"Can Talk save FM?"

[Holland Cooke]

That was the provocative headline on the cover of Talkers magazine, over a year ago.

Last week, at the massive, mind-boggling, Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it was astonishingly clear: music radio is screwed.

NOW, THE STATION THAT PLAYS THE MOST MUSIC LOSES.
Playing “the most music” has been SO axiomatic to music radio stations, for SO long, that it was a common jingle lyric in the 60s on many of what are today’s News/Talk stations.

AMs dropped music when FM receivers proliferated; and music FM had a pretty good run; until iPod, satellite radio, and other new-tech dislodged radio as a music delivery system.

Now, no matter how few commercials an FM plays, iPod and that thousand song phone play fewer. And ALL the songs that phone and iPod play are listeners’ favorites. That’s progress, and radio shouldn’t take it personally. Downloads have obsoleted CDs.

If you’re a music station, that song you’re playing...right now? You own it even less than a Sean Hannity affiliate owns Sean. That song, and Sean, are also on satellite radio anyway. How about Rush Limbaugh? Like music, Rush is also on iPod...and streaming...and using affiliates’ air to lure listeners away from real-time radio listening, since Dittocam audio is asynchronous to what’s coming-out-the-speaker of all those dutiful E.I.B. Network affiliates.

Whether there will still be music radio stations in 5 or 10 years remains to be seen. Fellow consultants who specialize in music radio tell me of the importance they are attaching to what their client stations do between-the-songs.

WHAT ALL OF THIS MEANS TO AM/FM RADIO?

1. It has never been easier to cost-justify good local programming. Offer more than listeners can get anywhere else. IMPORTANT: NOT boring local news or arcane local political topics. Relevance and convenience are paramount.

2. BE-KNOWN-AS-the-button-to-push for your content. Invest in off-air promotion that tells people not-yet-listening what they’re missing. Then, when they tune-in, deliver; and package, with on-air promos that “take ownership” of the role you play in listeners’ lives. Tip: Play defense, with overt imaging about being car radio.

3. Podcast! Be on iPod, and anything else that plays MP3s. Make the station’s web site a download depot for appropriate on-air programming; and “more about” on-air programming; and programming that never aired, but was promoted on-air. Offering non-perishable content on-demand yields more ROI on programming expense, and gives your advertisers more reach and targeting opportunities. If someone from your station will be attending the Radio Advertising Bureau convention in Dallas in February or the NAB convention in Las Vegas in April, tell ‘em not to miss my session “Revenue...Right Under Your Nose!” I will outline specific strategies.

4. Get programming on the phone, any/every way you can. Dust-off the weatherphone, a 60s/70s radio icon. And what other content can listeners-on-the-go “Press 2” to hear?

See and hear more from CES2007 at http://members.aol.com/cookeh/CES07.html, including transcripts/video/audio of keynotes. And DON'T MISS the "Endless Caruso One-liners" video you can click-to-watch. It's a hoot...and evidence that, for SMART stations, new-tech can be much more opportune than threatening.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

 

[MikefromDelaware]

So if FM will end up dropping music as most of AM has, and FM switches over to news/talk, that truly means the end of AM as far as I can see. If given the choice of listening to Rush, or a newsprogram on either AM or FM, most people would choose FM. That of course does put NPR in a good place as many if not most of their stations are already on FM. I guess that will leave the ethnic, religious, and brokered programs to AM.

I guess this does make sense as even in Canada, the CBC has moved many of their stations to FM so as not to lose their younger demos. An example of this is CBT in Tornoto that used to be on 740 AM that we in the US could pick up at night in Wilmington DE. Now that AM station is a standards station in Toronto. Obviously we can't get the CBC FM station here.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Logically, that's tempting...but...

So if FM will end up dropping music as most of AM has, and FM switches over to news/talk, that truly means the end of AM

It doesn't have to.

It's a shame that whoever-could-have-held-manufacturers'-feet-to-the-fire didn't, while the quality of AM receivers went to hell for a couple decades. Much of AM's problem is right there IN the radio. And, yes, on the station end, some owners have been less-diligent than others about keeping-up the ground system, and all the other pieces of the AM transmission puzzle. It's a black art.

But, short term, FMs-that-simulcast-News/Talk AM-sisters breathe new life into the AM's programming and Sales franchises.

What is astonishingly clear to radio eyes-and-ears seeing-and-hearing what I witnessed at CES last week is that 5-years-from-today will be A LOT different. Forward-thinking station owners in Washington, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans, who recently walked-away from break-even-at-best music formats, to simulcast pre-existing AM stations, are INSTANTLY ahead-of-the-game. So they've gotta-gotta-gotta be better-positioned for the long term than business-as-usual competitors, y'know?

