how long should a station call itself "all-new"?

[firepoint525]

I have never understood why stations cater to listeners who will only be with them for 15 minutes (if that) and stick it to those of us who might be more loyal to them if they weren't so boneheaded.

Because there are way more of them then there are of you.

Well fine then.  Drop the "all-new."  If they're so flighty, they'll never miss it.   

That's not "flighty", that's fairly normal mass audience behavior.  And evidence is that there's value in the term "new" for a period of time.  What we're discussing is how long that should be.

Which according to you on page 1 of this thread was a year.  I agree with that.  But then, as always happens here, we started getting typical "radio" responses, like from amfmxm and Shiny Knob.  Then you started falling into your own typical "radio" responses. 

It has been my experience that if the masses don't like what you are doing, they won't complain; they just simply won't listen.  That is about the only thing that differentiates me from "them."  I have posted on non-radio message boards as well, and whenever the subject of radio comes up, it's usually the same type of complaints that I have here.  But they ESPECIALLY detest these morning show bozos who laugh at their own jokes. And many of them say that they listen to their own CDs on their way to work because they absolutely cannot stand these bozos! The problem with radio these days is that they talk AT their listeners rather than TO them. It used to be that if you complained to a radio or TV station, your complaint carried the weight of 10 more people who did NOT complain. But now you get marginalized, and radio just keeps on doing what it has been doing, and wondering why their listenership is falling off. Hey, we have more listening options now! Now if you complain about anything, you just get marginalized and told to "get with the program." Hey, everyone else LOVES what we are doing! Oh, have you ASKED them? No, but we have "tested" them (whatever the hell THAT means) and our "research" tells us.....blah blah blah. Never mind that you carefully hand-pick your test-group so that they will give you the results that you already wanted, anyway.

Even if you are in the demographic that they SUPPOSEDLY want, they will STILL ignore you. Even if you try to call them up to tell them about a mistake that THEY made (like playing the SAME song multiple times in a row), they STILL ignore you. Why don't you know, we INTENDED to play that song several times in a row! And on and on it goes. I once tried to call a station about double-audio that they happened to be airing, but couldn't get anyone to answer the phone there, so I just gave up. But I also turned the radio off, as well.

 

[firepoint525]

I fit well within the cherished demographic (baby boomers)

About 2/3 of baby boomers are outside the broad 25-54 sales demo; in 6 months, 100% will be outside the increasingly used 18-49 demo.

Here we go again, the typical David Eduardo response. Well this station specifically targets baby-boomers (and says so on the air) so that is an issue for them, not for me. BECAUSE they target baby boomers, they have almost NO direct competition. They have the market pretty much to themselves. Even our local classic hits station doesn't exist anymore, because Come-in-last sold them off, due to owning too many stations in Nashville after acquiring Citadel.

I have never understood why stations cater to listeners who will only be with them for 15 minutes (if that) and stick it to those of us who might be more loyal to them if they weren't so boneheaded.

In the PPM markets, the average listening span is less than 15 minutes. People who listen to a station several hours a day do so in a bunch of such incidents, not non-stop.
So it is important to brand the station frequently so people both identify their choice and return to it each time they come back to the radio.
In the diary, we sell memorability. In the PPM we sell future usage. Both require branding.
[/quote]I understand branding, and cume listening. But their afternoon announcer sometimes actually forgets to mention the station's name. He just says "your brand new station for baby boomers" or something like that. "Radio for baby boomers" is indeed their slogan, but not their name. I know for a fact that the afternoon program is voice-tracked because he played "Evil Woman" twice within 10 minutes last week, and he back-announced a song that didn't play for another 10 minutes or so. "Live and local" my eye! You can get one or the other (live OR local), but not both.

 

[firepoint525]

In the days when AMs did Top 40, speeding up songs by a small percentage did make the sound crisper and also made stations that did not speed up songs sound dull. It was a useful practice if not abused.

