Howard Stern or O&A to 101.9?

[Bob1370]

"Stern was retweeting a listener a few weeks ago begging him to stay on satellite and not return to terrestrial radio. Stern's response: "I promise... No FM."

Hmmm...does that mean no radio, or just thar he's ruling out FM--but NOT ruling out an entrance into the AM talk wars? It's no secret that Imus' contract with WABC and Cumulus as a whole runs out next year, and he'll be 72 at the time...will he just head back out to the ranch and clear the way for Stern to replace him? Stern not only has the fan base, he actually has the money to become a major equity player in Cumulus right at the moment they could really use him...

 

[WNTIRadio]

By saying O&A were a regional act in the Northeast you exaggerate the reach of Stern. Add in LA and a dozen other markets, and 80-plus percent of the US could not hear him. And, even with the shares he had in some, but not all the markets he was in, about 85% or so of the populations where he did have an affiliate did not listen.

I agree completely with your assessment, but you're leaving out the publicity angle with Stern. Sure there were lots of people who didn't listen, but there was also a lot more press surrounding Stern prior to the signing at Sirius, from books to movies and appearances on late night TV. If you asked people who Howard Stern is, a lot more would know than if you asked them who O&A are... especially outside of Stern's markets. Then there was tremendous press when he signed with Sirius for the few months surrounding the deal, and again when he left terrestrial radio to go to Sirius.

O&A were a regional act. There was very little national press when they went to XM, and equally little when they went back to 92.3.

The promotional value of Stern to Sirius, now Sirius/XM was and is still almost equal to the actual radio show. O&A didn't have two bestselling books and a movie, and aren't on America's Got Talent right now either.

 

[cxracer]

I agree no Matt Pinfield, he's too old. Can't they get somebody young, under 30 years old? I would keep it a mostly music morning show. If they want comedy they can go to Z-100 or PLJ etc.

I dont agree with this crap Pinfield is great & not to old , Look at 91x san diego , They brought back Oz medina ,who is no spring chicken and has never sounded better ,GET SERIOUS

 

[FellOutBoy]

I agree no Matt Pinfield, he's too old. Can't they get somebody young, under 30 years old? I would keep it a mostly music morning show. If they want comedy they can go to Z-100 or PLJ etc.

I dont agree with this crap Pinfield is great & not to old , Look at 91x san diego , They brought back Oz medina ,who is no spring chicken and has never sounded better ,GET SERIOUS

Oz is rumored to be on his way out but yes they did bring him back but San Diego is also something like market number 16, it's not NYC. The Pinfield issue is not his age, he's just not particularly good. He's an incredible music resource I.E he knows everything but that does not/did not make him entertaining. Especially in the PPM world where his long stories which always included name dropping about his rock star "friends" seemed captivating to few more than he and his co host. His show had no ratings and they built a whole station around him thinking he's bigger than what he is. And they both failed.

 

[TTalkradio1]

An example of O and A being lazy is when they started letting Jim Norton do the interviews.

 

[WNTIRadio]

I dont agree with this crap Pinfield is great & not to old , Look at 91x san diego , They brought back Oz medina ,who is no spring chicken and has never sounded better ,GET SERIOUS

Old isn't the problem. Bad on the air is for him. Nighttime guy perhaps, but AM drive was the wrong place for him from the get go.

 

[Macker]

"Stern was retweeting a listener a few weeks ago begging him to stay on satellite and not return to terrestrial radio. Stern's response: "I promise... No FM."

Hmmm...does that mean no radio, or just thar he's ruling out FM--but NOT ruling out an entrance into the AM talk wars? It's no secret that Imus' contract with WABC and Cumulus as a whole runs out next year, and he'll be 72 at the time...will he just head back out to the ranch and clear the way for Stern to replace him? Stern not only has the fan base, he actually has the money to become a major equity player in Cumulus right at the moment they could really use him...

Are you high? If stern won't even touch FM, why would he go to AM? If he left Sirius, he would do his own thing, on iTunes or his website, and make a boatload more and have way more listeners than arguably any FM (and defintely AM) would ever deliver

 

[Macker]

it appears that many indirectly cite Opie and Anthony's failure on FM as the reason they think Stern would flop if he came back as well. Some differences that poke holes in that idea include O and A never reached critical mass that Stern did and they failed on fm partially because they came back phoning it in. They sounded un prepped and winging it relying on their rep rather than putting in work. There's no telling how Stern would do in the post PPM world because he's always defied odds in terms of ratings the bulk of his career. The evidence does indicate that he would not have the same sort of listening that he once did because PPM results look like they favor the quick break.

It is rather easy to establish a range of possibilities were Stern on FM today in NY and LA in the PPM world.

We know how much of Stern's diary listening was cume based and how much was TSL. We know he had relatively low cume, somewhere around 10th in the market. We know he had humongous TSL.

We can look at the range of cume and TSL (now called AWTE) possibilities in the PPM, and predict that the very cume-based PPM would change Howard's share rank. My personal evaluation after working for over 10 years with PPM would be that he might be 8th in NY and 10th in LA in share.

The biggest loss is the diary phenomenon where "favorite" shows would be written down as "6 AM to 10 AM" or similar, while the PPM shows many short bursts of listening, interrupted by the snooze button on the alarm, moving about the house while getting up, taking out the trash, going out to the car and first checking traffic, etc. Thus the 4 hours becomes 47 minutes or so.

The other issue is the fact that edgy personalty shows don't pick up phantom cume like more broad appeal music stations do when going into PPM. You either like Stern or you don't. So the cume would grow some, but not a lot.

A good example is the Spanish language equivalent of Stern in LA, who was #1 in the diary, edging out Stern, but who fell to about 10th in PPM for exactly the same reason I am explaining.

I think you're too caught up in the numbers. It's all about advertising revenue. Stern would deliver in that regard. Who cares about Arbitron ratings when you had someone has/had a massive loyal cult following and people hanging onto his every word.

 

[reelyreal]

Since when do advertisers buy on "cult following?"

They don't.

 

[davideduardo]

I think you're too caught up in the numbers. It's all about advertising revenue. Stern would deliver in that regard. Who cares about Arbitron ratings when you had someone has/had a massive loyal cult following and people hanging onto his every word.

Transactional buys, which are the bulk of the major station business in the top 10 markets, are based on numbers. Rating and CPP (cost per point). And a bit of "value added" by the station on occasion.

Stern, using LA as an example, got very little agency business. But when it came to bail bondsmen and paycheck loans, they had lines of clients. While that type of business pays a lower rate, those 12 minute stopsets on the Stern show brought in more money than a music format.

While there is a CPP metric on buys, the "C" does not stand for "cult."

 

[WNTIRadio]

You're forgetting what the live Stern reads can turn into, and how his "endorsement" of a product can carry a lot of weight.

See Snapple as an example. TDK tape back in the day, Sloman's Shield, etc. that all had live reads that were more a part of the show than a commercial. And a :60 could go on for 3 minutes.

Ask all those account execs how much money they made from Stern... in all the markets.

But all of this is moot. He's not going to 101.9 much less come back to FM radio after all these years.