FM is the way to go. I live in the 83rd ranked Arbitron market consisting of 26-local radio signals, not counting FM translators. About ten years ago, I was with station where management was rather innovative in taking a traditional AM news-talk format and placing it on a 50kw FM station consisting of ABC News, Rush, Boortz, Savage and many more names along with local talk programming. The "suits" said it would never work, howver, this "News-Talk on FM" station is now the number two rated station out of 26-local signals in the market.

Mark Tillery,
Ocala, Florida
[email protected]

 

[DaleGriffin]

The Sky is the perfect example of how FM Talk can work.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

The Sky is the perfect example of how FM Talk can work.

And so is a station Mr. Gaffney mentions in his blog, our very own local talk station on FM (WNIR/100.1 "The Talk of Akron").

WNIR has been doing topical talk radio on FM as a whole station for nearly 30 years, and its flagship midday program has been on the air nearly 35 years. The station is consistently in the top-5 in the Akron market 12-plus, and often #1.

Oh, and did I mention it's pretty much all local? No syndicated programming from 5 AM to 11 PM, Monday through Friday, and from 6 AM-7 PM Saturdays.

OK, so 'NIR is somewhat quirky. At times, it sounds like it hasn't changed a bit since the mid-1980's...including its personality lineup. NFL star and area native Bob Golic's afternoon show is the only different thing on the station since then, and even Bob sounds like he's been there forever. (He replaced the retired Joe Finan, an older liberal host who passed away in his 80's after doing a show briefly for the Clear Channel now-former liberal talker here.)

About its biggest problem is that 'NIR skews older. But Akron also skews a little older, though not as much as nearby Youngstown - a market that skews so much older it supports two major AM standards outlets.

But about WNIR. On the whole...it WORKS. The owners (two local brothers, the sons of the man who founded the station in its current form) are cheap, and spend almost nothing. The midday host who started it all, Howie Chizek, may be making a penny or two, but isn't a millionaire, and everyone else is likely not making a killing. (The cost of living here is pretty low, so it probably doesn't take much.)

And the station has operated live full talk show remotes from a local car dealer for pretty much their entire time on the air - via an unequalized phone line from a car dealer in the very same small suburb where the station is located.

But in this economy? It may be what keeps them thriving and humming even in the worst of times.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

I guess the only question that I'd ask is, generally Talk radio, especially political talk (Rush/Hannity, Air America, etc) tend to skew towards the older demos that advertisers aren't interested in (generally old white males - note the big deal Rush makes out of some younger person who calls in as they are not the norm and he really gets excited if the young person grew up listening to the show as a "Rush Baby").

IF the only reason the younger demos aren't listening to Rush/Hannity, Air America, etc is because these shows are on AM radio then doing as FTL Ian said about using your least performing FM, etc, might not be a bad idea; but IF the younger demos are not generally interested in political talk be it on AM or FM then it would seem like you're making a FM station become like an AM station where it too will skew old and you'd have the same problems that AM stations have in getting advertisers for stuff other than nursing homes, cemetaries, erectial disfuction, etc. A lesser performing FM is better than a spot less AM or FM where you end up filling the spot breaks from your satellite shows with PSA's. The AM in my market that airs Rush/Hannity does a great deal of that during their shows.

The other part of that might be where your station is located. If you're in a blue county then your local advertisers might not be interested in buying time on a show such as Limbaugh's or Hannity's, but might be interested in Air America. However, some advertisers may not want to offend anyone so they'd avoid either talk format, so at least with your FM albeit your least performing FM, but apparently performing better than most AM stations you might chase away the ads you now have and end up airing PSA's as many AM's now do as they let their FM sister stations pay the bills airing music. Now if you're in a red county then airing Rush/Hannity might be a good choice.

Maybe the key for that lesser performing FM station is to go after another segment of the music audience that is not being targetted well in your particular market (country, oldies - 60's70's, Classical Music, Classic Rock, Cool Jazz, etc). Each market is different in where the main emphais is.

 

[FTL_Ian]

Re: 92.7 WGMD's Dan Gaffney Challenges Clueless Radio Execs over FM Talk Reticen

Whether it's younger skewing liberty-oriented talk (like Free Talk Live), conservative or progressive news/talk, sports talk, hot talk, all-news, or some other talk, it should be on FM.

If there was enough content to fill the airwaves, I'd flip a whole cluster from music to talkers. 8)

Music radio is dead; long live talk!

 

[smedge2006]

Mike from Delaware is right -- most FM talkers are just dragging their tired old AM content over to the other band. They're not changing anything up to make it more Gen X- or Y- friendly.

