Barrett Media: KLOS ratings

[Delete My Account]

I will note that the most successful non-comms do have talent that tell stories about music. While the tone of a lot of KEXP for instance, may not be for everyone, Larry Mizell Jr. (through his family history in the business) does things like "OG Thursdays" where a lot of intel and storytelling around the music happens. That's just one example.

Spotify, I would argue does something that while it isn't "DJ" driven in the sense it doesn't have a voice narrative or DJs doing breaks, does have a sense of curation or context behind a lot of the playlists, particularly in dance culture where producers and DJs themselves post things that influence them and that does give context to the music, in a different way. Some of their curated playlists are hybrids that while too niche for full time formats on terrestrial radio, are definitely akin to what some stations or specialty shows might have experimented with in the past.

Apple Music has a lot of curators involved that are also more close to traditional DJs. Zane Lowe, Elton John, a myriad of music industry, former radio and artists that create shows on the platform. They've expanded that team in dance and country, in the not too distant past.

So, the traditional "DJ" model may not be as prominent a part of these services, but the contextualizing and curation is still happening. They aren't exact equals but there's still a place in the model for it, on either platform. There's an abundance of choice out there and people need guides to avoid being overwhelmed. Or, they just stick to what they know and never expand past that. I've never been able to stick to the latter. Personally, I still prefer radio whether I'm looking for the familiar or for discovery - with an actual human guiding it and hopefully, being interesting in how they present it. I realize other generations may view it differently.

 

[ted chittenden]

I agree. Tightening the music is always a good idea. They haven't lost anything by replacing Kevin Ryder with Nik Carter. Meanwhile it looks like KROQ has dropped below 1 million in cue for the first time in a while.

Well, yes and no. One remembers what happened to KRTH when it tightened its playlist in the mid- and late 1990s and early 2000s. Yes, short-term ratings went up for a few quarters, in fact for maybe a year or two. But eventually, they crashed. Why? Because even people who listen to radio only in their cars don't want to hear "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay," at roughly the same time every morning as they're driving into work. If your station's playlist doesn't evolve, even if it is a slow evolution, then you will eventually lose all of those gains you made in the ratings to other stations who are playing different songs.

 

[ted chittenden]

I agree with you, except that we don't know if they have talent. They're not allowed to use it in L.A. and (assuming they started in the business in the last 15 years) weren't allowed to develop it wherever they worked before.

In the 80s and before, DJs worked in small markets with very few restrictions, got to stretch their wings and figure out what worked and what didn't. The next few steps from there were usually increasingly more restrictive---but they had learned how to say stuff that mattered in whatever window the PDs gave them.

Especially for those who've been voice-tracking their shows in smaller markets before coming to L.A., they really were only there to fill 15-20 seconds of "content" on the way into a spot break and that's it.

There were five years between the Real Don Steele's first gig at KBUC in Corona and his doing afternoon drive at KHJ.

Tape of Don at KBUC used to be online, but I can't find it now, so here he is four years before Boss Radio at KIMA in Yakima. This, then Omaha, then Portland, then Oakland, all got Don ready to be a star in L.A. That farm system no longer exists.

The Real Don Steele, KIMA Yakima, March 12 1961 (0:31:39) - Reel Radio

reelradio.ncbmuseum.com

If you ever go back and listen to those long-ago airchecks from the Real Don Steele and others, you'll soon discover that these people were doing something else during their talking sets, something that is no longer being done by just about everybody in the business. Sure they cracked one-liners, but their real purpose appears to have been the reading of all that advertising copy. And when advertisers stopped providing copy for the jocks to read, then the radio stations that paid them found they could no longer afford to pay them as much as they were and sent them on their way. Sometimes I hear talent on the classic hits and oldies satellite networks making commentaries about the songs and occasionally cracking jokes *but* I almost never hear them read ad copy anymore, and as I said, I think that has a lot to do with the disappearing disc jockeys at most stations.

 

[ted chittenden]

I always ask this question when people bring up the talent issue: Name all the big name, popular music DJs on Spotify or Apple music. They don't exist. When most people tune in for music, that's what they want. Sirius is struggling with that issue, because they see themselves as a traditional radio service on a digital platform. But even there, it's hard to find the type of presentation that CF is talking about. Radio has changed. It used to be the only place to hear music without buying it. Now, hardly anybody buys music. It's all disposable, music and presentation.