As for Canada: What continues to be the under-told part of the story RE why "Jack" as largely flopped in the USA is that it begain in Canada, where the government WON'T PERMIT Oldies formats on FM. Free Speech isn't QUITE free up thar. It's protectionism on behalf of the Oldies AMs which are alive-and-well there. Jack was a back-door Oldies format.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Holland, besides the CBC radio programming (that has 3 radio networks, if I remember correctly, one for news/talk/drama, one for classical music and arts, and one for rock and modern music) what is allowed on FM by other broadcasters if Oldies are banned.

A format that I don't believe you'd find up in Canada is any sort of religious radio station that is a full time religious station like we have here, for example: CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), Black Gospel, Country Gospel, Praise Music, or even full time hymns and preachers.

Now it may be that someone like Billy Graham could buy time on a station to air his "Hour of Decision" broadcast in Canada as I remember hearing Cliff Barrows (the announcer of the program) giving both Graham's St. Paul Minnesota address and a Canadian address. However, that sort of full time religious radio format might be a unique format to the USA alone. I also guess you'd not find any brokered informercials in Canada either.

 

[robbbc]

To get back to the subject, though...

Can talk save FM? I can't see how. As far as I can tell your average market can support maybe 2 talkers. The third talker in the market typically gets less than a 1 share (sometimes no ratings at all). But maybe non-musical formats can save FM?

I would say that Sports radio and News radio could transition to FM. I could see WBZ Boston simulcast FM. That would work and probably boost ratings at one of CBS lower rated FM stations.

 

[FTL_Ian]

Can talk save FM? I can't see how. As far as I can tell your average market can support maybe 2 talkers. The third talker in the market typically gets less than a 1 share (sometimes no ratings at all). But maybe non-musical formats can save FM?

You're likely going to see further splintering in the talk format. We already have left/right, hot talk, and business/health talk. Add to that female-targeted talk, youth talk, religious talk, and who knows what else. How many and what formats will a given market be able to handle? Only time will tell, but I do know that competition will make everything better.

 

[FTL_Ian]

Not only can talk save FM and radio in general, but I see FM saving talk by introducing younger demos to the format. Case in point:

Free Talk Live's Florence, AL affiliate, WVNA 1590 AM just got their Fall 06 book back. The good news is that we shut out Lars Larson 18.2 to 0.0 M25-54. However, and this was a bit of a surprise to me, our M18-34 demo was nowhere to be found. Online, we're HEAVY M18-34, on AM - nothing.

I'm chalking it up to the virtual nonexistence of AM to younger people. They just don't surf to the band. FM still exists to them. (How many MP3 players have AM tuners? I've never heard of it, while FM tuners are included on many units.) We need to get more talk on FM before radio itself becomes totally irrelevant to the younger demos.

Smart owners and programmers will flip an underperforming music FM to talk (per Holland's suggestion), flip the transmitter into mono, and add Free Talk Live to nights. 8)

 

[AKLes]

How long before somebody evolves a teens-to-young-adults talk format?

Kind of "Dr. Laura" meets......(there's where you get the variations).

Hip young hosts dealing with ways to meet chicks/guys; various social interactions?

Not your "Focus On The Family" kind of format....something we might call more "Earthy".

Excuse me, now, I gotta go copyright this idea.....

 

[tbetz]

Re: Logically, that's tempting...but...

So if FM will end up dropping music as most of AM has, and FM switches over to news/talk, that truly means the end of AM

It doesn't have to.

It's a shame that whoever-could-have-held-manufacturers'-feet-to-the-fire didn't, while the quality of AM receivers went to hell for a couple decades. Much of AM's problem is right there IN the radio.

Man, you got that right. My brand-new Honda Fit Sport came with a pretty nice built-in stereo system for what is, after all, nearly Honda's cheapest car, but the AM section is just teh suck. Tinny, and simultaneously incredibly insensitive to signal, while being incredibly sensitive to noise, just the worst thing I have ever heard.

But its CD section does a great job playing MP3s and WMAs...

 

[radiocph]

A format that I don't believe you'd find up in Canada is any sort of religious radio station that is a full time religious station like we have here, for example: CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), Black Gospel, Country Gospel, Praise Music, or even full time hymns and preachers.

