Tell it to the music industry, because the music you listen to is created for a global audience. Not Detroit.
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Entercom Launches Alt 98.7
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
Tell it to the music industry, because the music you listen to is created for a global audience. Not Detroit.
McDonalds and Target and Home Depot and Walmart don't work there?
You exaggerate immensely the regional differences around the United States. A transplant from another country sees extreme similarity everywhere because the tiny differences by region are insignificant when compared to the similarities.
And I guess the national TV networks were trrying in vain since the 50's to get anyone to watch them in Detroit?
And your evidence is what?
K
Kevin
Guest
But the people who are in charge of what gets played on a radio station, are the people responsible for weather or not a station is successful, be it local or nationwide. The music industry supplies the product not how it’s distributed. We can thank the F.C.C. for the deregulation that took place in 1996, now we have a handful of big corporations that own most of our radio stations and eventually will nationalize their formats to the point of what we hear in Detroit is identical to New York City same announcer, same station for the entire country. Just like the U.K. and the rest of the world. Take a listen to the radio in the U.K particularly Global Radio they have a network called Heart, Smooth, Capital and about 4 others. They have many frequencies in the U.K. for their formats. They actually sound pretty good. That’s where American radio is headed.
It's a partnership. The record labels make and market the music. They have promotion staffs that pitch that music to radio stations and make their best arguments why their songs should get airplay. The radio stations listen to them, and also look at research, streaming charts, and other sources. But radio stations don't own the music, and they don't make more money when their audience connects with the songs.
There is nothing in the 96 Act that says anything about nationalizing formats. There were national formats in the 60s and 70s too. Anyone can buy radio stations, including you. No law that says you have to be a big corporation. It costs a lot of money to hire the staff and pay for everything involved in owning radio stations. They're allowed to run their business however they want. Listeners don't pay for the service, and even if they did, the services they pay for are all national too for the same reason.
Of course radio is headed that way because we are finally figuring out that we do not have to invent the same wheel locally in every market when a top quality wheel can be distributed nationally.
TV has worked that way from the very beginning... network shows shipped into Boise and Macon and Lubbock from New York or LA. And radio worked that way for going back to around the very late 20's when the networks took off.
The issue with music formats was cost; until very recently the distribution costs on leased lines or national microwave was prohibitive. We got satellite, but formats done there were very rigid as to clocks and timing so few larger market stations took those offerings. It was not until we got higher speed internet and the ability to adjust national offerings to local station needs that the ability to do national programming with local integration occurred.
Another stigma, beyond costs, was the ancient FCC prohibition of one owner having more than 7 of any type of station, AM, FM or TV. There was no internal thought about efficiency and shared resources as even the largest radio companies were quite small.
And there was a lot of complacency. Until the FCC, under Docket 80-90, released thousands of new and upgraded and moved-in station on a market that did not have any greater revenue because of it, creating a horrible situation of more than half of all US radio stations losing money. The only solution was to consolidate to control costs through shared resources.
The stigma against doing national formats came from the restrictions on radio that were created in the early 1930's with the intent of avoiding national and regional media, which politicians feared greatly. Those rules came when radio was beginning to grow and there was great fear of the power it could acquire. So now, 90 years later, we are still reacting to habits and rules that originated in Washington and have nothing to do with entertaining and informing Americans outside the Beltway.
Big radio's goal, in my view, is to compartmentalize listenership into as few stations as possible. They are implementing strategies incrementally in an effort to accomplish that objective.
At the end of the day, one or two stations per cluster per city will have a medium sized budget to customize programming for the local audience. All other stations will air filler formats / filler content. Those "throwaway stations" might only attract a 1 share of 2 share a piece, but the owners won't care, because the mothership station(s) of the cluster will command big ratings (relatively speaking).
Big radio believes the hemorrhaging of ad dollars will eventually hit a bottom and that the above model will be sustainable from a cash flow standpoint because some listeners & some advertisers will always be loyal to radio. Time will tell.
