They listen to both. If you look at streaming ratings from Triton Digital, you will see that a huge percentage of listening is to both streams of individual companies such as CBS and Cumulus as well as aggregators such as iHeart Radio.
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LA Times article on the struggles of AM Radio
- Thread starter Wimmmex
- Start date
They listen to both. If you look at streaming ratings from Triton Digital, you will see that a huge percentage of listening is to both streams of individual companies such as CBS and Cumulus as well as aggregators such as iHeart Radio.
Go ahead....quote the facts...chapter and verse. I've sat in enough research presentations.
Then be my guest...quote some "facts" (and their sources).
Or maybe you could just explain what you meant by this quote:
Maybe I misunderstood your point.
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That's just one service, though, and none of them measure ALL streaming. You'd have to aggregate them all, and I guarantee you that, while individual and aggregate streams provided by the broadcast companies do attract their share of listeners, the balance is against them.
You don't have an Internet connection? Access to Google? The ability to, God forbid, do the research yourself? I'm not here to coddle you, I'm here to encourage you to think. I'll tell you the same thing my parents told me when I was a kid: look it up.
What Josh and I are trying to say is that you can't look at the puny streaming numbers in the Nielsen Audio reports as an indication of how much "traditional" stations are being listened to via streaming.
The PPM requires a device to be inserted into the headphone jack of a phone or mobile device and then connected to the PPM for streaming to be measured if listened to via earbuds or earphones. We know that nobody will do that. Nobody.
So we have to look at numbers like Triton and other streaming measurements that show concurrent sessions (equivalent of AQH) and session starts (remotely equatable to daily cume) and try to equate them to traditional cume and share radio ratings.
When you do this, you find that streamed listening is considerable and growing, while OTA listening is declining.
More important is the need to further enhance stream listening. Taking 5 top 10 markets, the average amount of total OTA radio listening per person in a week in August was 10 hours. In the year 2000, the average was between 20 and 22 hours per person. OTA listening is declining, as people prefer to stream. Only the stations that make the transition will survive.
Triton does give us the total for Pandora and the other major pure plays. It also gives us the totals for the affiliated radio groups. It shows the dimension of streaming listening to traditional broadcasters, and it looks very competitive with the pure plays..
You're trying to make a point....without anything to back it up. I've sat in enough research presentations to have a handle of the facts. I've already "looked it up". I'm waiting for something to back up your position.
Or at least explain your:
"People already HAVE upgraded. It's called the Internet."
This isn't a research presentation, it's a lesson in how the media world works. I'm the teacher, you're the student. I'm not here to give you all the answers; some of them you're going to have to find for yourself. I'll grade you when you turn in your work.
Yea, and the coming of TV was supposedly going to kill the movies, starting in the 1950's, and kill radio, in general. It did not happen.
Granted, both have changed and adapted significantly, in order to survive. Is AM dead? Not in the slightest, as far as we are concerned.
Our parent company, MultiCultural Radio, is one of the largest operators of AM's exclusively (well, one FM...) in the country. Both of our stations
are also available on the internet, 24/7. We program to a foreign language audience. It is definitely a niche audience - the standard industry
techniques of programming, sales, and audience measurement do not really apply to us, and our mission. A number of ideas are being proposed
to help AM radio. Certainly, better designed receivers would help greatly. Just look at what happened to telephones: old Western Electric Ma Bell
phones were far superior to cheapo $5 phones you could buy at Walmart! I did not even discover FM until I was 14 years old (back in the day).
It was Top 30 on WRKO back then - my little transistor radio pressed to my ear. Yea, there are many more options available now. I occasionally
listen to internet audio streams. I also listen to CD's in my car, at home, etc. But radio is still prominent in my listening mix -- FM, and AM as well...
Granted, both have changed and adapted significantly, in order to survive. Is AM dead? Not in the slightest, as far as we are concerned.
Our parent company, MultiCultural Radio, is one of the largest operators of AM's exclusively (well, one FM...) in the country. Both of our stations
are also available on the internet, 24/7. We program to a foreign language audience. It is definitely a niche audience - the standard industry
techniques of programming, sales, and audience measurement do not really apply to us, and our mission. A number of ideas are being proposed
to help AM radio. Certainly, better designed receivers would help greatly. Just look at what happened to telephones: old Western Electric Ma Bell
phones were far superior to cheapo $5 phones you could buy at Walmart! I did not even discover FM until I was 14 years old (back in the day).
It was Top 30 on WRKO back then - my little transistor radio pressed to my ear. Yea, there are many more options available now. I occasionally
listen to internet audio streams. I also listen to CD's in my car, at home, etc. But radio is still prominent in my listening mix -- FM, and AM as well...
But wouldn't you and all the other GMs Multicultural has in place at its AMs sacrifice your first-born to be on FM, but know they never will be without a whole lot more money than leased-time Haitian preaching will ever bring in?
Not so much, no. The economics for FM stations for us, would not work. We would have to charge much more money per hour than the
marketplace would be able to support. An FM license in the Boston area, even if one was available, would be cost prohibitive. As the value
of AM stations has dropped, it becomes more affordable to buy them. Remember - all the cost of a license gives you, is the license itself -
a piece of paper. It does not include tower space, transmitters, engineering, office/studio space, staff, etc.