CKBD-600 "The Bridge" operated out of Vancouver for several years in the 90's....(CCM mostly, with a few preachers thrown in)

 

[jimwalsh2001]

For the spoken-word format to work on FM, the suits who run the industry (along with the Wall Streeters who bankroll everything) have to break out of the trap of thinking that "TALK RADIO" is all about angry white conservatives baby-sitting old people in their underwear.
That of course would require vision and courage, two things in short supply among radio management types...

 

[raymond_shaw]

For the spoken-word format to work on FM, the suits who run the industry (along with the Wall Streeters who bankroll everything) have to break out of the trap of thinking that "TALK RADIO" is all about angry white conservatives baby-sitting old people in their underwear.

Don't forget liberal talk and sports talk.

I am a real music lover and when I got the car I currently own, I stopped listening to the radio altogether and listened to my CD player - real CDs and ones I personally burned - a wonderful difference from horrible generic corporate radio.

But guess what??? When a local AM station went all liberal talk(in '04, just before the election) I started listening and got hooked. Of course, I am very into politics and most people I know aren't...

But my point is, I got out of the habit of avoiding my car radio and listening to music on my CD player and back to listening to my car radio....tolerating frequent commecial interuptions...because there was spoken word programming available that I found very interesting.

Yes, think out of the box, corporate suits. Bring back creative people to your industry. There are many things you can do with spoken word/talk programming...

Has anyone considered you could do a radio version of tv talk shows? Get an aspring Conan or Dave and have celebrity guests in the studio...and you could take live calls from listeners. Years ago, I remember listening to Larry King's old radio show and he had the brilliant comedian Robert Klein as his guest....a more entertaining talk segment I have never heard. There are plenty of entertaining people(not neccessarily A List celebrities) that can entertain an audience.

Also...

Anyone remember the old NBC Weekend Monitor programming back in the 50s, 60s and 70s. http://www.monitorbeacon.net/
>>>It became the greatest show in network radio history, the forerunner of talk radio and one of the most-copied formats ever. Its creator, the brilliant NBC President Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver Jr., described it as a "kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria." To the rest of us, it was simply, and wonderfully, "Monitor."<<<

Yeah, I remember this show as a kid - it was great...the ultimate magazine format. Serioius interviews(Martin Luther King was once a guest), humor(Bob and Ray, Bob Newhart and many others), Sports with Curt Gowdy(& others) - great hosts. Could a modern update of this work? Maybe.

Those are but 2 examples. Howard Stern proved talk radio works on FM and attracts younger listeners. But how about those who are not into radio porno? Spoken word programming could be the salvation of radio. The return of creativity.

 

[clichemoth]

Holland, besides the CBC radio programming (that has 3 radio networks, if I remember correctly, one for news/talk/drama, one for classical music and arts, and one for rock and modern music) what is allowed on FM by other broadcasters if Oldies are banned.

A format that I don't believe you'd find up in Canada is any sort of religious radio station that is a full time religious station like we have here, for example: CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), Black Gospel, Country Gospel, Praise Music, or even full time hymns and preachers.

Now it may be that someone like Billy Graham could buy time on a station to air his "Hour of Decision" broadcast in Canada as I remember hearing Cliff Barrows (the announcer of the program) giving both Graham's St. Paul Minnesota address and a Canadian address. However, that sort of full time religious radio format might be a unique format to the USA alone. I also guess you'd not find any brokered informercials in Canada either.

Edmonton has full time Christian radio on both AM (Southern/traditional gospel) and FM (CCM). Calgary has an FM, Toronto has an AM, and Montreal has a Christian station en Francais on FM. There used to be a very good Christian CHR in Hamilton that I listened to via streaming, but it flipped (I believe to country).

 

[Radio_Realist]

Anyone remember the old NBC Weekend Monitor programming back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

That was discussed in here at great length in a few threads about whether or not NPR-style programming could work commercially. And most of us all agreed that NPR/PRI is keeping the old NBC Monitor style of programming running along quite nicely.

 

[raymond_shaw]

That was discussed in here at great length in a few threads about whether or not NPR-style programming could work commercially. And most of us all agreed that NPR/PRI is keeping the old NBC Monitor style of programming running along quite nicely.

A thousand pardons - I don't read every thread on this board/website - I have a life in the real world that I have to attend to.

I would disagree with most of you on that one. NPR is pretty boring - if you're talking about Morning Edition, it's puts me to sleep(which on the road to work is not good). NBC Monitor was a million times better. No Bob Newhart on NPR...or Henry Morgan.

 

[Radio_Realist]

NBC Monitor was a million times better. No Bob Newhart on NPR...or Henry Morgan.

