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corperate control

B

bobdavcav

How much would there be if you ran a radio company? Here would be what I would do. The companies I would buy would be Greater Media, Alpha Broadcasting, Beasley Broadcasting, Sandusky Radio, Wilks Broadcasting, and Fisher Communications. I'd probably sell off the non-radio properties with the exception of KOMO-TV in Seattle, where I would also pick up KMCQ. Once the company gets organized, I would start centralizing the automation system in a way probably very similar to the way CC is set up. BTW, KLCK would flip from Hot AC to Active Rock. Once everything is set up, a note would go out to the PD of every music station saying basically if you want to continue to play this song, you need to play it next week. After that week is over, all stations would be moved to the central servers that hold all the songs. At this point all stations would keep their local playlists and can request new songs be added to the server as they come out. However, there would be 2 major restrictions,
1. If you want to add an older song to a CHR, it has to be already on the server. For example, if I had 2 CHR stations in 1996 and they continued to this day, they could not add California Love because it was not on the server originally and I am totally against CHR stations playing songs as golds they did not play as currents. However, if we bought a station playing that and they added it to our server, it would be allowed, but if that station wanted to add another gold they couldn't unless it was already on the server.
2. Newly launched stations could have unique playlists, but could not request new adds before a more established station. For example, if I bought KKMG after the centralization, it could add songs without restriction as long as it stays CHR. However, if it were to flip to country, it could not add new songs until the more established stations add it.
 
Where do I sign up? Haha.
 
Radio stations might be more successful if they would let the PDs be PDs without all the mandates. Your post made my head hurt just trying to read/understand it.

Certainly a station needs "boundaries" but a PD should be hired because that is their talent. I guess freedom within the main boundaries is what I would be in favor of. That is the system I worked under
for many years.

I have been a PD, ops manager and just about every thing else you could ever do in radio. I never sent nor received a message with all the dictates you listed. It is easier to write "what I would do"
on a message board, but if you have to meet payroll, etc. it is a different ball game.

I once ran a station for an absentee owner. It does take trust between the employer and employee.

I've pulled dying AM stations off their deathbed more than once but would only do it now if I somehow ended up owning it - never again for another "owner." Been there, done that.

But I have never worked at a CHR. Maybe someone that has will have some different thoughts.
 
You are right about payroll and everything there. To me, it seems like the corperate structure I would have in place doesn't seem too dictating. The main purpose of restricting the automation server to songs that were played in a given week is to avoid stations re-adding older titles. Sometimes KPLZ in my market will play the usual mix of currents and nothing but that. Then sometimes, they will throw something older in. While I am not against stations doing this in general, I want to stations to keep moving forward. In the case of new stations, I want them to sound sort of similar, but still have a lot of freedom. In other words, I would never dictate song for song what every CHR in my portfolio plays. This is done so people on boards like this one can't blame corperate if a song isn't added to a station. Given the broad range of formats represented in the stations mentioned in my original post, it would be pretty easy to make your CHR lean adult or lean rhythmic, and corperate wouldn't stop them from doing that. However, CHR is a new music format, so the general rule is if you didn't play it as a current, you're not playing it as a gold. That doesn't seem too dictating to me, especially when you think about the number of CHR stations in that portfolio, and with music these days crossing over between Hot AC and CHR and even rhythmic, that's hardly dictating. Actually, the new stations can only add what existing stations have already added practice seems less restrictive the more I think about it. Basically, once one station adds it, any station that wants too can add it.
 
I can understand your desire to keep CHRs current, but I DON'T understand why you would prevent a radio station under your control to play a song if your audience wants to hear it.

If I understand your post correctly, if I put on a CHR under your rule, and my audience loves "California Love," I can't play it because we weren't CHR when it was a hit.

...Why would you do that to you audience? Why not just play what they want to hear?
 
Not quite. As long as one other station in my portfolio is playing any song, it's free to be added by any station that wants too, whether or not I launched its current format or the format is held over from the previous owner. Let's take a look at the new Avril Lavigne single as an example. If I launched a CHR today and had all these stations under my control, the new station wouldn't be able to play it just yet since none of my other stations are playing it yet. However, let's say that KPLZ is the first station in my portfolio to start playing it. Then whatever station wants to add it can do so, even the new one that just launched. In the case of California Love, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am under the impression that it's getting more airplay today than it did when it was new in 1996. Did the audience back then not want to hear it but today's CHR audience does?
 
I think that you should only be allowed to play records that nobody else has played, or not be allowed to play records everybody else has. ??? Or only not allowed to play records that other stations weren't allowed to play unless they
never played before, unless corporate approved the new changes. ??? ;)

Or, wait ! If you haven't played the record before corpoarate picked it, then you'd have to base a whole format
on that one record.
 
Huh? If that was you trying to interpret my post, you're probably overthinking things. If that would be your corperate structure, it makes mine look simple. The only reason one record showed up in the conversation is because I am under the impression that it did not get much airplay when it was new, but then about 6 years later CHR stations started adding it into the rotation as a gold.
 
