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Is there ANY hope for radio
- Thread starter jamesh
- Start date
TheBigA said:
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean your have to be the message board bully, that being said
some that is SOME of your posts make you seem like one of those "You kids get off my lawn" guys...but your lawn looks like crappy as anyone else's anyway...it's just grass...chill.
I don't know the background of every one in this thread but I expect I'm not the only one that is a "suit" or former suit and others have never had that role. I imagine myself sitting in the CEO chair at a radio consolidator company figuring out my next move. I don't mean in grand philosophical terms, but what my plan is going forward and what am I going to do today to make great radio. You might think that making great radio is separate from the financial aspects of running the company but I don't see how you can separate them.Great radio in a market economy is what the market pays for it, not what we think it's worth. You don't have to like capitalism but you need to recognize that's the environment we're in. I understand that the cost of running the BBC is built into the cost of consumer electronics. Some people can wish we'd do that in the U.S. but current reality is different.
You know what my plan was when I was running radio stations for a consolidator? My plan was to get the hell out of there and retire. So no, I'm not inclined to point fingers at guys trying to do a job I couldn't figure out myself.
You know what my plan was when I was running radio stations for a consolidator? My plan was to get the hell out of there and retire. So no, I'm not inclined to point fingers at guys trying to do a job I couldn't figure out myself.
But "suits" never listen to the listeners or even care what they think, therein lies the problem.
I mean you say you want to do great radio but it's clear from your post that you were just about the money too, not what the listener liked. You said you were about that fat check retirement. Yeah...pretty much explains it. Sorry not trying to be mean but its the truth.
But the question remains, what did you really do for the listener?
S
Scooter Lesley
Guest
The full skinny: I have 34+ years of experience in both Radio & TV.
I have worked at #1 stations, had my own double-digit ratings, and made very very good money. Disagree with me, but when it comes to Broadcasting,...I Ain't Guessing At Anything!
Scooter Lesley.
I have worked at #1 stations, had my own double-digit ratings, and made very very good money. Disagree with me, but when it comes to Broadcasting,...I Ain't Guessing At Anything!
Scooter Lesley.
Interesting that you should mention money. I'm interested in Clemsonbloke's background because he said I look like I'm "all about the money" and yet I never mentioned my money, only said that the financial aspects of running a radio station are inseparable from the programming of it.Scooter Lesley said:
As a manager, I had to pay my employees and none of them accepted barter so if I didn't have any money, I wouldn't have any air talent. Were they "all about the money"? No, they needed to eat and so did I and so do investors.
What I see on this board has less to do with broadcasting than it does with larger issues having to do with attitudes about money and about capitalism. That's fine, people can disagree openly about what are really political issues. It's just interesting to me to see how people view "corporate radio". I've been to a bunch of corporations and all I saw was people. A corporation is just a legal distinction created by lawyers that limits personal risk and has tax consequences.
I may not have always liked working for the corporate owners of radio stations with their insistence that we turn a profit and give them a return on their investment but no one put a gun to my head. Why do people who work for radio consolidators and complain about it stay? Probably because they believe they have no choice. But they could put together their own business plan, throw in their own money and pitch their ideas to investors. But then they couldn't complain about suits any more, they'd BE one.
Good for you. I never did because I wasn't enjoying the radio business enough to go all in. For me, it was the right decision. Had I done it when I first considered it, I would have made a ton of money because in the years that followed, an idiot could make money owning radio stations and a lot of idiots did. It sure isn't that way any more!TheBigA said:
Now I'm older and investing in my own business, at levels that suit my age and risk tolerance.
It's not political, it's arithmetic. When you lose 424 million dollars in a year after multiple waves of layoffs and your debt load rises to near 21 billion you are making decisions based on survival instead of growth. These "suits" or "corporations" or "people" that have put radio in this position are now making programming decisions strickly based on debt load which makes the ship sink faster-the product is getting worse. They pretend cutbacks are "best practices" when it's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Overpaid for properties. Over borrowed from the banks. An app won't save them.
I mean streaming, the best at that is Pandora. 200 million subs and only worth about 2.5 billion-and they are the most successful at this. Others are not close. So unless CC can make an app worth 21 billion or more than 8x Pandora's worth the ship will go down. And yes that means bankruptcy. It's the only financially viable alternative.
