NY Times: Never Listen to Céline?

[BossRadioDJ]

An interesting article about music, radio and PPMs in the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/business/media/16radio.html

...Made slightly more interesting by an edit. The article originally read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to a soft-rock station with the suggestive name of KOIT on his commute.

KOIT? Suggestive?

It was later edited to read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to KOIT, a soft-rock station, on his commute.

 

[RadioJunkieMike]

An interesting article about music, radio and PPMs in the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/business/media/16radio.html

...Made slightly more interesting by an edit. The article originally read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to a soft-rock station with the suggestive name of KOIT on his commute.

KOIT? Suggestive?

It was later edited to read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to KOIT, a soft-rock station, on his commute.

Post-KOITal? KOITus interruptus?

Now if he had been listening to KOME...

 

[michael hagerty]

An interesting article about music, radio and PPMs in the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/business/media/16radio.html

...Made slightly more interesting by an edit. The article originally read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to a soft-rock station with the suggestive name of KOIT on his commute.

KOIT? Suggestive?

It was later edited to read:

Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to KOIT, a soft-rock station, on his commute.

Post-KOITal? KOITus interruptus?

Now if he had been listening to KOME...

Just wait until the Times sees the tower!

 

[michael hagerty]

And I love that Joe Puglise at Lite-FM thinks the PPM results are gonna get him more ad buys from Pontiac.

Joe: They're dead. Gone. Stopped making cars last summer.

It was in all the papers...including the Times.

Maybe if Lite-FM had a newscast.....naaaah.

 

[landtuna]

The NYT writer obviously lives east of the Hudson River and has apparently never traveled west of it.

Poor soul doesn't know KOIT was patterned after one of The City's most famous landmarks (and the tower holding all the gravy for those pricey wharf restaurants).

<Thankx, and a tip of the Hatlo Hat to Herb Caen for that 'gravy' joke from long, long ago>

 

[LKellerIII]

The NYT writer obviously lives east of the Hudson River and has apparently never traveled west of it.

Poor soul doesn't know KOIT was patterned after one of The City's most famous landmarks (and the tower holding all the gravy for those pricey wharf restaurants).

<Thankx, and a tip of the Hatlo Hat to Herb Caen for that 'gravy' joke from long, long ago>

Lillie Coit was the wealthy San Franciscan who got the tower built and named after her.

About a year ago, I visited Coit tower with out of town friends - for the first time in probably 20 years. The "elevator" music for the ride up to the top? KOIT, of course.

 

[1069_KIFR]

If the tower had carpets and drapes, who'd get the call to clean them? Yep, COIT!

 

[DavidKaye]

Lillie Coit was the wealthy San Franciscan who got the tower built and named after her.

Actually, she didn't "get" the tower built. She left 1/3 of her money to the city to erect some kind of monument to "add beauty to the city". She died about 4 years before Coit tower and the fire fighters statue in Washington Square were built.

From what I've read about her I think the last thing she'd have wanted was to have a monument named after herself.

 

[LKellerIII]

Lillie Coit was the wealthy San Franciscan who got the tower built and named after her.

Actually, she didn't "get" the tower built. She left 1/3 of her money to the city to erect some kind of monument to "add beauty to the city". She died about 4 years before Coit tower and the fire fighters statue in Washington Square were built.

From what I've read about her I think the last thing she'd have wanted was to have a monument named after herself.

I didn't mean to imply Lillie was a glory-hog - quite the contrary, I believe. So was apparently a real character, and an early feminist. As I understand, she was not born into wealth but married into it, and was quite generous with it. She reportedly loved to gamble, and would dress up in mens' clothes and smoke cigars, so she could sneak into the city's male-only gambling dens

She had a life-long love of fireman, and helped fight a fire or two herself as an unofficial volunteer, which led to the rumor that Coit Tower was built to look like the nozzle on a fire hose. Not true, apparently.

 

[NewsVet]

And I love that Joe Puglise at Lite-FM thinks the PPM results are gonna get him more ad buys from Pontiac.

Joe: They're dead. Gone. Stopped making cars last summer.

It was in all the papers...including the Times.

Wrong. Pontiac continued to make cars until late November. A GM VP said they had enough Pontiac inventory to last through February. Pontiac dealers are still advertising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/02auto.html?scp=6&sq=pontiac&st=cse

 

[michael hagerty]

And I love that Joe Puglise at Lite-FM thinks the PPM results are gonna get him more ad buys from Pontiac.

Joe: They're dead. Gone. Stopped making cars last summer.

It was in all the papers...including the Times.

Wrong. Pontiac continued to make cars until late November. A GM VP said they had enough Pontiac inventory to last through February. Pontiac dealers are still advertising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/02auto.html?scp=6&sq=pontiac&st=cse

I should clarify.