"Coming up, we have the Chipmunks, the Chipmunks, and the Chipmunks...Well, not really, but by the time we speed them up, they will sound like the Chipmunks." I used to have a turntable which sped up the records, and I HATED it because they were not playing on the correct speed. I still remember WNOX in Knoxville doing that back in the '70s, and it was obvious, even then to me as a 13-year-old back in the late '70s.

Even if a station is "new to you," the constant harping on "all-new" will get OLD within about 15 minutes of tuning in!

Tell that to brands like Tide that have used "New and Improved" over decades and decades every time they need to refresh the brand image. [/quote]And didn't the FTC crack down on them and others for the use of deceptive advertising?

 

[michael hagerty]

I have never understood why stations cater to listeners who will only be with them for 15 minutes (if that) and stick it to those of us who might be more loyal to them if they weren't so boneheaded.

Because there are way more of them then there are of you.

Well fine then. Drop the "all-new." If they're so flighty, they'll never miss it.

That's not "flighty", that's fairly normal mass audience behavior. And evidence is that there's value in the term "new" for a period of time. What we're discussing is how long that should be.

Which according to you on page 1 of this thread was a year. I agree with that. But then, as always happens here, we started getting typical "radio" responses, like from amfmxm and Shiny Knob. Then you started falling into your own typical "radio" responses.

To say that there are more listeners who use the medium in a certain way than there are people who, like you, would listen longer if certain things were done differently is a fact. As is to point out that the use of the term "new" has had success in promoting radio stations and that frequency of message is key in the success of conveying that message to a mass audience.

To call it a "typical radio response" is like looking at a house disapprovingly and calling it "typical" because it has a foundation, walls and a roof.

 

[amfmxm]

Thanks, Michael. I think that I was on the verge of being insulted, but being a "typical radio person," I was too dense to know for certain.

BTW, I passed along the Z-93 story not as a recommendation, but as an explanation of why (some) radio stations do what they do.

As an art-form, radio programming uses words to position stations within listeners minds--words like "new," "classic," "now," "hot," "cool," "favorites," "today," "yesterday," "soft," "jammin'"...

We use most of these words very deliberately, but without the benefit of knowing their impact on listeners' perception.

Is "New" effective positioning for the "typical" listener after 6 months--roughly 180 days? Or is the limit 193 days? Or is it 765 days? Is there a definitive point after which the word bounces off the listener's skull?

Who knows? Who cares? It's only radio...

 

[firepoint525]

To say that there are more listeners who use the medium in a certain way than there are people who, like you, would listen longer if certain things were done differently is a fact.

In no way is that "fact." Again, I have posted on non-radio message boards in the past. Whenever the subject of radio has come up (not even initiated by me, by the way), the complaints are the same or similar to what I have said here. So while there may be those "cume" listeners, the longer a person listens, the more likely he/she is to have the same complaints that I do. If "listeners like me" are declining, it is because we are becoming increasingly pissed off. Those who listen for 15 minutes a day are not listening long enough to pick up the chronic faults of radio. So the only way that there can be more of "them" (cume listeners) than there are of "us" is because "we" are abandoning them. And the repeated airings of "Evil Woman" twice within 10 minutes happened during afternoon drive last week, at about 5:00 p.m. on the day that it happened. I was in and out of the car (in other words, listening like "they" do), and heard it twice within 10 minutes. At one stop on my errands, I heard it play, then at my next stop, I heard it play again. I should probably direct you to the thread on the Nashville board, initiated by me, to which I gave the title "TWO nameless horses" because we are beginning to go off topic here. A thread there entitled "Chipmunk Harrison" (not initiated by me) is also good. On that particular day, I was also in and out of the car, and heard the mistakes mentioned there.

As is to point out that the use of the term "new" has had success in promoting radio stations and that frequency of message is key in the success of conveying that message to a mass audience.

