KYW: Sad State of Local Radio

[imhomerjay]

The issue is not whether KYW or any other station is live at the moment. It's whether some warm body is monitoring what is happening and whether the information on the air is current and still accurate. If KYW is not willing to invest the resources in being a 24/7 news operation, maybe they should start running some talk shows.

Which would have little practical impact. They’re not going, in anything approximating the near term, to abandon the 21 (or whatever it is) hours a day they’re live. Run a talk show at 2 in the morning, run a rebroadcast of news. You have a small audience at that hour to begin with, a smaller sample of which is listening to radio, and given the realities of daily life, it’s not as if those people were highly likely to be listening at 3 in the afternoon. Fine, the program was taped a bit earlier, but somehow that small audience will likely survive with news that doesn’t happen to be coming from the mouth of someone at that very nanosecond.

I have caught them getting lazy - obviously lazy. Like when they are running the exact same material on my way to work as I heard on my way home the day before.

By nature, the folks on boards like this are unlikely to be average listeners who spend that much time overanalyzing when, exactly, they hear a segment before—if they did hear it in the first place.

Don't tell people to tune in two, three, four times a day and not give them something new and different each time.

First of all, it’s just marketing. You can tell them to listen a few times, you can tell them to weld the “dial” to that spot and never stop listening. It’s just a catch phrase.

That said, some repeated elements does not equate to every single thing being the same. Some stories are still topical two, four, six, eight or 12 hours later. Ignoring them because someone who MIGHT have tuned in 3 hours ago and would

 

[MattParker]

The issue is not whether KYW or any other station is live at the moment. It's whether some warm body is monitoring what is happening and whether the information on the air is current and still accurate. If KYW is not willing to invest the resources in being a 24/7 news operation, maybe they should start running some talk shows.

Which would have little practical impact. They’re not going, in anything approximating the near term, to abandon the 21 (or whatever it is) hours a day they’re live. Run a talk show at 2 in the morning, run a rebroadcast of news. You have a small audience at that hour to begin with, a smaller sample of which is listening to radio, and given the realities of daily life, it’s not as if those people were highly likely to be listening at 3 in the afternoon. Fine, the program was taped a bit earlier, but somehow that small audience will likely survive with news that doesn’t happen to be coming from the mouth of someone at that very nanosecond.

I have caught them getting lazy - obviously lazy. Like when they are running the exact same material on my way to work as I heard on my way home the day before.

By nature, the folks on boards like this are unlikely to be average listeners who spend that much time overanalyzing when, exactly, they hear a segment before—if they did hear it in the first place.

Don't tell people to tune in two, three, four times a day and not give them something new and different each time.

First of all, it’s just marketing. You can tell them to listen a few times, you can tell them to weld the “dial” to that spot and never stop listening. It’s just a catch phrase.

That said, some repeated elements does not equate to every single thing being the same. Some stories are still topical two, four, six, eight or 12 hours later. Ignoring them because someone who MIGHT have tuned in 3 hours ago and would

The problem with marketing phrases is people expect you to live up to them. You say "just marketing." They say "credibility." It may be a little thing but if people can't believe that little things, they won't believe the big things.

And they are not just reporting the same story - they are running the same story (sometimes 18 hours later), the exact same piece. They have access to feeds from three networks but they keep repeating the same report. No updating. No re-working or re-writing. No finding a different sound bite. No taking a piece from CNN instead of the one from CBS.

People come on this board and talk about what somebody is never going to do. Never seems to arrive quickly. "WPHT will never drop their syndicated talk shows." Right now there is a report circulating on going to talk shows outside of 5am to 7pm Monday through Friday and how that would impact TSL. And I bet some people at CBS would just love to get Bohannon cleared in Philly. Maybe another Westwood show in the evening and some best of shows on weekends.

 

[imhomerjay]

All "listen 2, 3, 4 times a day" means is just that. There's not a statement that everything will be different the second, third or fourth time...so what is there to live up to precisely? That they'll have news of some kind. And once more, the non hyper critical radio geeks aren't going to spend precious time analyzing whether some taped report they MIGHT hear again is identical to one from the day before.

