radio..ice cold

[TheBigA]

Steve, allow me to point something out in your post. On the one hand, you say:

Marketing's insistence on relegating people over age 55 to live out of their golf carts.

Then later you say:

Eight words : 'Spot clusters and lame commercials within those clusters'.

I understand you feel offended that you've aged out of the demo. You're allowed to feel offended. But your criticism of spot clusters justifies why marketers have decided to ignore your demographic. Only boomers complain about commercials. Their children have grown up with commercials and accept them as the cost of doing business. You want music for free? You have to sit through a :30 pre-roll. They do it every day on YouTube. For every song they hear, they have to watch a commercial. That's the exact number of commercials a typical OTA radio station runs.

So if you want to be marketed to like Gen Y, you have to behave like Gen Y. Comments?

 

[landtuna]

Only boomers complain about commercials. Their children have grown up with commercials and accept them as the cost of doing business.

Absolutely untrue.

 

[TheBigA]

Absolutely untrue.

Maybe not in your house. But someone is watching all those :30 spots on YouTube. Millions and millions of views.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Big A :

Nah, I'm not offended about being left waiting for a train on a railroad spur that has ceased operations. That's because I'm aware that the branch has ceased operations, and why it was suspended. The passengers and the businesses are located elsewhere.

I had been listing suggestions without getting into detail .... merely tossing out thoughts in hope of someone else adding to the the pile.

In more detail now (since you asked :- )

If I'm fragged out about anything demo-related, it was the time I visited my Folks at their retirement village in Florida for the first time, 1995. A scan of both the AM and FM dials, which I always do with a good radio on any vacation, turned up * two * stations that reached The Villages which played the Standards. Both, of course, were on AM.

I don't mean to be condescending here by repeating:
* Two * stations that played The Standards and reached a retirement community in Florida.

I thought that negligence was a disgrace then, twenty years ago. And it was not even my music that was being left by the curb! And if it would not have been that easy a matter for either of my parents to locate the daytimer WLBE and the uber-directional WRZN on their own, imagine the problems the REST of the residents would have -- those who didn't have a son who'd spent 26 years in radio and who had been DXing since 1961.
And here the place was ..... The Villages, a beautiful place ..... enticing northerners to achieve some quality retirement years, with no more shovelling snow ..... and then leaving them without the Music Of Their Lives.

My bride and I have enough Beach Boys and Chiffons and Tokens and Steppenwolf and Stones and musicals and Santana and Oscar Peterson and Screaming Trees to ensure (pun intended) a No-Repeat retirement if I were to resume a normal workday schedule. So I don't care what demo I occupy.

Perhaps I wasn't lucid enough in my point. I'm suggesting that the 55+ dismissal has been a 'given' for decades. Irrespective of generation -- Eddie Fisher or Eddie Van Halen, Harry James or Harry Nilsson, Artie Shaw or Chicago -- those are the rules.
My concern was that very, very little in the way of radio originality or creativity is there to replace, replenish or re-establish the younger enthusiasm. And American music at one time might have been our most endearing export. It no longer is.

Wherever the blame lies, the available sweet-spot demo candle is aflame at both ends. That was my main point, not that of me being resentful. The sameness of radio station approaches is not the cause, but it sure is a glaring symptom that can be masked for the time being by concepts other than those embraced by lemmings.

 

[landtuna]

Maybe not in your house. But someone is watching all those :30 spots on YouTube. Millions and millions of views.

I was thinking more of broadcast, not Internet, but my point is the same. Kids don't tolerate commercials as well as Boomers do. They are very quick to hit the pre-set when a commercial comes on whereas Boomers are more tolerant (if not more forgiving). And have you read the comments underneath most of those Youtube video commercials? The kids tend to call them out with sailor's language even though they are locked into watching them. Ah, technology!

As for commercials in general.....I love the Budweiser commercials and have for decades. Unfortunately for Busch it does not translate into buying any of their products which taste like they were brewed by J. Panther Pilsner. Matter of fact, I cannot think of any product I have ever bought solely on the basis of a commercial.