There was, of course, FM Talk in the 90's -- pioneered by New Jersey 101.5 and WTKS in Orlando -- but recent FCC crackdowns seem to have neutered that format.

Other than changing the frequency and modulation method, I see no sign that most owners have a clue as to how to make their talk formats relevant to the next generation.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

The aforementioned "traditional" talk station on FM here in Northeast Ohio has just started streaming its audio:

http://www.wnir.com/

They are local 5:30 AM-11 PM (ET) weekdays, and 6 AM-7 PM (ET) Saturdays. If you hear nothing on their stream, it's probably outside those hours.

 

[Don62]

Fine. Relocate to FM.
But don't obliterate or destroy the AM band, which many, such as myself, still listen to regularly.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

Fine. Relocate to FM.
But don't obliterate or destroy the AM band, which many, such as myself, still listen to regularly.

About the FM station in question...it's been doing some sort of talk radio on the FM band since 1974, and been a full-fledged talker on FM since roughly 1985 or so.

When Howie Chizek started on 100.1 in 1974, he was also simulcasting on the co-owned AM, now-WJMP/1520 Kent (then both with the old WKNT calls). I can't remember when they dropped him off the AM...a pipsqueak, anemic highly-directional daytimer with an on-channel station just 20ish miles south of Kent.

 

[Don62]

The FM band is such a waste these days. Very little appealing to many people.
I know many who don't listen to radio at all, or who listen very little.

I don't listen much to FM primarily because it doesn't serve my musical interests, songs from 1958-1979.
Even those stations playing "70s oldies" don't really play much 70s and instead pollute the format with 80s songs.
Guess the 70s-based age group isn't appealing to advertisers either, so they have to make the format even "younger" and go after the MTV generation. Yuck.

Perhaps talk on FM would be better. Just keep AM viable.
Some great Golden Oldies stations and Adult Standards stations there would be good.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

It gets down to the same ole problem, advertisers want ONLY the young listener. The listener isn't radio's customer, they are the product. Radio tries to deliver the product the advertisers want, but unfortunately for radio, the young listener is becoming lesser and lesser as they Ipod, internet, etc. The loyal radio audience is the baby boomers (born 1946-1965) and their parents. Most music on commerical radio doesn't appeal to these two groups unless your market somehow still has a real Oldies station or a nostalgia, Classical Music, Jazz, or Country Gold station.

So radio has a paradox, the people who actually listen to the radio are the people that the advertisers don't want. Yet, we keep reading that 50 is the new 30, etc, but the ad agencies sure haven't adopted that idea, yet. I'm 57, I grocery shop, buy tires for my car, buy a new car every now and then, go on vacations, etc. Today I bought a new winter coat, took my wife out for dinner and then to see a play at a local theatre. Yet to hear the ad people talk, the only thing someone older than 49 is interested in is pre-burial planning, nursing homes, and the latest drugs to bug my doctor to give me. I've already pre planned my burial plot, am NOT remotely ready for the old folks home, and do not need any of those drugs. Just maybe it's the advertisers who are out of step.

The ad folks don't even get the benefit of me listening to their ads, because in my market (Wilmington DE/Philly) we have an oldies stations that plays too much disco, 80's, etc; we do have a classic rock station that does get some of the boomer ears, and no nostalgia or country gold station. The Jazz and Classical station is an NPR station. We also have an NPR station for news/info/entertainment that also pulls in that older demo. That leaves talk on AM which also pulls in the older demo, but not me as I'm tired of one sided political talk be it right wing or left wing. So I mostly listen to the two NPR stations or my own CD's or audio books. So moving talk to FM probably isn't going to help pull in advertisers as talk skews old and the advertisers would rather cut off their legs than target us over 49 folks with their ads.

It is a fact of life and radio will have to find a way to either attract the younger ears or somehow convince the advertisers that baby boomers have plenty of do-re-mi to spend and do spend, they listen to radio IF you program to them, so why not take advantage of this very large group in your advertising campaigns.

 

[Don62]

The way the radio industry is going these days - and darker days are ahead for this bare-bones industry - things are only going to get worse.
I can't see radio's leaders doing anything innovative to attract new listeners or try to even minimally serve its Baby Boomer and older listeners.

How much would it cost a big corp. like CC or Cumulus to put a great real oldies format on an underperforming AM or FM stick?

Don't they know grocery stores have items that don't sell as well- yet they're still offered, not in the large quantities like the Tide soaps but they still see to serve most shoppers.

Why can't radio adapt and do something to keep its most loyal listeners happy?

