SirRoxalot said:
Yeah, I've been fired in the past - but not in the last 20 years. As far as "rantings" are concerned, I'm as on the inside as anybody on the front lines can get.
Parden me, but I am very skeptical of that assertion. With your attitudes towards management, programming, research and sales It would astound me to find that you acually were employed at a viable, real, commercial station today.
I've got one thing in my resume that you don't. I've been a successful air personality.
So? I moved from gofer to intern to owner without taking that step because I was not good on the air. Where does it say you have to be a good on-air talent to own, run or create a successful station? The difference is that the stations I have been with are in my on-line resume, yet you, for all we know, have never stepped inside a radio station.
I've also been on the management side of the fence. I've been successful at both, in small markets and in large markets, over a long period of time. My knowledge comes from DOING IT on air and off, not READING ABOUT IT.
As does mine, as can be easily seen. You, on the other hand, have shown noting but disdain for those of us doing something in the industry... what are your credentials? Time to fish or cut bait.
McClendon didn't initiate the era of "evil corporate radio".
You said as much a few posts back when you broight him into the discussion with, to repeat the word, a total disdain for the facts about who he was and what he did.
"Evil corporate" has always tried to grab radio (and TV) as far back as RCA creating the NBC Red and Blue networks in an attempt to control what was broadcast in markets across the country.
Yet the big money maker in the thirties was CBS. The fact is, there were no duopoly rules, so nothing was done wrong. Business in any field will try to expand to the limit of the law, as it is profitable to do so. In any case, when the two nets became an issue, the government decided one had to be separated and ABC was born.
If the FRC, and later the FCC hadn't stepped in and limited both reach and broadcast hours, a few large corporations (NBC, CBS, Westinghouse, etc.) would have controlled radio as a medium for most of the country.
Other than the stwo networks, there was no real concentration or attempt to create same. By the later 40's, the few duopolies such as KFI and KECA and Arnie Bulova's stations in NYC were broken up. At that time, nearly every station in the US made money, save the relatively few independent stations which had a hard time, between the networks and the AFM.
By the mid-50's, a couple of years after the freeze was lifted, half of all stations were not profitable, a state that would be the rule into the 90's, enhanced by the expolsion of options as FM became viable and the mistakes like Docket 80-90.
It wasn't until 1996 that Big Corporate finally got a chance to grab control of large swaths of the radio spectrum, and they wildly overspent in an attempt to do just that.
Funny, but most consolidation was achieved via merger and equity offerings, not cash purchases.
Clear Channel wiped out a lot of local broadcasting in smaller markets in favor of syndication or voice tracking. Ultimately, they sold off many of those markets because they couldn't make money.
What they tried to do was make smaller markets attractive to national advertisers by creating regional ratings and synergies. Unfortunately, it did not work but nobody else had dared to try this. They shoud receive some credit for trying to change the sales model.
The reasons they sold most of those markets is that the margins were low, and made the whole company look bad.
You've tagged Dan Mason as "a fool who wants to push out PPM before the sample is proportional. I think history will show he is makiing more mistakes than correct decisions." That fool is doing a heck of a job repairing the damage that Joel Hollander did with the "Jackification" of CBS.
Jack in LA is the 6th highest biller in the USA. It's an amazingly entertianing and fun station without jocks. jack in NY had 25-54 numbers that are pretty similar to those of the reinstalled but updated WCBS FM, so the error was one of PR, not of programming. Mason's oldies station in Chicago is a wonderful 20th in 25-54...
Sorry if Hollander is one of your personal heroes. We'll see how history evolves, but I'd bet a lot more money on Mason being a radio savior than Hollander.
It's often said that one should never take over at any business that is #1. There is no upside and horrible downside. Hollander had to deal with the loss of Stern, and failed to replace Stern (maybe impossible) and entered the ring when radio was in stagnation, particularly non-ethinic radio. His dumbest act was taking the job.
My job is pretty secure. My biggest advantage as far as job security is concerned is that NOBODY is coming up to replace me. NOBODY in their right mind has any intention of getting into the radio business as it exists today.
Funny, but in the last few years I have hired two MBAs in marketing and finance from outside radio and the media. Both love it, and contribute daily with out of the box ideas.
When Wi-Fi becomes ubiquitous in the bigger markets, we'll see how many people tune into national streams instead of local providers who offer relatable personalities and locally-targeted music.
WiFi is being discontinued after city-wide installs have failed in a number of markets. WiMAX may be what is in the future, but we are dealing with technology that changes very fast. Satellite turned out to be a minor sidebar which has lost nearly $8 billion since launching.
1. Hire talent, and pay them fairly. Talent is found in programming, sales, promotions, and creative services (among others).
Some companies actually do that... you just seem to have ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Allow on-air talent to claim ownership of that daypart - which doesn't mean running off at the mouth for minutes at a time, but does mean allowing them to be creative in conveying the music, features, and promotions provided by programming department.
The very few who can do that engagingly are doing it now. Look at people like Jed the Fish in LA... you se him being fettered? In many cases, talent is restricted because the format does not succeed by talking too much per listener feedback. In many formats, listeners overwhelmingly don't want chatter in certain dayparts. Again, the example of Jack in LA is very significant.
Then again, if you did not see the art, talent and excitement of KHJ or KFRC or CKLW, etc., you probably can not see the talent, appropriate for each format and market that exists today.
Hire programmers who have a clue about how to develop on-air talent, and give them the time to do just that.
You are looking in the wrong places, I think. I see many of these programmers all over, inside and outside the building(s). There have always been PDs who could not rrain and aircheck, and those who could. For the same reason CBS could not replace Stern, it's hard to find a great PD.
5. Give programmers the time and money to do more research with a wider segment of the audience. Stop concentrating on JUST the P1s for a particular format and find out why overall audiences are shrinking, and TSL is declining.
We've been over this. Researching people who only have a passing interest in a music station's music style are never going to be listeners. We already research existing formats against format partisans as well as station partisans. It's funny, but in every market, we find that if a format has appeal to a person they are already cuming it. If they are not, there is universally nothing we can do to make them like our statio unless we change the station so much that we lose our existing audience, which is generally ill advised.
If somebody doesn't stop the bleeding, and rebuild the trust of both listeners and advertisers, radio won't survive - automated or not.
Your solution, in other words, is to spend lots more money on things that have been proven to be of little value or ability to increase either ratings or revenues. Problems are generally not solved by throwing money at them. They are solved by throwing intelligence at them, and that means paying for the most competent management you can get.