You make a very good point! When I get up about 3 or 4am in the morning to do my daily 20-minute exercise bike workout, I always have my Walkman-type receiver with me with headphones to boot. I usually keep it on KOAI because, at that time of the morning, they are just playing songs with no commercials. (They've had a difficult time getting local advertisers to purchase the time between 11pm the previous day and 5am on the current day.) The lack of jocks and advertisements is great for me at that time as I try to set my pedaling rhythm to the beats of the tunes I hear, especially if they're mid-tempo or faster. (For the record, I don't always make it.) That music holds my interest and helps keep me on the bike for that long which, unfortunately, ads and talking deejays don't do.

 

[ted chittenden]

Today, any DJ with any level of talent wants, at bare minimum, the ability to VT in other markets. But the real goal today is national syndication. And you can do national syndication from anyplace. No need for a million dollar studio. So that's where the bar is set. Everyone wants to be Ryan Seacrest.

But not everyone *can be* Ryan Seacrest, even if you had his talents. And there are a lot fewer spots open in national syndication than there used to be in local radio, meaning that the bar is very high and very few will make it. And you really don't need a lot of people for national syndication--certainly a lot fewer than you need if all local radio stations ran on personality deejays.

 

[ted chittenden]

There is not "one job per person" populating the U.S. (let alone the world) as there should be.

The only way your last sentence could come to fruition (and this would go way beyond radio to include all businesses) is to require businesses to hire people and give them positions even if the money wasn't there. Many people (including I suspect @davideduardo, given his background) would consider that to be Marxist. The problem is that many people also consider the other side of the coin, the use of a social safety net paid for by the wealthy to support those who are unable to find jobs, to be Marxist as well.

What most people on both sides of the spectrum fail to understand (and I'm going way beyond radio when saying this) is that the total amount of resources currently available to human beings are the resources available on this planet. And we know those resources are finite because we can (and have) measured the size of the planet on which we live. How those limited resources should be distributed is the cause of great debate and argument within our species and is *way* above what can be discussed here.

 

[yeoldeschool]

What new ideas are there on Spotify?

Spotify was the new idea.

People don't need radio to discover music.

I didn't say anything about discovering music. I'm talking about lengthening the time radio has left, regardless of what's there to be listened to. Take newspapers. People don't need newspapers to discover news now either. And while people who've never bought newspapers never will, the loss of subscribers who already subscribe can be slowed with better journalism, better style, and better side dish content. Same with radio. This is why I said large owners should designate some stations as loss lead laboratories. Let out-of-the-box thinking and experimentation commence on them without worrying about the initial short-term losses. If you dig long enough, you reach water. Radio is suffering from what happens to all declining business models, where once the air starts feeling thin, an urge develops to cling to convention -- and suffocate slowly in the long term -- rather than risk inducing sudden, large, but short-term losses of oxygen that might lead to creating an entirely new replacement atmosphere.

 

[TheBigA]

I'm talking about lengthening the time radio has left, regardless of what's there to be listened to.

That's not a radio company problem. They're already transitioning their audiences to different platforms and devices. When K-Love comes along with money, they sell. Let K-Love worry about lengthening the time radio has left.

Radio is suffering from what happens to all declining business models, where once the air starts feeling thin, an urge develops to cling to convention

I don't see that happening. They're retaining the formats that work and attract audience, and shutting down the ones that don't. In the meantime, they're building podcasting and other online businesses. There are no formats they can flip to that will get people to throw away their digital devices and go back to radio. They all know there's no growth, and their redirecting their resources to places where there's potential growth. Townsquare is already more than 50% digital. iHeart is very close too. That's the future. Not towers and transmitters.

 

[yeoldeschool]

I will note that the most successful non-comms do have talent that tell stories about music. While the tone of a lot of KEXP for instance, may not be for everyone, Larry Mizell Jr. (through his family history in the business) does things like "OG Thursdays" where a lot of intel and storytelling around the music happens. That's just one example.

Sounds delightful. I listened almost exclusively to southern California public radio during my college years and there were plenty of hosts doing that then around here as well.

Spotify, I would argue does something that while it isn't "DJ" driven in the sense it doesn't have a voice narrative or DJs doing breaks, does have a sense of curation or context behind a lot of the playlists, particularly in dance culture where producers and DJs themselves post things that influence them and that does give context to the music, in a different way. Some of their curated playlists are hybrids that while too niche for full time formats on terrestrial radio, are definitely akin to what some stations or specialty shows might have experimented with in the past.