There are a lot of costs involved in radio. Only those who are actually in the business can appreciate all of them... For the record, we do no Haitian programming...
marketplace would be able to support. An FM license in the Boston area, even if one was available, would be cost prohibitive. As the value
of AM stations has dropped, it becomes more affordable to buy them. Remember - all the cost of a license gives you, is the license itself -
a piece of paper. It does not include tower space, transmitters, engineering, office/studio space, staff, etc.
There are a lot of costs involved in radio. Only those who are actually in the business can appreciate all of them... For the record, we do no Haitian programming...
Understood. But with all the studies showing AM in serious decline among listeners under 40, aren't you concerned that the audience for stations like WLYN and WAZN is dying off and won't be replenished? Or are young people in the ethnic groups you serve still aware of and listening to AM? I realize that as long as a programmer is willing to pay for time, your stations will remain profitable, but won't there come a time that the programmer will wonder if he's reaching enough living, breathing people through radio to justify continuing to pay?
Again, that is for traditional radio audiences. We serve a niche audience. If you are Russian or Brazilian, in the Boston area, you are aware of us, regardless of your age. There will always be new immigrants who want to hear programming, in their native language. These listeners are also much more loyal than traditional audiences. They are much more likely to tune in to a niche station, and stay tuned in, for much longer periods of time. Another example - children's programming. Viewer/listeners will age out of your demographic, but those not yet born will be coming in into your demographic. I, for one, would be more concerned with how well the LA Times is doing. Newspapers are getting hammered by new technologies more than radio!
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Sorry, it doesn't work that way. I imagine I have more experience in the media world in my little finger than you could imagine.
However, on an anonymous message board all we have to go by is statements.
You were asked to explain or back them up....and you couldn't. (Somehow I don't think that qualifies you as a teacher....just another "Bozo on the Bus" with an opinion.)
In other words you have no answers. You have lots of opinions with nothing to back them up.
I asked you to explain or back up your statement and you could not.
Good luck!
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Hi WLYNWASNgm..... Since you understand this business model, how many niche's can there be? Can there ever be too many niche formats? I suppose if another Russian or Brazilian niche formatted station went on the air?
I know that WLYN is doing a great job.....but, how many ways can we cut the niche pie before it starts to hurt operators like WLYN? And if more mainstream stations start to leave the AM dial...will that affect the niche serving stations?
The niche (ethnic) programming pie IS getting thinner and thinner, and will continue to do so when more AM stations go the ethnic route. But it's true that immigrants who want to hear their language don't care if its AM or FM, and will tune in to wherever his/her language is spoken. - I wonder, though, how thin can the pie-pieces be before it becomes uneconomical for an AMstation (especailly a directional one!) to operate that way? Maybe they're safe. Look at religion on radio. Years ago, I thought "The Christian Pie" pieces would be so thin, the stations wouldn't survive. Well, the pie-pieces are very thin, and they are doing OK. And the Catholics have jumped in too, in recent years. (Former Pope urged all Catholic lay-groups in the USA to purchase radio stations ["those Protestants are whipping our butts!"], and they did). One very encouraging thing for AM radio locally.... WJIB's fund-raising was just as successful, if not moreso, this year (ended Sept 3) as it was in previous years. Apparently no drop in audience, at all, in the past 5 years; the period where AM started to shift downwards.
But if the same programming is offered on FM, the AM listening dries up entirely.
AM "began to shift downwards" in radical fashion in 1967 when the FCC eliminated virtually all full time simulcasting of AM stations with sister FMs in all but the smallest markets. There has been no significant acceleration of the AM decline in recent years.
In the past 5 years, 1030 has lost about 20% of its audience. 850 has lost 90% of its audience, and if 96.9 hadn't droppped talk, 680 would have lost 50% of its audience, but instead probably about 20% of its audience. In Boston, there are no other big-power stations with much of any audience. Rush Limbaugh, who stabilized the constant decline of AM radio in the later 1980's, and all through the 90's and 2000's, has, in the past 2 or 3 years dropped immensely... so much so that the highest power city stations have suffered in ratings and dropped Rush, only to put him on 2nd or 3rd-tier stations in the same markets. News/Talk on AM is slowly having their listeners go to NPR, which is largely on FM.
Much of the change you see is due to a combination of factors, not just one of them.
The first was the change from diary measurement of audiences to the PPM in the 2008-2009 period, precisely the start of the time frame you cite. The PPM was very harsh on stations with low cume and high TSL, which defines most AM talk stations perfectly. Add to that the decision to publicly list the non-commercial stations (which were previously masked to all but subscribers) and the change to PPM made both real and optical changes to radio.
The second was the tendency to find some previously AM-only formats such as sports cropping up on FM, removing that audience from AM.
The third was the smartphone and connected tablet, which changed the way may people wanted news delivered.
And, of course, the local competitive environment may have helped or hindered the maintenance of AM numbers.
Except for the Arbitron / Nielsen game-changing methodology shift, the other things have been going on for four decades as more and more formats migrated to FM with its generally better coverage and quality. The last 5 years have just been the tail end of 40-plus years of decline.
The NPR stations had audience all along... we just never saw it reported in the trades, so it was out of sight and out of mind.
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