I don't like "new" or "all-new" after a year. That ain't changing. What is amusing is that they are promoting "new" programming (which is indeed "new"), but how do you differentiate that from the station itself if you also call your station "new"? And their morning-drive guy (the biggest offender on "all-new") is voiceover on a commercial which starts out "for months we have been telling you about...." Well, wait a minute, thought you were "all-new"? And yet, you have been telling us something for months?

To call it a "typical radio response" is like looking at a house disapprovingly and calling it "typical" because it has a foundation, walls and a roof.

To say otherwise is to defend the status quo when it definitely needs to be changed. I have taken to listening to the local college station (when I was within range of their signal) because I could not stand what a "motormouth" that that morning-drive dj has become. And he still even emphasizes "ALL-NEW!" I would listen to something else, but there is nothing else for my demographic. Jack-FM and the AC station are about the closest competitors still left. Even the oldies AM station recently bit the dust, but no major loss there.

 

[firepoint525]

Thanks, Michael. I think that I was on the verge of being insulted, but being a "typical radio person," I was too dense to know for certain.
BTW, I passed along the Z-93 story not as a recommendation, but as an explanation of why (some) radio stations do what they do.
As an art-form, radio programming uses words to position stations within listeners minds--words like "new," "classic," "now," "hot," "cool," "favorites," "today," "yesterday," "soft," "jammin'"...

You are confusing slogans and station names with meaningless adjectives. But it's okay. David did that with his La Nueva example.

"Good Times and Great Oldies" was around for many years, but probably not on just any one station for all that time. So was "Today's Hits and Yesterday's Favorites." Those were slogans, not (increasingly) meaningless adjectives. If your station's call letters ends in one of the following (but not limited to these), then you should use "new" as your actual name (not as a meaningless adjective):

-NEW (obviously!)
-NOO
-NU
-KNU

...etc.

We use most of these words very deliberately, but without the benefit of knowing their impact on listeners' perception.
Is "New" effective positioning for the "typical" listener after 6 months--roughly 180 days? Or is the limit 193 days? Or is it 765 days? Is there a definitive point after which the word bounces off the listener's skull?
Who knows? Who cares? It's only radio...

What? You don't know? You don't care? Better do some of that highly prized "research"! :

 

[michael hagerty]

To say that there are more listeners who use the medium in a certain way than there are people who, like you, would listen longer if certain things were done differently is a fact.

In no way is that "fact." Again, I have posted on non-radio message boards in the past. Whenever the subject of radio has come up (not even initiated by me, by the way), the complaints are the same or similar to what I have said here. So while there may be those "cume" listeners, the longer a person listens, the more likely he/she is to have the same complaints that I do. If "listeners like me" are declining, it is because we are becoming increasingly pissed off. Those who listen for 15 minutes a day are not listening long enough to pick up the chronic faults of radio. So the only way that there can be more of "them" (cume listeners) than there are of "us" is because "we" are abandoning them.

Yeah, it's a fact. Anecdotal evidence from people you know and people you don't isn't.

And listeners like you (last time, I identified that as people who would listen longer to stations if they did certain things differently) aren't declining. The percentage is about the same as it has been. The bulk of 18-49 and 25-54 year olds aren't "set it and forget it" types. They have specific stations for specific moods or tasks. The key is in understanding that the people who "use" radio is a much larger group than the people who are inclined to settle in and listen hour by hour, day in and day out.

 

[davideduardo]

Those who listen for 15 minutes a day are not listening long enough to pick up the chronic faults of radio. So the only way that there can be more of "them" (cume listeners) than there are of "us" is because "we" are abandoning them.

Non sequitur based on a misunderstanding of facts.

The average time spent with radio in PPM markets is around 12 hours a week. In diary markets, it is around 17 hours a week.

That's not "15 minutes a day" by any count... it it six times that, with a few minutes worth of change left over.

But people used 5 to 6 different stations during a week, according to need, mood and situation. And they don't use radio non-stop during the workday or while at home... they listen in "kibbles and bits" that average under 15 minutes each.

The keyword here, of course, is "average." Some listen more per week, others listen less. About 6% don't listen at all. And some do listen for an hour or more non-stop, and some don't.

