KIIS HD2 Down

[davideduardo]

Imagine that. Treating all listeners as equal instead of putting them into arbitrary demo boxes. Naturally this was presented as a negative.

Stations don't have "demo boxes". Advertisers do.

So success and survival require that commercial stations attempt to appeal to the ages and other criteria that advertisers use to buy ads.

That means picking a hopefully large subset of the public advertisers want to reach and doing a good job attracting them.

Some people like country, some like hip hop. Generally, people who like certain music styles do not care for or even hate other music styles. So stations can't treat all listeners as equal... because they aren't equal.

 

[TheBigA]

Seattle may be the largest market to still have music HD2 signals owned by IHeart

Not sure about that. All of iHeart's DC FM stations have HD-1 and HD-2 signals with various music formats.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

Stations don't have "demo boxes". Advertisers do.

So success and survival require that commercial stations attempt to appeal to the ages and other criteria that advertisers use to buy ads.

That means picking a hopefully large subset of the public advertisers want to reach and doing a good job attracting them.

Some people like country, some like hip hop. Generally, people who like certain music styles do not care for or even hate other music styles. So stations can't treat all listeners as equal... because they aren't equal.

As I am sure you can tell, the original line was just an off-handed comment, meant to convey the difference between the way things ought to be (in a perfect world, which we can all agree does not exist) and the way things actually are. But since both you and BigA have taken the thought to its ridiculous extreme (reductio ad absurdum), I will indulge.

I didn't say all listeners to radio are automotons and any format will suffice since there are no differences. I said wouldn't it be nice if out of all of the listeners to a given station, they were not subdivided into race, age, and gender boxes to satisfy advertiser buyers. When you get right down to it, what your advertisers are asking the industry to do is engage in racism, genderism, and ageism and sell the related product to them. The industry happily obliges. Again, I am not saying doing these things is not appropriate or necessary (they are, no argument here) I am just saying wouldn't it be nice if all of the listeners to a given radio station were valued the same because in reality we all know they are not.

 

[TheBigA]

I am just saying wouldn't it be nice if all of the listeners to a given radio station were valued the same because in reality we all know they are not.

All members are valued the same at KPCC and KCRW, regardless of age or gender. There is no reason why a community group hasn't done for boomers what EMF has done for evangelicals. All it takes is someone to make the first move. In LA, Stevie Wonder owns a radio station. Is he the only rich musician in LA?

 

[luperm]

As I am sure you can tell, the original line was just an off-handed comment, meant to convey the difference between the way things ought to be (in a perfect world, which we can all agree does not exist) and the way things actually are. But since both you and BigA have taken the thought to its ridiculous extreme (reductio ad absurdum), I will indulge.

I didn't say all listeners to radio are automotons and any format will suffice since there are no differences. I said wouldn't it be nice if out of all of the listeners to a given station, they were not subdivided into race, age, and gender boxes to satisfy advertiser buyers. When you get right down to it, what your advertisers are asking the industry to do is engage in racism, genderism, and ageism and sell the related product to them. The industry happily obliges. Again, I am not saying doing these things is not appropriate or necessary (they are, no argument here) I am just saying wouldn't it be nice if all of the listeners to a given radio station were valued the same because in reality we all know they are not.

One point that your argument lacks is to address who then would pay the bills? Also, is it really racism or ageism? For that to be the case, you'd need to show evidence that all ages, races, income brackets and genders buy the same things and spend their money in the same way. If that was the case, you'd possibly have a point...but we all know that's not the case.

 

[davideduardo]

I didn't say all listeners to radio are automotons and any format will suffice since there are no differences. I said wouldn't it be nice if out of all of the listeners to a given station, they were not subdivided into race, age, and gender boxes to satisfy advertiser buyers. When you get right down to it, what your advertisers are asking the industry to do is engage in racism, genderism, and ageism and sell the related product to them. The industry happily obliges. Again, I am not saying doing these things is not appropriate or necessary (they are, no argument here) I am just saying wouldn't it be nice if all of the listeners to a given radio station were valued the same because in reality we all know they are not.

Advertisers target specific products to specific market segments.

A perfect example is the cosmetics industry where products are targeted by age, skin color and culture. And, of course, gender. The reasons are more than obvious.

"Family Vans" appeal to a different market segment than subcompacts. In fact, every major brand targets different age groups and lifestyles as well as urban / suburban / rural differences.

This shows the five target groups for Subaru vehicles: https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...-came-to-be-seen-as-cars-for-lesbians/488042/

The five groups are: teachers and educators, health-care professionals, IT professionals, outdoorsy types and Lesbians.

Because of factors like age, gender, ethnicity, heritage culture, environment and education, it's impossible to have any commonality in radio programming and as the nation becomes more diverse it appears that those distinctions are becoming divisions and polarizations.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

One point that your argument lacks is to address who then would pay the bills?

I thought I was making it pretty clear that I was not advancing an argument, just making an observation.