This is very true. When you listen to an Entercom Buffalo stream you hear promos on how "Internet Radio Works", followed by a 5-minute long stream of long-outdated "Stamp Reports", Johns Hopkins PSAs and "Looking At The Law" vignettes. Makes me want to call an AE and buy time.
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Pergament says WBEN can't sell airtime during Rush Limbaugh's show
- Thread starter Rob Piotrowski
- Start date
This is very true. When you listen to an Entercom Buffalo stream you hear promos on how "Internet Radio Works", followed by a 5-minute long stream of long-outdated "Stamp Reports", Johns Hopkins PSAs and "Looking At The Law" vignettes. Makes me want to call an AE and buy time.
In WNY, relationship selling wins. Period. We're outside the Top 50 markets now, so transactional selling doesn't have nearly the impact of good sales people crafting sales plans that work for local advertisers. Yeah, I know, "talent" is a PITA to you, "A", but it makes a hell of a difference both on the street and on the air in this market. If that wasn't true, Townsquare wouldn't be so deep in 2nd place, and Cumulus wouldn't have slipped from 32% of the market to 18% in the last 10 years.
I'm sure it does. My post was about inventory. Someday, Entercom's great sales staff will retire. Just as their listeners will pass away. In the meantime, Townsquare is building inventory for the future. They won't win this year or next. But the inventory they're building will be worth more ten years from now. As for Cumulus, they have absolutely no strategy beyond on-air. No plan for the future. They'll be lucky to have 18% in five years.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Cumulus in as much financial trouble as iHeartMedia? That might explain why they have no plan for the future.
Cumulus is in dire financial straits thanks to the mismanagement of the Dickey boys. Their current strategy is to survive, either through rebuilding from the ground up or through bankruptcy. "TheBigA" doesn't think that talent matters, but the talent drain in programming, sales, and management during the Dickeys' Top Down Systems-Oriented management approach, along with trying to expand beyond radio, is what put them in their current financial position. The companies that understand two things are thriving:
Radio IS the primary business. Anything that adds to that, or utilizes that position to enhance radio's position helps.
Radio is primarily LOCAL. The bulk of the money is local money. Focus on serving the local audience and local advertisers or you lose.
Mary Berner has the right idea. What she may not have is the time or resources left to rebuild the company without going through bankruptcy.
Radio IS the primary business. Anything that adds to that, or utilizes that position to enhance radio's position helps.
Radio is primarily LOCAL. The bulk of the money is local money. Focus on serving the local audience and local advertisers or you lose.
Mary Berner has the right idea. What she may not have is the time or resources left to rebuild the company without going through bankruptcy.
That's not at all what I think. And there is no shortage of talent at Townsquare. The fact is that there's no real growth in on air. There are only so many spots you can sell, and the price for those spots is pretty stable. Listeners are complaining about spotloads, and advertisers are looking for cheaper platforms. The only way for radio companies to grow is by looking beyond the air signal. That's what this is about. Townsquare is one of the few companies that understands that.
Entercom knows this is true, as evidenced by today's story in RBR:
http://rbr.com/entercomsmartreachdigital/
However, Townsquare has invested in more platforms, and is better positioned for the future, even though they're in smaller markets.
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Cumulus today has a better plan for the future under Mary Berner than it has had for a decade.
To keep the creditors from forcing bankruptcy, they have to see a viable, working plan. Apparently that is what Cumulus now has. While the plan may not have filtered down to all the levels locally, the company has bought time to rearrange the deck chairs. Whether it is too late remains to be seen.
A top rated 25-54 station in a market that size will still do nearly half its revenue with agencies, meaning the business is at least based in a transactional, statistical framework. Agency business can mean local agencies, too. And regional ones. There, sales come as a result of relationships as well as audience delivery.
And even local direct is about a form of audience delivery: customer response. If a station does not have a significant audience in whatever demos will patronize a client's business, it does not sell.
Sales is all about delivering customers. To the direct account, that is measured at the cash register while for agency business it is measured by listener impressions. In both cases, there has to be a sizable audience.
Talent is important to some formats, less important to others. Just having "talent" live on the air does not guarantee success at the sales (or ratings) level. And let's not forget that "talent" can apply to the PD, the GM, the CE and all the support staff, too. I can think of plenty of great stations in even smaller markets in the past where they did not have the best talent available, but having a good GM and a great PD made the stations enormously successful. A talented player with no coaching staff is pretty useless.
I agree, although that's more a statement on previous management. The problem with the current plan is it seems to depend an awful lot on conventional broadcasting. Part of the plan is to improve programming, thus improve ratings, and ultimately improve revenue. But what happens when the improved ratings don't improve revenue? Once again, there are only so many spots the audience will sit through, and you can only charge so much for those spots in a competitive marketplace. If the competitors are offering products that improve their value, that makes your spots overpriced. iHeart and Townsquare are offering a multi-platform approach to advertising, and that's a much better value for clients.
If you have products no one else has, and Entercom has that in Buffalo with the Sabres and the Bills, then you have a competitive advantage. But Cumulus doesn't have sports, they don't have events, and they don't have a digital strategy. Those are three very big weaknesses. In Buffalo, Cumulus just has spots and dots, with a very narrow demographic that is aging. Not a good plan for the future.
D
dand5780
Guest
Although WBEN is, in many cases, their favorite station.
No, but it has more stopsets and a higher spot load than the average music based FM.
AM news / talk stations all across the country make up for aging demos by being able to carry more spots.
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