IS TERRESTRIAL RADIO DYING IN NASHVILLE?????

[scottwmro]

Why is it with all the great retail that was created in this country during the last 100 years, the store still standing is Wal Mart? Why is that? And every store in every city looks the same. A Wal Mart in NJ looks like a Wal Mart in Texas. And they're all filled with people fighting to get inside and buy. Why is that? What happened to the small niche stores that used to cater to individuals? No one shopped there, and they went out of business.

Why? On the surface it is all about price. WallyWorld offers lower prices than small niche stores can. It seems people are saying "We don't care how well we are treated somewhere else, at the end of the day we want to get more stuff for better prices."

Dig a little deeper and you'll understand it is all about marketing and gullibility. WallyWorld has built a reputation on giving you lower prices, but in reality, I can go into a Kroger or Publix and find items that sell for less. It's all about smart shopping and knowing what to buy where. But who has time to shop when you can go to the big store with everything under one roof and get everything for, well, usually less... or at least break even depending on what you buy.

Oh, and about Publix... they've built a whole chain on providing service... obviously some consumers must want service.

I'm just fearing that in poor economic times, the small niche stores won't be able to stay open. And who'll be left but the big guys. That doesn't bode well.

Guess small niche stores will have to do something bold to stay in business, such as... such as... advertise on radio! ;D Radio, yeah, that's the ticket!

Keep in mind that Wal-Mart is NOT in the Retail business, they are in the Inventory business. There is a difference. Since Sam Walton passed away, Wal-Mart has become America's one store for one stop shopping for anything in the household. If XM/Sirus gets smart, they will push through the NAB's protest against them providing local programming. They have the technology to become local in every major city, even to the smallest towns. It's the NAB that has stopped this! This has been the NAB's fear that if XM/Sirus was allowed to do this, it would knock out terrestrial radio for good.

 

[jharmon]

NAB left the gate open and radio has left the barn as far as the future is concerned.
XM/Sirius will probably go away because of a bad business model and huge amounts of debt they cannot pay.

ATT has a new new device to go into your car with video and audio as a subscription service. Radio's latest competitor.

Cell phones play music, have gps, news, weather and traffic content. Anaother radio competitor. What is the need for anyone to listen to radio if you have it all in the palm of your hand. And you don't have to endure the babble and palaver coming out of the automobile dashboard.

The internet. We we all know the story of the internet.

No static, no bull, no need. Thank the corporate ceo's for not advancing the cuase for radio and not having a good enough lobby effort.

AM radio is gone, except for a few good stations scattered here and there. Unless you're nostalgic for the good old days, you probably never ever consider AM radio. Ask your children or grandchildren if they listen to AM radio. Ask them if they even listen to FM?

Technology was going to move forward, no matter what radio people tried to do.

By the way, Wal-Mart's business model is the envy of every other retailer in the world. People want deals, especially in this economy. Wal-Mart will expand their services, and make larger stores that will require golf carts to get around them.
They just began selling the I-Phone. They will sell more in a year that Apple could possibly hope to sell because of their distribution channels.

 

[firepoint525]

The thought has occurred to me many times over the years, that Sam Walton's original five and dime store in Bentonville, Arkansas, could not compete with what Wal-Mart has become now!

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Keep in mind that Wal-Mart is NOT in the Retail business, they are in the Inventory business. There is a difference.

Scott: Please elaborate. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Granted, Walmart has moved into more "vertical integration" than smaller retailers.... but I look at your statement and ask myself: "Aren't ALL retailers in the inventory business?"

If XM/Sirus gets smart, they will push through the NAB's protest against them providing local programming. They have the technology to become local in every major city, even to the smallest towns.

Here again. Please elaborate. "Being local, becoming local" does require some technology, but I would offer to you that technology IS NOT THE ISSUE. Who is MORE LOCAL to the smallest towns than guys like you who have a tower, a studio at the local level. Who is MORE LOCAL to the smallest towns than guys like you who go down and eat breakfast with the town's movers-and-shakers at a local 'greasy spoon'... which today may be McDonalds.

