I was a newspaper reporter/editor from 1993 until 2008, and it wasn't just Craigslist and other free online classifieds that killed newspaper revenue. Up until the mid-2000s, most newspapers still were trying to squeeze a 20% profit margin out of the business rather than investing in preparing well for the huge shift to online news and advertising. It's sad they were caught flat-footed while nearly everyone else saw the proverbial train coming straight toward them. It's also sad to see both TV and radio going through versions of the same thing now.
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Lowest KUBE ratings ever, in December PPM
- Thread starter crainbebo
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I was a newspaper reporter/editor from 1993 until 2008, and it wasn't just Craigslist and other free online classifieds that killed newspaper revenue. Up until the mid-2000s, most newspapers still were trying to squeeze a 20% profit margin out of the business rather than investing in preparing well for the huge shift to online news and advertising. It's sad they were caught flat-footed while nearly everyone else saw the proverbial train coming straight toward them. It's also sad to see both TV and radio going through versions of the same thing now.
And guess what, all of them are national.
Could you imagine having Colbert in one single market, and then the rest of the CBS affiliates have their own local guy at late night? Insanity. But that's what radio in the USA did for some reason and when they try to streamline things, people start hating them.
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First was real estate. Full visual tours of new homes could be done online, while the newspaper restricted listings due to cost. Agents determined that the web did more for sales than the local paper.
Then the auto business discovered the same thing. Full listings, build-your-car options, etc.
We already covered classified.
And as far as readership, as far back as the later 90's sports fans could get instant updates and lots of commentary online.
And we could get quotes and buy/sell stocks and bonds online with ease and in real time.
Sports, autos, homes, classified, stocks. What is left?
I talked many years ago with a relative who was publisher of a larger market newspaper, and there were several categories that moved rapidly to the web.
First was real estate. Full visual tours of new homes could be done online, while the newspaper restricted listings due to cost. Agents determined that the web did more for sales than the local paper.
Then the auto business discovered the same thing. Full listings, build-your-car options, etc.
We already covered classified.
And as far as readership, as far back as the later 90's sports fans could get instant updates and lots of commentary online.
And we could get quotes and buy/sell stocks and bonds online with ease and in real time.
Sports, autos, homes, classified, stocks. What is left?
Obituaries, puzzles/quizzes, recipes. Those retain the elderly, tech-resistant subscribers, but their numbers shrink by the day.
Here's the thing: Newspapers thought they were in the newsgathering and dissemination business. The problem is you can't do that if you don't have money. So once the money went away, it became difficult to do the newsgathering. Now they're faced with the reality of finding new ways to pay for the newsgathering because the advertising has disappeared.
And yes, the same issue is confronting broadcasting, both TV and radio. So it's important to find new revenue sources now before the advertising disappears. The means creating new platforms, new ways to use talent, and rededicating resources in ways that keep the boat afloat. That appears to be part of what's going on at KUBE.
I'm aware of the rabbit hole. I was responding to your comment about Fallon going after a younger audience. So are the other current ones to a certain extent and I like all of them better than Leno or Letterman! I'm far from a younger audience and getting further away all the time! The only thing I really don't like about Fallon is his theme song(assuming he's still using the same one), which strikes me as a complete waste of time!
Then isn't it difficult to form an informed opinion on the viability of a station without all the data?
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That's pretty funny. Oh sure, these group owners just do this for fun Good one!
Interesting story. And their growth seemed to come from digital. "Multiplatform" revenues were down, and "Audio and Media Services" were down. Their digital audio group's revenues went up 142% from 2019.
That's why successful businesses diversify. When one or some are down, it's made up by others.
When offering "web strategy" couple decades back, used to frustrate me to no end trying to deal with TV News Directors who refused to put anything on the web site until it had gone on the air first. Info that was in high demand would wait hours until 5p had passed.....
Of course, like the other industries cited above, it was ALMOST too late for many by the time they finally "got it".
Same criticism applies to attorneys and org's like AFTRA who seemed to find every reason to fight forward momentum while new startups came along and ate the opportunities. Music opportunities on the web definitely took a hit because record company attorneys wanted so badly to put their head up their
Of course, like the other industries cited above, it was ALMOST too late for many by the time they finally "got it".
Same criticism applies to attorneys and org's like AFTRA who seemed to find every reason to fight forward momentum while new startups came along and ate the opportunities. Music opportunities on the web definitely took a hit because record company attorneys wanted so badly to put their head up their
They did that as a negotiating tool in order to get the digital royalty they now have. So now they love digital.
Except they're bad entrepreneurs. If they were better, there would be more demand for what they do. As it is, it's limited to their fans.
A good example of a lack of forward union thinking is in the AFTRA contracts that cover ad agency audio production of commercials. They forced advertisers and their agencies to pay separately for streaming by radio stations in addition to the over the air usage.
So, the results are multiple: agencies tell stations "no stream". Stations do separate stopsets with non-AFTRA talent for the streams. As more advertisers look at digital, they record radio ads anywhere but union markets, so as time goes buy, fewer and fewer ads are done in union studios in unionized markets. More are done by voice talent using home studios.
But that's the way it always was. Record companies used to release records all the time whose sales didn't pay for the plastic, the covers, the promotion, or the distribution costs. They always were hedging bets on artists. Some of my favorite artists were net losses to record companies. The only people who bought the records were their fans. There may have been 50K nationwide, but it didn't pay for the production of the LPs or CDs.
The entire business model has changed, as we've discussed here a bunch of times. It's still changing. I think it's the end of what we used to call "mass" media. I think that as the internet model matures further, it's all just differing "content". Some content will be more popular than other content. But the competition already is massive, and I don't see that reducing. The days of news starts like Walter Cronkite, music stars like Elvis, big movie stars, big TV stars, big news writers (Woodward & Bernstein) or big anything, are slowly coming to a close.
They'll always be there. Fox still gets 3 million or so viewers a day. Walter Cronkite got 48 million. The trend appears to be that every medium gets smaller and smaller, but they still can make money if they're smart at it, if only because the population is still growing and people need media.
I don't know how it will affect radio on the local level. Maybe local streams and podcasts? Maybe radio becomes national in scope? Maybe it stays just as it is now, except it will all be delivered online?
Fox gets and average of nearly 3 million viewers throughout the day. The total cumulative audience is in excess of 40 million daily.
Part of the difference is that the only way to view in the 60's was "appointment" based. Today, I can get news at any moment through a variety of sources.
Ownership and even power output limits in the US date back to the 30's when a group of senators tried to keep radio from being bigger than newspapers. In most of the rest of the world, it is normal and well accepted to have mostly or totally national services... whether the country be as small as Switzerland or as large as India.
TV figured this out in the 50's. Radio knew this in the 20's, 30's and 40's but due to legislation and misunderstanding of audiences, failed to create national services.
Digital is new, and has, literally, no way to go down. Traditional media is down mostly due to the pandemic, not a sudden change in medium preferences.
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