The cars built since summer have been to fulfill fleet orders (motor pools and rental cars), for which there is no advertising support.

Pontiac itself is no longer making ad buys. Individual dealers who still have Pontiacs certainly might.

A sixty-day supply of briskly selling cars is one thing, but if Pontiacs sold briskly, they might have survived. The number of cars remaining in the retail pipeline is in the very low thousands or possibly even high hundreds by now...and there will be cars that don't sell for years. In fact, part of the problem was that Pontiac dealers had leftover '08s and even some '07s on hand while trying to liquidate the '09s and early
spring-built '10s.

So Joe shouldn't hold his breath for that PPM-driven ad buy.

 

[LKellerIII]

And I love that Joe Puglise at Lite-FM thinks the PPM results are gonna get him more ad buys from Pontiac.

Joe: They're dead. Gone. Stopped making cars last summer.

It was in all the papers...including the Times.

Wrong. Pontiac continued to make cars until late November. A GM VP said they had enough Pontiac inventory to last through February. Pontiac dealers are still advertising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/02auto.html?scp=6&sq=pontiac&st=cse

I should clarify.

The cars built since summer have been to fulfill fleet orders (motor pools and rental cars), for which there is no advertising support.

Pontiac itself is no longer making ad buys. Individual dealers who still have Pontiacs certainly might.

A sixty-day supply of briskly selling cars is one thing, but if Pontiacs sold briskly, they might have survived. The number of cars remaining in the retail pipeline is in the very low thousands or possibly even high hundreds by now...and there will be cars that don't sell for years. In fact, part of the problem was that Pontiac dealers had leftover '08s and even some '07s on hand while trying to liquidate the '09s and early
spring-built '10s.

So Joe shouldn't hold his breath for that PPM-driven ad buy.

I've seen a lot of Pontiac G-6s on the road in San Francisco the past couple of years, but only because this is a tourist town, and GM was selling them for rental car fleets. The one acclaimed car in the Pontiac model run was the high performance G-8 (actually a "badge engineered" Holden, from Australia). From what I have read, with the death of Pontiac, this car will be coming back as a Chevrolet Caprice, with a different body style that copies the look of the Chevy Caprice from the early 90s, though a bit smaller. GM hopes to sell the new Caprice to police departments nationwide. I understand that Ford will be discontinuing the Crown Vic - the default of most police departments, nationwide.

To bring the subject back to radio, if you hear any GM auto advertising the next couple of years, it will be for Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC.

This morning, I heard on NPR that GM sold more cars last month in China than in the USA- and Buick was the top seller.

Your views, Mr. Tirekicker?

Sadly for us reminscing baby-boomers (GTO, Firebird), Pontiac is dead. Stick a fork in it.

 

[SFStatic]

The sad part is that Pontiac sold 140,00+ cars last year, and Buick 89,000. The only reason GM kept Buick instead is that they are a big deal in China. It's a sad statement when the taste of Mr. & Mrs. China overrides Mr. & Mrs. America. The new GTO was a kind of bomb, but the G-8 (replaced the Grand Prix), which was built by GM's Australian subsidiary, was a hell of a car, and was selling.

I hope GM does ramp up advertising of the remaining Chevy, Cadillac (doing pretty well), Buick, and GMC lines. The dirty secret is, most of the underpinnings of ALL GM cars save Caddy were pretty interchangeable. If you needed a Buick part or Pontiac part, many dealers and used car lots just bought the cheaper Chevy part and put it in.

 

[NewsVet]

I should clarify.

The cars built since summer have been to fulfill fleet orders (motor pools and rental cars), for which there is no advertising support.

Pontiac itself is no longer making ad buys. Individual dealers who still have Pontiacs certainly might.

A sixty-day supply of briskly selling cars is one thing, but if Pontiacs sold briskly, they might have survived. The number of cars remaining in the retail pipeline is in the very low thousands or possibly even high hundreds by now...and there will be cars that don't sell for years. In fact, part of the problem was that Pontiac dealers had leftover '08s and even some '07s on hand while trying to liquidate the '09s and early
spring-built '10s.

So Joe shouldn't hold his breath for that PPM-driven ad buy.

Joe was talking about local Pontiac dealers. And the GM VP was clearly not just talking about fleet orders.
Meanwhile, Pontiac has a final closeout sale posted on its web site:

http://www.pontiac.com/

 

[LKellerIII]

The sad part is that Pontiac sold 140,00+ cars last year, and Buick 89,000. The only reason GM kept Buick instead is that they are a big deal in China. It's a sad statement when the taste of Mr. & Mrs. China overrides Mr. & Mrs. America. The new GTO was a kind of bomb, but the G-8 (replaced the Grand Prix), which was built by GM's Australian subsidiary, was a hell of a car, and was selling.