Just my two-cents worth: If the day ever comes where where a corporation with headquarters in NYC and Beijing and a transmitter out in space somewhere can outperform a media with it's tower planted in a local market run by a family planted in that local market, heaven help us all.

 

[firepoint525]

In the past 20 years, since 1989, I've seen many folks buy a small AM station, hire a full time staff, and coming in thinking they are going to set the world on fire, BEING LIVE, PAYING EXPENSIVE AIR TALENT, with a hot classic and current country music. THEN, all of the sudden, reality sets in! They are in debt up to their butts, and end up owing D.J.'s (their former live talent), owing the bank, back taxes, etc., then they are gone.       

If this is the attitude that radio station ownership and/or management takes towards their staff (and it is! :), then it's no wonder that radio is dying!     I realize that making payroll is one of the biggest expenses that almost any business has, and it must be one of the highest priorities, because employees who are not paid will not stay with you very long (and may even sue you!), but far too often, station management kills morale at the station by underpaying employees, trying to squeeze as much work out of their staff as they can for the chicken feed that they actually are paying, and then still has the absolute unmitigated GALL to bitch about what DOESN'T get done!  Well, it's always been my experience that if you don't put gas in your car, it won't run!  And if you don't pay your employees well enough (and don't at least treat them with basic human respect and decency!), then they won't stick around!  If you ain't payin', I ain't stayin'!    I've been to too many staff meetings that were little more than bitch-fests!    They pay their staff about what they would pay their local weekend part-time high schooler, but then expect him to sound as smooth and polished on the air as Rick Dees or Casey Kasem!  Not only that, but they don't believe in allowing their people any time off to rest and relax!  Six-day (or even seven-day!) workweeks, get off at midnight, but be back by six a.m., then come back and do the overnight shift the next night, then still come back the following evening!     I'm sure there are some businesses where machines aren't worked as hard as the people in radio are! :  www.krud.com  Bottom line, if you kill employee morale, it WILL show on the air!  If you're lucky, your staff won't embarrass you!

As for the rest of that paragraph, you are spot on.  Lon Sosh came to WDXN in 1993 like a house afire with big dreams much like you described above, but a year later, he had left that station with his tail between his legs!  Even I had been around long enough to know that AM radio in 1993 was not exactly going to set the world on fire.  He did everything that you said above, EXCEPT for treating his people with respect, and paying them anything like he wanted them to perform!  :

All I can say is you're right on target how this business has been in the last 20 years. Your first paragraph described what went on at 92Q in the early 90's when I was there. Staff Meetings that dragged moral down, "One on One" Air Check Meetings with the P.D., and yes, we had the famous "HOT LINE", so if the P.D. or Sam Howard heard something they didn't like, you would get chewed out!

I had to live and breath 92Q morning, noon & night, for very, very low pay!  That's why I got smart and got away from that place. I would get called in to work all the time, none of the other jocks wanted to work, due to moral in that place. Myself and Vic Clemmons had to work the 92Q Haunted House in Madison for free, just to keep our jobs! 

I caught wind that our bookkeeper was not sending out all the invoices, affidavits, etc., so the station wouldn't get paid for ads, and the billing department was in a mess, and I would get calls from clients buying ads, chewing me out about their spots, when I had nothing to do with the contract the client had between them and the station. No wonder Sam had to file Chapter 11 around 1990!  Low pay and no money coming in.

Speaking of Lon Sosh, he's trying to set the world on fire at WRUS in Russellville again. I know some things about Lon that I won't mention on this board due to it deals with his personal life. In the 90's, before Saga (Five Star) stepped in, WDXN was everything under the sun, news/talk, CHR-Dance, back to country, you named it, they tried it.  Where they are now is the best move the station has ever taken since it went on in 1966.