 

[TheBigA]

My concern was that very, very little in the way of radio originality or creativity is there to replace, replenish or re-establish the younger enthusiasm. And American music at one time might have been our most endearing export. It no longer is.

As usual, a great post.

First of all, the Standards format your parents enjoyed is actually still available in places where there's enough audience to support it. Sure, it may be on an inferior frequency, but it's still there. The format isn't completely dead even though most of its listeners are. You're correct that national advertisers don't want older audiences. So the solution to that is subscription radio. If there was a way to provide OTA radio programming as a subscription service, the problem would be solved. Broadcasters don't care what we program, and we don't care where the money comes from. But it costs money to do what we do. You understand that.

Second of all, with regards to "American music," a lot has changed since you were in the target demo. About 25 years ago, the American music industry was sold to foreigners. There really is no such thing as "American music" any more. It's all owned by the French, the Japanese, and the Germans. The only remaining American music company is Warner Brothers, which for a time was owned by a Canadian. Sure, there are lots of Americans making music, and lots of Americans trying to sell music. But by and large, the music itself is owned by foreigners. And those foreigners own the music to make money, not to entertain Americans. Ultimately, it's all about money, and I know you understand that as well.

Finally, with regards to your kids and how they consume music, you're correct that they don't share your enthusiasm for OTA radio. We wish they did, but your generation raised them in a way that they want to get it "their way." So they don't have loyalty to a radio station, but to the music itself. Any device that allows them to hear what they want when they want it for free is great. It doesn't matter if it's an OTA radio, a phone, or a computer. The device is the means to an end. So we in the radio business have to get our content where they are, and do it in a way that makes financial sense. That's what we're doing. To be honest, "radio originality or creativity" doesn't mean as much to your kids as they did to you. They're not impressed. They want to be in the driver's seat, they want to be empowered to be creative, they don't want to be captive audiences to someone else's creativity or originality. So that's just the reality we live with.

The other reality is that the audiences won't be as large as they were 30 years ago. We know that. The minute people could buy personal music devices like Walkmen, our share of the audience started to drop. That's just how it is. So we share our audience with lots of other devices. It's not our choice. Truthfully, very little in this discussion is our choice, from the music we play to the quality of our audience. So we know we can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Just playing music from the 50s won't bring back the past or change the trends in media usage. It is what it is. The bad news here is the people who pay for radio, the advertisers, are not boomers. They're not retirees. They're the age of the people who are using other media. So we know what the future is, and there's nothing we can do about it.

So that's my view on the situation. What do you suggest we do?

 

[TheBigA]

And have you read the comments underneath most of those Youtube video commercials? The kids tend to call them out with sailor's language even though they are locked into watching them. Ah, technology!

It doesn't matter what they say. What matters is what they DO. And yes, they sit through them. They can't hit the pre-set on YouTube. Same with Pandora. They are captive and they are forced to sit through advertising. That is the price of free music. Get used to it. There will be MORE commercials in places like Pandora and YouTube, not less.

 

[CTListener]

It doesn't matter what they say. What matters is what they DO. And yes, they sit through them. They can't hit the pre-set on YouTube. Same with Pandora. They are captive and they are forced to sit through advertising. That is the price of free music. Get used to it. There will be MORE commercials in places like Pandora and YouTube, not less.

Most of the commercials I run into on YouTube provide an opt-out after five seconds, which in many cases isn't enough time for the viewer to know what's being advertised. I almost always take that option when it's offered, except when the ad itself looks interesting or funny. Example: Aubrey Plaza's wonderful pair of ads for Newcastle Brown Ale's "Band of Brands" crowdsourced Super Bowl ad. Those ran 2 minutes each and were really enjoyable. But no, I didn't run out and buy a 6-pack of Newcastle (although it's not a bad beer at all and I do drink it at the local minor league ballpark, where it's on tap). But those are very much the exceptions. Do you think the opt-out will eventually be eliminated? More important, will the apparently never-ending Whack-a-Mole game that sees songs appear, disappear, reappear, disappear frequently end in triumph for the labels, publishers and artists? And if so, will that mean a significant loss of eyeballs and revenue for YouTube?