FM Radio lacks big stars with the exception of the Urban and Urban AC formats. Development of top-shelf stars that can play nationally is a reasonable goal, but so far, I think FM radio is coming up far, far short of that goal. Sorry, but the industry is not known for having innovative minds. The braintrust works for Apple, Google, and other silicon valley stalwarts, not old fashioned AM/FM radio or newspapers.
NextRadio (FM chip in cell phones) = total flop.
"Free FM" in the post-Howard Stern era = total flop.
HD Radio = total flop (only reason it's still around is because FCC extended it a lifeline in the form of analog FM translators).
The industry's track record of failure dates back to the 1980s, when it couldn't even rally around a unified AM Stereo transmission standard in timely fashion.
Radio's ability to conduct effective research and then to successfully implement programming strategies based on that research is inconsistent at best. How else can one explain the FM News disasters in Chicago and New York? Or John Dickey's idiotic "reverse crossover" strategy used on some of his country stations? (That strategy drove New Country 96.3's ratings in Dallas into the ground.)
Most broadcasters aren't even capable of reliably answering the simple question - what song just played? Song logs on web sites are often difficult to find, are inaccurate or aren't even offered. RDS also seems to malfunction quite a bit.
David, your mentioning of those big box stores gave me the idea to come up with the following analogy - FM radio is to modern media what Walmart is to modern retail. Both are bad experiences, but plenty of people still use them.
At the end of the day, one or two stations per cluster per city will have a medium sized budget to customize programming for the local audience. All other stations will air filler formats / filler content. Those "throwaway stations" might only attract a 1 share of 2 share a piece, but the owners won't care, because the mothership station(s) of the cluster will command big ratings (relatively speaking).
Big radio believes the hemorrhaging of ad dollars will eventually hit a bottom and that the above model will be sustainable from a cash flow standpoint because some listeners & some advertisers will always be loyal to radio. Time will tell.
FM Radio lacks big stars with the exception of the Urban and Urban AC formats. Development of top-shelf stars that can play nationally is a reasonable goal, but so far, I think FM radio is coming up far, far short of that goal. Sorry, but the industry is not known for having innovative minds. The braintrust works for Apple, Google, and other silicon valley stalwarts, not old fashioned AM/FM radio or newspapers.
NextRadio (FM chip in cell phones) = total flop.
"Free FM" in the post-Howard Stern era = total flop.
HD Radio = total flop (only reason it's still around is because FCC extended it a lifeline in the form of analog FM translators).
The industry's track record of failure dates back to the 1980s, when it couldn't even rally around a unified AM Stereo transmission standard in timely fashion.
Radio's ability to conduct effective research and then to successfully implement programming strategies based on that research is inconsistent at best. How else can one explain the FM News disasters in Chicago and New York? Or John Dickey's idiotic "reverse crossover" strategy used on some of his country stations? (That strategy drove New Country 96.3's ratings in Dallas into the ground.)
Most broadcasters aren't even capable of reliably answering the simple question - what song just played? Song logs on web sites are often difficult to find, are inaccurate or aren't even offered. RDS also seems to malfunction quite a bit.
David, your mentioning of those big box stores gave me the idea to come up with the following analogy - FM radio is to modern media what Walmart is to modern retail. Both are bad experiences, but plenty of people still use them.
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I disagree with that. The country radio format has a very strong group of local talent in all sizes of markets including Detroit, but also in smaller markets. They also have several strong national talents, the best known of which is Bobby Bones. The country format has a unique system for recognizing local radio talent through the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association Awards. No other radio format has such a visible partnership between the music industry and the radio industry. I believe that partnership is what's hurting the alternative format now. If there was such a partnership in the alternative format, you'd see an improvement in the music, and you'd see an improvement in the radio presentation of the format, as you do now in the country format.
I'm not sure what evidence you have for this. The fact that iHeart has three or even four stations in Nielsen's Top 5 demonstrates to me that iHeart isn't following what you say. They've done a great job of managing their stations, promoting their best talent, and selecting music that attracts an audience. That's just one example. I believe the audience and the music industry bear some responsibility for what you describe as "compartmentalization" As I said, music radio is a partnership, and radio can't do it alone.