I actually like what Scott is doing at WMRO, simply putting the station on a satellite, rather than hiring a full staff and then pistol-whipping them into performing more work than management is actually able to pay them to do.  In other words, if you can't afford to pay your staff a decent living wage, then stop trying to lay a guilt trip on them, and make it seem like you think they aren't worth as much as you are paying them!    If you can't afford a staff, then maybe you'd be better off going on satellite.  I suppose the argument could be made that stations which hire staff are providing "jobs" in the community, but if you are going to treat your employees like less than dirt, then you'd be doing the community (and yourself) a favor by NOT bringing people into an environment of intimidation!

I am aware of what happened with Lon at 'DXN (it even made their newscast there!), but I can't go into it here because it would probably get edited from this board.  He once called a meeting in which he yelled at us for nearly two hours!    Among other things he said to us was that stations were going on satellite because they couldn't find good announcers to work for them!  But I felt like saying that for $4.50 an hour, he was never going to be able to find anyone who sounded as smooth and polished as those satellite guys! 

But he did a few things right.  He invested in some state of the art new equipment.  He updated the station sound with new jingles.  (The old ones had been in use since the '70s! )  He bought an FM station (among others) and simulcast us over it. And he moved the station into a new studio, and out of that ramshackle old building downtown that they had been in for many years.  The roof of that old building leaked, and we had to turn off the fluorescent lights every time it rained because water would come in through those lights and create an electrical hazard!    (That building was eventually torn down after the 1999 tornado.)  But he also did a few things that were head-scratchers, like putting up expensive billboards all over town, and printing bumper stickers which had a completely different logo than what was on the t-shirts, the van, and those billboards.  And the van had a basset hound painted on the side of it, which suggested that the station had a basset hound as a mascot, but we had no such dog, or any dog for that matter.  And he also went to AM stereo (a waste of time and money by 1993), and even got the station an 800 number!  Who was going to call an AM station from out of town anyway?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The thought has occurred to me many times over the years, that Sam Walton's original five and dime store in Bentonville, Arkansas, could not compete with what Wal-Mart has become now!

And Sam Walton knew that. The man who owned the five-and-dime store in my Arkansas hometown told me of the days when he would go to meetings where Sam would hassled their franchise owner to "get with the times". (By the way, Sam's original five-and-dime was across the state in Newport, Arkansas.) Sam eventually had to decide which way he would take HIS business. Not content to follow the template promoted by his five-and-dime franchise, he kept introducing new, "foreign" concepts into his store until I guess we could say "he was invited to get with the program, or get OUT of the program."

There are some things about Walmart to dislike. There are some things about Walmart to embrace and latch onto. Too often we simply judge them on what happened the last time we entered one of their stores. Walmart is like an iceberg. We actually get to see about 10% of it. Broadcasters.... including small market 'local' broadcasters could learn a lot if they put some energy into understanding that 90% of Walmart that you can only see if you dig real hard.

Broadcasters would do well to look around them and identify the "spiritual relatives" of Sam Walton who toil today in the world of broadcasting.

 

[radioboy]

Scott,

The fact that your station has no debt and low overhead has got to be a plus for you.

What the majority of station owners do not have is any peace of mind whatsoever. When you make changes
to try to make more money..then it fails..and you change again..and it fails..it is a vicious cycle.

I went to work for a 5000 watt AM daytimer in 1983 that had a mixed contemporary Christian/
preaching-teaching format. This station actually had a local market share of around 2.0. It was a fun
place to work, we did remotes, and folks all knew us.

In 1985, this station sold to a new owner. His approach was that "this is a business." He cut down the music
segments, phased out the remotes and concentrated on making money solely. As the audience shares began to drop, local agency business also decreased. His question every afternoon was "Any checks come in today?"

I left in the summer of 1988 for another gig..but that's not the end..

In 1996, this same gentleman rehired me. The station was at a 0 share, bills weren't getting paid, he had to
refinance, most of the staff was gone..you get the picture, I'm sure. He was living in another state by this time and was an absentee owner.

It took me the better part of 5 years to turn it around. However, during that time, the mortgage was paid off, a new tower was installed, a new fence was installed, the then mostly Christian-talk format was tweaked,
and things looked better. I stepped down in 2001 as manager as I was getting married and wanted a life.