BTW, hardly any song ever truly disappears from YouTube, I've found. Vary the spelling of the artist's name or the title and songs you thought the lawyers had pulled years ago will magically reappear. There is still much about the Internet that is just as Wild West as it was 10 years ago.

 

[landtuna]

It doesn't matter what they say. What matters is what they DO. And yes, they sit through them. They can't hit the pre-set on YouTube. Same with Pandora. They are captive and they are forced to sit through advertising. That is the price of free music. Get used to it. There will be MORE commercials in places like Pandora and YouTube, not less.

But it DOES matter what they say...and even more, what they DO. If you owned a business and advertised on any medium and discovered that your prospective customers get enraged when your commercial comes on what would you do? That is exactly what is happening when commercials are force fed to an audience that doesn't tolerate them well.

I asked my kids the other night why none of them watch network TV and the common answer was "commercials". Too many. Too often. Too obnoxious. I asked them what radio station they listed to the most and 4 out of 5 answered "none". They all listen to their own playlists on mobile devices (or they plug those devices into the car radio as I do). I asked them why they didn't listen to radio and again the answer was "too many commercials" (or a close derivative).

As a nation we are beat over the head with advertising. The reason I gave up reading the daily newspaper was too much ad space and not enough real news. The reason I gave up radio was too many commercials and not enough of the music I enjoy. If I watch TV at all it is recorded so I can skip commercials. I have all the filters installed on my computer so I see very, very few. I have an answering machine on my landline so I don't have to answer robo calls. I have developed an immunity to advertising such that it is most likely I can sit through a commercial and not be able to tell you what the product is. And given that most advertising is baloney anyway I don't feel I have missed a thing. So what advertisers have done to me they are also doing to the millions of younger people who seem to develop an immunity at a very young age. That doesn't bode well for any broadcaster. Not only do they not have much money, they have no interest and that will be a killer.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

From Big A :

>> 'They're the age of the people who are using other media. So we know what the future is, and there's nothing we can do about it.

So that's my view on the situation. What do you suggest we do?' <<

* * * * * * *

In response solely in the context of older demos:
Every suggestion ever made to here and to other easily available forums already HAS to've been considered by those in management and programming. To put it another way, if there was a solution at hand, it would have been implemented. Apparently, no miracle drug is needed.
Many people brusquely dismiss those at flag rank as nothing more substantial than anonymous, paranoid, conniving, selfish myopics with no vision outside the next quarterly and who flunked every music appreciation course ever taken.
But heck, we all know that is not true. For these management people, that is their LIVELIHOOD. There is a reason for them being in such positions. There is a lot more depth to all of that performance than can be justified labelling them merely as survivors of the Million Wing-Tip March.

Yet -- and you asked for a suggestion:
I submit that a certain uncomfortable percentage of those 'in charge', with iPads and flat-screens and mini-pads and smart phones ready at the elbow, are as set in their own ways as they indict the older audience to be. The corridors they travel right this moment may stifle, or at best compromise, their ability to look outside the box they occupy now, and tomorrow.
With others of the same lean across town at competitors, doing the exact same thing.
If you grant me that, Big A, then the only option that's left, vis-a-vis older demos, is to turn an eye toward the only demo that will be available in the not-so-distant.

One possible solution, Big A, is the improbable realization by these decision-makers that the AARP audience, or what remains of it, is not their best bet but their only one.

Well, okay. Maybe someone can get Lee Abrams on the courtesy phone and ask him for some advice. After all, the demo he reached successfully and methodically is now a few years older than 55

 

[TheBigA]

Most of the commercials I run into on YouTube provide an opt-out after five seconds, which in many cases isn't enough time for the viewer to know what's being advertised.