Interestingly, when we compare apples to apples over a long period of time, we see far less alarming data than you have pulled out of a magician's hat. The earliest Arbitron diary numbers showed around 21 hours per week of radio listening, and 5% of people not listening at all. Today, the diary markets show 17 to 18 hours a week of listening (it varies) and 6% not listening at all.

Since the first diary survey was in the mid-60's, we have nearly 50 years of data to compare. The first numbers were before cable in large metros, before independent cable programming, computers, video games. They were before CDs, Walkman devices, MP3 players, downloads. They were from the dawn of the cassette era, before truly portable cassette players existed. They were pre-internet, pre-iTunes and pre-smartphones.

Yet with all that competition for the consumer's time, radio still gets well over two hours a day when we compare measurements using the same methodology.

 

[davideduardo]

I used to have a turntable which sped up the records, and I HATED it because they were not playing on the correct speed. I still remember WNOX in Knoxville doing that back in the '70s, and it was obvious, even then to me as a 13-year-old back in the late '70s.

The right amount of acceleration is only perceptible using an A-B comparison. If you can tell without the comparison, it is sped up too much. I sped up music in the mid-70's on what would be called a Hot AC today and never heard that any competitor knew about it; in fact, only one production person inside the station knew about it other than the engineer and myself. The station was #1 18-49 women so it obviously did not hurt!

And didn't the FTC crack down on them and others for the use of deceptive advertising?

Not for the specific use of "new" or "new and improved" when, in fact, there had been some kind of change, modification or improvement in the formula.

Caveat: radio stations can say "new" without restriction since they are always modifying the product with songs added and removed from play, changes in airstaff, imaging, etc.

"We thought we would take this opportunity to remind readers of the basics of “new and improved” advertising. In an oldie but goodie advisory opinion from 1967, the FTC opined that while it wanted to maintain flexibility to address particular situations (but of course!), that “it would be inclined to question use of any claim that a product is ‘new’ for a period of time longer than 6 months" (with a limited test market exception). The “6 Month Rule” was thus born and is still generally alive and well, although not the basis for recent enforcement activity. In addition to the general time frame, the FTC advised that the product in question must actually be entirely new or “has been changed in a functionally significant and substantial respect.”

From: http://www.consumeradvertisinglawblog.com/2010/02/how-long-can-your-product-be-new-and-improved.html

 

[davideduardo]

Hey, everyone else LOVES what we are doing! Oh, have you ASKED them? No, but we have "tested" them (whatever the hell THAT means) and our "research" tells us.....blah blah blah. Never mind that you carefully hand-pick your test-group so that they will give you the results that you already wanted, anyway.

"Research" is just another word for "asking the listeners".

You are trying to make research somehow noxious or downright toxic. It isn't.

When a music station researches correctly, it pulls a sample of people who like the genre or kind of music played on the station or its competitors and who use the station or its competitors often enough to have some opinions on the songs and the stations themselves. Beyond that, participants are generally restricted so they fit in the age group the station targets.

Research does not target light listeners, because, contrary to your thinking, most light listeners listen very little because of other factors like not being able to have a radio on at work, preferring TV after work or for the breakfast show, etc.

In fact, the BBM in Canada studied non-users... that 5% or so who did not use radio in the sample weeks. They found that the majority had "issues" such as a death or illness in the family, an expanded work schedule, a vacation, a broken car radio, etc. Very few were total non-users...

Research also does not target very light users because, in a test intended to evaluate music, you want people who are familiar with the music. All you get with very light listeners is a bunch of "neutral" scores and useless results.

But, yeah, research is "asking the listeners what they want".

 

[michael hagerty]

To say that there are more listeners who use the medium in a certain way than there are people who, like you, would listen longer if certain things were done differently is a fact.