The owner decided talk radio would make him a fortune, and in April 2001 changed the format.

Advertisers dropped like flies. In less than a year the station was in WORSE shape than it had been in 1996. Billing was less than $4k. Someone crashed part of the fence down, an FCC inspector saw it and levied a fine, and in April of 2002 I received yet another call.

"Would you PLEASE come back?"

Against my better judgement, I did. They had no program material left, so I brought in Southern Gospel and got it going as a temporary format..which did catch on slightly. In 2004 the station was billing about $10k.

Then the owner decided he wanted to try another format. I told him, "I wish you the best, but I can't go through all of this work again just to see it get torn up every time," and gave him a month's notice.

Now, the station is a shambles. It is leased out to a party that does not play sign-on or sign offs, legal IDs, or anything else that's not on the EWTN satellite. They've missed lease payments and he now gets about $4500 a month on a station that has the issues I just told you about, plus has no studio although it is legally supposed to have one. The FCC could make a fortune off the "challenges" this station has today.

It seems to me, once the station was purring along about 2000, with no mortgage, stable billing of $11 to $12k a month that settling in and enjoying it would have made more sense. This owner has had a heart attack and stress problems resultimng from the albatross he created for himself.

I retired after the 2004 incident and now just run an Internet country station for pleasure.

If WMRO is a joy for you Scott, I think you are right where you need to be!

 

[TheBigA]

If XM/Sirus gets smart, they will push through the NAB's protest against them providing local programming. They have the technology to become local in every major city, even to the smallest towns. It's the NAB that has stopped this! This has been the NAB's fear that if XM/Sirus was allowed to do this, it would knock out terrestrial radio for good.

That was never a serious threat. Keep in mind who runs Sirius. He doesn't have the money or manpower to go local in any city, even New York. His game plan is national programming from one studio to the entire country. The NAB rightly realized that Sirius could never be a player in local radio. They're right.

 

[TheBigA]

ATT has a new new device to go into your car with video and audio as a subscription service. Radio's latest competitor.

Yes and it was just announced who is providing the program content for them: Music Choice. That means 20 channels of jukebox music, no DJs, no personality, and no nothing. You call that competition?

 

[jharmon]

not competition, another nail in the coffin. Yes, no dj's babbling on about nothing, just music and videos. Like satellite, Ipod, mp3, etc. And they are not hurting radio right?

Whatever you think.

 

[olebud]

Yes, no dj's babbling on about nothing, just music and videos. Like satellite, Ipod, mp3, etc.

To those of you in programming this is a dumb question, but what do the 'primary' folks radiio is programming to (18-34?) want to hear. I don't qualify for whatever the demo is and won't bore you with what I do like, but what is it?

(okay, I'll bore you a little. I've ALWAYS and still do like funny mornings whether there were with the station that employed me or the competition.)

 

[olebud]

whether there were with the

WHOOPS

sorry both that....should have said whether THEY were with

 

[olebud]

never mind

 

[scottwmro]

Yes, no dj's babbling on about nothing, just music and videos. Like satellite, Ipod, mp3, etc.

To those of you in programming this is a dumb question, but what do the 'primary' folks radiio is programming to (18-34?) want to hear. I don't qualify for whatever the demo is and won't bore you with what I do like, but what is it?

(okay, I'll bore you a little. I've ALWAYS and still do like funny mornings whether there were with the station that employed me or the competition.)

Buddy,

I think the youth of today (18-30) is mostly a hip-hop crowd. I say that because everytime I'm TV channel surffing, & I pass VH-1 and MTV, it's reality shows, with a bunch of hip-hop mix in with it. I hate it. Hip-Hop is not my cup of tea, but I guess it's making money. I think the youth of today is not concerned about "Radio D.J.'s like we all in our 40's and above grew up with.

