-
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
939 MIA flips to Totally 939 All 90’s all the time!
- Thread starter Brian Sherwin
- Start date
G
Groove1670
Guest
Miami/FTL was never a grunge or alternative market back in the day, and probably not now (I've been out of the market since the mid 90s). Freestyle and dance yes, or pop songs with a Rhythmic lean yes.
Yes. I've been directly involved with the market up to the end of the last decade, and one of the issues for Spanish language stations that I have worked with is that anything that is not rhythmic no longer works.
And as many listeners to Spanish language media share with general market stations, I looked at the music there, too (at one point some of the Spanish language stations played some English language songs, too) and there was just no rock, grunge, alternative influence.
Over 50% of the market is Hispanic. Under 25% is non-Hispanic white. Go figure what drives a market that is 75% or more ethnic!
I keep hearing this modish, gender-neutral word, "Latinex" all over the media, but it is probably only used in English.
I know that in Spanish, male words mean both male and mixed-gender, so the joke does not exclude LatinAs
I keep hearing this modish, gender-neutral word, "Latinex" all over the media, but it is probably only used in English.
I know that in Spanish, male words mean both male and mixed-gender, so the joke does not exclude LatinAs
Nearly every word in Spanish is either male or female gendered; there are very few gender neutral words and those are "imports" from non-Latin based tongues. In plural, when mixed, it generally defaults to male. Latinos and Latinas together are "Latinos".
Here is a very good and succinct explanation of gender rules in Spanish if anyone wants to dig deeper.
https://medium.com/@puentera/latino-latinx-latine-a3b19e0dbc1c
The "x" suffix is an attempt to make a language that is gender-based into a gender neutral one. Among people I known, nearly nobody over about 30 uses that construct. And among younger Hispanics (a term not everybody likes, either) it seems that the English dominant people like the "X" thing, and the Spanish dominant ones do not.
Or, as a relative from PR said, "we are not Latinos, Latinas, LatinX. We are Puerto Rican."
Last edited:
As a follow-up, here is a fun dichotomy...
"Radio" can be masculine or feminine.
If I was going to work, I'd say the equivilant of "I'm going to the station" or "voy a la radio".
But if I'm going to buy a radio, I'd say "voy a comprar un radio."
And this usage sometimes varies by country!
It is likely that the radio receiver is masculine because "radio" is a contraction of "radio receptior" which is inherently masculine. And the station is feminine as it is a contraction of "estación de radio" or "radioemisora" both of which are used in various parts of the world and both are feminine.
File under: more than I wanted to know -> genders -> broadcasting.
David, I've told you before I don't care about PPM. I think its hogwash. I'm a small market guy, I find large market thinking to be insane. Its not 1980. Yet we.keep doing radio like its Hit Radio 107.
As far as billing, it's because all that iHeart focuses on is major clients. I tried to do sales long before I ended up on air at WIOD. The sales manager berated me for thinking small market. I told him he needed to open his mind. If you go back to the hair salon, local restaurants, spas and people who make this community what it is...with a format and people they want to hear, you could outsell an agency anyday.
But hey what do I know. I'm too small market. Cough cough 939 now has a Pembroke Pines eyelash sponsor cough cough....
As far as billing, it's because all that iHeart focuses on is major clients. I tried to do sales long before I ended up on air at WIOD. The sales manager berated me for thinking small market. I told him he needed to open his mind. If you go back to the hair salon, local restaurants, spas and people who make this community what it is...with a format and people they want to hear, you could outsell an agency anyday.
But hey what do I know. I'm too small market. Cough cough 939 now has a Pembroke Pines eyelash sponsor cough cough....
Have you tried selling to the hair salons lately? It's tough. Radio prices are too high for a lot of small businesses. Radio today is built for short term listeners, so advertisers need to buy a large package. That gets into real money. If you're going to make personal visits and work your clients the way you should, it's not worth it for a few spots a week. Those businesses have cheaper ways to reach their audience. Some of them are free! Most of the restaurants and businesses I frequent want my email address and text number. That's how they reach their customers now.
In large and medium markets, a considerable part of ad revenue is based on metrics. That requires ratings of some kind.
In small markets, there is also a ratings system: it's the merchant's cash register or the professional's appointment calendar.
I was, among other things under my title, the GSM, NSM and LSM of a station in Puerto Rico. Except for "cash in advance" nightclub ads, payable weekly, we did not take local direct advertising. A cost-benefit analysis we did showed that the servicing, collection and other costs exceeded the margin on the sales and we just could not justify the effort. The station had large coverage, and local accounts with one or two locations just could not afford us anyway.
You named three of the worst-paying local account categories. It usually costs more to collect, on the average, than those categories can yield.
There are cases of specialized services that will draw from wide areas; usually, though, they find today that alternatives like Internet options will work better and be cheaper. In the Miami market, no station has more than 5% of the listening on average, and the chances that many of those people will be in your single location area are minimal. On the other hand, McDonald's had hundreds of locations, so the ads each reach some people for each one, splitting broadly the cost.
The real question is "Have you tried collecting from a hair salon lately?"
So many salons are using the system of renting a chair to stylists that there is a de facto committee deciding on promotion; they will never agree on one single radio station! And then one or two of them will not pay up at invoice time because it "didn't work".
On the other hand, you know who are among the best? Lawyers. Not very sexy, and their ads are usually awful, but they are good payers.
That is so true. Stylists today are independent contractors, not employees. The salon is just the facility they use. I know doctors who operate that way too. I think we'll see more of this moving forward because providing employee benefits is too expensive.