That's not the point. The point is you're captive to the advertising. Whether you know what's being advertised, they got your attention for five seconds, which is more than they'd get on radio or TV. In the advertising business, the goal is "reach." You want to reach an audience. The next step after that is "sell." But you can't sell unless you reach, and these forced pre-rolls on YouTube and other websites deliver that. That's what advertisers pay for. If radio could deliver more of that, perhaps the game would be changed.

If you owned a business and advertised on any medium and discovered that your prospective customers get enraged when your commercial comes on what would you do? That is exactly what is happening when commercials are force fed to an audience that doesn't tolerate them well.

That might matter to the small local businessman. But it doesn't matter to the types of advertisers who pay for the free media people enjoy. Because it's the CONTEXT of that ad, the environment, that makes the different. So sure, the ad is annoying. But afterwards, you get to enjoy the music. So it's a package deal. Advertising and music together. You get the honey and the vinegar. The carrot AND the stick. And last time I checked the usage numbers at YouTube, no one is changing their behavior on YouTube because every single music video is preceded by a :30 commercial. So I stand by what I say. People can complain all they want about commercials. That's the trade-off if you want free media. Otherwise, buy all the CDs or download all the songs and make your own show. No one's stopping you.

So what advertisers have done to me they are also doing to the millions of younger people who seem to develop an immunity at a very young age. That doesn't bode well for any broadcaster. Not only do they not have much money, they have no interest and that will be a killer.

As I've said to you many times, statistically you & your kids are NOT typical. So don't assume that because your kids behave one way that "millions of younger people" react exactly the same. The facts say you're wrong.

 

[TheBigA]

One possible solution, Big A, is the improbable realization by these decision-makers that the AARP audience, or what remains of it, is not their best bet but their only one.

I think some owners, particularly those who own small AM stations, recognize that. They are not the stations that top the ratings, they are not the stations that make the most money, and they are not the stations that most people turn to when they think of radio. But they're there. Thousands of them. If you run a business, and you have a choice of aiming at a small dedicated group and a larger, more diverse and less passionate group, who do you aim at? The answer, from my experience, is it depends. I've worked in both situations, and I've lived a more comfortable life aiming at the larger group. So that's my personal bias.

 

[landtuna]

That might matter to the small local businessman. But it doesn't matter to the types of advertisers who pay for the free media people enjoy. Because it's the CONTEXT of that ad, the environment, that makes the different. So sure, the ad is annoying. But afterwards, you get to enjoy the music. So it's a package deal. Advertising and music together. You get the honey and the vinegar. The carrot AND the stick. And last time I checked the usage numbers at YouTube, no one is changing their behavior on YouTube because every single music video is preceded by a :30 commercial. So I stand by what I say. People can complain all they want about commercials. That's the trade-off if you want free media. Otherwise, buy all the CDs or download all the songs and make your own show. No one's stopping you.

It isn't the ad that drives most people away but rather that there is an ad. If they remember the ad at all it is a negative memory. Not much of a "reach".

And BTW, there are a ton of music clips and videos not proceeded by ads. I wouldn't hazard a guess of percentage but I rarely run across one. Perhaps the ads are just aimed at the youngsters.

As I've said to you many times, statistically you & your kids are NOT typical. So don't assume that because your kids behave one way that "millions of younger people" react exactly the same. The facts say you're wrong.

An overused retort. I'm pretty sure we're quite normal because in addition to my kids their friends tend to agree with them. They don't hang around La Casa de Callous much any longer but that was the way it was a few short years ago.

 

[TheBigA]

It isn't the ad that drives most people away but rather that there is an ad. If they remember the ad at all it is a negative memory. Not much of a "reach".

The statistics the agencies look at don't measure how the person feels about the ad. Just that they clicked on it, and were captive for at least 5 seconds. That counts as a view. You can argue this all you want, but it really doesn't matter. A view is a view, and people click on those videos and view commercials every day in increasing numbers.

An overused retort. I'm pretty sure we're quite normal because in addition to my kids their friends tend to agree with them.

Your kids hang around with people who are like them. They're probably white and of a certain income and education. That's why you're not typical.