You're obviously free to take that attitude, but I'm sure GM thinks about it in terms of total units sold... whether those units are sold in China or the US is largely irrelevant. And again, I'm sure Pontiac's sales were that high because of rental fleets. Do you know anybody (private citizen) who actually spent his/her own money on a G6? I don't. Buick is now a hot seller in a country with 1.3 billion people - a nation 3 times larger than the US, in terms of population. That's not to be taken lightly.

In the early 90s, the Ford Taurus was the #1 selling car in America because Ford sold them to Hertz, Avis, etc...for almost zero mark-up and zero profit. So the Taurus may have had bragging rights, but Ford made a much smaller profit than Honda did with Accords (#3 seller) and Toyota did with Camrys(*#2 seller). By the way, I made the mistake of buying a 93 Taurus...it was the least reliable new car I've ever owned. Will my next car be a Ford because they're built so much better these days? Only if you put a gun to my head. I'm still pissed-off.

I'm hearing very few car advertisements on the radio for GM, a few more for Ford, now a much healthier company. Chrysler? On life support...dead, but not yet buried. Really, television is still the preferred medium for auto advertising.

 

[1069_KIFR]

Oprah gave away a full studio audience of Pontiac G-6's awhile back. Her famous, "You get a car, you get a car, you get a car, everyone gets a car!"

 

[SFStatic]

I actually knew a number of folks that bought Grand Prix models, not G-6's. My attitude is more of a point of view, based on having been a franchised auto dealer for a number of years (and no, not Pontiac, nor even American Iron.) The vehicle badged Buick in China is not the same as those built here. The point about population is basically not important right now, as a tiny proportion of the giant Chinese population is able to purchase an auto, particularly an American one. Buick is a prestige car in China.

That is all from here...this thread is way off into the weeds at this point.

 

[michael hagerty]

I should clarify.

The cars built since summer have been to fulfill fleet orders (motor pools and rental cars), for which there is no advertising support.

Pontiac itself is no longer making ad buys. Individual dealers who still have Pontiacs certainly might.

A sixty-day supply of briskly selling cars is one thing, but if Pontiacs sold briskly, they might have survived. The number of cars remaining in the retail pipeline is in the very low thousands or possibly even high hundreds by now...and there will be cars that don't sell for years. In fact, part of the problem was that Pontiac dealers had leftover '08s and even some '07s on hand while trying to liquidate the '09s and early
spring-built '10s.

So Joe shouldn't hold his breath for that PPM-driven ad buy.

Joe was talking about local Pontiac dealers. And the GM VP was clearly not just talking about fleet orders.
Meanwhile, Pontiac has a final closeout sale posted on its web site:

http://www.pontiac.com/

NewsVet:

Joe didn't specify so how do we (or you) know?

And while the GM VP's quote didn't include the words "fleet orders", any Pontiacs built since August (all of them G6s) were built to fulfill fleet order contracts.

The last Solstices, G8s and G6s bound for dealer stock left the assembly line the last week of July. G5 and G3 production was halted earlier in the year due to oversupply and never resumed. The G3, a rebadged Chevy Aveo, had a 615 day supply at the rate it was selling in April.

And just because Pontiac hasn't shut down their website doesn't
mean they have an ad budget that includes radio buys.

Llew: Buick's hot in China. If they can make it an American alternative to Lexus they've got a shot. Pontiac's only unique vehicle as the G8. Everything else was a rebadge at a time when Gm needed to stop duplication and cannibalism between their brands.

 

[LKellerIII]

Isn't the Chevy Aveo a re-badged Suzuki Somethingorother? I recall that in the 90s, Pontiac had a re-badged Chevy Cavalier. I don't think anybody bought those either. A truly unattractive and inferior car. The Aveo may be better engineered, but it's is a homely little thing. Hopefully GM has finally learned some lessons.

I don't remember who said it, but my favorite laugh line about GM during this whole mess is "GM - the corporation that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Sorry for the diversion...wasn't this thread originally about Light Rock and KOIT?

 

[michael hagerty]

Isn't the Chevy Aveo a re-badged Suzuki Somethingorother? I recall that in the 90s, Pontiac had a re-badged Chevy Cavalier. I don't think anybody bought those either. A truly unattractive and inferior car. The Aveo may be better engineered, but it's is a homely little thing. Hopefully GM has finally learned some lessons.

I don't remember who said it, but my favorite laugh line about GM during this whole mess is "GM - the corporation that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Sorry for the diversion...wasn't this thread originally about Light Rock and KOIT?

It's a Daewoo...which GM now owns.


I'm sorry for the diversion, too. Apparently Joe has a loyal (but misinformed) friend reading the SF board. Tell Joe it wasn't personal.