Though that work can be farmed out to freelancers.
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Let’s get back to entertaining, informing and making money
- Thread starter secondchoice
- Start date
Many groups, even those in just a few markets, consolidate certain departments. Traffic, billing and accounting is another area were it is often better to have centralized functions. In such cases, vacation and sick day work can be easily handled by a team that shares the work.
National sales has long been consolidated even by small groups. Engineering was consolidated going way back, with design, modification and equipment purchases handled by the most experienced senior engineer.
Companies that had stations in multiple small markets might appoint a more experienced manager at one station to oversee and train a newly promoted first-time manager. I saw this back in the 60's with the Paul Bunion Network in Michigan and it worked quite well there.
But someone has to oversee the paperwork, copy writing, production, licenses for production libraries, etc. But in groups, it is easy to have one person do that coordination for all the stations.
I know, right? Local radio doesn't need someone at the street level to deal with local clients. Helping to craft campaigns, writing copy focused on their needs, coaching local business owners who want to be the "star" of their own spots. Building relationships. This is all passe'.
Have the guy in the hub read a script someone wrote from a template. Put some generic music underneath. Then when that local client says "radio doesn't work" and pulls their buy, just find some other business to try again. Creativity and customization simply costs too much money. Make it generic!
That sounds like it's own business. Start your own agency. You would likely make more money than working for "the man." Act as the intermediary between the client and the station. The sales people know you already. Put some skin in the game.
It's not passe. It is the job of the sales staff, assuming it is a local direct client.
Or leave the dying radio business for greener pastures.
A lot of the responses to the OP are essentially saying "it's not like it used to be and you're just going to have to get used to it."
I get that you're bullish on radio continuing to be relevant, but the truth is that the medium is slowly and inexorably dying.
As for starting my own agency? Sounds great. Now...why would I buy radio?
It depends on what you mean by "radio." I always say it's not one thing.
Listen to your clients. They will tell you what they want.
Radio is hardly dying, but it is forced into evolving because the way radio has made money is changing. Selling to the local car dealers, furniture stores, grocery and hardware stores is becoming much more difficult than back in the day. Either these businesses are being replaced by Amazon and big box stores, or moving their ads to social media because it's cheaper.
NEWSFLASH: Nothing stays the same. Everything changes over time.
If I still owned stations, I sure wouldn't hire you.
secondchoice, you lost me at "financially fails". Pick up a good accounting book and refine your definition of that term. Then go back and do a total rewrite of everything you propose, since on the surface it indicates a total lack of understanding of reality. And by the way, when's the last time a bank accepted a broadcast license as collateral? And if you're really serious, I want some of what you're smoking.
You would buy radio because it is STILL rated very highly as an advertising-supported medium. And you can't buy media that isn't advertising supported (by definition). You can waste a lot of money on analyzing click-throughs, but what matters is that radio is still a dominant force in auto sales and numerous other categories.
For all of you trying to dig radio's grave, I'm putting my resources in creating more success in radio. Some build and some tear down. Radio is not what it was when I entered the business but it is evolving as it always has. It cost less money to operate a station these days and stations have access to all sorts of material that was never available.
It's easy for us to be local with jocks 24/7 (some voicetracked but done right) and revenue eclipses what it was a dozen years ago. With 50 stations on the dial I have 38.1% of the 35+ demo. I guess some think this is failing. I'm continuing to write annual orders.
It's easy for us to be local with jocks 24/7 (some voicetracked but done right) and revenue eclipses what it was a dozen years ago. With 50 stations on the dial I have 38.1% of the 35+ demo. I guess some think this is failing. I'm continuing to write annual orders.
When I posted this, I tried to keep it on a non-technical level. Rather than go thru all the classes* of bankruptcy I used “failed”. Conceivably a station could be tied in with a farming operation and Chapter 12 could be used. A town or municipality could used Chapter 9. A person could end up in Chapter 13 from other business not related to radio. Banks or bondholders they still have a claim.
IMHO Chapter 11 is the most abused. Corporate management will try to find a bankruptcy court that tends to keep them in control while the shareholders and employees get screwed. That’s why Delta and Northwest airlines filed in Chicago. If a company files Chapter 7 or 11 the licenses should go back to the FCC.
This is a radio site. If you want to nitpick and be snarky there are other sites. If you don’t like the idea, come up with another one or say you like the insanity of the current ownership system.
BTW: I was a day trader for 11 years before retiring. Before that I was victim of Lehman Brothers. (I had nothing to do with the insuring of mortgages.) I developed throat issue which messed with my radio career (first choice). Thankfully I had a BSBA from Tennessee Tech which is an accredited university to fall back (on second choice). I didn't know the "legal and accounting police" checked this site. Just try to keep it simple and readable by people not in the business. If you want to go down the accounting and business "hole" PM me but I don't think the readers of this site want to hear about the business exact terms.
*Chapter 10 might be changed
H
Harvey_Dogg
Guest
The station that is bankrupt is sold by the court along with the license so that debts are paid to the IRS, the bank, and investors. You think they should lose everything!!!!!!!!!!
That would throw those stations off the air and into a state of confusion for years while the FCC goes through the motions of reassigning those licenses, holding an auction, and then starting those stations from scratch. We saw the process play out in Sacramento when Entercom turned in 107.9 in 2017. It took five years, and ended up getting bought by iHeart. Not sure how having a station off the air for five years benefits the public interest. Imagine if we were talking about hundreds of stations. The auction money would go to the FCC, not the radio company creditors. Not in the interest of those creditors. The courts feel the creditors benefit by getting equity in the stations and keeping those stations on the air.
3 AMs silent in St. Louis and the FCC tried auctioning them off. No one showed up with checks and stax o' wax.
Well sir, I wasn't being nitpicky or snarky, and I'm sure you were a great day trader while it lasted, but your thesis terribly flawed, and shows that whatever credentials you have don't appear to be connected to the realities of the broadcasting business. It's full of specifics that are not even possible. If you think there's insanity in the current ownership system, try it yourself. I'm sure you'll enjoy working with transmitter manufacturers, tower leases, FCC policies and regulations, music royalties (Sesac, GMR, ASCAP, BMI, Sound Exchange, with more on the way). You may even like dealing with the FCC and regs that make no sense and subject to day-to-day re-interpretation of the regulations themselves. Then watch it all unwind in a hurry when you attempt to work through your thesis, which in fact was not "simple and readable by people not in the business". By the way, I'm fully aware that this is a radio site; I would hope that most posters on this site are "in the business".
Have a good day.
One of the station owners I follow on Facebook is very proud of his stations and is having success with them, but follow his timeline and there is endless frustration.
Let's talk about the insanity of the current ownership system. There are no ownership limits to the number of stations or channels an internet company can own. No ownership limits to the number of channels SiriusXM can own. No ownership limits to the number of record labels that Universal or Sony can own. This is the environment in which radio broadcasters operate. Competition from other media is driving down market shares and ad rates, just as they were in the late 80s and early 90s after Docket 80-90 added hundreds of new stations to the FM dial. Since then, the FCC has added LPFM and AM translators to the band. Yet the ownership rules stay exactly where they were 25 years ago. If that's not insanity, what it? It's no wonder that the only groups interested in buying stations are religious non-coms.
That's actually a consequence of the ownership limits being too lax. In many markets, the ownership limits are such that only two operators can control all the full-market service stations, and a third company is unable to assemble a competitive cluster.
For example, New York, LA and Chicago each have only two significant English language clusters.
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