That was in the past but I think I heard a real ad last time I was there.
-
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
Declining radio audiences
- Thread starter TexasTom
- Start date
To an extent, I agree here. "Research" is great, but only gets you so far. I've always believed that radio is a balance between a business and an art form. Research is all well and good on the business side... but art is hard to quantify and research.
In fact, "research" is part of why the music biz is where it is today. It's all about fitting a form/mold that will sell the best today, without much care for tomorrow. Of course you're not going to see much variety in the mainstream in that kind of world. And if people are only exposed to the most commercial stuff that fits the mold because nobody's taking any chances... that's not going to be beneficial for society nor society's value of music and the music biz.
Last thought on this point: research for the here and now is all fine and dandy. The "research" might indicate that people 'want' washers and dryers that last the rest of their lives. Would following that research be advantageous to Maytag? No. Why? Because while it might sell them a lot of washers short-term, long-term it's not going to bode well for them. I get the impression that a lot of the research and whatnot done in the radio arena is about the here and now, and not the how can we maximize this long-term?...
I see a lot of criticism of ideas on this board that don't conform to the current research, and then a lot of doom and gloom about where the industry is heading. I don't get that, y'all. If the research is where the buck stops... what's does it indicate the fix is - real solutions? How do we turn the tide on radio? And if we can't do that and it's just doom and gloom anyway, well then, what's the harm in having a little fun while Rome burns?
In the future, everyone will be famous for more than 15 minutes
There is really no such thing as “researching the future” because people change their minds, their tastes, their needs. Radio, just like Proctor & Gamble and McDonalds research what people want right now.
The assumption is that what they want right now will last a while and be useful. But stations do regular music tests because people change. They gent tired of some songs, they want to hear some less and the become attached to newer ones.
When things change, ongoing research tracks it. But we can not predict change in any actionable manner: “hey, by June of 2026 we will need to reduce the rotation 9f this song….”
My take is: It is what it is. There is no "doom & gloom." You just budget for the new reality. People are not going to throw away digital devices and buy transistor radios. That train left 20 years ago. The research says that most people include radio as part of their media usage. Sometimes it's a streaming service, sometimes it's a broadcast service. Depends on the situation. You have to be realistic. It's nobody's "fault" and nobody is to "blame." Things change.
Once again, there are thousands of radio stations and hundreds of owners. Everyone operates their own way. Let's say I do what I think will attract and entertain people. That doesn't mean the other stations will follow. Radio is herding cats.
Last edited:
Rome burns faster. People lose jobs (and healthcare) sooner.
Yet the circulation of neither paper was as great as the online subscription base of those journals today. And the area of influence of each is vastly wider.
Wow....have YOU got things ass-backwards.
Maytag could very easily build a $5000 washer that would last 40+ years. They simply don't have a big enough client base that would pay that kind of money for a machine that would accomplish that.
A $1500 machine that's readily repairable for 30 years is a much better investment in time - and money.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Research is a tool for a competent programmer. It is not the "be all end all" factor. The programmer needs to look at the research and make the final decision as to whether it is right for the station.
My old friend Jhani Kaye once told me that programmers "can already hear in our own heads what the station should sound like, and then we replicate that on the air". He's right.
Yep!
Research is a tool, just like Mediabase, just like trade charts, just like competitive monitors. The key is the skill of the PD.
I remember one of Bill Drake’s jock aircheck evaluation sheets. It had several dozen things like “segues not tight” and the like. But one was “Bakersfield sound”. That meant that the jock was not sounding overall like Drake’s mental vision for his Boss Angeles station.
Drake knew how he wanted the station to sound He knew when he was not getting it.
Was the air staff being carefully coached by management as to the particular presentation that was desired?
Think of the director of a movie or TV show. Their job is to convey to the actors the fine details of their characters personas, and how they portray that. It’s the actors job to carry that out. Some aspects of individual personality might still come through, but with careful direction the desired outcome is achieved.
You can make the same argument with athletes and coaches.
People are not mind readers. If they were, they’d be working for the FBI/NSA/CIA for a much higher salary.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Taking this example and having talked with Bill Drake personally about a year before his passing, I can say with certainty that you can be 100% certain yourself that his airstaff was being coached. Bill was a perfectionist. So is Jhani Kaye.
Hell, so am I. KRKE's owner tells me that all the time.
That's a terrible analogy. No radio DJ or personality wants the PD to sit in the control room with them telling them every little thing to do or say. I had that happen once at my first job. Never again. The reason you hire these people is because they know who they are and what their "role" is. The role is the same every time they open a mic.
Professional voice talents who read commercials or do imaging get that kind of direction. They get told where to put emphasis, and they read the same words over and over. It's absolutely painful. Not something anyone who does daily radio would ever want.
People may not know this, but there are lots of professional talent coaches. Some of them write columns for RadioInk. Here's one of the best:
The Master Communication Skill - Radio Ink
The more you perfect the art of active listening, the more your communication and conversations will improve professionally and personally.
radioink.com
They will work with radio or TV talent and advise them what to do and say. Radio stations today expect their talent to know how to do their jobs.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Besides, that's what skimmer tape reviews are for. (Although it's not tape anymore.)