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Kevin
Guest
100% spot on Mark. You hit the nail right on the head.
We call that "glass half empty" analysis. You attribute them all to the radio industry, but in point of fact, you can't blame the entire industry for the mistake of one company (CBS) in attempting to replace its biggest star. So you blame the entire radio industry for "Free FM" but don't give them credit for recognizing Howard's talents in the first place. Free FM was not an industry format, but rather a brand from one specific company.
The FM chip required co-operation from the electronics industry and the telecom industry, and they simply weren't on board. One could blame "big tech" for refusing to even discuss this idea. It's certainly popular now to blame big tech for these kinds of blanket decisions that affect consumers.
HD Radio got off to a solid start, but truthfully, iBiquity wasn't the smartest partner one could have. They insisted on getting their royalty up front. Had they given their technology away to electronics manufacturers, we might have seen more acceptance out of the box. There wasn't much the radio industry could do if consumers couldn't actually find HD radios.
It's interesting to me that two of your three radio industry flops weren't really controlled by the radio industry but rather the electronics industry. At one time, the electronics industry had a vested interest in the success of radio stations. Electronics companies such as RCA, GE, Westinghouse, and others also owned radio stations. Today, radio companies own radio stations and nothing else. So to blame radio for electronics flops is putting the blame in the wrong area.
Proof that E’com’s going to mess with ‘OMC?
I see no evidence of that. Consolidation allowed groups to have both first and second tier stations; single FM ownership made everyone fight for the top ranks, resulting in multiple stations in the same format. Now we have greater principal signal variety of formats than ever.
As said above, groups can now combine two, three, four or more stations on a buy to reach an advertiser target. That means that slightly lower rated stations can be immensely profitable due to the combinations.
That is oversimplification. There are stars in all formats, from Seacrest to Bobby Bones. Beyond that, there are plenty of regional multi-station "stars" that are doing quite well.
Those are technical advances that require manufacturer buy-in. As BigA said, radio had no control over it.
A very, very bad example. We were ready to go with it in 1978 when an obsessive and nutty manufacturer stopped the initial FCC decision on a system and delayed it half a decade until it was too late. NOT radio's fault.
Research can only go so far. One can determine an interest, but if the execution, promotion, signal, and competitive environment don't cooperate, the concept does not work.
Not every new format launch works. Not every station implements research correctly (and research is 25% data, 25% interpretation and 50% execution).
The paid RDS and BDS services are very accurate. In general, though, radio is interested in what is coming next, not in what was done in an unrecoverable past.
I'm not particularly sure why what the last song that played is a key element in your "proof" that radio is incompetent. Most streams and HD broadcasts have the current title displayed. We are in the "right now" business, not in the history business.
That is a matter of opinion. I don't like Walmart in one aspect, and that is the longer lines. So we keep a list of staples and needed home items and, prior to the pandemic, would go about every 3 weeks to a month and get all the items that they had a better assortment of, better prices or a fuller stock of. Today, a lot of that "stuff" is bought from them online where they have a very usable site.
I've never had a "bad experience" in Walmart. In fact, I find the overall experience most satisfactory based on a cost/benefit analysis. Thinking otherwise, to me, is elitist.
Walmart is mass appeal. So is radio. If you want higher priced "classier" stuff, you can go to a specialty shop or boutique. I come from a background where Spam was a delicacy and nearly $42 a can (in today's dollars or S/. 80 in 1964), so perhaps my perspective is different. I don't worship Walmart, but find both that chain and Costco very useful and money-saving.
I'd only hope that any station I programmed or managed were as successful in its field as Walmart.
See - there's the problem. You guys in radio executive leadership positions (past & present) have an excuse for EVERYTHING. It's always someone else's fault.
