Bringing Back The Standards

[DavidSC]

The bottom line in this discussion is DaveEduardo doesn't believe in or want to do Adult Standards. So we can all be glad he won't be the one operating a standards station. Leave it to someone who believes it can be done. Many stations have made a good living doing what no one else thought was worth it. San Francisco's KFRC remained a competative top 40 many years after knowledgable people armed with numbers said Top 40 was dead and music AM even deader.
One key to success...find your "hedgehog'' concept (the you can be best at...see the book Good to Great ) and run with it. Standards is apparently not Mr Eduardo's thing to do. It might be someone else's.

Oh yeah...the statistics showed the Wright Bros. that flying was impossible.

 

[davideduardo]

The bottom line in this discussion is DaveEduardo doesn't believe in or want to do Adult Standards.

No, the bottom line is that for stations that depend on agency business, nobody wants to do standards. It is not a question of liking a format (most of us in programming or management have "done" formats we did not like personally) but of the ability to deliver bottom line dollars.

Standards can work, moderately, in smaller markets where direct business is less transactional; it can also work in some cases for smaller signals in major markets or for suburban facilities that know fromt he offset that they will not get agency and transactional dollars.

So we can all be glad he won't be the one operating a standards station. Leave it to someone who believes it can be done.

As I said, it can be done in certain situations. But don't look for a major signal in a market where agency business is critical to change to this format.

[/quote] San Francisco's KFRC remained a competative top 40 many years after knowledgable people armed with numbers said Top 40 was dead and music AM even deader.[/quote]

Top 40 just changed its name to CHR. Nobody ever said it was dead; it just metamorphosized into an 18-34 format after teen buys migrated to other media.

Standards is apparently not Mr Eduardo's thing to do. It might be someone else's.

Yeah, someone who does not like paying income taxes... and avoids them by losing money.

Radio is a business, and always has been.

 

[DavidSC]

During the 70s and 80s R&R and Billboard carried many articles about the non-viability of Top 40/CHR and heritage stations tried to image themselves as AC instead of CHR and lost their ratings. Then someone like Mike Joseph would come along and created a stir with Back to the Basics Top 40/CHR.

True a station that depends on buys from agencies doesn't want to do a format they don't want to buy. With so many catering to agencies there is a hole in the market for stations catering to local businesses using on the street reps. They probably won't be the top billers but #14 in billing is probably better than below #14 while fighting to even be noticed.

 

[jonbruce]

I think what David Eduardo said regarding standards stations can also be applied to "oldies" stations too. With the bulk of oldies listeners now over 55, oldies stations can only thrive in small markets, small signals in big markets and suburban stations that rely on direct retail.

 

[davideduardo]

During the 70s and 80s R&R and Billboard carried many articles about the non-viability of Top 40/CHR and heritage stations tried to image themselves as AC instead of CHR and lost their ratings. Then someone like Mike Joseph would come along and created a stir with Back to the Basics Top 40/CHR.

True a station that depends on buys from agencies doesn't want to do a format they don't want to buy. With so many catering to agencies there is a hole in the market for stations catering to local businesses using on the street reps. They probably won't be the top billers but #14 in billing is probably better than below #14 while fighting to even be noticed.

The problem, except in maybe the first three or four markets, is that #14 is not many people and will not, often, provide results for a client unless we are talking about very specialized stations like KIRN, the Farsi station in LA that serves a compact Persian community and gets results.

Part of the reasons why a low rated metro station can't often work is that direct accounts pay lower rates and the return on the value of the station is such that the money, invested in US Savings bonds, would produce more. In fact, at all times since the late 50's, around half of all US radio stations have not been profitable.

Even America's most successful standards station (which is, as I have been corrected on, a hybrid and not a pure standards station) WDUV in Tampa / St. Pete barely makes a profit despite being #1 12+ for about a decade or more. They are 14th in billing, too, and that is because they are not appealing to any agency accounts in a transactional market, and most direct accounts do not market to 65+, where about 95% of the listeners are.