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Connoisseur Media acquires Bonneville’s San Francisco Cluster

Mark Roberts said:
PR. Radio stations have done that for a long time. I'm referring here to actual over-the-air programming.
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Serving the public is more than running a talk show at 5AM Sunday morning. Yes serving the public is good PR.

Meanwhile it's up to the FCC to represent the public. If they feel a station isn't serving the public, they can send them a violation. How many iHeart stations have received FCC violations about serving the public? You're welcome to have an opinion, but I'm asking you to provide examples.
 
ted chittenden said:
If over-the-air radio is no longer considered to be a public service, then I, at a personal level, can no longer consider it to be worth fighting for. As far as I'm concerned, the Internet can eat it for both lunch and dessert!
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To me, the issue is how we've defined public service. I can't think of ever turning on the radio during public affairs programming and thinking, "WOW! This is amazing. I can't wait to tune in again next week!" Even if it covers important local issues people need to hear, I can't imagine people tuning into the radio to hear that programming. The audience wants what it wants, and people tuning to a music station don't want to hear a talk program.

As Shenandoah put it in the early 90's, "Radio's playing our favorite song. I'll change the station if the news comes on."
 
Kent said:
The audience wants what it wants, and people tuning to a music station don't want to hear a talk program.
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On the other hand, when a major hurricane threatened Florida in 2023, iHeart set up a state-wide network of radio stations to provide around the clock hurricane information.

www.insideradio.com

As Idalia Strengthens, Florida Radio Mobilizes Coverage.

Hurricane Idalia may spare the heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg metro of Florida with a direct hit, but the coastal area is bracing for powerful, and life-threatening storm surges on Wednesday.
www.insideradio.com www.insideradio.com
 
TheBigA said:
Serving the public is more than running a talk show at 5AM Sunday morning. Yes serving the public is good PR.
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But that's not the basis for broadcast regulation. Just because KOA had a food drive at a King Soopers in Denver on Friday Wednesday (which they really did) doesn't count, except perhaps for the live broadcast from the supermarket.

(corrected date; to be clear, the morning talk/news block did not include the broadcast; that started at 9 am with Michael Brown)

TheBigA said:
Meanwhile it's up to the FCC to represent the public. If they feel a station isn't serving the public, they can send them a violation. How many iHeart stations have received FCC violations about serving the public? You're welcome to have an opinion, but I'm asking you to provide examples.
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Of course I'm expressing an opinion. You can go to the Colorado board and read the post that I made after listening to the KOA morning talk/news block on Wednesday. It has significant details that went into the formulation of that opinion. Otherwise, I'm not here to take homework assignments.
 
Mark Roberts said:
But that's not the basis for broadcast regulation. Just because KOA had a food drive at a King Soopers in Denver on Friday (which they really did) doesn't count, except perhaps for the live broadcast from the supermarket.
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Have you read the actual regulation? What a station does to serve the public isn't restricted to its air signal. It's about using station resources.

Once again, it's up to the FCC to represent the public and hold radio to account. I'm still waiting for all those FCC violations.

Mark Roberts said:
You can go to the Colorado board and read the post that I made after listening to the KOA morning talk/news block on Wednesday.
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I did, and I responded to it. There's nothing I saw there that violates any FCC rules about public interest.
 
ted chittenden said:
If over-the-air radio is no longer considered to be a public service, then I, at a personal level, can no longer consider it to be worth fighting for. As far as I'm concerned, the Internet can eat it for both lunch and dessert!
Click to expand...
For as long as I have been in radio, the government's definition of "public service" and the public's own definition have been very different.

I owned a bunch of stations in South America... in one market 9 of them. Only one did news and discussions. But when we did research (which, despite what many think, we did back then, albeit in primitive forms) for new stations and formats, we found that the vast majority of listeners considered "service" to be synonymous with "entertainment" and "company while I work" and the like. Few mentioned "news" and the like in first place.

So a station that plays a nice mix of music all day long is, to its listeners, a "public service".

More recently, doing studies for what was the leading AC stations in Miami and LA, we found the same thing. At most, those listeners wanted a bit of an update when they got up and one the way in the morning, but at no other time.
 
Mark Roberts said:
PR. Radio stations have done that for a long time. I'm referring here to actual over-the-air programming.
Click to expand...
And, if you talk to the listeners of those stations they vehemently dislike the idea of adding talk and public service elements to their "favorite station". I've done that kind of research, and among other things that had us remove news elements after 9 AM from what was then LA's #1 AC radio station.
 
TheBigA said:
Here's one example, but I could post hundreds:

fm106.iheart.com

St. Jude | FM106.1

Thank You page for St. Jude Radiothon on FM106.1
fm106.iheart.com fm106.iheart.com

Meanwhile you use one company that owns less than 5% of the stations in the country to make a broad generalization about radio.
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And we all know that, since PPM gave us "dailies", running those fund raisers all day were a significant hit on listening levels. But we did it because we cared.
 