I've long thought Spotify should allow playlist creators to upload their own audio files (publicly unlisted and unsearchable). Then, with a web interface provided by Spotify that resembles simplified radio automation software, let those playlist creators configure their playlists with precise, millisecond-accurate in/out start/end time offsets, and with features like multi-track overlapping, fades, crossfades, and so forth. Imagine the potential. You, as a DJ, could voicetrack an entire playlist by uploading all your talk-overs and talk-betweens as individual sound files. You could also upload yet other audio files containing jingles and music beds (e.g. for use under certain voiceover segments). Yet other audio files you upload could be songs not carried in Spotify's internal inventory (imagine you're Dr. Demento and want to upload some vinyl transcriptions). Voila! You can now precisely emulate the tight sound of radio on Spotify, where all the multitudes have gone. DJs (new and old guard household names alike) -- even programming directors -- could live on well past the inevitable demises of AM and FM themselves.

I'm thinking these special playlists could be called something like "Spotcasts" to publicly distinguish them from ordinary playlists. And their creators could offer them either on subscription bases (for whatever prices their creators choose), or for free. If free, creators could display tip jar donation links, with the amounts tipped conveniently being added to donors' regular monthly Spotify bills. Another way of monetizing free "Spotcasts" would be uploading ads as yet more audio files. A provision for optionally tagging each ad for specific region(s) would make this especially powerful. That way, during any given "break," each listener hears an ad for his area, or if none is available for where he lives, a national ad plays ... or if no national ad is in inventory, then the "break" telescopes inward and there's no break at all. Best of all, except for self-uploaded songs (which would be for specialized needs anyway), there would be zero music licensing for creators to pay. Again, "Spotcasts" would just be regular playlists with added granular timing controls plus the power to mix privately-uploaded audio files with conventional pointers to Spotify's own song file inventory. So each user's regular Spotify bill would fully cover the contents of a Spotcast if 100% of its music came from Spotify's inventory. (This "loophole" is basically why I thought up this idea to begin with. Frankly, rather than making DJs configure elaborate playlists via some Spotify interface, it would be easier if Spotify just let them publicly upload hours-long contiguous MP3 files of already pre-produced shows. But that would probably legally make them the "performances" of the music within. So by doing everything with playlists, creators pay nothing, and listeners' bills stay the same, as their existing monthly payment amounts already cover any and all songs cued by playlists.)

 

[Theater of My Mind]

If you ever go back and listen to those long-ago airchecks from the Real Don Steele and others, you'll soon discover that these people were doing something else during their talking sets, something that is no longer being done by just about everybody in the business. Sure they cracked one-liners, but their real purpose appears to have been the reading of all that advertising copy. And when advertisers stopped providing copy for the jocks to read, then the radio stations that paid them found they could no longer afford to pay them as much as they were and sent them on their way. Sometimes I hear talent on the classic hits and oldies satellite networks making commentaries about the songs and occasionally cracking jokes *but* I almost never hear them read ad copy anymore, and as I said, I think that has a lot to do with the disappearing disc jockeys at most stations.

I don't know about that. Nearly every break is a plug for something on iHeart music stations these days. Sometimes a paid sponsor, otherwise self-promotion for the company, and sometimes both at once.

 

[TheBigA]

I've long thought Spotify should allow playlist creators to upload their own audio files (publicly unlisted and unsearchable). Then, with a web interface provided by Spotify that resembles simplified radio automation software, let those playlist creators configure their playlists with precise, millisecond-accurate in/out start/end time offsets, and with features like multi-track overlapping, fades, crossfades, and so forth. Imagine the potential. You, as a DJ, could voicetrack an entire playlist by uploading all your talk-overs and talk-betweens as individual sound files.

That exact idea was offered by Amazon Music a few years ago. People could organize their Amazon playlists into a hosted radio show. It was a failure.

Run the airwaves with Amp, the live radio app from Amazon

Amp is launching in limited-access U.S. beta for iOS. Learn how it will enable creators to DJ their own shows for free, with tens of millions of licensed songs.

www.aboutamazon.com

 

[yeoldeschool]

That exact idea was offered by Amazon Music a few years ago. People could organize their Amazon playlists into a hosted radio show. It was a failure.