Many phones offered a usable FM chip more than a decade ago. Eventually, almost all new phones offered it. No one cared. It was a flop. Why was it a flop? In my view, it's because active smartphone users viewed FM radio's content as unappealing versus other alternatives (Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, personal playlists, etc.)
Regarding AM stereo:
Here we go again - blaming external circumstances. The fact the industry as a whole failed to successfully lobby the FCC to adopt a standard much sooner is massive failure on the part of the radio industry. Yes, the FCC definitely shares in the blame. I am not excusing the FCC's stupidity here.
You are out of touch with a sizable chunk of your audience; gets back to my earlier point about research.
Can you name anyone who considers Ryan Seacrest's voicetracked dayparts in markets outside of Los Angeles "must listen" radio? Gee, I sure can't. At his flagship where he does something that resembles a REAL radio show, his AQH share is not what it used to be. CHR/Pop and Urban stations in general are experiencing unusually if not historically poor ratings. (It is important to note that Detroit is NOT one such market.) Now that a high percentage of young adults no longer have to contend with cellular data limits or corporate firewall restrictions when accessing their favorite digital music because they now work remotely - their usage of FM radio has crashed.
There are many stations in southern Michigan, that don't use them at all, don't use them to display artist/song data, or have frequent glitches.
During increasingly common syndie music programming, artist/song data is seemingly never displayed.
Many phones offered a usable FM chip more than a decade ago. Eventually, almost all new phones offered it. No one cared. It was a flop. Why was it a flop? In my view, it's because active smartphone users viewed FM radio's content as unappealing versus other alternatives (Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, personal playlists, etc.)
Regarding AM stereo:
Here we go again - blaming external circumstances. The fact the industry as a whole failed to successfully lobby the FCC to adopt a standard much sooner is massive failure on the part of the radio industry. Yes, the FCC definitely shares in the blame. I am not excusing the FCC's stupidity here.
You are out of touch with a sizable chunk of your audience; gets back to my earlier point about research.
Can you name anyone who considers Ryan Seacrest's voicetracked dayparts in markets outside of Los Angeles "must listen" radio? Gee, I sure can't. At his flagship where he does something that resembles a REAL radio show, his AQH share is not what it used to be. CHR/Pop and Urban stations in general are experiencing unusually if not historically poor ratings. (It is important to note that Detroit is NOT one such market.) Now that a high percentage of young adults no longer have to contend with cellular data limits or corporate firewall restrictions when accessing their favorite digital music because they now work remotely - their usage of FM radio has crashed.
There are many stations in southern Michigan, that don't use them at all, don't use them to display artist/song data, or have frequent glitches.
During increasingly common syndie music programming, artist/song data is seemingly never displayed.
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As for country radio having "big" stars - Bobby Bones earns good ratings in a few sizable markets and is basically the equivalent of wallpaper in others. Most of the general public, and probably a high majority of the country radio audience nationally, has no clue who he even is.
Cumulus has changed national morning show hosts how many times over the past eight years? I want to say at least three times. Their attempts at anointing national stars don't seem to be working very well. I will say Nights with Elaina is a perfectly decent show - far better than the awful "Nash Nights Live" (could not stand the guy they hired from KKGO from L.A. to host that show - typical booth announcer type).
In most of the markets where competitive situations exists, Cumulus stations that lean heavily on national programming often underperform the competition by wide or even massive margins (look at Grand Rapids).
Lazily picked playlists bookended by 10, 12 or even 15 minutes of commercials an hour isn't going to cut it. Disc jockeys with no poise who sound worse than some college radio DJs (example: Jade on WRIF - who has no business doing middays in a top 20 market) aren't going to bring listeners in the door and will do little to compel them to resist the urge to change the station as soon as the music segues to chatter. Radio was so much better when personalities made regular appearances in the community, when radio stations offered meaningful LOCAL contests, when artists were occasionally interviewed live on the air, and when listeners could more actively participate in programming via song requests, etc.
