A sad observation

[waunderlust]

You're comparing radio to a dying medium (print) and saying that's how you fix it?
Newspaper/shopper magazines/weekly advertising dollars are all down. (newspaper advertising is down at least 10% from last year). Direct mail spending is down. Just because there's lots of them and just because there's lots of ads doesn't mean they're making money. The "penny shopper" costs just that.

Don't get me started on the internet. No one but Google and porn are making money on the internet and I'm still waiting for Google's bubble to burst. It happened once, it'll happen again. Wait till their buy out of Scott Studios catches on (for cash strapped stations). Their "business model" is to market radio stations like websites and fill empty stop sets. You'll know someone bit when you hear a thousand enzeyte (sp?) commercials a day that pay NOTHING unless someone calls.

just my 2 Euros (God knows the dollars falling everywhere)

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If you are selling advertising for radio, then your frame of mind every morning has to be: Print is the dying medium and I work for the marvelous, golden, immortal method of communicating, the spoken word!

If you own the local newspaper, you get up every morning and say: I represent the proven media and I must go out today and do my best, and when the radio bubble bursts.... I will make hay while the sun shines.

But if you are an old codger who beat his brains out for a number of years in radio, and then you got out for a number of years, and you listened to people in your office, you listened to how people communicated in your civic clubs and your church, and may served on some committees and boards that had to figure out how to publicize and promote their events and membership, you learn to sit back and evaluate the various institutions in your life free from the loyalties expected by the employment relationship.

Assume for a minute that I am sitting here putting together a plan to return to broadcasting. I want to create a business plan, a programming concept that is bullet-proof, establish an organization that has a 95% probability of survival and success. I get up every morning realizing that newspaper has been around for more than 200 years and there is no other form of print/visual breathing down their neck. Radio has yet to complete it's first 100 years; it has all manner of competing audio breathing down it's neck; and a high percentage of the people who make radio work are not sure we will be in business 20 years from now.

There is that old, old cliche that I grow tired of, but what is more appropriate for this place in our thread: The railroads "owned" transportation in our nation at one time. When trucks came along, railroads looked down their nose and said: "WE are RAILROADS" when they should have said "WE are TRANSPORTATION"... how can we use trucks? Later they should have said: "WE are TRANSPORTATION"... how can we use airplanes?

So here we are. WE are RADIO. But we don't know what our function is. Are we music and entertainment? Are we News and Talk? Do we have fences that define our communities. For you guys who are 30 years old: Where will you be 20 and 30 years from now: operating a radio station that publishes some specialty print media, and operates a web site. Or will you be working for a website that happens to own a handful of blog sites and a radio station to support the website? Be prepared to be a radio guy who gets RAILROADED right out of town.

So what is your vision of the future? What business will you be in?

 

[waunderlust]

For someone who has analyzed the market and wants to get back in, you're full of bad advice and twisted questions. No competition to newspapers? Who's reading all their news on line then? See ya at the call center. Just follow the sheep...I mean goats...ney ney

 

[jeffwoehrle]

You're comparing radio to a dying medium (print) and saying that's how you fix it?

No, I'm recognizing the reality that dollars drive the station, and dollars (right now) have too many other places to go. Besides, who is to say that radio isn't dying as well?

Had a few drinks with a good friend this evening, and he came up with a nugget: Maybe $50 spots are gone and the new reality is $10 spots.

Very true. Unless the advertising makes sense to the business owner, only a twisted sense of 'loyalty' will drive the buy.

Not that such as thing isn't feasible...anyone who has sold high school sports for an AM station knows that economics makes little difference when emotion comes into play. If the owner of the local hardware store has a kid in the playoffs, you can bet your ass he'll buy spots no matter what the effectiveness may be...or not be.

In a marketplace where competition for advertising dollars is so diverse, one has to look at offerings from the client's perspective for a change. What I see (from the client chair) is that my money can be effectively spent in a myriad of ways other than radio, and plenty of those ways give far more bang for the buck.

 

[Nairda]

Most radio stations now all sound like IPODS. If YOUR radio station sounds like an IPOD you are SCREWED!
No more commentary is necessary.
Thank you. OUT!

 

[RK]

When i was growing up, I DREAMED of owning my own radio station...
now looking back, I realize having that dream must have been the result of partial INSANITY.

After working in the biz, and seeing all the BS that goes on behind the scenes and with 99.9% of the population owning an IPOD, (ok, that's an exaggeration, but it certainly feels like that sometimes).......

In 20 years I'm not sure radio will be in business. I hope for all the small "Mom & Pops" that still scatter the country, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a station, I sincerely hope their investments are not flushed down the toilet if radio someday does no longer exist.

-RK

 

[STICKBOY]

1. If your not billing look in the mir----or
2. There is plenty of opportunity