Run the airwaves with Amp, the live radio app from Amazon

Amp is launching in limited-access U.S. beta for iOS. Learn how it will enable creators to DJ their own shows for free, with tens of millions of licensed songs.

www.aboutamazon.com

Interesting. I would like to know why it failed, though. Was the feature poorly promoted by Amazon Music (i.e., just how visible was it to the complete userbase)? Could it have been poorly implemented technically (obnoxious glitches, ad overload, etc.)? Was it killed prematurely because it didn't perform to lofty expectations quickly enough? And especially: could the limited group of creators invited into the beta have been uncompelling, or even boring, to the demographics who would most enjoy hosted, radio-style playlists? There's also the oft-fatal marketing mistake factor of touting the appeal of a new product as the involvement of a bunch of trite celebrities. (I can't deny that I cringed a bit when I read the part exclaiming, "the undisputed reigning queen of hip-hop, Nicki Minaj, will soon bring the highly anticipated return of her radio show, Queen Radio, to Amp.")

More insight would be helpful.

 

[TheBigA]

Interesting. I would like to know why it failed, though. Was the feature poorly promoted by Amazon Music

Ask yourself why would I listen to someone else's personal playlist when I can make my own.

The other thing we find is there's a very small percentage of people who seek out hosted music programming on streaming sites, whether it's Amazon or Apple. They both offer hosted linear programming in selected formats, and it's hardly ever used. The majority of people who use streaming sites want unhosted music.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Ask yourself why would I listen to someone else's personal playlist when I can make my own.

Totally agree with that quasi-sarcastic rhetorical question. Listeners already have that option. It's called "radio".

 

[yeoldeschool]

Ask yourself why would I listen to someone else's personal playlist when I can make my own.

Because when people tire of their own playlists, they explore others'. That's why Spotify's public playlists feature exists. It's popular. So how does adding voicetrackability and tighter timing to a popular feature sink its viability to the point of "failure" (TheBigA's term)? I don't believe that's possible unless other factors contributed to thwarting Amazon's version, and that's why I'm interested in the specific reasons Amazon's implementation failed -- before accepting that the core idea itself is inherently fruitless. I think there must be more to the Amazon story. At least, picture all the failed burger franchises that came and went before the one named McDonald's appeared.

Totally agree with that quasi-sarcastic rhetorical question. Listeners already have that option. It's called "radio".

Those funny boxes with the "AM", "FM", "seek", and "scan" buttons all over them that everyone here keeps telling me listeners don't buy/use/prefer anymore? Or in other words, how can you hear a tree fall in the woods if there's no tree?

And yeah, stations stream. But that requires separate apps than Spotify, and you know how people flock around the single most popular iteration of any given thing. Do you know how many disgruntled, strike-afflicted Youtube content creators there are who stay on Youtube rather than moving to superior competing platforms because Youtube is an audience gravity well and inert people can't be arsed to install competing apps? For every iHeart, Audacy, or TuneIn app out there, there's a million people with wind whistling in one ear and out the other saying "but I can already hear music on Spotify."

People tend to begrudgingly relinquish features they love in outgoing technologies if incoming technologies omit them while introducing a multitude of new desirable features. Consider how DVRs gave people numerous features VHS never could (HD recordings, instant commercial skipping, chase play, elaborate scheduling logic) all while robbing them of an absolutely vital one: removable media (the ability to keep your recordings forever). When DVRs took recording permanence away, people didn't cling to their VHS machines to keep removable media access. They bit down and sacrificed that freedom in exchange for the large number of novel bells and whistles on offer from DVRs. My intuition is that the same is happening with radio hosts / jocks / personalities. It's that lots of listeners have also begrudgingly relinquished hosted shows -- something they loved when the hosts were themselves highly liked personalities -- to get features radio couldn't offer but that streaming could.

In short: your complete unknown neighbor down the hall won't succeed voicetracking a Spotify oldies playlist (barring a miracle), but why does that mean Shotgun Tom Kelly's tightly voicetracked oldies playlists would fail?

It wasn't Shotgun who drove people to streaming. It was all of radio's often obnoxious commercials, the station IDs between every song, the screechy callers phoning in yelling how much they love K-Earth, the pointless time/temp/traffic/celebrity news chatter, the (poorly processed) loudness wars, hearing the same songs to excess, etc. I believe that attractive personalities freed from all that baggage could have success with hosted playlists. I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong about that, but would like to understand the specifics of why Amazon's implementation failed as a prerequisite.

The other thing we find is there's a very small percentage of people who seek out hosted music programming on streaming sites, whether it's Amazon or Apple. They both offer hosted linear programming in selected formats, and it's hardly ever used. The majority of people who use streaming sites want unhosted music.

