Re: Capitalism comes to Rochester!
SirRoxalot said:
Could Entercom run promotions about WROC on their other local outlets in town? Yes. Do they? No. Could some of their talent on the FM side do something on WROC-AM from time to time that could drive FM listeners to WROC for a sample of something? Sure. Do they? No.
Could Entercom direct listeners away from their other stations and point them toward their low-rated peashooter? Sure. Should they? Why?
Clear Channel does it all the time. I've heard plenty of promos for other stations in the group on CC stations. I remember learning about 1280 when they switched to "hot talk" by the promos they ran for it on 1180. When they switched to sports talk, it was extremely common to hear discussions about sports stuff over on 1280 on the sports-oriented talk they ran on 1180.
And, as far as spending money on outside promotions, I'll use Entercom's salespeople's own arguments on this point - you have to spend money (on advertising) to earn money. Highway advisory radio stations get more promotion than most radio clusters spend on their smaller AM's.
It wasn't that many years ago that Entercom was announcing to the world that they would be going after WHAM's audience by hiring Allen Harris as their morning host and airing conservative talk radio. That idea lasted what, two years? Harris is back on WHAM (part-time) and 950 switched over to liberal talk because their ratings were anemic. Trust me when I say that despite what management tells you to your face, if someone or some group came along tomorrow and offered to pay Entercom a great deal of money to buy 950-AM, they would sell it in a minute. And if that means dumping AA or DN, so be it.
The problem with WROC's conservative format was that they had a lineup of the second tier hosts that would never be able to best WHAM, and considering a lot of the conservative base is out in the regional areas where WROC could only dream of reaching, no surprises that the station went nowhere. Air America is targeting a younger demographic than most conservative talk reaches, but they're doing it on AM with no promotion. When the under 30-crowd doesn't even know what the AM button is for, they've got built-in problems already. There are a number of libtalk outlets that do promotion - Stephanie Miller has billboards promoting her show and they've attracted an entirely new audience that never knew these stations existed. In most cases, the only promotion a lot of libtalk stations get are brief mentions in the local press when they launch the format. And again, considering audience figures for newspapers and even TV news for younger folks, that's not going to help much either.
You are going to have to spend some money to get some money back in the form of some higher ratings.
And as far as accepting a great deal of cash to dump the station, I'd say that is true of virtually every radio station on the air these days. Put up enough cash and you'll find a seller.
Why do you think WROC-AM is airing the program at that hour? If they truly cared about having a solid audience, they would air the show before 6pm. This was just an attempt by the radio station to placate to the DN crowd. WXXI could have carried the show for an hour instead of repeating that boring Bob Smith program. But as the DN crowd discovered, Silverstein is no fan of that show. Just remember that the next time Silverstein and company go on the air begging for your money during their every-other month pledge drives.
The problem is you are again talking about displacing Randi Rhodes, who is now live 3-6, and who has the capacity to draw far larger audiences than DN can. There honestly isn't a lot of space for the show on WROC except in the evenings, and yes, pre-emptions will be an issue. It was for Randi when she was timeshifted. But having it somewhere on the dial is better than nowhere.
And there was little/no risk of dumping EcoTalk or the other throwaway stuff AAR put at 8pm for DN.
