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TampaDan

Although I'm an old geezer (in my 40's), some of my friends are very young (early 20's). Whenever I ask one of them what radio station they listen to, the response is always the same - "I don't listen to the radio."

Do I just have some weird friends? Or do we have a generation of people who have no use for the medium? If that's the case, what would it take to bring them back?
 
The people have so many choices, starting with their phones to get their entertainment and information on demand that radio has to make it's product unique. For years radio has been throwing away the two things that made it such a vital part of people's lives: localness and immediacy. Most people over 40 heard about great events such as Nixon's resignation or the assasination of Dr. King on the radio. Yes, cable's 24 hour news cycle is harder to fight than Uncle Walter's six o'clock news, but live and local news at the top and bottom of every hour with the ability to break in immediately with live bulletins is still something radio can do better than any other medium, provided it's managers see the importance. Unfortunately, today's upper managers see news and the associated overhead as luxuries to be disposed of, instead of assets to be exploited.
 
We already know it's going to take to bring 'em back, there's no question about that...

And see, this is the frustrating part, just like what happened at FLA tonight. It seriously makes me want to hang up the cans ASAP. This just isn't right. It's not just the across the board incompetence at all levels of management. In every company, mind you. It's the fact that the solution to these problems is FREE. These high and mighty folks who'd tell you that they're "making a difference" in the community, are the same folks who are purposefully letting their stations sound like crap for absolutely no reason. The sad part is, these same people are killing the medium.

But the truth is, its just too easy (and rewarding) for these companies to wallow in mediocrity. Most of these stations couldn't handle the kind of success that would accompany the live & local format you're talking about, and they're scared of it. Seriously TampaDan, there's nothing weird about your young friends. I don't know anyone else my age who listens to the radio. Radio abandoned them sometime during their childhood, and you just don't reward that type of cruelty.
 
TampaDan said:
Although I'm an old geezer (in my 40's), some of my friends are very young (early 20's). Whenever I ask one of them what radio station they listen to, the response is always the same - "I don't listen to the radio."

Do I just have some weird friends? Or do we have a generation of people who have no use for the medium? If that's the case, what would it take to bring them back?
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I don't buy the "teens/20somethings don't listen to the radio" line. It may not be cool to admit you listen, and certainly they grew up in an era with many other choices I'm guessing radio still plays a part, albeit a smaller one than than it did with someone over 30. I haven't lived on the suncoast since the late 80s and am not familiar with the market these days, but I'll bet that stations that are targeted toward an under-30 audience (CHR, urban/hip-hop, alt/active rock) are still doing well. Somebody's listening.

When I was growing up in the early/mid 70s it wasn't cool to listen to AM, and no one would admit they did, but for some reason 'most everybody was familiar with all the top 40 songs that didn't get played on FM at the time.

There are lots of other places to go for entertainment these days, but I'm guessing radio will be around for a long time. I often wonder if radio would have been as central to the lives of today's over-40 generation had there been the same alternatives back then "when radio was relevant" as there are today. I'm guessing not.
 
Oldbones said:
I don't buy the "teens/20somethings don't listen to the radio" line. It may not be cool to admit you listen, and certainly they grew up in an era with many other choices I'm guessing radio still plays a part, albeit a smaller one than than it did with someone over 30. I haven't lived on the suncoast since the late 80s and am not familiar with the market these days, but I'll bet that stations that are targeted toward an under-30 audience (CHR, urban/hip-hop, alt/active rock) are still doing well. Somebody's listening.
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You don't have to buy it dude, but it's the truth. I want to take a moment to examine something... why exactly is it that, "it may not be cool to admit you listen"? I'll tell you why, because anyone with half a brain knows that the way these FM's are programmed SUCKS. I wouldn't admit I listened either!

Oh wait, I did admit that two posts back. Well, never mind that... I'm a radio nerd.

Anywho... yes, people are listening to FM radio... people who can't afford iPods or satellite radio. Which raises the question... if they can't afford an iPod, what makes you think they can afford whatever the station is selling?
 
The "live and local" approach sounds promising, but I'm not sure about "news". One thing WABC in New York found out (back in the day when they were Top 40) is that their ratings dramatically improved when they STOPPED airing news every half hour. I guess there's too many people who reach for the remote whenever the news comes on. If it's not presented in a humorous way a la Letterman, Leno, Stewart, etc. they're not interested.

So how does "live and local" look without an emphasis on news? Something like WRBQ, WQYK, WXTB? Are we already doing it?
 
We have an excellent example of what a thoroughly local radio station was in our own history... Q105. It owned almost every conceivable position in radio in the market. Besides effectively block-programming as CHR nighttime and proto-Hot AC weekdays, Q105 also owned the news and talk images in the mid-80's in this market, not the putative talkers of that period, WPLP and WFLA, which were niched toward women and the elderly. (There's a newly released aircheck from 1987, in which Bob Lassiter is heard lamenting this fact. Why do you think Lassiter and the other stars of Tampa talk radio in the 80's had to work so hard? Because the Q dominated EVERYTHING.)