About six months ago, I listened to a cassette tape (true story! I have a Sony boombox that has a cassette deck) I recorded of some live FM radio late night on a Saturday from 1999 or 2000. This was in Grand Rapids. Some observations:
-Station was plugging a LOCAL contest (the Bud Light Blind Date) where listeners could register to win tickets for a private concert from a big rock artist who was booked to play a local music venue.
-The DJ was live, spontaneous, and did more than just read stupid liner cards. Not only was he live, he sounded damn good. Far more entertaining than many of the folks who now work full time weekday shifts in that market.
-The DJ was actually giving out the station's PHONE NUMBER so listeners could make requests.
-I even heard a listener or two on the air making song requests.
Listening to that tape saddened me; it crystalized just how much commercial radio has slid down the tubes over the past two decades. The product was SO MUCH BETTER back then. On-air hosts in general did a much better job engaging and interacting with the audience.
Cumulus has changed national morning show hosts how many times over the past eight years? I want to say at least three times. Their attempts at anointing national stars don't seem to be working very well. I will say Nights with Elaina is a perfectly decent show - far better than the awful "Nash Nights Live" (could not stand the guy they hired from KKGO from L.A. to host that show - typical booth announcer type).
In most of the markets where competitive situations exists, Cumulus stations that lean heavily on national programming often underperform the competition by wide or even massive margins (look at Grand Rapids).
Lazily picked playlists bookended by 10, 12 or even 15 minutes of commercials an hour isn't going to cut it. Disc jockeys with no poise who sound worse than some college radio DJs (example: Jade on WRIF - who has no business doing middays in a top 20 market) aren't going to bring listeners in the door and will do little to compel them to resist the urge to change the station as soon as the music segues to chatter. Radio was so much better when personalities made regular appearances in the community, when radio stations offered meaningful LOCAL contests, when artists were occasionally interviewed live on the air, and when listeners could more actively participate in programming via song requests, etc.
About six months ago, I listened to a cassette tape (true story! I have a Sony boombox that has a cassette deck) I recorded of some live FM radio late night on a Saturday from 1999 or 2000. This was in Grand Rapids. Some observations:
-Station was plugging a LOCAL contest (the Bud Light Blind Date) where listeners could register to win tickets for a private concert from a big rock artist who was booked to play a local music venue.
-The DJ was live, spontaneous, and did more than just read stupid liner cards. Not only was he live, he sounded damn good. Far more entertaining than many of the folks who now work full time weekday shifts in that market.
-The DJ was actually giving out the station's PHONE NUMBER so listeners could make requests.
-I even heard a listener or two on the air making song requests.
Listening to that tape saddened me; it crystalized just how much commercial radio has slid down the tubes over the past two decades. The product was SO MUCH BETTER back then. On-air hosts in general did a much better job engaging and interacting with the audience.
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Very, very few of them had the chip activated. Despite the efforts of industry leaders like Jeff Smulyan, there was no interest by the carriers, who saw activating the chips as a loss of data revenue. And by the time Smulyan got two of the smaller carriers on board, smartphones with no headphone jack were appearing; the headphone was the FM antenna.
The industry was firmly behind the initiative to have a system approved. They encouraged all five manufacturers to present their best efforts for the planned FCC decision. Many of the companies had conditional orders for the equipment; my WQII had order #1 for two of the possible providers. But then one disgruntled provider who was not selected decided to sue and the courts and FCC hearings held the process back about 5 years. There was nothing radio could do.
Blame Kahn, not radio. Radio was ready to roar with AM stereo... and when the original system was approved, AM still had half the audience.
I can. Seacrest is not "voicetracked". It is produced. He lays down pieces or workparts of his shows based on all the things he does. That includes artist participation, breaking news told directly to him and a lot more. In fact, he does not generally go in to KIIS more than once a week, and then mostly to put content into the system.
The fact that he can develop pieces around his schedule and insert a lot of big names makes the show fascinating to those who are into that kind of content. TV has been putting shows together with workparts for decades and it makes the medium better.
