U
Unknowable
Guest
I agree. Yay for local, community-driven radio!
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
CBS selling radio division, Houston impact?
- Thread starter Mediafrog+
- Start date
I'm of the older demographic the ad agencies don't want to target. The fact is the argument was heard 40+ years ago in high school. Everybody plays the same 40 songs...too many commercials...the album rock stations don't play the good stuff.
It takes a lot of ignorance to believe multi-million dollar companies intentionally try to put themselves out of business by not offering product that produces income because it produces results. Indeed if the claims were valid, radio would have gone under decades ago. In the real world radio is still working, still making money and still producing results and if it wasn't it would not exist. Can radio do better, yes everything can be improved, but radio is very well researched and very in sync with what listeners want and very in sync with delivering results for advertisers.
It takes a lot of ignorance to believe multi-million dollar companies intentionally try to put themselves out of business by not offering product that produces income because it produces results. Indeed if the claims were valid, radio would have gone under decades ago. In the real world radio is still working, still making money and still producing results and if it wasn't it would not exist. Can radio do better, yes everything can be improved, but radio is very well researched and very in sync with what listeners want and very in sync with delivering results for advertisers.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
That's proof of being outside the demographics where stations can make money. As has been touched on, we spend a lot of time and money researching music to determine what songs the listeners want to hear. The reason you perceive radio as being "generic" is because, regardless of individual markets, the vast majority of songs which test well with listeners in the target demographics are going to be the same everywhere. We're in the business of playing the hits, because we want to always be playing a consensus favorite when someone tunes in and we want to keep playing them so they'll stay tuned in.
I mainly work with smaller market, non-conglomerate owned stations. And I would bet that you'd call them "corporate" if you listened to them. But in Albuquerque (to take an example), in 25- to 54-year-old listeners, I doubled my client's audience size, almost tripled the amount of time spent listening, and got the accompanying boost in ratings share.
If there was "nothing on the air people care about" that would not have happened. I get the perception that you define "people" as yourself and those who hold similar views about radio. Guess what? You're not my target listeners, you wouldn't even pass the screening for music testing, and there is nothing I or any other programmer can do to make you happy.
Fortunately, there are still plenty of listeners who we can -- and do -- make happy.
BTW, using "younger listeners" to make your point, doesn't. We all know they are migrating away from traditional radio. Try a better example next time.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Yay, until the owners go bankrupt because they can't sell enough airtime to pay the bills.
Who has the #1 station in Houston? iHeartMedia's KODA. Say what you will about the company, it's debt, and the station's playlist. It's still the #1 station in Houston, with a cume of over 2.3 million people. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. They're #1. And they have been #1 for a long time, in a very competitive market, competing against a lot of new media, satellite, and the internet. And yet 2.3 million people still listen. That says a lot about the quality of work that this station does every day.
The last time album rock stations played "the good stuff" (in other words, everything the music director and even the jocks wanted to play) was that brief period in the late '60s/early '70s that saw the rise of free-form radio. It never really attracted that big an audience and struggled to get any advertising, but the people who listened (mostly teens and college students) thought it was great. It took Lee Abrams to monetize the format in the '70s with "Superstars." Those were the album rock stations your high school buddies were complaining about. But they still listened, and so did people in more advertiser-friendly demos, which meant money for the station owners. Want to hear just about everything? Subscribe to SiriusXM. Between Deep Tracks, Underground Garage and The Loft, you'll hear classic rock tracks hardly anyone but the channels' programmers remember.
Absolutely. I'm have had many disagreements with folks that the songs radio does not play should be aired. I've had success playing the songs the majority of the listeners, especially in my target demographic, liked or loved. As explained several times on this forum by others, when you go beyond familiar the consensus is not there. Playing unfamiliar music is a great way to destroy time spent listening and earn you the bottom on the barrel in ratings.
And I might add once more, those of us hired to program stations must produce what management or ownership wants. Our job is to discover how to do that and get it done regardless of whether we personally like the music or not. Whether you are a consultant or program director, it is never about what you want personally but all about producing the audience the station management or ownership desires. That's how we earn our paychecks.
And I might add once more, those of us hired to program stations must produce what management or ownership wants. Our job is to discover how to do that and get it done regardless of whether we personally like the music or not. Whether you are a consultant or program director, it is never about what you want personally but all about producing the audience the station management or ownership desires. That's how we earn our paychecks.
Last edited:
Apple even tried to do a format with jocks. It was called Beats One. You know, for you folks who claim you don't listen to local radio because it doesn't have live personalities? Apple gave you 24/7 personalities and everybody yawned, and they were pulled in short order. Folks really think there's a way radio could program to the "everything sucks but my personal playlist" crowd? Maybe by merging the playlists of the entire population into one giant 20,000 song rotation and that would please everyone all the time? Seriously?