Read through some of the reader comments on the story about Tuesday's expected Clear Channel bloodbath.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01162009/business/clear_channel_plans_revamp_150374.htm


other peoples' comments:

[size=10pt]Radio used to matter. We'd get news from it, hear the latest music, opinions, and live events. On Tuesday, Clear Channel will summarily dismiss many of the very people who could make radio matter again. The ones left will have too many duties - heaped on them so that there's no way they can do their jobs well.
thanks to cost-cutting Clear Channel.
....
Clear Channel was allowed to grow to dominance, assuring that radio would become insignificant

.

I spent several years as a Clear Channel employee, and Cramer is right: radio is gone as we know it, and CC has been at the vanguard of its destruction. The only advantages radio had relative to other media were that it was live and local. Increasingly, it is neither, and it seems that the more radio is challenged by other entertainment options, the more the stooges at Clear Channel drive their listeners to those options. The quality of their product offerings is irrelevant... at CC, the business philosophy is solely about doing it as cheaply as possible. I'm a big proponent of the free market and take most corporate criticism with a grain of salt, but Clear Channel is, in fact, one of the truly awful companies in this country, one to whom employees are an unnecessary inconvenience. This is what happens when an entertainment comapny is run by bean counters who don't understand the nature of the business they operate. What to make of an entertainment company that doesn't value entertainers? Bain-Lee is about to finally drive the industry into the ground. I can only hope they lose billions. It's precisely what they deserve.

 

[semoochie]

Any number of people on this board will tell you that it isn't that baby-boomers don't have and spend money. It's that the return on investment is less than it costs to make the sale. This is according to ongoing research by major advertisers, not ad agencies or individual stations.

 

[FTL_Ian]

Re: 92.7 WGMD's Dan Gaffney Challenges Clueless Radio Execs over FM Talk Reticen

Talk can help save the FM band, but the FCC is the number one threat to radio. It is slowly strangling the industry.

 

[jackandcoke]

Wow, we've gotta keep you guys away from the razor blades, don't we? From what I've read so far on this thread, radio is in the crapper, FM is in the crapper, and radio execs/owners are too stupid to slap talk formats on FM. Y'all need some Prozac, quick!

Look, for one thing, more and more radio companies ARE shifting FM stations to talk, or news, or news/talk. Even in Dan Gaffney's world--at least in that Top 10 market across the Bay Bridge--Bonneville moved all-news WTOP to FM about two years ago, very successfully. And there is no doubt that in the next year or two, many more licensees will be following suit with some combination of news and/or talk on FM.

Why aren't they doing it fast enough to satisfy Dan? Well, for one thing, very few broadcasters enjoy the peculiar combination of factors that have made WGMD a raging success: a booming growth market (Sussex County, Delaware)... a tremendously wealthy market (tons of Summer Homes for DC/B-more/Philly elites + millions of tourists shedding dollars in weekly waves half the year)... and virtually no competition (sandy soil that makes AM useless and a half-dozen other FM sticks all aimed at nearby larger markets). Gaffney could be running a thousand-cycle tone with periodic stop-sets on 92.7 and still make millions. He has no idea what the real world is like.

A big reason why licensees have been slow to do talk on FM is that they are making a hell of a lot of money running music on FM. Don't kid yourselves, gang, radio is still a tremendously profitable business. And the primary expense for any radio operation is bodies... people... talk show hosts. If you can generate 60 percent cash flow watching computers spit out tunes with no humans attached, why change?

BTW, if you don't think radio is still an incredibly profitable business, ask yourself why there has been no flood of radio bankruptcies, thus far...

 

[Don62]

Any number of people on this board will tell you that it isn't that baby-boomers don't have and spend money. It's that the return on investment is less than it costs to make the sale. This is according to ongoing research by major advertisers, not ad agencies or individual stations.

That's only part of broadcasting.

Again, it seems clever broadcasters could find a way to use some of their lesser signals for programming aimed at the other groups. And these aren't tiny niche groups like Carribbean music or something.

Take newspapers. They have different sections of the publication that attracts different readership.
Many never peek at sports, where the readership demo is likely low, and I'm sure more 55+ readers read the obituaries.

Take situations where a big ownership groups through purchases has a market leader that has a huge older listener base ( ala KVOO, Tulsa, KOMA_AM, Okla. City) and blows it up by changing formats, which brings in only a fraction of listeners, likely less an 1 shares.

Likely, the owners were embarassed to have a big country station or oldies station that isn't "hip" anymore.
You see on the boards here that "That was a sales problem" and not a ratings issue. You read about this kind of thing happening all the time.

The broadcasting industry is dying, and all broadcasters can do is lay people off, take nearly all programming off satellite, and tighten formats.