KIIS is suffering from the downtrending of all CHRs during the pandemic. This has happened before, and that is why iHeart has a spectrum to reach 18-64 women in LA with AC, Hot AC and CHR.
And, as I said, Seacrest (even prior to the pandemic) maybe went in to the station once a week. What he did on KIIS is the same content all the affiliates get. KIIS simply integrates it with their playlist and commercial and other elements.
18-34 usage of radio is about the same as it was two years ago or so. There has been no crash. If you had access to AQH persons and rating rather than share, you could see that.
Use what?
On most major stations, music is played locally and integrated in the audio system with networked content. So if there is no RDS or other data, it is at the local station level and that likely means that they don't consider it important.
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It's a good show, and it fits the stations. It is not a disaster anywhere, and it mirrors the station elsewhere.
Cumulus was a mismanaged company. Not every owner or manager is going to win the trophy.
In fact, when I had ratings wins, I knew that they were due as much to the shortcomings of my competitors as my wishful thinking about being so amazingly good!
Again, a company that was pretty much destroyed by a bad leader (I can think of very relevant leadership examples elsewhere right now, too) and it is very difficult for them to try to rebuild in the 13th month of a pandemic.
Today, the world is "local". We have friends on social media all over the country and even the world. "Local" has turned out to be an excuse, not a listener magnet. I did national programming 67 years ago and beat every station in each market because we found the entire nation's best talent and gave them a bigger stage. Where did I get that idea? From comparing Steve Allen's night show with local efforts in a top market before I built my first station.
35 years ago, I did it again, networking multiple FM's in a territory with no outside radio. We did so well that we had between a 13 and a 15 share, double the #2 station and leading a market with 135 radio stations in the entire area we covered.
A good networked show with talent that can be part of the lives of the artists they play and the lifestyle of the listeners does not need to be localized... it needs to be individualized so that each listener bonds with it. Doing remotes at the Pep Boys or Baskin-Robbins won't cut it.
You may have noticed, but today artists don't do free concerts. Before, they did them to sell records. Today, they make little from recordings and get most of the income from appearances and endorsements.
Yet when a station puts on a syndicated show such as Delilah or Tesh (or whatever fits the format) they wipe the other stations in their particular arena off the map.
And most of us learned about 50 years or more ago that we don't let listeners create our playlist. It's destructive.
That may have been a "gee, golly, I was on the radio" moment then but today people in the younger format areas don't use the phone and if they want to show off, they go to Pnnterest or Facebook or whichever social media site is having its moment in the sun.
Did you notice how long Pandora lasted before the "new" owner had to write most of it off? Radio is still here, and the good stations are making money, though.
But that is not how most younger listeners want to be "interacted" with today. If you asked them, in many cases they find the classic DJ style soooo old school that they flee in a second when they hear it.
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K
Kevin
Guest
If Entercom guts WOMC that will be the end of traditional radio in my household, at that point I’ll toss all radios in the dumpster. 95% of my radio listening is streaming anyways. At some point the traditional radio will be useless to me and my family.
WOMC is the highest billing FM in the market. Other than obeying any research them might do to keep the existing audience happy, it is doubtful they will make major changes.
Their biggest problem is that the core is aging, and they will have to speed up the renewal of the library to keep the 25-54 audience happy. That, of course, means not paying any attention to the over-55's even thought they are about third in the market in that group.
Are you talking about yourself or do you have some facts? He is a multi platform star who won Dancing With The Stars and appears on other TV shows in addition to his morning show. People in the demo know who he is.
Wow, sounds like you're suffering from boomer disease. Everything was better when you were younger. Yes we know. The music was better then, the clothes were better, the girls were prettier, and the cars were faster. Yes we hear that all the time. Nobody cares. It's what old people talk about all the time. Or complain about all the time.
K
Kevin
Guest
You don’t have to have “boomer disease” to realize traditional radio sucks. Face it AM and FM Radio is just terrible in the 21st century and it’s not going to get any better. And watch it there’s a lot of us boomers on this website.
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