If I'm not mistaken wasn't it subscription based. I don't know when I think Apple or iTunes I don't think radio. The whole thing was a long shot, not easily accessible as terrestrial radio. I'm not 100% on streaming internet radio. Its a pain to open an app, search for the channel you want, wait for it to load, oh my phone is ringing... well can't listen to it now...
This is exactly why 92% of the public still use OTA radio. The alternatives are too much trouble, and too much work. Plus, some require subscription.
The other barrier to Internet radio is the fact people do other things on the internet and listening to programming is usually pretty far down the list. Not to mention the data cost and having to have an internet connection. Radio just winds up easier to us, is quite accessible and the radio is only for the purpose of listening to the radio even if the radio is part of the options a device offers.
However, when you dig into the habits of younger adult Millennials, you find that they are so adept at using their smartphones or tablets that they prefer using an app to a radio dial which is almost counter-intuitive to their way of thinking. They "all" have data packages with their smartphone, and they manage them skillfully. If you look at how T-Mobile has upset the cellphone market recently with free streams from many providers, and see their stores filled with Millennials at all hours, you will find that the impediments that those of us over 35 have to streaming and playlists are non-existent among younger consumers.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
Except for one glaring problem. If you try to stream in a car, and the stream goes down when you switch cell towers or get a text or call, you have to pull over and fuss with the phone to get the stream back. I don't see a technical solution to that problem. For me, it was "once and done" - never do that again, streaming in the car is not ready for prime time.
The interesting statistic to me is how few millennials, including those in their 30s, actually pay for their own data package or their Sirius subscription. Like car insurance, they're often bundled with their parents. One has to wonder what will happen when those plans shift to the people who actually use them.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
I suspect a lot of them are using free wireless broadband wherever available. A lot of companies frown on this, have IT departments that find employees who stream, and warn / terminate those using company internet for personal uses like streaming. That leaves Starbucks and other places with free wi-fi - and if you have ever been there, all the data use slows the free wi-fi to a crawl, and it is a haven for identity thieves - so a lot of people are no longer using "free" wi-fi. If they know what is good for them and don't want their identity stolen.
I don't think you can rely on millenial streaming to rescue radio. They are smarter than getting fired for abusing wi-fi at work, and smarter than getting their identity stolen at Starbucks.
Especially since streaming isn't profitable for streaming companies. The only way it works is as an ancillary to another more profitable business.
Won't T-Mobile offering selected streams data-charge-free run afoul of net neutrality? I thought the issue that got the case going was one of the pre-paid carriers offering YouTube (but not Vimeo, etc) free.
I find the iHeart app very easy to use on the phone and desk/laptop. I will sometimes stream all day at work. It's a small workplace so if anyone had a problem with it they'd have said something by now.
I find the iHeart app very easy to use on the phone and desk/laptop. I will sometimes stream all day at work. It's a small workplace so if anyone had a problem with it they'd have said something by now.
Is this an actual statistic or is this anecdotal? It sounds more like a Gen-Xer or Boomer complaining about those millennial slackers.
rbrucecarter5 said:
Once upon a time when we had an office that was all trying to share a 3 meg DSL line we would complain about people streaming at their desks. With the bandwidth we have today, I have better things to do than track down people playing a 128k stream at their desk. Your company's acceptable use policy may vary.
gr8oldies said:
No. You're thinking of some cable companies and telcom companies charging (or wanting to charge) Netflix to prioritize date on their network.
What T-Mobile is doing is offering to not count certain streaming media against their high speed data cap. T-Mobile sells "unlimited" data but only a certain number of GB/month is high speed. After you hit the cap your speeds are throttled. Since streaming media eats a lot of that data, this keeps people from being tempted to switch to a wireless carrier that offers higher caps or doesn't throttle users speeds based on usage. There is no such thing as a free lunch: the video all streams at fairly low resolution, but from a marketing point of view they're speaking directly to millennials in language they understand and offering something that is important to them.
The recent Nielsen study on millennials:
http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...ielsen-audience-report-focuses-on-millennials
Behavior is different when living at home vs. living on their own. Not a surprise btw.
CBS may want to jettison their radio division to focus on TV, specifically on building duopolies in existing markets and maybe buying/divesting stations to create O&Os. The ownership caps make it onerous for CBS to be both in the TV and radio business, especially in the lucrative big markets.
Now that CBS is gone from radio, KTRH may never have CBS TOH news and/or be a CBS all-news station. If iHeart goes under too, there will be an even greater concentration of ownership into what was the #3 and #4 largest radio conglomerates. But perhaps they may be able to buy KHOU now.
Now that CBS is gone from radio, KTRH may never have CBS TOH news and/or be a CBS all-news station. If iHeart goes under too, there will be an even greater concentration of ownership into what was the #3 and #4 largest radio conglomerates. But perhaps they may be able to buy KHOU now.
- Status