TheBigA said:
I did, and I responded to it. There's nothing I saw there that violates any FCC rules about public interest.
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Nor did I even suggest that anything KOA was doing was violating FCC rules. I just argued that it was bad programming. That, too, is a matter of opinion. You may disagree, and that's fine. Nor did I ever suggest that iHeart was violating anything for which it should be penalized. I just argued that it was incompetent. Again, that is a matter of opinion. You may disagree, and that's fine. But you're not going to persuade me otherwise.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Nor did I even suggest that anything KOA was doing was violating FCC rules. I just argued that it was bad programming. That, too, is a matter of opinion. You may disagree, and that's fine.
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I said in my response that I would change the station. Listen to one guy blather about the news doesn't interest me. That's my opinion.

Mark Roberts said:
You may disagree, and that's fine. But you're not going to persuade me otherwise.
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It's not my intent to persuade anyone in any way.

Just last week, the FCC issued a Public Notice stating its intention to ensure TV stations "meet their public interest obligations." I'm sure they intend to do the same with radio stations. It's the FCC's job to enforce its rules.

 
levi99 said:
But what's gonna happen to the commercial break lengths? I mean they are 4-6 minutes at least, for now.
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Anyone who thinks the FCC review of public interest obligations will have any effect whatsoever on that has not learned a single thing from reading all of the discussions about that.

Commercials are a necessity because the listeners do not pay us directly. The FCC doesn't care about that, either. Length of stopsets is not a "serving the public interest" matter. In fact, the vast majority of radio stations meet their public affairs responsibility with an hour of programming at 6:00am on Sundays, and over one thousand of those stations are running Viewpoints Radio from UARN (the other is Radio Health Journal).

Obviously, the FCC finds that sufficient, after seeing the UARN quarterly issues report in so many stations' Public File. So why should they care how many commercials a station runs to pay the bills?
 
KilowattKat said:
Based on what just happened in Florida, I don't see the FCC not giving an ownership cap waiver to Connoisseur for their purchase of the Bonneville cluster.

radioinsight.com

FCC Approves Ownership Cap Waivers In Fort Myers

The FCC has granted its first two waivers to surpass the current ownership caps with the approval of Beasley Media
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
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So they might get a waiver for two of the four stations that they would be over the cap with.

OTOH, there is also a difference between Fort Myers (market #51) and San Francisco (#6). A difference of 45, if my math is correct.
 
K.M. Richards said:
So they might get a waiver for two of the four stations that they would be over the cap with.

OTOH, there is also a difference between Fort Myers (market #51) and San Francisco (#6). A difference of 45, if my math is correct.
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Sure, but you can definitely see where the wind is blowing and arguably there is more competition in SF already than in Fort Myers along with more licenses and media outlets.

My gut feeling is that this approval is a very big deal that we will look back upon as a time when the industry shifted dramatically.
 
KilowattKat said:
Based on what just happened in Florida, I don't see the FCC not giving an ownership cap waiver to Connoisseur for their purchase of the Bonneville cluster.
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I think you're probably right. I always figured this waiver had a better chance of getting approved than the one in Florida.
 
K.M. Richards said:
So they might get a waiver for two of the four stations that they would be over the cap with.

OTOH, there is also a difference between Fort Myers (market #51) and San Francisco (#6). A difference of 45, if my math is correct.
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I hesitate to offer this thought, but WTF, here goes: The always-objective, never-partisan, follows-the-law-to-the-letter FCC chairman is favorably disposed to the Florida broadcasters his Commission issued the waivers to. He may, or may not, be as favorably inclined to issue a waiver to Connoisseur, depending on whose "campaign chest" they've contributed to recently. (Or whose meme coins they've purchased, or whose movie they've bulk-purchased tickets to, in case I'm being too oblique for someone who's just woken up from a 9 year nap.)
 
Isn't real issue is market concentration?

Once this transaction closes, FMBC & Sun will control stations that have just over 60% of local radio revenue in Ft Myers.

If the Connoisseur/Bonneville deal gets approval, they have about 15% of local radio revenue for the Bay area.

2 completely different ball games, don't you think? Yeah, one market has a much larger population, but the difference in revenue concentration is 4x. That is significant.

I'd argue that advertisers have so many ways to spend their $ today that this is not really an issue anymore. There is no must-buy station or cluster in 2026. Will a dominant market share give FMBC/Sun all that much pricing power in an industry with stagnant (at best) to declining revenue/client demand?

However if the rules are being waived, the commission should just go ahead and change them for all. Then watch the landslide of cluster swaps as groups bulk up in some markets and let go of others.
 


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