In no way is that "fact." Again, I have posted on non-radio message boards in the past. Whenever the subject of radio has come up (not even initiated by me, by the way), the complaints are the same or similar to what I have said here. So while there may be those "cume" listeners, the longer a person listens, the more likely he/she is to have the same complaints that I do. If "listeners like me" are declining, it is because we are becoming increasingly pissed off. Those who listen for 15 minutes a day are not listening long enough to pick up the chronic faults of radio. So the only way that there can be more of "them" (cume listeners) than there are of "us" is because "we" are abandoning them. And the repeated airings of "Evil Woman" twice within 10 minutes happened during afternoon drive last week, at about 5:00 p.m. on the day that it happened. I was in and out of the car (in other words, listening like "they" do), and heard it twice within 10 minutes. At one stop on my errands, I heard it play, then at my next stop, I heard it play again. I should probably direct you to the thread on the Nashville board, initiated by me, to which I gave the title "TWO nameless horses" because we are beginning to go off topic here. A thread there entitled "Chipmunk Harrison" (not initiated by me) is also good. On that particular day, I was also in and out of the car, and heard the mistakes mentioned there.

I took your advice and spent some time with those threads.

It looks like you've got one or more stations that fail on execution. Sped up voice tracks, songs that repeat in the same hour, back-announces and plugs that don't match the songs...those aren't evidence of a systemic problem in radio, but evidence that somebody at the local station screwed up...repeatedly in trying to execute and localize a turnkey format.

As to why they're continuing to hammer "new"...they're not gaining altitude. They don't have the number they hoped to have by this point. They probably won't ever get there. Especially if they can't get the basics down.

 

[firepoint525]

Hey, everyone else LOVES what we are doing! Oh, have you ASKED them? No, but we have "tested" them (whatever the hell THAT means) and our "research" tells us.....blah blah blah. Never mind that you carefully hand-pick your test-group so that they will give you the results that you already wanted, anyway.

"Research" is just another word for "asking the listeners".
You are trying to make research somehow noxious or downright toxic. It isn't.
When a music station researches correctly, it pulls a sample of people who like the genre or kind of music played on the station or its competitors and who use the station or its competitors often enough to have some opinions on the songs and the stations themselves. Beyond that, participants are generally restricted so they fit in the age group the station targets.
Research does not target light listeners, because, contrary to your thinking, most light listeners listen very little because of other factors like not being able to have a radio on at work, preferring TV after work or for the breakfast show, etc.
In fact, the BBM in Canada studied non-users... that 5% or so who did not use radio in the sample weeks. They found that the majority had "issues" such as a death or illness in the family, an expanded work schedule, a vacation, a broken car radio, etc. Very few were total non-users...
Research also does not target very light users because, in a test intended to evaluate music, you want people who are familiar with the music. All you get with very light listeners is a bunch of "neutral" scores and useless results.
But, yeah, research is "asking the listeners what they want".

If I didn't feel like I was more likely to get hit by lightning or win the lottery than be asked my opinion of a radio station, then I might agree with you. The only time I was ever asked for my opinion was when I got a survey in the mail a little over 10 years ago asking me to listen to the (then) oldies station for an hour, then fill out the survey and mail it in. So I did. Simple as that. I generally liked what they were doing at the time, so it was fairly easy, and it was fun, and it was for a station that I listened to, anyway. If it had been for a station that I did not listen to, then I would have told them that. I have no idea how they got my name. They didn't even give me the crisp $1 bill for the survey, but that was okay.

 

[firepoint525]

To say that there are more listeners who use the medium in a certain way than there are people who, like you, would listen longer if certain things were done differently is a fact.