But NPR (or PRI) has Car Talk, (with Click and Clack the Tappitt Brothers), What Do You Know?, with Michael Feldman, and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". The only difference is that instead of putting every single thing all together into one program called "Monitor", NPR/PRI runs many different shows. So, the current NPR/PRI programming isn't identical to that one particular radio show from yesteryear, but the sum total of all their shows contains most of the elements of the old NBC Monitor.

As you noted, "I remember this show as a kid - it was great...the ultimate magazine format." Like a paper magazine, it had short "articles" with little depth. NPR/PRI is more like a library of books. Instead of short little bits for the attention-deficient, they expand each of the bits into separate shows.

So, I'll grant you that perhaps the one old show from yesteryear was better than any one individual NPR/PRI show today, especially if you can't handle listening to something that takes longer than three or four minutes. But the proper comparison of NPR/PRI to the old NBC Monitor is to look at the totality of all NPR/PRI programming, not just one individual show.

As I see it, Morning Edition is far superior to the short little snippets of news that Monitor stuffed in between other short little bits because it has depth. But then, regarding depth as being a positive thing is unusual in the radio industry. Modern commercial radio programming is based on the principle of pandering to the stupid who are incapable of listening to anything that lasts longer than a Top 40 pop song.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

It seems to me that the point being made is that a new version of Monitor could reach a group of listeners that won't or wouldn't choose to listen to NPR/PRI, maybe because of its depth. So, it's possible for some enterprising network or syndicator to make a 21st century version of Monitor work. Now would Westwood One, or ABC radio be possible sources. Maybe Phil Royce, from ABC radio, who sometimes frequents this board could offer some insight as an expert as to why a new version of Monitor would or would not work on commercial radio today. Or maybe Holland Cooke. Phil and/or Holland, you guys up for the challenge?

 

[radio dx]

Just from what I have seen here in the bay area over the years I am not so sure talk on fm would make a difference, remember KGO FM? or KCBS FM? and now just look down the street at "free." These formats may work on the fm in other markets but the bay area has shown a track record on this already.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

The Bay Area is unique. It's perhaps the most prominent AM market, due to A) the presence of 50,000 watt flamethrowers like KGO and KCBS, and B) the extreme multipath on FM due to the terrain there.

And the situation is different than the days of "KGO-FM". Back then, AM was much more vital nationwide. Today, as FTL's Ian notes, young folks barely know where the AM dial is.

Traditional news/talk outlets continue to migrate, slowly, to at least FM simulcasts (WHIO/Dayton, WOKV/Jacksonville, KSL/Salt Lake City), or even entirely to FM (KTAR/Phoenix, WTOP/Washington). Yes, companies like Cox and Bonneville are up front on this, but even Clear Channel has two large market FM news/talkers in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh.

Is it 100% necessary to be on FM even in 2007? Maybe not, particularly if your AM is a flamethrower itself that has no problem covering the market (like WTAM here), and still has a higher 35-64 audience than anything.

In 2010 or beyond? Maybe. When those 25-30 year olds start aging into the lower end of your demo, will they think to tune to AM?

 

[Radio_Realist]

I am not so sure talk on fm would make a difference

Why does everyone get so hung up on whether talk formats are on AM or FM? It's spoken word programming. If the sound isn't the greatest, or if it's in real nice stereo, so what? All things being equal, better sound will beat poorer sound. Any station that simulcasts the exact same thing on an AM and FM station (which is a foolish waste of signal) will find that the only people who choose to listen to the AM over the FM are those who don't own an FM receiver, or who aren't smart enough to figure out how to switch their radio to the FM band. (That explains why KDKA has kept so many listeners in Pittsburgh, though now that they'r dying off at a faster rate, KDKA is slipping faster and faster.)

However, even though good sound beats poor sound with everyone except the stupid, talk radio is about content. Good content beats poor content for most listeners, hands down. Given a choice between two different talk shows, most listeners will pick the more interesting or entertaining, regardless of what band it's on.

And don't give me those tired arguments over whether or not some version of a talk format did or didn't work one place or another. Talk programming isn't like music. You can't do auditorium testing on three minute long segments of talk, and then repeat the ones that test well. You can't go by how many callers are on the request line asking for a particular talk bit to be repeated. All talk programming is unique, and it's always (or almost always) totally brand new when it's aired. If someone doesn't like a certain host in a certain town at a certain time, that only proves that they didn't like that certain host in that certain town at that certain time. You really cannot extrapolate from the performance of a certain host in a certain town at a certain time how a different host in a different town will do at a different time.

There's only one way to find out if a certain host will work in your town on your station. That is putting him on the air.