 

[TheBigA]

And they are not just reporting the same story - they are running the same story (sometimes 18 hours later), the exact same piece. They have access to feeds from three networks but they keep repeating the same report. No updating. No re-working or re-writing. No finding a different sound bite.

I have no problem with that. A good local piece is worth airing a few times. You invest several hours of work from a reporter, it deserves more than one airing.

Just like a hit song on music radio. Heavy rotation in CHR is 6 spins a day. Same song. No one seems to mind.

 

[MattParker]

It's amazing the lengths some people go to make excuses for sub-standard effort and sub-standard performance. And how some people expect the listening public to buy those excuses.

Fact is a news report is not a song. People are told to keep tuning because something is always happening. People, who as pointed out in another post are almost as smart as rats going after cheese in maze, who tune in and hear exactly the same thing - word for word - they heard the last time are going to conclude they don't need to tune in that much. People who tune in because something important to them has happened or is happening and don't hear it are going to conclude the station misses lots they don't know about.

Listeners aren't interested in excuses. I wonder how interested some of you are in excuses (and there are always excuses) when you get bad service in a restaurant, when the shop doesn't fix your car right or when the plumber doesn't show up to fix your leak.

 

[TheBigA]

It's amazing the lengths some people go to make excuses for sub-standard effort and sub-standard performance.

No excuses. Basic Radio 101.

Most people don't listen to radio, especially news radio, all day. They listen in short chunks. That's where the idea of "You give us 22 minutes, we give you the world" came from. Except now they have to do it in less time.

So it's very likely that only a fraction of your audience heard a particular report the first time it aired.

NBC-TV built a re-run campaign around this concept: "If you missed it the first time, it's new to you!"

And it's true. A feature report, one that's basically undated, can run several times during the day, and will reach more people for the first time that way. Same logic behind repetion of commercials, school closings, and other useful undated information.

 

[MattParker]

It's amazing the lengths some people go to make excuses for sub-standard effort and sub-standard performance.

No excuses. Basic Radio 101.

Most people don't listen to radio, especially news radio, all day. They listen in short chunks. That's where the idea of "You give us 22 minutes, we give you the world" came from. Except now they have to do it in less time.

So it's very likely that only a fraction of your audience heard a particular report the first time it aired.

NBC-TV built a re-run campaign around this concept: "If you missed it the first time, it's new to you!"

And it's true. A feature report, one that's basically undated, can run several times during the day, and will reach more people for the first time that way. Same logic behind repetion of commercials, school closings, and other useful undated information.

You must have gotten a D in radio 101. But you do help illustrate the mind-set that makes radio decreasingly relevant and interesting to listeners.

Repetition in commercials is desirable because a commercial doesn't typically start to register until a person has heard it five times. Commercials, unlike news, are not expected to be current and timely. All this is covered in communication research 101.

School closings and other "useful information" (whether school closings are still "useful" is a highly debatable point) and stories are repeated from one news cycle to the next. If you keep listening, you hear the story again. That's how you supposedly know you've heard the whole presentation.

If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed the issue was not about people listening all day - every day. It's about people coming back two-three-four times a day - six, eight, sixteen hours later - and hearing the exact same report - word for word, sound bite for sound bite. Not some interesting feature. Just a run of the mill news story. They have three networks feeding covering the same stories and they can't even be bothered to run alternate versions - or updated versions (the networks do update or at least produce new versions of stories running all day).

Interesting that you quote NBC promos - a network that has run itself into the ground during the past 20 years through various attempts to be cheap. Cheap is probably one of the historically most effective ways for an industry to destroy its customer base. Marketing 101.

 

[gakski]

My point is very simple. The in-progress storm was a big local news story not covered live by the area's #1 all-news station for several hours.

 

[imhomerjay]

Yes, and the three people at that hour missed out on hearing "it's snowing.". Oh, the humanity of that tragic loss one night at 3 in the morning.

TheBigA would receive a far better grade in the 101 class than many of those who can't, or won't, look at the reality of business today. But let the evidence sleek for itself--still, consistently, among the highest rated of its peers means they're running their business quite well.