 

[b-turner]

One of the things that I think caused the evolution of radio is niche programming over the years.

From my experience in programming (in small markets then) we were trying to be all things to as many people as possible. When more stations signed on we had to evolve by carving out a segment of the audience to own. In the earlier days of top 40, there might have been a couple of choices for us. As more stations arrived on the radio dial, those two top 40s might have doubled so one station might lean a bit easier while another might be more rock oriented, etc. Then came offshoot formats such as album rock and adult contemporary. We took the masses and split them into several slices of the pie. The result was radio splintered the market and made none of the stations really dominant across the board as in the earlier days of top 40 radio.

If we went back to the 1960s through about the early 70s and asked high school students what they listened to, you could likely count the stations on a single hand without running out of fingers. Today that number is likely double or more. I recall the late 1960s in Dallas where talking smack about KLIF might be considered fighting words. Everybody listened. About 5 years later there were easily about 7 or 8 stations kids in my high school listened to. It wasn't so much that KLIF had sold but that competitors divided that audience in to several niches. And yes, many moved from KLIF to KZEW's Album Rock format. In the early and mid 1960s, the only top 40 in Kansas City was WHB. Finally KUDL switched from talk to top 40. Even KBIL, a daytimer in Liberty, Missouri, was playing what we would later term Adult Contemporary, as they simply dropped the 'heavier' side of top 40.

And I remember going to school assemblies, birthday parties, charity events and remote broadcasts from businesses quite often. I also answered the request line. I think we were more active in the community back then but it was also a fact the station has a very large cross section of total radio listeners. We also had double the billing we would have a decade later because we had about triple the number of radio stations to compete thanks to upgrades and new stations coming on the air. As we morphed we were no longer the 'personalities' we were back in the beginning and appearances were not that frequent, in fact, much more rare, but in line with our 'niche'.

 

[b-turner]

I might add that when stations were required to be manned, there was the 'feel' of knowing the DJ and bonding with the station if there was audience participation if only that was via the request line. That emotional bonding might very well be what we are missing. It wasn't that those DJs might have been more talented but that they at least had the illusion of being accessible to the average listener.

I recall selling advertising in Del Rio, Texas. One of my accounts was Paul Kallinger Sr. who by then owned a small furniture store. I really enjoyed visiting him. His son had been our morning guy for a time. I asked Paul if today's DJ (around 1990 or so) was as talented as in his day. His gracious answer was indeed they were. He explained today's DJ was not in the same situation as he had been. He noted when the network feed went down and you had to ad lib live until it comes back up, you learn the gift of gab pretty quickly. As he put it, after a few such glitches you handle it with ease but until it happens a few times you never know your inward talent that must come out through the microphone. I thought he offered a very kind answer. I realized he had the ability to say a lot without saying much at all, all the while sounding like the most exciting thing since sliced bread. I knew I sure wasn't there.

Even with that said, I have listened to many airchecks from top 40 from the late 1960s through about the mid-70s. Most were not that great. The programming was even more simplistic. We still thought they were exceptional in the day.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@ b-turner .........

Haveta disagree with you on this :

>> 'Then came offshoot formats such as album rock and adult contemporary. We took the masses and split them into several slices of the pie.' <<

Yes, the early A/C may have been a niche format. 'Chicken Rock' was what it was called in a few places, derisively, and always by competitors. Still, it sat there, lolling in a hammock supported by the extremes of Frank Sinatra at one end and Frank Zappa at the other. Programmers wouldn;t dare go near either extreme but still had a massive library of songs in between to use as a positioner all by its own musical identity.

Album Rock might have * begun * as a niche format, as a pop form of Progressive, except that it wasn't called Album Rock or AoR until the mid 70s. When the genre caught hold, as it did very swiftly, it became both a male- and female-demo craze. AoR was possibly the last mass-appeal format many of us will ever hear.

