Do You Really Care About Radio?

[LKellerIII]

But listening is listening, even if passive, because it still gets the sponsor's message out to the audience.

This makes no common sense. Passive listening is not listening. Test after test has shown that people who are passive listening (or doing almost anything else passively) cannot recall recent events. Office radio is especially subject to this phenomena as there are a variety of tasks an office worker can be involved in at any time which takes their primary thought instead of the "white noise" in the background. If advertisers are being sold on office listening ratings they are being sold a bill of goods.

I'm not sure that's true. I'm no expert, but I think advertisers might think "passive listening" (or seeing) is OK. I'll give you an example from my own life. About 2 years ago, I had taken the subway (BART) from my home to work. When I got to work, the John Lennon song "Imagine" started going through my head. Especially the line; "Imagine all the people - living life in peace..." I knew I hadn't heard the song in God knows how long. All throughout the day, the song kept going through my head.

In the evening, I took the subway back home. On my train car was a big-paper card advertisement for Heavenly Valley Ski Resort with the caption; "Imagine all the people - living life on skis."

The point is - I had not consciously noticed the advertisement, but it had obviously registered subliminally. After seeing it the second time, Heavenly Valley Ski Resort is forever burned into my brain. That doesn't mean I'll go there, but the ad did what it was supposed to do - force me into brand name recognition.

 

[JEREMIAH]

David Kaye:

Wow! I have an old CBS net alert unit. Got it from KNUU here n LV. The station had been a CBS afillate for years.
It still lights up with the number 3....I'm still waitiing for CBS in NY to send a pulse.

Jerry Gordon

 

[TheBigA]

If advertisers are being sold on office listening ratings they are being sold a bill of goods.

Next time you have a minute, let them know. Until then, advertisers buy numbers. Background listeners count as much as those who hang on every word. It's been that way forever. In fact, there was far more hanky panky with the diaries. I know programmers who'd kill themselves to build a dedicated audience, the kind who'd proudly coat their cars with bumper stickers...only to get beat in the ratings by a beautiful music station with no DJs playing the Living Marimbas.

The job of programmers is to deliver the numbers. Most of them do a good job, and according to the numbers I see, a lot of people in San Francisco listen to OTA radio.

 

[landtuna]

I typed up a rather lengthy response but this miserable software lost it in posting. I will not type it up again but summary testing with graduate students here proved that passive listeners retain not more than an average 15% of information presented while with visual (TV) it is more than 70%. This was an adult audience who did not know they were being tested.

Like it or not, visual ads are retained much better than audio ones. That said, radio probably has better penetration into niche listeners than other media (with the possible exception of certain Internet web sites).

If I am an advertiser I would want my message to reach as many people as possible but only if they are potential customers. Paying for random bodies who don't or can't recall my product or are not interested in it or can't pay for it is a waste of money.

I realize that stations can to some degree categorize their listeners and then deliver raw numbers. And I also realize that most people who hear the ads are not active listeners therefore, at best, you might be getting your message across to less than 15% of the number you are buying. I'm not a math expert but a potential of only 15% doesn't seem very good.

Radio, in general, is hurting financially being forced to share their piece of the advertising pie with newer and more targeted forms. No matter how sales spins it the only reliable way to determine if a specific ad campaign is effective is to measure the direct sales as a result. The Diary and PPM are only vague estimates.

P.S. The wife and I once owned a business. It was well before PPM came to Phoenix but the lessons learned in biz school were very valuable in deciding what ads to buy and in what media.

 

[recto101]

I noticed in Malls and Big Businesses they tend to use a web-feed of music playlists assigned to the company. Such as McDonald's radio heard in some branches. and during breaks they will do ads about their products on sale. The Only people that I can think of that still use OTA radio is mainly small businesses. I know in Fairfield Small businesses like the dentist office tend to crank their OTA radios to KUIC-FM. But in Vallejo its a Different Story some of the Small Businesses is using their Mp3 feeds or in some cases listening to Alice, KMEL, Kiss and Wild.

 

[TheBigA]

Just about every car repair shop I've ever been in has the OTA country station on all day. Even the Sears and Jiffy Lube.

