Cumulus to buy CBS stations?

[secondchoice]

A large percentage of agencies work for and are under the thumb of publicly traded firms "Wall Street".

Really? You know this how?

Read Ad Age: I made it easy, here the link for is account search largest accounts on the Ad Age site:

http://adage.com/results?endeca=1&s...order_by=score&search_phrase=largest+accounts

I do stand corrected on the "Wall Street" term, there are a lot of "foreign" accounts that are listed on other exchanges than the NASDAQ or NY Stock Exchange, but most are publicly traded somewhere.

 

[TheBigA]

Read Ad Age: I made it easy, here the link for is account search largest accounts on the Ad Age site:

You're making a HUGE leap from companies that are listed on the NY Stock Exchange (their individual company offices, thus their employees, aren't located on Wall Street) to telling ad agencies not to spend money on alternative rock radio.

Look: Advertising is a business. If alternative radio attracted larger audiences, they'd get more ad dollars. They didn't, so they don't. It's really very simple. Don't make stuff up to justify a radio format that was a flop in NYC.

 

[secondchoice]

Read Ad Age: I made it easy, here the link for is account search largest accounts on the Ad Age site:

You're making a HUGE leap from companies that are listed on the NY Stock Exchange (their individual company offices, thus their employees, aren't located on Wall Street) to telling ad agencies not to spend money on alternative rock radio.

Look: Advertising is a business. If alternative radio attracted larger audiences, they'd get more ad dollars. They didn't, so they don't. It's really very simple. Don't make stuff up to justify a radio format that was a flop in NYC.

I am not defending a failed format. I would hardly call Age Age making up stuff. As for the Wall Street maybe I should have used large corporations with huge advertising accounts (most of which are publicly held companies). I did not make up Ad Age's large account listing. If you look at the listing Cadillac (GM) Homer Depot, Walmart. (BTW all listed on NYSE) listed as recent stories. I am not an Alternative fan, I am an oldies (I can accept classic hits) fan. I would have liked a clone of WCBS FM on 92.9. In many markets the post 50 demo (I am in it) do not get $$. IMHO The True Oldies Channel on 106.7 died because too many of us old geezers (50+) listened. The Agencies in Atlanta wanted younger demos. I have been out of the business for a long time, but I am believe sure Alternative's P1 is not over 40. It will interesting to see how 105.7 will bill.

 

[TheBigA]

I would hardly call Age Age making up stuff.

Show me where Ad Age says that agencies didn't direct money to OTA radio because of Occupy Wall Street. That's the connection you're making up.

There are lots of successful alternative rock stations in the country. Just not in NYC. Advertising is based on ratings, not personal politics. And in point of fact, alternative rock radio didn't support the Occupy movement, so I don't know where you came up with that idea. There were a lot of older (over 50) people who took part in that protest. And from what I can see, it really had no impact on anything.

 

[atlantaboy]

Why not admit the reason is because alt rock audience chose not to listen to alt rock radio in NYC when it was available. They prefer to use personal music devices so they can hear their personal favorites and not have to listen to artists or bands they don't like.

This was my original theory about NYC, i. e. most younger Alternative fans live in the city and do a very minimal amount of driving - I don't know how else you could make sense out of the fact that the Los Angeles Alternative-Radio audience is huge and the New York Alt-Radio audience, apparently, is tiny, or at least is being portrayed that way - Alternative bands certainly don't skip over NYC when they tour

I know that if I lived in a city where walking/subway was more convenient, I wouldn't be listening to Alternative radio either

 

[secondchoice]

I would hardly call Age Age making up stuff.

Show me where Ad Age says that agencies didn't direct money to OTA radio because of Occupy Wall Street. That's the connection you're making up.

I am not saying that OTA suffered, I am saying that the negative press reports did not help anyone in the demo. It really was the first media exposure that folks with huge college loan payments do not have the huge amount non essential cash to spend. IMHO the next "financial" crises will be the student loan defaults.

Alternative bands certainly don't skip over NYC when they tour

Neither have Country acts skipped NYC, and there hasn't been a country station in NYC for a long time until recently when Cumulus started Nash.


I am not an employee of fan of Cumulus, but back to the original post do your really think that Cumulus would put an Alt. station in NYC? Look at from the customer's view point. Would an agency buyer (customer) feel comfortable feel buying a flight on an Alternative station verses than Hot AC assuming the age brackets were audience size were the same the same?

I might have a jaded view on this since my first on air experience (early 1970's) was at a suburban Nashville station (WDBL) that played country during the day and what would now be called Urban at night. We had 3 to 4 times the audience at night than during the days. Yet except for one merchant we had a hard time selling the nights. There was a "perception" that the night time crowd did not have spendable money.

 

[TheBigA]

I am not saying that OTA suffered, I am saying that the negative press reports did not help anyone in the demo.

But you have no facts that point to any connection between protests on Wall Street and the failure of alternative radio. Because there is none. The fact is the protests themselves were so small that it's obvious to anyone that they really don't reflect "the demo."

 

[chrocket87]

I am not an employee of fan of Cumulus, but back to the original post do your really think that Cumulus would put an Alt. station in NYC?

I do. It's just a matter for getting a frequency that's ripe to flip, which seems to be the monkey wrench here. Sure, it's speculated that WFAS will go Alt once the stick moves, but it would be on a rimshot signal that probably won't be conducive to Alternative success. If only WBAI would just roll over and die already.....

 

[TheBigA]

Would an agency buyer (customer) feel comfortable feel buying a flight on an Alternative station verses than Hot AC assuming the age brackets were audience size were the same the same?

Why not? Ad agencies buy audience. The problem with alternative in NYC is that it doesn't attract a large enough audience, and there are other platforms advertisers can use to reach the demo. So they do.

Cumulus stunted with alternative, even using the failed WRXP call letters before flipping the new station to country.

 

[atlantaboy]

Would an agency buyer (customer) feel comfortable feel buying a flight on an Alternative station verses than Hot AC assuming the age brackets were audience size were the same the same?

I don't think Cumulus would flip Fresh or PLJ, if that's what you mean - but we're not talking about Alternative vs. Hot AC - we're talking about Alternative vs. useless Rhythmic-leaning CHR in a market that already has one (and a Rhythmic and another pop station)

@TheBigA - all that RXP stuff was before the WRDA model came into fruition - Radio 105.7 now has a 4.2, and still with a signal that only comes in clearly in half the city limits - Hot AC-leaning Alternative, geared towards commuters (both in the car and at work), rather than single people living in the city, hasn't ever been tried in NYC, and I feel like it could clearly rate higher than the 2.4 that Now is stuck at

 

[RoddyFreeman]

I guess I can't speak for all advertising agencies, but I worked at agencies for years. And I can tell you audience size plus sometimes qualitative factors such as income--correlated with spot rates--determine the stations on a buy. Politics have virtually nothing to do with it, especially since most buyers are very young and probably don't care about politics. That's not to say some clients don't want to be on political talk shows, but that's more about not wanting to be controversial than personal politics. It was the case when Howard Stern was on terrestrial radio. But I highly doubt an alternative station has lost a single dollar because of politics. And I personally do not think of Occupy Wall Street people being alternative listeners.

Sometimes perception--i.e. country listeners can't afford clothes--comes into play, but that's probably mainly among small retailers rather than agencies.