In my local market, the two largest TV account categories are Air Conditioning (we have now had 150 days this year over 100°) and lawyers. Personal injury of course is big, but also so are elderly estate and final wishes categories. This market has a median age of 52!
So true. CA has a minimum wage that was $14 before the pandemic. We found that service at the retail level had been gradually reduced and that things like restaurant prices even for convenience foods was so high we had reduced our nights out considerably; we just could not find value in spending over $100 for a "nice" restaurant dinner for two.
So we buy more online as merchandise has full descriptions, warranty details if covered, and easy returns and exchanges... and a much broader selection. And, the end game is to move out of CA when the pandemic is over. This is a common feeling by friends, and this will affect not just migrations but also the future of radio's biggest local clients, retail and services.
Example: Three of the national franchise home maid services quoted us $400 and change for a 3 hour, 3 person "deep cleaning". We bought sanitation gear for our regular service person and will get a full day for $120. Add in the supplies, masks, gloves, booties and use of our vacuum and mops and pails, and it is still less than a third of the quoted price.
Not sure how it is for Miami, but for Lake of the Ozarks (who saw over 13 million visitors this year) they do this daily. This is their bread and butter and they do very well at it. They hardly have any agency packages, it's all local restaurants, salons, events, stores...etc. Ad rates may be lower than Miami, but the market concept is the same. Maybe Miami needs to bring their ads rates back to reality?
Yes that makes sense. We had a little of both in our small market....we go by popularity in the local magazine, the number of clients we have and the importance our stations get in the community. The Nielson rating for our market included areas we barley served, yet we remained # 1. It was nice to see, but as the owner always said "We see how popular we are when the listeners keep listening and the advertisers keep advertising, numbers mean nothing."
It's amazing....In the Lake of the Ozarks market where I've worked now some 20 years, this was never an issue. Sure we have a few bad apples from time to time, but generally everyone kept up with the their bills. Being a vacation tourist spot, they ALWAYS bought ads in cash and in bulk, before their competition got the time slots. I just can't grasp in my mind how that doesn't translate to other areas....I mean even in small small small rural areas, they bring in HUGE bucks for just a high school football game.
That makes sense. But the smaller the station gets, the more it can rationalize. Maybe more so for the AMs than the FMs I get it, but what about larger local chains? Obviously one that already does is this Flannigans...but there are more than just that! I had an online NASCAR show and I managed to get a monthly sponsorship from the NASCAR Cafe in Davie whenever we broadcasted from Homestead Miami Speedway....could you imagine if someone at WAXY did that?
I knew people involved with the local radio station when I was with a newspaper in Arkansas in the late '70s. One was a sportscaster who doubled as a salesman. He had all the business he could handle selling time on football games and never said a word about them stiffing the station when it came to paying. So much of David's experience is in Puerto Rico and Latin American nations; maybe we're talking "cultural differences" here, or maybe advertisers who just don't have the money to pay promptly. My experience in small-town Arkansas sounds like yours in small town Missouri. Our paper never had to go after the restaurants, sporting goods stores and barbershops that regularly advertised with us either.
Last edited:
the one near our station does... theyre or three doors down from us in our plaza, advertise monthly and have our station on in the salon whenever theyre open
No, I'm talking about my experiences in Lake City, FL, Tallahassee, FL, Birmingham, AL, Phoenix and Tucson, AZ, Las Vegas, NV, San Antonio, TX and Albuquerque, NM markets with stations in English serving general market audiences.
Oh, and Puerto Rico is in the USA, and everything from credit reporting to banking and finance systems are essentially no different than in South Dakota or Wyoming. Money has no "culture".
Ad rates are based on actual listening levels. A station in Camden, AR, might cover 50,000 people while one in Miami might cover 5,000,000 people. So the Arkansas station might cume 5,000 in the annual county by county Nielsen survey, the one in Miami cumes a half a million or more.
I'll betcha' that the local newspaper... I find one that is a daily in Camdenton... does not charge as much for its 5,000 circulation as the 100,000 that the Miami Herald has, either.
The fact is that in large metro areas, single location businesses are pretty much unable to use mass media like radio, TV and daily papers because their customer base is a tiny part of the metro area but the ad media charge for full market coverage.
I doubt the Lake of the Ozarks region saw that many visitors this year... not tourist based area has done well for the last eight months.
Oh, and in tiny markets like that where stations are owner operated, many of the restaurant ads are trade for the owner to use, not cash deals. Many, many small owner operated stations appear to be unprofitable. But the owner takes a salary and trades everything from their heater/AC unit to their car and their home maintenance. But the business model changes in larger markets where businessmen are more sophisticated and analytical and in many cases use local ad agencies for their campaigns.
And one of my first jobs was summers at WCCW in Traverse City, MI... another tourist based economy. There was very little advertising from tourist attractions because merchants knew... and that was 60 years ago so it is not new news... that tourists did not spend a lot of time listening to local radio stations while on vacation.
There can be cultural differences but as David pointed out, money has no culture. When I was working in a community that was 97% Hispanic on the Texas/Mexico border, I found I needed to dedicate a day each week going client to client to collect the prior week's advertising. Very, very few would pay the monthly invoice by mail by check. They were most comfortable paying from the register and you writing them a receipt. It wasn't just the radio station. Folks would stand in line in 100+ degree heat to pay a light bill or water and sewage bill from the city. They sometimes paid by check for these services. Perhaps there was a time in the past when paying by mail in that community was not a sure deal. What I can say is by going with the flow you kept a good rapport with your clients and your past dues were nil. While I could have used an extra day each week to sell, I had a very enjoyable time working in the town.
- Status