Rochester's Winter Book

[Element9]

If I put my ruthless MBA hat on, the "have" stations will probably be financed by continuing to bleed the "have nots"

... Disclaimer: no one wishes to see this industry turn around more than me - but the realities interfere with the fantasies. There will be a time, yet to be determined when it can be fun again.

There are about 3 thousand former Clear Channel employees and a few thousand from Entercom, Cumulus, Citadel and Emmis that are waiting... waiting... waiting. Reality is a cold-hearted bitch.

 

[Bob1370]

Reading Mike Doyle's comments, first, there's no question that Entercom has several Rochester stations that are getting the job done well--he deserves congrats for what WBEE, Buzz and PXY are accomplishing. For one, they are good-sounding stations in their respective format realms. And since Clear Channel has essentially gutted the format competition it fields for two of those three stations, and has only a minor rimshot player going against the third, those core stations are likely to see even better days ahead as long as they continue to do a good job and stay locally focused. The folks at Entercom can take credit for beating CC on those fronts and maybe convincing Clear Channel to give up the fight.

The CMF-Fox battle evidently gives everyone something to take to the bank, and something to worry about. It's the biggest format battle in commercial radio in the market right now and probably will stay that way for some time.

The one thing I might question, is the decision about WROC. Mike says, "We are very happy with Sportsradio 950 ESPN. Ratings up from Progressive talk, and revenue WAY up since the swap." I get the second part, sports is probably a lot easier to sell as part of a package buy of the cluster than progressive talk. My one question about the numbers, though, is that since progressive talk IIRC got pretty consistently into the 1s and skewed both younger and less exclusively male than the conservative talk Clear Channel serves up, can Entercom really be satisfied with a consistent 0.8 share for WROC now? Maybe the 25-54 men or some other desired demo are stronger now than before for 'ROC, maybe cume's better, I don't know, there are a lot of ways to read a rating book. But I still wonder how long two stations are going to keep fighting over a 2 share for the whole format. Seems like a lot of effort invested in a battle that doesn't look like it's got a huge return for whoever comes out the winner.

 

[listener-in]

I always love the anonymous people who call others unprofessional.

I’m sure that all radio managers sincerely believe in the job their station is doing. However, they should step outside occasionally and imagine themselves in the shoes of us anonymous listeners, who provide their bread and butter. Yes, I know that listeners rank below the advertisers in the pecking order, but without us, their clients go away. And, whether they "love" (translation: dismiss as unworthy of consideration) our opinions or not, they matter.

Maybe WROC is doing an excellent job running its sports station; if that is indeed the case, there should be even less excuse for low ratings than when it did progressive talk, because the of slipshod way in which that format was put on the air, as I described last fall on this board. As I pointed out, WROC’s lousy signal is beyond its control, but there are plenty of other things it could have improved upon. How did WROC manage to make the listening experience almost intolerable? Let me count the ways:

• 
  Prolonged silences
  
  Simultaneous competing audio streams
  
  Gross mistiming of tape-delayed shows – segments starting several minutes late and having to be cut off in mid-topic for the news at the top or bottom of the hour
  
  Repetition of the same hour of a “best-of” show in consecutive hours of air time
  
  Stale CNN news bulletins - sometimes yesterday's news, sometimes over a week old

I didn’t make such incidents up. They really happened, and not just once or twice. They happened often. Add the fact that there was zero promotion in the community, and you have a recipe for guaranteed failure.

I’ll leave it to the radio insiders to decide whether they would consider all of this professional, but it certainly didn’t come across that way to this listener. For whatever reason, WROC’s managers most certainly did not run the progressive radio format as if their jobs depended on it.

 

[shakes]

Is the "Break Room" 2 words, or is it "Breakroom". The website has it one way, and the GM has it another. Makes you wonder?
In his thanks, he forgot the three people he fired: Kasper from PXY, and Lumpy and Philbilly from CMF. I guess they didn't help with the ratings? All I heard on the CMF AM show was Philbilly's stories.