John Hogan lies again!

[davideduardo]

Look, I'd no intention of getting into a tit-for-tat on whether an 'i' is dotted or a 't' crossed when examples are given only to advance a larger discussion. Here's the bottom line: There are stations that offer nothing more than duplication. I have heard them --even within the same market.

It's quite apparent that you have trouble in discusssions where a command of radio industry facts and listener behavior is involved.

If you are talking about format duplication, then I suggest you take to heart what BigA has posted. At no time have there been more formats and variants. I've mentioned before that Cleveland Ohio, in the late 50's and early 60's, when the market was in the top 15, had 3 formats on it's 8 stations. 2 r&b, 3 MOR, 3 Top 40, with only slight differences between each station in a type. Today, the market has at least 20 viable stations with different formats.

If you are talking about the same programs being on stations relatively close to each other, then you should know that nearly all metro area listening to AM (where most of the syndicated shows you refer to are placed) is within the 10 mV/m contour daytime, and inside the generally even smaller interference free contour at night. Reviews of millions of radio listening diaries and their plotting on maps and compared to coverage contours has shown this to be universally so.

So, you may find me argumentative. I simply find no facts to support either your contention of local format duplication or to support your contention that a show does not have to be on in every market for listeners in every market to find a station to hear them on. Format counts and measured listening invalidate both views of duplication.

I don't see the point in running them. Advancing technologies may hasten that. I want to know what people think those stations can offer to provide an alternative. I posed the question to you in particular because you're a knowledgable individual, but you seem to care more that the oboe missed a note in the 42nd measure of the second movement rather than discussing the entire symphony. That is, quite simply, unreasonable.

My point is that there are no "spare stations" to put experimental formats on.

First, the recognized authority on valuations and radio economics says that there are, on average, less than 3 viable AM stations per market in each of the top 100 US markets. And with talk and sports being still-viable formats in these cases, there is no reason for a viable station to try anything different. The remainder of the stations do not cover their markets day and night, and can not prove a format one way or another as they are not competitive.

Second, station operators with underperforming stations are constantly doing a type of research called a format seaarch looking for options. Were and if there are any out there, they will be developed.

And, third, radio advertising is not sold based on some vague standard of quality. This is in part because each person's concept of quality is different and because, mostly, advertisers buy audience exposure by pairs of ears, not by intangibles. Audience delivery determines revenue in radio, newspapers, magazines, even billboards.

 

[adma]

If Rush had been a liberal, we'd have nothing but liberal talkers blathering on the air because everyone would've been thinking, "We have to duplicate that." Of course, they missed the much larger point. Rush isn't successful because of his politics; he's successful because he is a superb broadcaster. But I think he can be beaten; anyone can be beaten. And certainly his many clones could be beaten with less effort.

But maybe you're missing a different kind of point, somewhat related to politics and in its turn not unrelated to matters of "taste": that is, once we entered the era of Rush becoming the paradigm of the "superb broadcaster", it became a negative epiphany for many sensible observers re the radio industry, including those who in a past age might have been attracted to it, creatively speaking. This incarnation of "superb" turned out to be a taint, IOW.

Perhaps it's because of this Rush = superb broadcaster party line, on top of the whole new media/new technology/new consumption habit thing, that helps explain the bigger, broader mess the industry's in. Talent (generically speaking, as opposed to radio-specific) isn't necessarily drawn to perceived ugliness, you know.