...So, if I understand you correctly, if a market loves "California Love" but none of the other stations you own in other markets are playing it, the station in the market that loves it can't play it, either?

...And, if only one station you own HAD played it, but DOESN'T play it when your new station launches, EVEN IF THE MARKET LOVES THE SONG, the new station can't play it?

I'm still having a hard time understanding why your local audience would care what your other stations in other markets are / have played.

I'll repeat myself: why not just play what your local audience wants to hear?
 
NightAire said:
I'm still having a hard time understanding why your local audience would care what your other stations in other markets are / have played.
Click to expand...

Great point.

Although duopoly is about a decade and a half old now, there are still a lot of people who don't understand how radio is used.

There are some places where duopolies have existed for 50 years or more. And they realized that lots of music would overlap multiple stations. In my first job at a multi-station operation (5 in one market) there was one set of two stations in the cluster that overlapped on nearly half the songs. Yet the listeners were very different, defined by the songs those two stations did not share. But both groups liked some of the same songs, and both played them. They both had huge ratings.
 
You're pretty much right on, especially on your first question. Do you really think that not playing 1 gold would be a station killer? Maybe California Love was not the song to use as an example because it would surprise me if WBQT isn't playing it, but it was the only song that I could think of. As for songs not being played in a while, it depends on when the last time they were played was. If any station played it the week I was monitoring for songs to be put on the automation server and it has been played maybe once since then, it's still fair game. If it is not played by any station during the monitoring period, it doesn't get added to the central automation server, therefore stations don't have access to it. These rules are in place mainly to minimize the amount of hard drive space songs take up. Additionally, a station would need to send a list of songs to add to the server ahead of the launch of a new format to the company i.e. an Urban, an Urban AC, or a standards station, but we'll most likely let that happen as long as we have the songs to add ahead of time, then that station would not be restricted, but not a station flipping from talk to say CHR since that's a format already done by the company.
 
bobdavcav said:
These rules are in place mainly to minimize the amount of hard drive space songs take up.
Click to expand...

Three tb drives are about a buck and a half now. You can put together a redundant RAID array with 6 tb of storage for less than a grand.

Stations don't worry about cost of storage any more... it's so cheap.

Restricting airplay because of hard drive limits is silly.
 
DavidEduardo said:
bobdavcav said:
These rules are in place mainly to minimize the amount of hard drive space songs take up.
Click to expand...

Three tb drives are about a buck and a half now. You can put together a redundant RAID array with 6 tb of storage for less than a grand.

Stations don't worry about cost of storage any more... it's so cheap.

Restricting airplay because of hard drive limits is silly.
Click to expand...

Ditto... I run 6 stations (4 Music/2 Talk). All linear audio (20,000 cuts or so). I use two file servers (redundant with auto fail over). They use LSI RAID 5 and are populated with Raptors. They boot from an Intel SSD.
 
Hmm. I think one thing is for sure, I don't think I would get as many complaints on these boards as Cumulus does, especially when it comes to CHR. If one station gets a lot of complaints, that's not really corperate's problem. Not only would all my CHRs now be able to play Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men or I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons right now, but they would have been allowed for several months already. Those are two songs that apparently Cumulus is still not allowing their CHRs to play.
 
I'm not a fan of CHR, but this question I pose probably applies to all music format OTA stations.

That question is "Do they play what the listeners want to hear or do they play what they want them to hear?"

Sounds like a simple question, but we already know what the answer is.
 
northwoods said:
I'm not a fan of CHR, but this question I pose probably applies to all music format OTA stations.

That question is "Do they play what the listeners want to hear or do they play what they want them to hear?"

Sounds like a simple question, but we already know what the answer is.
Click to expand...

Station extensively research their audiences and their reactions to both new songs and older songs. So yes, the stations are playing what listeners want to hear.

Maybe not what listener 3,567,322 sitting in the corner there demanding a song from 1992 just because he, himself, likes it. But what the overall audience indicates they want to hear.
 
northwoods said:
I'm not a fan of CHR, but this question I pose probably applies to all music format OTA stations.

That question is "Do they play what the listeners want to hear or do they play what they want them to hear?"

Sounds like a simple question, but we already know what the answer is.
Click to expand...

Here is how it really works:

Stations sell advertising, whose cost is determined by the number of listeners. so well run music stations try to get the biggest number of them.

If a station plays new music, there is an element of risk. No new song can be researched in advance of play. Only once a song has played enough to bond... or not... can we find out how much listeners like it.

But after a 125 or so spins (which means each listener might have heard it two to three times) we can start looking at M Scores in PPM markets and see if each play results in audience loss. We can also use techniques like call out, web testing, etc., to get further feedback on new songs.

But for the couple of weeks while the song is new, we fly blind, based on our gut feel, strength of the artist, past local acceptance of similar songs, trade magazine details on station adds and drops elsewhere, etc. We are only right about half the time at best.

But the whole process is about playing what we can ascertain is the listeners' desire to hear.
 
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