 

[nocomradio]

Every construction job has a radio playing OTA broadcasts all day long. Many smaller retail outlets also do the same. Car repair shops (as mentioned above) are pretty constant. All in all I still do see a lot of radio playing in many businesses, especially in smaller towns and cities. Here, I do hear a lot of local small businesses advertising too. Usually the car dealers and ads for the local fair, or electric co-op.

Now, go into the larger cities and walk into a retailer or business and you are much more likely to hear Sirius, or in the case of Goodwill stores, their own feed of music and announcements. Sonic drive-ins also have their own Sonic Radio. In those areas, I'd bet advertising on OTA radio would be hard to see any return for an advertiser. Not to say they don't, but it sure seems to me that you'd only be getting people in the car on drivetime and not much else. Now with the smartphone emerging, I'd say that might put a dent in things too.

 

[LKellerIII]

Just about every car repair shop I've ever been in has the OTA country station on all day. Even the Sears and Jiffy Lube.

Not so much in San Francisco - KOIT in car repair shops is typical, with KFOG if the owner is an older white guy. My dentist runs KFOG, but he's an old hippie.

By the way - the Coit Tower elevator plays KOIT. I guess that should be obvious.

I work at a public agency in Oakland with a lot of African-Americans, primarily middle-aged or baby boomers. KBLX has always been the number one station - played in cubicles, offices, outside in the yards, and in garages in the Maintenance bays.

And if my work mates are any indication, Steve Harvey in the morning may be working - the "water-cooler" chatter lately is usually about what Steve said this morning.

 

[landtuna]

Sonic drive-ins also have their own Sonic Radio.

Sonic's here in the SW USA tend to be mostly drive-in eat-in-the-car where Sonic Radio cannot be heard very well, if at all. The few tables out front are underneath the speakers so is listenable out there. If they are trying to simulate the Top-40 of drive-ins of 50 years ago they missed.

Sonic has great limeade's though. ;D

 

[TheRover]

De-regualtion has suceeded in pushing off and out the truly entrertaing music, and the effet that that music might have on the populace.

And yet there's absolutely nothing in the deregulation laws that has anything to do with music. Nothing.

Stated or not, the effect of de-regulation is the homoginization of the varoious music genres, pushing out completely progressive rock.

So, instead of ever hearing "Sorrow", "Sheep", or "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd, we get:

"Comfortably Numb"

"Another Brick in the Wall Part II"

"Money"

------Only, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.

It's what's not played, that is the problem with conglomerate controlled radio.

THIS is prgoress --- culturally, it is NOT.

I think they call it the Decline of Western Civilization.

 

[TheBigA]

Stated or not, the effect of de-regulation is the homoginization of the varoious music genres, pushing out completely progressive rock.

Progressive rock was dead before deregulation. LONG before.

Consider KSAN, once San Francisco's progressive rocker. It got soft and mushy and then flipped to country music in 1980. That was 16 years before deregulation.

 

[michael hagerty]

Stated or not, the effect of de-regulation is the homoginization of the varoious music genres, pushing out completely progressive rock.

Progressive rock was dead before deregulation. LONG before.

Consider KSAN, once San Francisco's progressive rocker. It got soft and mushy and then flipped to country music in 1980. That was 16 years before deregulation.

Sad but true. KSAN's L.A. sister, KMET only found success after blowing off progressive rock for a more "modal" approach in '78. True free-form progressive rock radio was a dead duck from about 1975 on.

 

[LKellerIII]

Stated or not, the effect of de-regulation is the homoginization of the varoious music genres, pushing out completely progressive rock.

Progressive rock was dead before deregulation. LONG before.

Consider KSAN, once San Francisco's progressive rocker. It got soft and mushy and then flipped to country music in 1980. That was 16 years before deregulation.

Sad but true. KSAN's L.A. sister, KMET only found success after blowing off progressive rock for a more "modal" approach in '78. True free-form progressive rock radio was a dead duck from about 1975 on.

I would have said 1972 - I left LA in 73, and I recall that a year or so before, KMET had the O'Jay's Love Train in heavy rotation. It could be that it was only one jock who liked the song, but I seem to recall it day and night. Don't get me wrong - it's a great soul song, IMO - but not exactly consistent with a "free-form" prog rock format.

