wgliradio said:
This from the same person who lives and dies by this kind of lifestyle of projecting current behavior, be it revenue, listener patterns etc, into the future to "program" stations.
Radio station research is mostly based on "now" as, confirmed by Clouseau's post, we want the best set of songs, the best morning show tomorrow, etc. We don't know what songs we will be playing in 90 days, let alone 12 years.
But we do look at trends. But we can not predict change.
Here's a trend. We are taking a 500 mile trip. 5 hours into the trip, we have gone 250 miles. We can expect to arrive in another 5. However, if there is a detour, road construction, heavy rain or fog or an accident (change) we will not arrive at that time.
If an oldies station's audience is getting one year higher average age each year, and billings are dropping each year of the last 5 by 5%, we can safely estimate that at some point the station will cease to be profitable or to deliver the desired return on asset value. However, if we change the music, competitors change and impact us, etc., it may get better or worse. We can not predict change... but can determine what will happen if we stay the same; we can not wait for a competitor do move out of our way!
Trending, as opposed to prediction, is what we do with investing, too. If Washington Mutual has increased dividends each year for over a decade, we can take this into account in determining total future returns. However, if the is change, like a recession, all bets are off.
Basically, if the argument fits in his world, it's perfection in scientific data. If it doesn't, the research is nonsense.
Radio research is about what listeners like today. We can't tell what they will like tomorrow, any more than we can tell if a new single will be a hit. We ask "how much would you like to hear this song on the radio today." If we ask how much they will like the song in two years, we will get totally useless data... because the listener does not know and can not tell.
And we certainly do not try to predict out 12 years.
I'm more apt to believe a group that does not have any ties to the outcome of the race than anything Eduardo, any radio group, NAB or Ibiquity would place before us. Broadcast surveys from radio interests lack common sense and contain more spin than a New York Yankees broadcast and usually are aimed to force the wanted outcome.
Bridge Ratings derives its income from radio stations, as far as I know. Their interests are radio's interests. My qualm is not with their methods or their people, but with trying to convert research on radio into a crystal ball. There are too many variables.
iBiquity is a vendor to radio. Their interests are different from radio's, in the sense that they want to sell licences and get fees for receivers. Radio stations don't participate in this process... we want more audience, or to protect existing audiences, or to try to save our investments in AM. The relationship is not shared, it is symbiotic.
It's only these same kind of models that Ibiquity uses to help their cause... by projecting number of operating stations by a certain date... etc etc. But it's only OK when the numbers look good. When it's a "whoops", watch out.
iBiquity knows, roughly, how many stations are on the air, and, exactly, how many are licensed. There is no prediction there. Just fact.
These numbers, from a realistic standpoint, are obvious. Anyone who knows anything about radio can tell you that the HD number is probably about right... a pimple on the @ss of an elephant vs the usage.
Right or wrong, the number is encouraging for a system that started being marketed 11 months ago and was only approved by the FCC two months ago... and where the cost of receivers is still not anywhere near the sweet spot for a massive adoption of HD. I mean, like, ya' know, most of the receivers made so far have crummy front ends and there is no "elegant" chipset out yet. I'd say this is a good start.
As for the change in techology, I guarentee for every design being brought to market for HD in the form of chip design, there are probably 100's of ideas in cell phone design at the same time.
But a radio does one thing: it detects an electromagnetic field and converts it to audio. A cell phone basically does the same thing, and then each model adds features. But it is still a phone. We might see a combination cell phone and toaster oven some day, but the phone part does the same thing a cell phone did in 1989... it picks up a signal and makes it audible.
HD radios may or may not have features. She SanDisk MP3 players have FM radios, ya' know. But my point is that an HD radio, well designed and at a good price, is a better radio.
I've said it on these boards, radio DOES NOT KNOW what the competitor is, because the final outcome is evolving as we speak
Thank you. This is my point, too. Change over the longer span vs. trends in the short term. For the moment, terrestrial radio derives nearly all its revenue from analog terrestrial AM and FM signals. In the long run, we may deliver content in other forms. But right now, we make no money from it. Those of us who work on the day to day operation of station are focused on the things we can do now, like HD. At a different level we are also, as an industry, looking at everything from WiMax to BPL.
This is where content will meet the road in the future, not over an antiquated analog system with a band-aided digital system that half works.
Actually, FM HD works wonderfully. The usable range of HD is as great as the usable range of analog, and it is far more immune to multipath, etc. AM HD is probably too little and too late as AM is pretty well cooked... but all you have to do is be in Miami during summer lightening to know that HD not only sounds better, it is almost imprevious to the high (analog) noise levels caused by atmospherics and man made interference that reduces so much the coverage of analog AM.