The Q Zoo was more a talk show than a music show -- and they did everything they could to make the talk content as local as possible. I don't recall a lot of time spent on Madonna gossip (the closest 80's equivalent to today's Britney Spears obsession among CHR jocks). It was local, local, local. Q105 far outshone the AM's in covering events like the arrest of most of the Hillsborough County Commission, and Billy Ferry's gasoline attack on a supermarket. In the latter incident, the only radio reporter on the scene was Q105's Roger Schulman, WFLA had just a phoner read by a newsman from his house after the Tampa Bay Bandits USFL game, and WPLP had nothing but CBS national news stories mentioning the attack until the next morning. WFLA had a long uphill battle in the late 80's to displace Q105's "news" image, which was lower-key but almost as pitched as the battle by the Power Pig to dethrone the Q in music.

Q105 didn't air more newscasts than WFLA or WPLP. What it did was bring that same competitive attitude to their two-or three-person news staff that helped it dominate the ratings. I remember watching a live news conference by some political candidate at a podium -- obviously no mic flags present -- but out of the crowd pops an arm holding a Q105 mic flag, right into camera range! Another reminder of the Q's dominance in that decade.
 
Local doesn't mean news or controversy so much as it means a cosmetic. A style, an approach to the audience that valdates them as being a part of the station. As a station is involved, it recieves involvement. Jack McCoy (KCBQ/Last Contest) said that every individual market has a rhythm..like a bio-rhythm that has hills and valleys..the number one station in any given market is the one that most closely synchronizes with that rhythm.

One can not accomplish this with a voice tracked "show" done by a fellow in another town who does three other markets..eight days prior...for 500 dollars a month. It can't work..and it doesn't. It is this that has shot it all to hell. THIS is the reason radio has become so uninteresting to the younger listener..It is THIS that has literally shown them the door, and invited them to find somewhere else to get thier audio fix...be it music or shock talk or what have you. Even with an iPod full of your hand picked favorites..there is still some kind of weird satisfaction that one gets when one of "your songs" is played at random by a radio station. It's like "wow..someone else likes what I like..cool"

Can it come back..sure. By re-indroducing these non-listeners to radio again..almost like a newly discovered medium..and guess who just might be the one to do it?

Randy Michaels is setting himself up to be the great saviour of this industry by systematically removing key people from CC and other companies around the country and making them part of his new regime at Tribune. He is most likely waiting with a checkbook and an army of investors to "hand pick" spun off stations from the legions of sick broadcast companies that have been raped by their own shortsightedness and the weakened US dollar. He knows the reasons radio is ill, and may have the cure, and the balls to make it work again. You see he is the reason a lot of this may have ultimately happened. He spent company money to build brands, to hire talent, to improve physical plants, signals, and equipment to be uber-competitive. This kind of passion is frowned on by the accounting types who ended up getting shoved to the top of radio's food chain..and killed the golden goose. They shoved Randy on the shelf and he quietly watched the fun..and plotted.

The key to re-introducing radio to the millions of non-believers will be expensive, but well placed investments in people and cume building outside advertising..AND the Internet...will bring them back. Allow a quality..locally flavored radio station back into any market and watch what happens.
 
News is not the be and end all of localness. But to join Jeff in paying tribute to Randy Michaels, it was Randy who decided to make local news the centerpiece of his efforts to make 970 WFLA the dominant AM player in the market. He wanted live "local" news 24/7/365 and branded the station "NewsRadio 970 WFLA." They paid reporters bonuses when their mic flags got into newspaper photos. It became the de-facto "radio station of record" for the Tampa Bay market. CC's company line is now "listeners aren't turning to radio for news anymore." Of course they aren't. Listeners no longer know that if they want the latest news all the have to do is turn on 970 and listen for a few minutes. I won't dispute that WABC might have done itself some good by dumping news. Every market is different. But the fact is that it doesn't go unnoticed by listeners, even if it's just subliminally, when they're not getting information that they need from a place they used to automatically turn to for that information.

Effectively programming any radio station requires the ability to read the wants and needs of the audience as well as the overall vibe of the market (thanks for that metaphor, Jeff) and Randy seized on news as the way to do it with a heritage station in Tampa. It might be some other element at different stations in different markets. But a genius like Randy (love him or hate him, he is a genius) is able to tap the vibe that makes stations resonate to that vibe.

Voice tracking isn't in itself a bad thing. Just like traditional syndication you can use it to leverage talent into new markets at minimal costs, but it reminds of why the great golf instructor Harvey Penick tried to limit each of his lessons to a single topic. Lessons he said were like aspirin, a little can cure you, but too much can kill you.
 
Same situation in Australia. We're told that people "in their 20's and younger" don't listen to the radio. They have too many choices, i.e. d/l music on their ipods. They can hear what they want with no ads, no songs to dislike, etc.