My memory is that at the time, KMET was getting beaten in the ratings by KLOS's "Rock N' Stereo" format with very little jock talk and a tight play list. So it seemed like KMET was responding with a less free-form approach, though I can't say what happened between 73 and 75, because I wasn't around.

 

[DavidKaye]

Consider KSAN, once San Francisco's progressive rocker. It got soft and mushy and then flipped to country music in 1980. That was 16 years before deregulation.

Not only that, but KSAN was owned by Metromedia, the heaviest hitter of the non-network owners. They owned radio and TV stations, syndicated TV variety and talkshows, operated a billboard company (Foster & Kleiser), ran a direct-mail company (MetroMail), and ran a paging company, MetroCall. KSAN was no mom'n'pop outfit.

 

[uncamark]

Consider KSAN, once San Francisco's progressive rocker. It got soft and mushy and then flipped to country music in 1980. That was 16 years before deregulation.

Not only that, but KSAN was owned by Metromedia, the heaviest hitter of the non-network owners. They owned radio and TV stations, syndicated TV variety and talkshows, operated a billboard company (Foster & Kleiser), ran a direct-mail company (MetroMail), and ran a paging company, MetroCall. KSAN was no mom'n'pop outfit.

Our complainer should read the interview today with Allen Shaw at radio-info.com. He came right out and said that in 1971, "free form" progressive rock didn't bill enough for union engineers and overhead, which is why he came up "Rock 'n' Stereo," the first AOR format. And ABC's stations became over the course of the 70s very profitable. The thing is that there was an audience who had burned out on Top 40 radio but didn't want to sit through Ginsberg poetry or Miles Davis jazz to hear the new Who album--or listen to jocks saying "it's like ten after five, like if you're into time, man..."

 

[DavidKaye]

Our complainer should read the interview today with Allen Shaw at radio-info.com. He came right out and said that in 1971, "free form" progressive rock didn't bill enough for union engineers and overhead, which is why he came up "Rock 'n' Stereo," the first AOR format. And ABC's stations became over the course of the 70s very profitable. The thing is that there was an audience who had burned out on Top 40 radio but didn't want to sit through Ginsberg poetry or Miles Davis jazz to hear the new Who album--or listen to jocks saying "it's like ten after five, like if you're into time, man..."

The Tom Donahue "free form" format declared no time checks or weather reports. "If you want the time, look at a clock; if you want the weather, stick your head out the window."

What many people don't realize about the Donahue format was that it really didn't generate much revenue. I happened to like the fact that the format allowed that a poem could be interspersed with an acid band and Ernie K-Doe's "Tee-Ta-Tee-Ta-Ta", but I realize that I'm in a minority.

Not only that, but in those days KSAN did stuff that no station would do today: Listeners' Personals, where people could list that they wanted a roommate or whatever, ride sharing (what would the station do if someone listened to the station, got a ride and got raped?), and finally, the drug report -- which drugs people should stay away from that week.

 

[TheBigA]

What many people don't realize about the Donahue format was that it really didn't generate much revenue.

That's what I read too, and that Tom's widow was left to run the station after Tom died. That's when the music got a lot less unpredictable. By then, the Summer Of Love was long over.

 

[davideduardo]

Stated or not, the effect of de-regulation is the homoginization of the varoious music genres, pushing out completely progressive rock.

If there was a cause for the death of the free-form and progressive rock stations, it was Lee Abram's Superstars and somewhat related things like ABC's stereo rock format. AOR with a playlist, tighter integration of talent with the format, promotion, etc. just decimated the progressive stations.

That happened roughly 40 years ago... 25 years before consolidation and most deregulation.

 

[recto101]

Hmm? Wouldn't people care about radio more once a big disaster strikes? I do know that the USGS and Red Cross earthquake guides do say in a quake do not use your phone but use your radio to an all-news station for info of the quake.

 

[stewie]

Hmm? Wouldn't people care about radio more once a big disaster strikes? I do know that the USGS and Red Cross earthquake guides do say in a quake do not use your phone but use your radio to an all-news station for info of the quake.

Let's hope they don't rely on the EAS system in place. However, you make a really good point. There are few technologies you can rely on when disaster strikes (and it will again). Radio (due to its portability) has always been one of them.

That's also why I hold an active ticket as an amateur radio operator.