But Spotify playlists aren't linear. You can skip ahead past stuff you don't want to hear. Also, to emphasize, my thinking is that people would seek playlists by people they wanted to hear, not simply start random playlists by Johnny Q. Nobody. Youtube has millions of Johnny Q. Nobody channels nobody watches too, but that does nothing to degrade the success of the successful channels.

 

[RayydioLA]

The only way your last sentence could come to fruition (and this would go way beyond radio to include all businesses) is to require businesses to hire people and give them positions even if the money wasn't there. Many people (including I suspect @davideduardo, given his background) would consider that to be Marxist. The problem is that many people also consider the other side of the coin, the use of a social safety net paid for by the wealthy to support those who are unable to find jobs, to be Marxist as well.

What most people on both sides of the spectrum fail to understand (and I'm going way beyond radio when saying this) is that the total amount of resources currently available to human beings are the resources available on this planet. And we know those resources are finite because we can (and have) measured the size of the planet on which we live. How those limited resources should be distributed is the cause of great debate and argument within our species and is *way* above what can be discussed here.

Fair. My post was a nicer way of basically saying "the world is unfortunately over-populated and machines are taking our jobs, besides." If I had said that, some holier-than-thou would've chimed in "no one owes you a job." Yet more and more people are without them and are being impoverished. The WGA strike, the SAG-AFTRA strike, and the Hotel Workers strikes--all in 2023--were just a piece of the puzzle to exposing that, not to mention that there are hundreds if not thousands more small-market radio and TV stations that don't have the collective bargaining representation of a union to help them when more shifts go automated and cut live bodies from staffs, which has been happening for more than 20 years. Consolidation of budgets, and fewer people wearinig multiple hats, has been happening on TV and film sets, too. Of course, to your point, we all see it is happening in other non-entertainment sectors, as well. Just look at the self-checkouts at the grocery stores. That's been happening for 20 years, too. And that "DOGE" fiasco ruthlessly machete'd more than 300,000 government/civil servant jobs in the DC area, alone, 6 months ago. Including essential medical research. But that's getting into another type of discussion.
Not a Marxist or Socialist here, for heaven's sake. That's been proven multiple times over generations to not be economically viable.

 

[TheBigA]

Because when people tire of their own playlists, they explore others'. That's why Spotify's public playlists feature exists. It's popular.

The Spotify playlists aren't hosted. The Amazon AMP was hosted, like FM radio. People don't want hosted playlists on streaming sites.

I'm interested in the specific reasons Amazon's implementation failed -- before accepting that the core idea itself is inherently fruitless.

Because it didn't bring more usage or money to Amazon Music.

You can skip ahead past stuff you don't want to hear. Also, to emphasize, my thinking is that people would seek playlists by people they wanted to hear, not simply start random playlists by Johnny Q. Nobody.

Keep in mind that skipping songs is a different royalty rate. That's why some services don't allow it.

 

[K.M. Richards]

It wasn't Shotgun who drove people to streaming. It was all of radio's often obnoxious commercials, the station IDs between every song, the screechy callers phoning in yelling how much they love K-Earth, the pointless time/temp/traffic/celebrity news chatter, the (poorly processed) loudness wars, hearing the same songs to excess, etc.

Ever so slightly off-topic, you have explained in one paragraph all the things I refuse to do with The Eighties Channel™. We do several straight segues every hour. No screaming "listener" sound bites. No mindless chatter. No commercials with high annoyance elements. Every day is a "no repeat" day from 6:00am to 7:00pm.

We call it "clutter-free" radio, and it is turning a profit in Albuquerque.

Maybe I'm just doing Spotify without the app?

 

[hotpatrick2004]

Ever so slightly off-topic, you have explained in one paragraph all the things I refuse to do with The Eighties Channel™. We do several straight segues every hour. No screaming "listener" sound bites. No mindless chatter. No commercials with high annoyance elements. Every day is a "no repeat" day from 6:00am to 7:00pm.

We call it "clutter-free" radio, and it is turning a profit in Albuquerque.

Maybe I'm just doing Spotify without the app?

Thanks K.M. Richards makes a lot of sense!

 

[Theater of My Mind]

Interesting. I would like to know why it failed, though.

I don't think it was promoted very well, if at all. I just remember seeing a page mentioning a few hosted shows once and thought, that's interesting, but I couldn't figure out what it was all about or even how to find them. I never saw any mention of it again and I forgot about it until now.