I'm in my car, it's 6:15 AM in Gallatin, some guy, about 20 years old, playing hip-hop in his car so loud, with so much bass that it "shakes" my car, and he's got on rap songs with vulgar words. The girls are listening to this stuff to! Hip Hop songs using the F. word, the M.F. word, and the B. word (downing women) in songs, or whatever, it is seems to be a bad trend our youth is following! We can sort of thank corporate for this too! They brought it on! That's why we have problems with gangs. Guys in thier 20's and above in gangs, with vulgar, ugly tattoos, gee what's the world coming too!

Somebody ask me one day if I played "Snoop Dog" on my station. I said no, and at the time I didn't know who he was! I had to do a Google search to find out who "Snoop Dog" was, and gee, is that the future of music and radio?

I'll stick with my Adult Contemporary Top 40 Hits. Snoop Dog will never have a hit on that chart!

What's your take on this Buddy?

Scott

 

[jetfli]

I think the youth of today (18-30) is mostly a hip-hop crowd. I say that because everytime I'm TV channel surffing, & I pass VH-1 and MTV, it's reality shows, with a bunch of hip-hop mix in with it. I hate it.

That may be true with some 18-30 year-olds today, but there are so many who aren't interested in it or just pay it only a passing notice. You'd be surprised how big alternative, classic rock, and oldies are with this group.

The Marketing gurus at MTV Networks, including MTV and VH-1, do their research as any other company would with focus groups, etc. But it has been documented that the purpose of their research is not to find out what their audience likes and what interests their viewers in order to program their channels with content the audience wants, but to learn how to get their target market to watch what MTV Networks wants to program. So when you see certain programming on MTV and VH-1 -- don't assume it's what 18-30 year-olds like -- it's what MTV Networks and their advertisers want them to watch!

 

[Tibbs4]

ATT has a new new device to go into your car with video and audio as a subscription service. Radio's latest competitor.

Yes and it was just announced who is providing the program content for them: Music Choice. That means 20 channels of jukebox music, no DJs, no personality, and no nothing. You call that competition?

Sounds just like radio to me...

 

[romer979fm]

Sounds just like radio to me...

I'd argue with you, but I can't figure out how to voice-track my response

 

[olebud]

I'd argue with you, but I can't figure out how to voice-track my response

Just like you always do it....very tight with no dead air :

 

[scottwmro]

ATT has a new new device to go into your car with video and audio as a subscription service. Radio's latest competitor.

Yes and it was just announced who is providing the program content for them: Music Choice. That means 20 channels of jukebox music, no DJs, no personality, and no nothing. You call that competition?

Sounds just like radio to me...

I've said this and I've said it before, this is the trend that people want. Only in emergencies (i.e. a tornado just hit their town) will they tune to a "local" station for local information. The Demo, 16-30, will not listen to radio at all. It's going that way for people that are in the 30-60 demo as well. Like I said, I see too many XM/Sirus receivers in people's cars, and they can take them, in their office, or home and listen to it as well. If AT&T jumps in, so will other cell companies.

One person (I want say who he is) got mad it me because I said AM Radio is dead. Well, it's true, and FM is falling fast! It does no good to complain and argue with me. I see it on the streets everyday. I'm not stuck in my car, tuned to my little AM station. I'm paying attention to the outside world and to what the youth (under 25) is doing. Now, I'm not saying that they rule the world, and the rest of us have one foot in the grave. All I'm saying is we have to let go of the past. It's o.k. to visit the past, and the great memories, but we can't keep on living it and make the young adults under 25, live it.

We as humans tend to "hang on" to what we grew up with and hate change, especially when it comes to radio, TV, and even newspapers. I hate the way Gallatin's News Examiner looks now, cheap! More and more changes are to come on the fast track. I plan on getting an iphone in March. Before you know it, we will be able to hear radio stations on our cell phones. You won't see any cell phone giving one an option to listen to an AM station over it. The manufactures will even look over the local market FM's as well. I not trying to argue with anybody, and I'm not saying I'm right. That's just the way I see it for now, but only time will tell.

 

[Tibbs4]

I'd argue with you, but I can't figure out how to voice-track my response

Just like you always do it....very tight with no dead air :

Buddy, whose kissing up now??? We all know Romer is still using reel-to-reel.