 

[TheBigA]

My point is very simple. The in-progress storm was a big local news story not covered live by the area's #1 all-news station for several hours.

And my point is it didn't matter because most people were asleep and the real news didn't begin until the rush hour.

 

[TheBigA]

You must have gotten a D in radio 101. But you do help illustrate the mind-set that makes radio decreasingly relevant and interesting to listeners.

We're talking about one of the most listened-to radio stations in Philadelphia. So you're wrong.

 

[DonTheTrucker]

My point is very simple. The in-progress storm was a big local news story not covered live by the area's #1 all-news station for several hours.

And the point that several others are making is that in a city of 2 million, you're probably the only person that noticed.

Radio is not a jobs program. I'm sure whomever is in charge at KYW looked at the numbers, and figured it wasn't worth the extra expense to have someone in there for those 3 hours.

 

[DToTheJ]

Come on Rollo-Smokes, who made you king of the Radio Info discussion boards?

Actually, I think that might be me... check out my post count!

How many times in the pre-recorded news segments did anchors tell listeners to "log onto kyw1060.com cbsphilly.com for more information on the snowstorm"?

 

[MattParker]

Come on Rollo-Smokes, who made you king of the Radio Info discussion boards?

Actually, I think that might be me... check out my post count!

Quantity over quality.

 

[Seltzer]

When your brand is built on "timely information" then you should be delivering kit 24/7. KYW is certainly dropping the ball here.

 

[imhomerjay]

The business is the bottom line. Invest the resources you have without breaking the bank, and do it where it does the most good for the balance sheet. If a careful business analysis says 3 am isn't that time--and it's quite logical it wouldn't be--then focus it where you can. Resources are finite, despite the collective "wisdom" of self-annointed experts who can't accept that times change, forcing changes in how business is done.

 

[MattParker]

What is illustrated in this thread is not unique to radio as a business. It does reflect how American business has been systematically undermining itself. American business obsesses about quarterly numbers. Elsewhere business is committed to quality and customer satisfaction. The Chevrolet division of General Motors once controlled 55 per cent of the US car market. They decided they could save money by cutting quality. Asian manufacturers took a different path. The American electronics industry is dead for the same reason.

Cut quality. Lose customers (or listeners). Somebody posts he is disappointed with KYW's performance on an issue to him (apparently speaking as a listener). Some others (apparently speaking for the industry) say tough noogies. A business focused on itself and not its customer doesn't last long. Sounds like they don't teach Demming in radio 101.

I fail to understand why some here keep defending the bean counters now running radio and their short-sighted mentalities. What they are doing means fewer jobs, fewer listeners, fewer ad bucks - and ultimately, no future for radio.

Somethings are more important that a quarterly balance sheet. Like the future.

 

[TheBigA]

Somethings are more important that a quarterly balance sheet. Like the future.

At the end of the day, someone has to pay for it. You're against gov't subsidy. So you get what you pay for.

In the meantime, none of this has affected KYW's ratings and they haven't lost listeners. Quit speaking in generalities and deal with the specific facts.

Also:

"The Asians took a different path," and that brought us to Toyota, who did the exact same thing.

 

[DonTheTrucker]

Somethings are more important that a quarterly balance sheet. Like the future.

I hate to break it to you, but the future isn't in news radio stations reading copy 3 times an hour 24 hours a day.

KYW has someone there 21 hours a day. That's 21 more than a lot of stations.

 

[MattParker]

In the meantime, none of this has affected KYW's ratings and they haven't lost listeners. Quit speaking in generalities and deal with the specific facts.

Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. It doesn't matter what the slice is when the pie keeps shrinking. Revenue has declined. Cume has declined. Demographics have aged.

Radio is a business where the customer is always wrong. And you wonder why listeners have turned away from radio.

For the record, I am not against pre-recorded segments in off-hours in principle. But what we have been talking about here is a major snow fall in a snow obsessed market and the likelihood of increased TSL and cume. On a normal night, if they are recording segments, nobody knows or cares. On this night, they should have been live.