In no way is that "fact." Again, I have posted on non-radio message boards in the past. Whenever the subject of radio has come up (not even initiated by me, by the way), the complaints are the same or similar to what I have said here. So while there may be those "cume" listeners, the longer a person listens, the more likely he/she is to have the same complaints that I do. If "listeners like me" are declining, it is because we are becoming increasingly pissed off. Those who listen for 15 minutes a day are not listening long enough to pick up the chronic faults of radio. So the only way that there can be more of "them" (cume listeners) than there are of "us" is because "we" are abandoning them. And the repeated airings of "Evil Woman" twice within 10 minutes happened during afternoon drive last week, at about 5:00 p.m. on the day that it happened. I was in and out of the car (in other words, listening like "they" do), and heard it twice within 10 minutes. At one stop on my errands, I heard it play, then at my next stop, I heard it play again. I should probably direct you to the thread on the Nashville board, initiated by me, to which I gave the title "TWO nameless horses" because we are beginning to go off topic here. A thread there entitled "Chipmunk Harrison" (not initiated by me) is also good. On that particular day, I was also in and out of the car, and heard the mistakes mentioned there.

I took your advice and spent some time with those threads.
It looks like you've got one or more stations that fail on execution. Sped up voice tracks, songs that repeat in the same hour, back-announces and plugs that don't match the songs...those aren't evidence of a systemic problem in radio, but evidence that somebody at the local station screwed up...repeatedly in trying to execute and localize a turnkey format.
As to why they're continuing to hammer "new"...they're not gaining altitude. They don't have the number they hoped to have by this point. They probably won't ever get there. Especially if they can't get the basics down.

I had to send you there because there is just too much going on there to mention it all here. And the repliers to those threads all have various gripes about the station that are different from my own, but still legit, nonetheless.

I get a skewed view of the station myself because I live almost within site of their tower. (It also doubles as my cell-phone tower when I am here at home.) They claim to be a "Nashville" station, but even though I can pick them up from all over town, apparently not everyone can. It is the mother of all "rimshot" stations.

All the examples of screw-ups that you cited above were from the same station, although other stations may have gotten mentions within those threads.

Also not mentioned is the fact that the ownership (and most of the jocks on that station) are from Indiana. Nothing against Indiana, but if I were a Hoosier, I wouldn't want to listen to a station run by a bunch of Nashvillians, unless maybe it was a country station. (And in a weekend promo announcement, the morning drive-time dj referred to a local waterpark as "Wave County." He has been here for (at least) a year and a half, and he did not know that that waterpark is Wave COUNTRY? Even if he was reading from a typo, he should have known better than that. "All-new" ain't gonna solve that!)

If you know enough about radio to save that station from itself, then please come to Nashville and do so! ;D

 

[davideduardo]

If I didn't feel like I was more likely to get hit by lightning or win the lottery than be asked my opinion of a radio station, then I might agree with you.

Radio stations, even in the best of times, did not have unlimited budgets. When research is done, it is better to survey a hundred well recruited persons than thousands at random.

Your probabilities of being called, in a diary market, by Arbitron, are once every 70 years or so. They don't have to sample everyone... just enough to make the results reliable enough to satisfy ad buyers.

The only time I was ever asked for my opinion was when I got a survey in the mail a little over 10 years ago asking me to listen to the (then) oldies station for an hour, then fill out the survey and mail it in. So I did. Simple as that. I generally liked what they were doing at the time, so it was fairly easy, and it was fun, and it was for a station that I listened to, anyway.

That was not a survey. It was an effort to create sampling. If one out of every 100 persons who got that mail piece became cumers to the station, they could see a major increase in listening...

What you did was the same thing as peeling off the sticker and putting it on the response card. You became engaged with the station, and they hoped you would listen or listen more afterwards.

They probably did not even tabulate the responses. That was not the objective.

I have no idea how they got my name.

Simple: direct mail lists for the target ZIP codes.

 

[davideduardo]

Here we go again, the typical David Eduardo response. Well this station specifically targets baby-boomers (and says so on the air) so that is an issue for them, not for me. BECAUSE they target baby boomers, they have almost NO direct competition. They have the market pretty much to themselves. Even our local classic hits station doesn't exist anymore, because Come-in-last sold them off, due to owning too many stations in Nashville after acquiring Citadel.

What you are describing is obviously Hippie Radio in Nashville. It's a rimshot that barely covers 15% of the population of the Nashville MSA with a decent signal.

