Mike McVay on Live & Local and Great Content

[Paul_Warren]

...The reason they pay him a lot of money is he delivers results. Results mean ratings. So he must know what people want to hear on the radio. Why is that so hard to accept?

Big A, that's oversimplified in at least one meaningful way. McVay is selling the same benefit The Research Group started selling in the late 1970s - the replacement of volatile, expensive excellence with consistent, middle-of-the-pack numbers on a predictable budget. It's a pragmatic approach which has always made sense to the former sales managers running most companies.

...Actually, John Lanigan was the morning host at WMJI....Being a Clevelander, just wanted to correct that. Carry on.

Thanks for that correction. A less lopsided air talent matchup, to be sure, but still an odd couple of formats/stations to compare.

Not to put words in your mouth, Big A, but I think we'd agree on at least one thing. Whatever criticism anyone would have of McVay or any consultant, he's done a way better job of managing his career than most of his critics. As I get older, the idea of maintaining some ideal of artistic purity at the expense of remaining employed strikes me as goofier all the time.

There was an interesting story under "Making Moves" on January 6. A Milwaukee ESPN affiliate had dropped Colin Cowherd's national show, and is replacing one of those hours with what up till now has been a podcast. So maybe there is a route to breaking into radio at the local level. It just involves even more poverty than it did back in the day!

 

[TheBigA]

So maybe there is a route to breaking into radio at the local level. It just involves even more poverty than it did back in the day!

Not so much poverty, as an investment. That's the problem today. No one wants to invest in themselves. They want someone else to take the risk on their "volatile, expensive, excellence." That may have happened when radio had no competition, and owners were insurance companies and other non-broadcasters. But you can't BS these guys today. Radio has become the kind of thing people can do from their homes. If they're good, and know how to build a fan base, they're creating the kind of content that is marketable for broadcast. In the old days, they work overnights for minimum wage. What's the difference? That's a form of poverty too. The guy who does a podcast understands the relationship between what he does and how the audience reacts far better than the same person working overnights for minimum wage.

 

[Paul_Warren]

Not so much poverty, as an investment...In the old days, they work overnights for minimum wage. What's the difference?

The difference is whatever minimum wage is now. Most podcasters earn no revenue whatsoever. But I guess that's analogous to the kids who went to answer phones for the 7-M jocks at Top-40 stations in the 50s and 60s hoping to break into radio, before the unions made them stop.

If you're going to use a podcast as a launching pad for a radio gig, the odds are reeeeeally long. Even heritage air personalities and news people who try to make a living on their reputations after RIF usually find podcasts a dead end financially. I have some experience in this end of the Audio Content business, and what I've seen is that podcasts are normally commercially viable only when they serve a narrow niche interest which is not geographically limited. These guys in Milwaukee are an outlier, moving sports talk based on a local team from the web to radio.

 

[Paul_Warren]

Wow, podcasts becoming radio shows is looking like a trend for 2012:

Major Trendz Radio Network will go national on February 1, 2012 with launch of The R and R Show, formerly a webcast show from PitRadio.FM and Golden Child, a former jock from Clear Channel’s WJIZ [Albany, GA], as well as Raymond Fox...

(From the headlines on Radio-Info 1/13.)