doowopvault said:
I gotta say, David, YOU ignore the facts, and the facts are....you preach and preach and preach about how it's a business, well....your brand of business is BAD BUSINESS!!!. When millions of people are thrown to the wayside because of their age, not only is it bad business, but it is ignorant, disrespectful and downright stupid.
You are not only blaming the messenger, you are blaming that messenger for the wrong thing.
In the rated markets, the significant, non-niche stations are dependent for profitability on agency business. While this is less in the smaller rated markets, the larger they get the more dependent on local, regional and national agency revenue stations become. And agency business comes by meeting price goals (CPP) on delivery of the agency client's target consumer. That is, in descending order, all or some part of 25-54, 18-49 or 18-34.
There are essentially no buys for 55+. So a station programming to "geezer demos" may get leftover local direct business, but no agency buys. It likely will make little or no money.
Here is a real world example: WDUV in Tampa is an FM that has been #1 in 12+ for well over a decade. But in 25-54, it is about 15th on average. Guess what? It is not #1 in revenue. Not #2. No, it is #14. What that shows is that the only salable portion of its audience, even in a market famous for its retiree community, is the under-55 portion.
So don't blame me, and don't blame radio for the fact that there is very little revenue to be had if a station programs to seniors.
You say, along with the rest of the "experts" who post here, you have to play what the younger listeners are listening to, and that will get the businesses to advertise.
Very few businesses and products cater to seniors alone. Few cater to teens. That is why the broad 18-54 range is what advertisers seek, all or in part. It's where their marketing departments have determined the profitability to lie.
Those that cater to teens or seniors do tend to be in smaller revenue generating categories.
Well...here is the question, if having a successful station requires implementing your plan, along with gutting a station down to it's bare bones, then........why are so many failing?
Trimming costs is the product of a recession, not of the other factors you mention. Radio revenue, which was growing in tiny amounts up to 2007, plummeted about 40% during the recession. And while there has been a slight recovery, revenues are still off by 30%, so there is less money to spend and operations are leaner.
And, keep in mind that you can go back to the FCC Financial Report data from the 50's and find that even then half of all stations did not make a profit. Yet, somehow, they all stay on the air... only a handful go permanently silent and those tend to be very bad AMs... low power, high-band daytimers.
So don't say stations are "failing" as they are not, to any greater extent, than they have been over the last 50 years.
(Verifiable data, available online)
You say, when I post, that the data is suspect. Sure it is, because it contradicts your position.
Your last working link cited data from over a half a decade ago. First, it was pre-recession. Second, it did not say how the percentages were derived, what markets were examined and what the source figures were. In other words, BS. Irrelevant, stale BS.
You have so much respect for the research clowns, the very people who put a dozen or so people in a room, ask them questions, and based upon those answers, that's how you format a station, from coast to coast....please lol lol.
That is not how station music research is done. Music testing is done with a statistically sound sample, one that can be replicated with great accuracy. And it's sample size is about 10 times what you think is used (you've never seen a music test, right?) and done locally for each station for the markets that can afford the $30 to $40 thousand dollar cost. Results are only shared for smaller markets, and then on a "similar" market basis.
The sample sizes are, by the way, larger than the specific sample of a single station's P1 audience in ratings surveys. Yet those sample sizes are perfectly accepted... even approved... by the advertisers who spend $15 billion dollars a year on radio advertising.
That's why people in the past have said, who travel as part of their business, while driving, city to city, all they heard was the same formats playing the same songs.
And why shouldn't they hear the same songs? The US is a highly connected nation... even back in the days of piano rolls and sheet music, the hits were the same in Spokane and Savannah. In the 50's Gisele McKenzie and Snookie Lanson sang the top songs for the nation on Your Hit Parade on TV.
(The radio version went back to 1935... the same "hits" were presented nationally via a network broadcast)
So, local stations of a particular format, for the most part, will play about the same songs. The differences are related to local competitive situations, local ethnic composition, local median audience age, etc... and that is what makes local music research essential in the larger, competitive markets.
When I asked you the question, which you ignored, if station after station are going to implement the same methods, playing the same genre, playing the same tunes, by the same artists which are pushed by the same corporate labels, where is the uniqueness?
The uniqueness is that you can't hear the Spokane station in Savannah.
On purpose, there is little uniqueness between a McDonalds in Stockton and one in Syracuse. Or a Home Depot. Or a WalMart. Maybe the WalMart in one place has a slightly different merchandise mix, given climate and other factors, but for all practical purposes, the model is almost identical... because it works that way.
the creativity? how does this cookie cutter programing increase listenership? how can stations pick up more listeners if one station playing the same crap isn't playing or doing anything different than the others?
Take New York City. There is a wide variety of stations... and at most, two in any specific format niche. It is not the "same crap" as there are far more different formats than ever before.
The major, major market I grew up in had, in 1959 when I started in radio, 8 stations. 3 were Top 40. 3 were MOR. 3 were r&b. There were 3 different formats I could pick from. That same market today has a score of different formats to choose from, even more if you take into account the marginal signals and the non-commercial stations.
That's why David, your way of running a station is the reason stations try changing their call letters, try changing formats, genres, voice tracking etc, ARE STILL BEING SOLD, STILL IN THE RED AND STILL FAILING!!!!
Fewer stations are being sold than I can ever remember or find in the public records. And, in any case, businesses get sold all the time... in good and bad times. Just like houses. Or shares of stock.
Probably half the stations in the US continue to break even or lose money. No change over the last 50 years... except that the FCC has seen fit to license three times as many stations as we had in 1960.
People like you run a business by cutting and cutting,
Actually, through most of my career I have owned or run stations with larger than average staffs, better than average technical facilities, and higher than average pay scales. Only with this latest recession, due to its severity and length, coupled with increasing costs of things like insurance and regulatory compliance, has it been necessary to "tighten the belt" to insure survival of the enterprise.
offer the same product, don't offer anything different. No creativity, nothing unique and then wonder why there isn't any increase in business!!!
If folks in San Antonio and South Bend want a CHR station, why would we not expect to have one or two CHRs in each market? If folks in Sarasota and Salt Lake City want a hit country station, why should there not be one serving each local market? And, national taste being as consistent as it is, the songs that those CHRs play will be rather similar in each market. And the ones the country stations play will also be similar.
Oh, and the "corporate record companies" are now, in most cases, radio's enemy. There is less cooperation between the two sides than I have ever seen.
So what is your solution? to cut some more lol lol. When that doesn't work, you sell the station and go on to the next station/victim and implement the same failed measures producing the same failed results.
Where do you see this happening? Generally, if a station owner fails today, they are out of the business.