The litmus test for any contemporary format, historically, is how it performs as a nostalgia format. Heck, Classic Rock has been a genuine format for a few decades now, despite how miserably it treats the demos who helped build the AoR foundation in the first place. My math suggests that Classic Rock has gotten four times the mileage -- and is still going pretty well at it -- than its parent format got.

Adult-contemporary ? Has that been successful in its revamped reincarnations over the years? It has had to reinvent itself several times, because the extremes off which it lolls and makes a living have blurred with each passing decade. There can be no nostalgia version of a format that has evolved by listing back and forth between forms of music it's simultaneously supposed to distance itself yet somehow embrace in order to stay relevant.

In any case: The opinion here is that AoR was not a niche format. It was a brand new one. It took root and flourished on a different dial from AM. It also may be the last mass-appeal format (both genders, regardless of the reasons why) that modern American pop music has to offer.

Great radio stories, b-turner, and great discussion. Radio indeed might be ice cold, as the OP suggested. But so far the weather has never stopped our complaining,

 

[b-turner]

I respect your right to disagree. In fact, I agree Album Rock wasn't called anything at the time it first appeared. It was yet to be named. I sometimes heard 'Underground Radio' and 'Progressive' as early terms. The newspaper in Dallas called the stations 'Progressive Rock' in 1969, for example.

My point was the listeners of the various formats that appeared came from somewhere and most were likely from top 40 that heavily dayparted to attract as many folks as possible. I was trying, as poorly as I did, to show that as new stations came on the scene, the audience that had been mostly on one or two stations went to maybe 4 or 5 stations because those stations often chose to center on certain demographics the typical top 40 station once had by default. All of these offshoots, as I called them, were a result of carving out a slice of what had been perhaps one station's audience.

Thank you for the nice comments. I appreciate the comments and your clarification. You are right, the album format was an FM thing but I wonder how many came from a meager serving of core artist crossovers from top 40 to land on the FM with a station that really expressed their musical interests.

I recall something Gordon McClendon reportedly said about why he decided to sell KLIF. In his opinion the mass appeal of top 40 was dying. He saw the coming trends in programming and he noticed how volatile top 40 was. I think we both might remember how it edged heavier around 1970 then became more adult contemporary, disco influenced a few years later and heavily new wave by the 80s. I thought he was right. There had already been the evolution of top 40 brought on by the British Invasion and the coming influences would insure the older demographics would be at least somewhat alienated by the general top 40 format. He felt it would be impossible to maintain the audience he once had in the future years. Maybe top 40 destroyed itself by evolving so quickly.

You mention the viability of the formats over the years while I was centering on a smaller span of time. I suppose in top 40 we were simply doing what the dozen or so MOR stations did to compete. I noticed one my be more crooner based while the next might mix in some more contemporary artists and so forth. It seemed most claimed a slice of the pie for themselves versus trying to be a station for everyone that liked MOR. I noticed on Beautiful Music stations that one might be all lush orchestrated and the next centering in on newer covers of songs versus the big all time favorites of several decades. It might be Mantovani on one station and the Paul Mauriet on another station.

 

[landtuna]

Your kids hang around with people who are like them. They're probably white and of a certain income and education. That's why you're not typical.

You tell me. All of my kids are "white". Three are male and were born and raised here. Two are female and were born and raised in Romania. None are currently married and all are currently living out of the house. From about 1990 on we had tons of other kids in and around the house and that didn't let up until just several years ago when the last kid left the nest so about 20 years experience with kids of all kinds. The males hung out with guys a lot like them but the girls hung out with a wide variety of kids, both male and female, that were very international (had been born and raised in other countries). They all like different kinds of music but none get it on the radio. One likes Metal, one Country, one Oldies, one girl splits between Romanian music and modern pop and the other girl is almost totally Romanian. The Country Kid is the only one having sat radio and that's because he lives in an area where OTA is very spotty. They range in age from 39-25.

I would say my family is not typical but not for the common reasons.

 

[TheBigA]

I would say my family is not typical but not for the common reasons.

How about education and income?

Sorry, but it's pretty unlikely anyone will be flipping to Romanian. Although you never know.