Not happening any time soon....all have been around quite awile and are locally owned.. and very involved in the vibrant commnunity.
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Rimshots or weak signals that outkick their coverage
- Thread starter radiofan86
- Start date
Not happening any time soon....all have been around quite awile and are locally owned.. and very involved in the vibrant commnunity.
One day last week as we went out for a walk, we saw the Amazon delivery truck roll into the far end of the street. We realized that it was making a delivery to about one out of every three homes. It would move 100 feet, make one or two deliveries, move again and repeat the process.
If I had laid in wait for UPS, I might have seen the same thing all over again.
The pandemic reduced store traffic. Those that can afford Amazon Prime, have valid credit cards and the like are doing much more on-line shopping. But while households with tighter budgets and fewer discretionary purchases still shop retail, the "big spenders" on items with higher mark-ups are far more likely to be buying online. That change in buying hurts local direct accounts the most.
In our household, we have not been into a supermarket for 42 months. Same for most local store categories.
And the keyword here is "limited".
In the moderately affluent community we live in (which is part of the already "well to do" on average Palm Springs metro) radio revenue is projected to decline over the next few years and has not kept up with inflation for over a decade. Stores are starting to lock up everything from razor blades to Tide© detergent, making in-person shopping rather disagreeable.
The net result: less and less local retail advertising. Looking at the newscasts on the most successful local TV operation, we see air conditioning companies (it gets to 122° easily on some summer days), plumbing services, floor and rug cleaning firms, plastic surgeons, pain doctors, personal injury and estate attorneys, mattress showrooms, car dealers, realtors, paving and stonework providers, garage door repair and.... well, the conclusion is that these are mostly services, not retail. And most are based on the relative affluence of the area.
I'd not welcome even a gift of any station in Wyoming. Even if you don't pay your taxes (I am sure you saw the related news item), it's not a good business.
The station has also added versus firing employees in the last 5 years... AND after renting for 12 years,m bought their own building.
Id say things are going well. Owner was born and raised in laramie, went to high school and college there.. never left and has a ton of connections and relationships built up, plus one of the smartest owners ive worked for when it comes to $$ AND engineering. He does most of his own engineering...
Normally Id agree with you, but theres alot of things, some that are hard to prove with numbers, as to why the station is doing well.
The format has remain unchanged for 12 years, just updating with music on a regular basis, very very stable staff.. we look at what our competitors do and dont do.....and try to make what their weaknesses are to be our strengths.
That's what I thought too. Tell me nothing has changed in 2025.
And that is the perfect case of "the exception makes the rule".
If you go to any over-radioed market or nearly any depressed market (Key West, Traverse City, Grand Junction come to mind) and you will see nearly nobody prospering and maybe one operator or owner doing OK but only because they work 70-hour weeks and are on-call 24/7. And they are not vacationing in a villa on St. Kitts.
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Yep, and for a lot of reasons you mentioned, the numbers of local viable businesses that would advertise on radio continues to decrease in number.
Paul is right that a town like Laramie might be a little slower in this trend, but it will happen there eventually too. Radio owners, even in small towns or communities who bury their head in the sand that everything will be great into the future just like now, do so at their own peril.
Saw just yesterday on the local news that some local Giant Foods stores in DC are removing all brand name products off the shelves, leaving store brands only. Ordering well known brand names is only available via online delivery or drive through pickup.
Yeah now is not the time to consider radio as a business. Especially with less than a dozen or more stations.
Dallas/Fort Worth has a long history of successful rimshots thanks to its flat terrain... it also hasn't hurt that most of the metro's population growth has been toward the rimshots, which are all perched on the north side of the market.
KTCK has been the top station in the market for most of 2023 - it is simulcast on a vulnerable upper-end AM (1310) and the 96.7 rimshot, some 60 miles from downtown Dallas.
Adult R&B KRNB has been a regular in the top 10 over the last few years, finishing as high #4 earlier this year.
In 1995, KDGE (then on 94.5) was the #1 station in 18-34 at a time when Alternative was white-hot and there was no other source for the music in the market.
I lived in laramie full time for 2 years, there have been numerous businesses opening there since then
Back around 2002, another member of the HBC team and I did a project where we got ZIP Code data, crossed it with the 60 dbu, 65 dbu and 70 dbu contours of rated FM stations in about a dozen markets. At the time, Arbitron was "playing nice" and did some runs for us so we could correlate ZIPs with ratings with coverage.
There was really only one market, Dallas, where our conclusion that 80% of home and work listening was inside the 70 dbu contour and 95% was inside the 65 dbu contour.
Part of the issue was that the laws of physics determined whether stations could penetrated into homes, apartments and business locations. But Dallas proved that, when a viable format was not on a better signal, people went out of their way to make up for that impediment.
The Internet has voided all those findings and conclusions.
And how many others have closed or are "hanging on by a wing and a prayer"?
Exactly.. the station has a very wide, overall playlist.. centering on 80s to now, but going back to the 70s sometimes and very rare 70s. Country, rock, pop, a little bit of soul, a touch of alt... nothing too hard, rocky or slow...... garth brooks into a lighter classic rock tune, or justin beiber into gloria gaynor. The station is family friend and female heavy.. the other stations in the market are louder, harder and very male heavy.. and the country station on 95.1 is very aggressively processed, females have told me they cant listen for long. Neither of the clusters are very involved in the community.
We counter them on processing and community involvement./
Prob. a few, but the community has a downtown association and also a city wide chamber that work pretty hard and laramie also has a 10,000 student college
How long ago?
Students who can't wait to leave the community after graduation.
Isn't that true of almost all small-town four year college students?
Yep, but especially in places like Laramie WY. Or any small community.
Some but not all.. Laramie is not a bad place at all, I miss it.
Oh I have no doubt Laramie is like the big city compared with Moose Rectum, AK.
That still isn't saying much.
Is there any town in the US that you like?
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