The whole concept of using "hippie" and talking about "boomers" is repugnant to me... it is pandering at its silly worst. I was born in the baby boom years, but don't know a single contemporary who likes the term or uses it in self-reference.

As for advertisers, having the market to itself does not make WHPY any more salable. Unless you specifically want to reach 60-somethings, it is a valueless sales proposition. Even in 35-64, it's 17th in ratings in a market where BIA thinks there are just 16 "viable" stations...

WHPY is obviously a low budget operation. It's reported to bill around $14 thousand a month... not much to pay utilities, staff, rents, tower site, insurance, music licensing, sales commissions, maintenance, syndication fees, etc. So it is logical to expect them to be running "on the cheap" and that is where bad equipment generally meets inadequate staffing and creates disasters on the air.

 

[michael hagerty]

To put that $14,000 a month billing into perspective, Firepoint, the station I programmed in Reno (only 250,000 people--a much smaller market than Nashville is now) in the late 70s billed $100,000 or so most months...cracking a million a year.

There are probably 4 or 5 local TV news personalities in Nashville whose paychecks are bigger than WHPY's billings.

 

[firepoint525]

Here we go again, the typical David Eduardo response. Well this station specifically targets baby-boomers (and says so on the air) so that is an issue for them, not for me. BECAUSE they target baby boomers, they have almost NO direct competition. They have the market pretty much to themselves. Even our local classic hits station doesn't exist anymore, because Come-in-last sold them off, due to owning too many stations in Nashville after acquiring Citadel.

What you are describing is obviously Hippie Radio in Nashville. It's a rimshot that barely covers 15% of the population of the Nashville MSA with a decent signal.
The whole concept of using "hippie" and talking about "boomers" is repugnant to me... it is pandering at its silly worst. I was born in the baby boom years, but don't know a single contemporary who likes the term or uses it in self-reference.
As for advertisers, having the market to itself does not make WHPY any more salable. Unless you specifically want to reach 60-somethings, it is a valueless sales proposition. Even in 35-64, it's 17th in ratings in a market where BIA thinks there are just 16 "viable" stations...
WHPY is obviously a low budget operation. It's reported to bill around $14 thousand a month... not much to pay utilities, staff, rents, tower site, insurance, music licensing, sales commissions, maintenance, syndication fees, etc. So it is logical to expect them to be running "on the cheap" and that is where bad equipment generally meets inadequate staffing and creates disasters on the air.

It is, but again, it is not my baby. I can agree with you on everything except (and you didn't even mention this, so it is possible that you don't know) that their studios are on Music Row here in Nashville, ironically enough right next door to the building that houses all the Clear Channel stations in town. Hence they are probably paying among the highest rents in town, except for maybe downtown itself. I am sure that they could have found SOMEWHERE to locate where the rent would be more reasonable. :

 

[firepoint525]

To put that $14,000 a month billing into perspective, Firepoint, the station I programmed in Reno (only 250,000 people--a much smaller market than Nashville is now) in the late 70s billed $100,000 or so most months...cracking a million a year.
There are probably 4 or 5 local TV news personalities in Nashville whose paychecks are bigger than WHPY's billings.

Because of their location, they are probably paying a higher percentage of that in rent than they should. The Clear Channel operation next door houses at least five stations, so they can handle the rent.

 

[michael hagerty]

To put that $14,000 a month billing into perspective, Firepoint, the station I programmed in Reno (only 250,000 people--a much smaller market than Nashville is now) in the late 70s billed $100,000 or so most months...cracking a million a year.
There are probably 4 or 5 local TV news personalities in Nashville whose paychecks are bigger than WHPY's billings.

Because of their location, they are probably paying a higher percentage of that in rent than they should. The Clear Channel operation next door houses at least five stations, so they can handle the rent.

Outflow is irrelevant. They're grossing $168,000 a year. There are certainly radio GMs and probably more than a few radio sales people in Nashville who make more than that. It's not a sustainable, survivable number.