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News/Talk Countdown
- Thread starter semoochie
- Start date
There are quite a few very successful local news/talk stations. Maybe not as many as there used to be. But lots of them. The real strength of these stations has shifted from national talk hosts to local ones. That seems to be the future of the format. If you look at The Talkers Hot 100, there are loads of popular local talk show hosts at stations like WLW, KFI, and WGN. These stations continue to get good numbers. I think this is why we haven't seen any new national shows in the last two years. The focus has changed.
The real problem here is the slow death of AM. There are some markets that have no AMs in the Top 10. They have news/talkers, but not on AM. The strongest AM stations are all-news in the rust belt. But all news failed in Houston and Atlanta.
The real problem here is the slow death of AM. There are some markets that have no AMs in the Top 10. They have news/talkers, but not on AM. The strongest AM stations are all-news in the rust belt. But all news failed in Houston and Atlanta.
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Everyone seems to think we're running out of old people. The exact opposite is true. All of this talk of the "death" of talk radio is wishful thinking by people who don't like what they hear on talk radio, or (especially true here) used to work in talk radio and were replaced for some reason.
News/talk today is mostly a misnomer. Time was stations programmed news blocks as well as talk shows. And talk shows weren't just political talk but sports talk, advice talk and lifestyle talk. But if you mean the current variety of ideological political talk with syndicated hosts, it is on the decline.
No, we are not running out of old people but the question is will the new old people (i.e., Baby Boomers) want to listen to Rush, Hannity and the rest to which the current crop of old people has been listening? And we are running out of depression/WW2 generation old people.
The other big question on which the future of ideological talk depends is will advertisers continue to avoid buying the attention of old people?
The call in show is one of the few areas in which rusty tower terrestrial radio has a clear advantage over new media. But young people won't listen as long as all talk radio offers is the political version of get off my lawn. Talk radio skews old because it sounds old - angry geezer radio.
Going local won't change things much. Those stations with local hosts continue to adopt the same style and content as Rush and his clones. So what if they are local?
There's a company in Canada called Zoomer Media. They own radio stations and magazines, all targeting active, older adults. And apparently they are successful in getting advertisers to buy. But their radio properties are standards and classical music. Not talk. Maybe they have discovered that the market potential lies in older people who are not angry geezers.
Maybe talk radio didn't do itself any favors 20 years ago when it got rid of all flavors of talk except Rush and others like him. If you don't remember, watch Frasier. Frasier was depicting talk radio as it was maybe 15 years earlier but in a lot of ways it was talk radio's Golden Age.
One thing killing talk radio is nobody is willing to do something different - try anything different. Really different. Different is not getting somebody local to do the same old, same old act as Rush. It's not dropping Rush and picking up Gallagher.
How much time left? Pure speculation. But the death will be slow and lingering. Probably kept alive because nobody knows what else to do with all those AM flame throwers currently running syndicated or semi-syndicated talk.
No, we are not running out of old people but the question is will the new old people (i.e., Baby Boomers) want to listen to Rush, Hannity and the rest to which the current crop of old people has been listening? And we are running out of depression/WW2 generation old people.
The other big question on which the future of ideological talk depends is will advertisers continue to avoid buying the attention of old people?
The call in show is one of the few areas in which rusty tower terrestrial radio has a clear advantage over new media. But young people won't listen as long as all talk radio offers is the political version of get off my lawn. Talk radio skews old because it sounds old - angry geezer radio.
Going local won't change things much. Those stations with local hosts continue to adopt the same style and content as Rush and his clones. So what if they are local?
There's a company in Canada called Zoomer Media. They own radio stations and magazines, all targeting active, older adults. And apparently they are successful in getting advertisers to buy. But their radio properties are standards and classical music. Not talk. Maybe they have discovered that the market potential lies in older people who are not angry geezers.
Maybe talk radio didn't do itself any favors 20 years ago when it got rid of all flavors of talk except Rush and others like him. If you don't remember, watch Frasier. Frasier was depicting talk radio as it was maybe 15 years earlier but in a lot of ways it was talk radio's Golden Age.
One thing killing talk radio is nobody is willing to do something different - try anything different. Really different. Different is not getting somebody local to do the same old, same old act as Rush. It's not dropping Rush and picking up Gallagher.
How much time left? Pure speculation. But the death will be slow and lingering. Probably kept alive because nobody knows what else to do with all those AM flame throwers currently running syndicated or semi-syndicated talk.
There still are quite a few of those kinds of shows on talk stations around the country. Sports talk has really become its own format, and some towns have two or three sports talk stations. But there are still quite a few advice shows. KFI has Bill Handel On The Law. KABC recently signed Dr. Drew. Lots of stations feature financial advice, pet advice, love advice, and more. There are several comedians around the country who host talk shows. There are lots of local lifestyle shows around the country. The problem is that they're not controversial, and it usually takes controversy to attract big ratings. Unquestionably the political talk is killing the format, and no one is seeking out any more of these shows.
That's not so.
"News / Talk" is just a broad-scope name for stations that may range from talk shows with hourly newscasts to stations with drive time news blocks to stations with lots of sports to those with no sports at all unless it is in a newscast.
The term is just a catch-all for a wide variety of format options and blends.
That's irrelevant as long as advertisers pretty broadly reject targeting anyone over 55.
Since TV already dismisses 50+ and radio is seeing more buys in the 18-49 range, a reversal is very unlikely.
The AM station is no longer standards. It's pretty much an adult AC / oldies station. And they only have one of these, plus the Classical FM. And they are in Canada where regulations, media usage and licensing and other elements are really different.