Sometimes, though, the tactic of real time "direction" backfires on the PD. When I did afternoons at Y97 in Santa Barbara in the late 80s, the PD used to bypass the reviews and just come in to the studio if something I did bothered him.
Y97's main positioning imager was "Santa Barbara's Hot FM". Sometimes, if I was on a roll going into a stopset and couldn't really slow down for the time and jock ID, I would do something like "3:52, K.M. in the PM on the Hot FM and a 30 minute Power Play next on Y97." Well, this apparently irritated my PD enough to come in and ask me -- nicely -- to try to stop doing that as much.
Then ... "as long as I'm in here, why don't you take a few listener calls on the speakerphone so I can hear what the audience is thinking." The very first call started:
"Is this K.M. in the PM on the Hot FM?"
I just looked at the PD with an "and you were saying?" expression. He said "I give up" and left. And never brought it up again.
My technique for decades took the most work but yielded the greatest benefits.
I’d listen to the aircheck (for those unaware, a recording of just the studio mike(s)) and find two things.
First was something well done. Not just special things, just sometimes a great segue where the voice and pacing and timing was just perfect.
Second was something that could have been done better.
I’d get with the jock and go over the first one, after playing and saying “how could you have done that better? We would discuss and I would try to have the talent self-critique and see what could be improved. Then I would play the perfect example and emphasize that it was magnificent and that was just what I wanted.
We would end on a positive note, after reinforcing the jock’s talented good example. Often, PDs do not reinforce good work, so the jock has no reinforcement. The best thing I had happen was to see a jock call me or see me and ask if I had a moment because they wanted my feel on something. The did that same day. This was not a critique, it was positive reinforcement and we all need it.
Last edited:
Online services are already providing that and will likely expand on those offerings in the future. Want to watch Thursday Night Football? Unless you're a business, you have to go to Amazon Prime for that. I've said several times before that broadcast TV is likely in a much worse position for the future than radio. If the NFL migrates completely to internet distribution, retransmission fees are going to drop like a stone.
Research can also tell you what the audience wants to hear and how it prefers to hear it. I'll grant you that it's more work and owners and research companies might not expend the effort on it, though.
You may well be right that research is part of why the business is the way it is today. The problem, however, is have you ever heard an operation that doesn't use it? The reaction to any station programmed on the PD's gut is almost always, "God, this sucks." As David has mentioned several times "I have a golden ear" has destroyed many a broadcasting career and made next to none. Commercial radio, by the way, isn't in the business of providing some artistic benefit to society. It's in the business of getting as many people as possible to its customers. If you're looking for music as art, I recommend going to the far left side of the FM dial or finding a local LPFM. Even better, if you're ever not doing anything on a Friday or Saturday evening, check out some of your local music venues, find an act that sounds interesting, and support your local musician. You'll do a lot more for society's value of music by supporting those people.
Keep in mind that David Field and Entercom thought they knew how to maximize radio for the long-term. They thought that to the tune of taking on about $2 billion in additional debt and adding properties with high expenses to their portfolios. How is that working? Corporate America frequently gets criticized for considering "long-term" to be six months down the road, but the days when people bought into radio with the expectation of cashing out a short time later for a huge profit went away a relatively long time ago. Most everybody in radio now is in it for the long-term whether that was the original plan or not. At least when it comes to the big companies, they seem to be trying things. Granted, they might not be having quick success, but iHeart and Cumulus have digital divisions while Townsquare serves as a de-facto ad agency for smaller businesses that can't afford one for themselves. Those are long-term strategies, even if their effectiveness may still be questionable.
Programming is only one part of radio's problem. The part that can't be fixed easily with research is what to do about the advertisers disappearing. TV has the same problem but has been able to fall back on retransmission fees. Radio doesn't have that. While the economy has been booming and is creating jobs at the fastest pace since at least the 1950's, the businesses replacing the ones that closed during the last two major recessions don't advertise (or at least don't advertise as much as those they replaced).
Reminds me a little of the competing CHR that I could listen to for a couple hours and know exactly what the jock was going to say. The PD required all liner cards to be read verbatim. If one those cards involved a PSA or charity event that used my station, too, I could read it better and sound more genuine during our "what's happening" segment. By the time Cumulus bought my cluster and I found myself at said competing CHR, it had a new PD who had canned that policy almost as soon as he'd walked in the door!
My thoughts about research merely reflect that it is not helping a sick patient and has not. Something different has to be done or as you suggested, it's all dome and gloom while it burns. I don't see any owners or investors having fun during the fire.
It doesn't matter what I consider entertaining. I'm out of the demographic that counts. I do know that playing music isn't the answer as the young "prime demo" groups have mostly abandoned radio. Therefore something ese has to be found or the decline will continue. I dial around and don't hear much of the entertaining radio you describe. Maybe I just scanned across the station during one of the endless stop sets and missed the fun part
- Status