I pretty much agree with the prior posts re: programming. So there's no need to re-hash it here. Suffice to say, radio needs to return to its roots and give people a REASON to listen.
 
For the past couple of years 970 has been doing all they can to drive me, a loyal listener since the late 80's, away from their frequency.

1. No "live and local" shows outside of morning and afternoon drive.

2. Terrible syndicated fare. Beck the melodrama king, the shell-of-his-former-self Limbaugh, the truly God-awful Hannity, etc.

3. Branding themselves "FoxNewsRadio" about 2-3 years after it was considered hip, if it ever was considered hip.

4. The news! What made me tune back when I flipped to some music, top and bottom of every hour. Now both newscasts are dominated with the worst radio news I have ever heard: Fox News.

Typical Fox News broadcast...

Fox Anchor: Trouble at the pumps!

Soundbite: We're having trouble at the pumps.

Fox Anchor goes through almost a sentence before succumbing to the urge to play another useless soundbite that adds nothing to the story, then repeats the process.

Then of course they have to throw in one of their catchphrases, either "We Report, You Decide" or "Fair and Balanced" because they don't have the integrity to just say "This is Fox News" and leave it at that as so many of their network radio news brethren have done before.

I started listening to 970 in my teens, so don't tell me that the young folks don't want to know what's going on around them. What's driving them away from newsradio are the same things that are driving me away.
 
AMandFM said:
For the past couple of years 970 has been doing all they can to drive me, a loyal listener since the late 80's, away from their frequency.

1. No "live and local" shows outside of morning and afternoon drive.
Click to expand...
In the spirit of accuracy, 970 has zero "live and local" weekday call-in shows, and no afternoon local shows. All of their daily shows - and most of their weekends - except for morning drive are entirely syndicated.

They booted their interesting and compelling Sunday p.m. host for syndicated computer show last year.

970 doesn't know what local is.
 
Cedric said:
Don62 said:
They booted their interesting and compelling Sunday p.m. host for syndicated computer show last year.
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I loved Mark Beiro's show, and I couldn't stand most of what he had to say...
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Same here. I'm far from a "liberal," but I'm certainly not "all right wing."

Biero was great. I cannot fathom why the station yanked him off the air.

Oh, I get it. Local "real" shows are no good. Got to take everything off the satellite and run the station with as few "workers" as possible.
 
Don62 said:
AMandFM said:
For the past couple of years 970 has been doing all they can to drive me, a loyal listener since the late 80's, away from their frequency.

1. No "live and local" shows outside of morning and afternoon drive.
Click to expand...
In the spirit of accuracy, 970 has zero "live and local" weekday call-in shows, and no afternoon local shows. All of their daily shows - and most of their weekends - except for morning drive are entirely syndicated.

They booted their interesting and compelling Sunday p.m. host for syndicated computer show last year.

970 doesn't know what local is.
Click to expand...

I had a problem classifying Schnitt's show, as it originates here but it goes up on the bird. I guess that's live and local to an incredibly small degree.

I remember a time when 970 had me locked in all day long. I was in my late teens and the only syndicated show they had on during the day was Rush, and even then they didn't run his entire show because it would have interfered with their mid-day report show. I loved the mid-day report.
 
remember a time when 970 had me locked in all day long. I was in my late teens and the only syndicated show they had on during...
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You know, I think that's something unique to this market... the numbers of people who listened to talk radio as teenagers or twentysonethings. I call that the "Lassiter Effect", as one way of measuring it is checking out the demos of the people who put together sites like boblassiterairchecks.

There was one book in the 80s where a talk station made the top 10 in teens -- probably a fluke, I thought, until I noticed all the people in their 30's now who remember Tampa talk radio's golden era. Talk radio was very exciting in Tampa at one time, and that drew in people outside the "target demo." I doubt there are many people in Rochester or Baltimore who can remember listening to talk radio as teens
 
smedge2006 said:
There was one book in the 80s where a talk station made the top 10 in teens -- probably a fluke, I thought, until I noticed all the people in their 30's now who remember Tampa talk radio's golden era. Talk radio was very exciting in Tampa at one time, and that drew in people outside the "target demo." I doubt there are many people in Rochester or Baltimore who can remember listening to talk radio as teens
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Count me in on that one. I was hooked by Lassiter, Dave Fowler, Tim Coles and the whole WPLP gang when I was just 11-12 years old. Then there was WFLA with Dick Norman, Jay Marvin, and yes even the ambulance chaser, among many others. Then just as it was starting to get a little stale, along comes WSUN with Neil Rogers, Lassiter again, Rick & Suds and I don't think I need to remind anyone how great that line-up was.

Funny that you mention Rochester. I know what the talk radio scene there was like back then because half of my family lived there and we went up to visit every year. The most talked about show was Bruce Williams on WHAM ;D
 
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