And your 290 million that tune in every week are losing to the new number one station in many major markets now-that station is Pandora.
I mean streaming, the best at that is Pandora. 200 million subs and only worth about 2.5 billion-and they are the most successful at this. Others are not close. So unless CC can make an app worth 21 billion or more than 8x Pandora's worth the ship will go down. And yes that means bankruptcy. It's the only financially viable alternative.
And your 290 million that tune in every week are losing to the new number one station in many major markets now-that station is Pandora.
jamesh said:
How many employees does it take to run a computerized stream service? Not as many as CC employees.
If CC started it's business ten years ago instead of 40 years ago, they never would have employed as many people, or purchased as many towers and transmitters. In other words, if they knew then what they know now, I'm sure it would have been different. They are adapting. They are slowing letting go of the staff they once needed to bring them more on par with streaming services. Why? Because that's what the business today will support. The ad rates and revenues aren't what they were 15 years ago, so staffing can't be what it was then. CC has a competitor to Pandora, and it's doing very well. So does CBS. These companies know that's where the future lies. It's a process. When the automobile was invented, it took a while to convert all the blacksmith shops into gas stations. That's what's going on in radio right now. As you say, Pandora has a lot of subscribers, and a lot of investors sunk billions into them. But they've yet to turn a profit, and their music royalty costs increase geometrically as their subscriber base grows. Using the same math, they too could be bankrupt soon. As you said, it's simple arithmetic
Now who's the bully?jamesh said:
Your non-political rant has a decidedly political tone to it.
And I don't think I'm the first to point out that the people who set these events in motion have moved on. The people running these companies are the cleanup crew.
But what I notice most is that so many people who get on anti-corporation tirades are so short on answers. Okay, their debt is high. You're the new CEO. What do you do?
What to do... What to do...
The stigma of bankruptcy being diminished in recent times, the smart thing to do is declare it immediately!
On a larger scale what must happen is that debt must be universally diminshed at apportioned rates tied to economic "retraction".
That's right, your home mortgage gets dialed down, your car debt, and your credit card levels.
The financiers themselves must accept the same diminished returns as everyone else.
Ahh, but who hurts? Everyone.
But it saddles more blame upon those who were "overexuberant".
They should be sharing in the blame and pain in some way.
Finance has engineered advantages and always looked for arbitrage and other convenient schemes to create winners and losers.
It's always a "more for me" is better game and we eventually end up competing against ourselves now that
Wall St. is more important than Main St.
When you're making your money in corporate investments you are also driving those corporations to find a better
value than paying you to do whatever it is you do.
It's a mind game we all put on ourselves , and it universally gets in the way of any kind of business
we'd really like to be employed at.
At one end of the scale is an obscene congregation of wealth, at the other, extreme exploitation and slavery.
Finance (and corporations) make their living ensuring that this separation is maintained, and stretched as thin
as possible in the middle.
So do we prefer a corporate shelter over the risks of private proprietors?
Most people have a conscience, something not required of corporations.
This makes a difference in how any entity behaves, the conscience thing.
The stigma of bankruptcy being diminished in recent times, the smart thing to do is declare it immediately!
On a larger scale what must happen is that debt must be universally diminshed at apportioned rates tied to economic "retraction".
That's right, your home mortgage gets dialed down, your car debt, and your credit card levels.
The financiers themselves must accept the same diminished returns as everyone else.
Ahh, but who hurts? Everyone.
But it saddles more blame upon those who were "overexuberant".
They should be sharing in the blame and pain in some way.
Finance has engineered advantages and always looked for arbitrage and other convenient schemes to create winners and losers.
It's always a "more for me" is better game and we eventually end up competing against ourselves now that
Wall St. is more important than Main St.
When you're making your money in corporate investments you are also driving those corporations to find a better
value than paying you to do whatever it is you do.
It's a mind game we all put on ourselves , and it universally gets in the way of any kind of business
we'd really like to be employed at.
At one end of the scale is an obscene congregation of wealth, at the other, extreme exploitation and slavery.
Finance (and corporations) make their living ensuring that this separation is maintained, and stretched as thin
as possible in the middle.
So do we prefer a corporate shelter over the risks of private proprietors?
Most people have a conscience, something not required of corporations.
This makes a difference in how any entity behaves, the conscience thing.
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