The AM stations that were big names in the past, like WGN, are now not even in the top 25 in 25-54 today. And the issue is as much the fact that those stations are AM as anything else. It's much less about the programming. People under 50 did not grow up on AM, don't like its sound and static, and appear to only use AM for occasional sports broadcasts when there is no better alternative.
What talk stations are running out of is revenue. Advertisers don't want to pay to reach people over 55, so whether anyone is listening or not there is very little ad revenue to be had.
It's not just "old people" that advertisers are avoiding. The other continuing thing mentioned by most advertisers is controversy. There are still a lot of "do not buy" lists that specify "Rush, Hannity, Savage, or any other controversial programming." That's an exact quote. Even some local hosts get singled out. It doesn't matter if your talk show gets great ratings. If it's controversial, it's possible for offended listeners to boycott the sponsors, and no one wants to have that happen.
Well, if you're Cheap Channel, See B.S., or Cume Useless, what else y' gonna do with those AM stations that you're still paying off?
Sorry, but if a station runs a TOH network newscast they are not News/Standards, or News/Oldies. Without a news block it's a talk station. And while there may be the odd exception here and there, mostly they all are cookie-cutter, ideological, political talk all day long. When guys like Minelli and Boyce imposed cookie cutter talk, the industry applauded and followed suit lemming-like. You can't turn around and say now that it's foundering that this is not all there is.
Sorry, but if a station runs a TOH network newscast they are not News/Standards, or News/Oldies. Without a news block it's a talk station. And while there may be the odd exception here and there, mostly they all are cookie-cutter, ideological, political talk all day long. When guys like Minelli and Boyce imposed cookie cutter talk, the industry applauded and followed suit lemming-like. You can't turn around and say now that it's foundering that this is not all there is.
All of the companies you listed have full news blocks on their stations. CBS's WBZ Boston is basically all news during the day, with a couple of local talk shows at night. IHeart has several stations doing a solid news block for morning drive. Same with Cumulus' KGO and WYAY.
Because of the reason I stated earlier (advertisers hate controversy), you've seen a dramatic change in the content of news talkers, and it really has broken the pattern of political talk. It may have worked ten years ago when those particular PDs were in charge. But not any more. Cumulus is one company that has been clearing out the ideological talk, and replacing it either with local news or lifestyle. But Entercom is also cleaning things up.
Good post.
Personally I think news/talk will survive because everything is cyclical. Maybe not on AM radio, or even radio, but as long as there are creative people who want to talk about current events, they'll find a forum.
And BTW, I don't think Oscar is actually Fred (as was suggested in another thread.) The above was quite a long post and NPR wasn't mentioned once! ;-)
If you look at the demographics of both cities you have a possible answer.
The forum is podcasting. But because podcasting isn't tracked or monitored the way radio is, most people don't know the wide variety available, and they don't get coverage or attention the way a quote on broadcast radio does. At some point a podcast will make big news, but so far, it's really a stealth platform.
The demographics are not significantly different from, let's say, San Francisco. About the same total percentage of ethnic population, around the same average age.
The issue appears to be more related to whether a "new" all news station can launch, even if entrenched stations in other markets are doing quite well.
I don't think anyone would say that KFI is not a "news/talk" station, but it has no news blocks and for as long as I have been monitoring it as either a competitor or listener, they have never had a news block.
There are plenty of news/talk stations that have no news blocks. Particularly outside the top 20 markets, there is generally not enough news, not enough money for staff and not enough interest to do a full talk block. That is where we got morning shows with strong newscasts, ranging from Gambling to Wally Phillips "back then" which were talk mixed with some news: news/talk!
KFI does something interesting with news. Since they have a newsperson in-house most times, they drop in brief newscasts other than at the TOH and BOH. No fanfare or sounder -- just "[name] has the news," and the newsperson starts talking. It's usually just a couple of stories but it gives the impression that they're on top of things.
For the sake of this discussion, maybe we should differentiate between news/talk (a hybrid of news and talk) and news-talk (talk about news stories.) I'd describe KFI as the latter.
WBZ is the former...it's all news during the day, talk at night. Then you have a station like IHeart's WBEN Buffalo, that's mostly talk, but runs a 4 hour solid news block in morning drive. Same with Cumulus' WYAY Atlanta.
Sorry to disappoint you but since you brought them up: Public radio "news and information" station formats are at lot closer to what news/talk was - call it "classic news/talk" - than the political drumbeating Beck/Rush/Hannity/Levin stations today. And in many markets public radio stations are out-rating commercial talk stations. Maybe there's something commercial talkers could learn from them. And, no, I don't mean asking listeners for money.
For the record, I was one of those posting unregistered. I wish I could do it again.
Come to think of it, "classic news-talk" radio was once called, "call-in shows." Some still exist on commercial radio -- Alan Colmes comes to mind. He starts with calls right out of the box and takes lots of calls throughout the show. Many of the callers are regulars.
I can't think of a classic "call-in show" on NPR -- the ones I hear are mostly interview based. It seems the role of the Rush'Hannity/Levin caller is to agree with the host and reinforce his agenda.
I can't think of a classic "call-in show" on NPR -- the ones I hear are mostly interview based. It seems the role of the Rush'Hannity/Levin caller is to agree with the host and reinforce his agenda.
If you limit the so-called news/talk format to call-in shows, then public radio is out. However, Talk of the Nation would have qualified.
When Rush started in syndication, though, the conventional wisdom was you couldn't do a talk show without guests and interviews.
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