• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Smerconish To Unseat Limbaugh On WPHT?

@Time:
1.) Your premise is wrong. CBS is NOT "dumping Rush". Premier is moving Rush. There is a difference. If CBS was "dumping Rush", they wouldn't be continuing to air his show.

In radio, if you are going to be gone, you ARE gone!

2.) a "PH.D" is not a genius, it means he was able to be accepted, attend, and complete the education and graduate. It does NOT mean they are any smarter or dumber than anybody without the title.

The smartest people I know are people who never finished High School. The ones with the degrees are, generally, able to organize their thoughts and present them better.
 
1.) Your premise is wrong. CBS is NOT "dumping Rush". Premier is moving Rush. There is a difference
Click to expand...

According to the latest news reports, technically you are correct, CBS and Premier were apparently dickering over price, and it was Premier that blinked and found itself another option first. However, we shouldn't forget that it was CBS who dumped two other Premier "talk stars" in the past year and the syndicator couldn't find another home for either one in Philly radio. And, that would indicate CBS had the only game in town when it came to potential affiliates. It was probably very clear CBS wasn't going to pay "confiscatory rates" to carry Rush anymore. So, Premier saw an opportunity with a brand new station and made a deal the new station owners found attractive. On the flip side, Premier was faced with the possibility that all its biggest stars might be shutout of any affiliate agreement in Philly, decided that half a loaf is better than none and convinced Merlin to change plans and make a deal.

If CBS was "dumping Rush", they wouldn't be continuing to air his show.

In radio, if you are going to be gone, you ARE gone!
Click to expand...

Not true, in a case where there is a legal affiliation agreement like this, especially between two major players with in-house legal departments. When it comes to "personal service contracts" if a station decides "you are going, you ARE gone" those who are gone still get paid. Opie and Anthony spent a lot of time on the beach, collecting regular paychecks after being fired. Even Imus got paid when CBS called it quits, although there was some kind of lump sum settlement reported to be about $20-million for the I-man. On the other hand, with a syndicated show, if you are dropping it for business reasons you have to let the contract run out.

a "PH.D" is not a genius, it means he was able to be accepted, attend, and complete the education and graduate. It does NOT mean they are any smarter or dumber than anybody without the title.

The smartest people I know are people who never finished High School. The ones with the degrees are, generally, able to organize their thoughts and present them better.
Posted on: Today at 12:51:19 AM
Posted by: Irishfl
Click to expand...

Just for the record, nobody said anything about PhD's being anything other than "more likely to listen to NPR than to Rush."

When you are marketing any product, or service, you look for different traits among your target customers so you can more efficiently reach them. If I am marketing Harley Davidson's bikes I might put the spots on a sports talk station or a classic rocker. It would likely be a waste of money to pay for a short non-commercial announcement on NPR.

By the same token, on TV, PBS recently ran a Masterpiece Theater series called "Downton Abbey" and the "sponsor" was a company that offers high-end European river cruises to well off Americans. The "sponsor" was delighted to have such an efficient way to reach so many potential customers with its short announcements before and after the program. It's different strokes for different folks and in marketing, including radio station formats, you have to pay attention to the differences.
 
Broadcast Story of the Year?

badjef said:
CBS is NOT "dumping Rush". Premier is moving Rush. There is a difference.
Click to expand...
Having had time to think this through, it's not clear whether CBS was looking to phase Rush out for cost savings or just renew him cheap. They did drop Beck and Hannity which had, in the past, been part of the deal to keep Rush. Whether CBS was trying to save money at all costs or just thought Premiere had no other options is unknown, though CBS did start marketing PHT as live and local (for whatever that's worth) after ditching Hannity & Beck.

Premiere, for its part, didn't move mountains to get its other product back on the air in Philly, with owner Clear Channel declining to swap any of their decent-billing, cheap-to-run music formats for talk. Premiere may have been waiting for Limbaugh to be available as part of the package, or clearing the product in Philly may have been relatively low priority.

Whatever the situation, 1210 now finds iself where WWDB was in 1999/2000 when they allowed CBS to outbid them for Rush and attempted to do all local talk. We all know how WWDB ultimately saved money - by dropping the relatively expensive talk format two days before Election Day 2000 and going to cheap music jukebox formats that yielded them depressed ratings for years, but also greatly reduced costs and improved demos. But WPHT has a big disadvantage being an AM station in 2012. Music is even less of an option for 1210 than it was when they first threw in the towel on talk in 1990. I equated that move at the time as simply signing off, though others thought such a move might be doable in oldies-centric Philly. I think years of sub 1.0 ratings for powerhouse 1210 suggests the former theory was closer to the truth.

If 1210 is trying to save money and wants to exit talk, what else is left? Brokering is profitable. Does Family Radio have enough cash to eventually get itself on 1210? Would one of the Hispanic broadcasters want to upgrade their signal, say from 1310 to 1210? Would a 5th sports outlet generate enough revenue on the Phils flagship?

One thing's for sure. I voted the move of Rush from DB to PHT in 2000 as by far the top story of that year based on the upheaval I was sure would follow, and as Rene points out elsewhere, this move is the major story of this and maybe next year as well for the same reasons. More upheaval will most certainly follow. Throw in a 44-year heritage station, a new broadcaster in the mix, and heritage 1210 at a crossroads yet again, and this story qualifies as a tsunami in the market. Grab your galoshes!
 
I agree, one predictor of who goes where likely is political affiliation, but there are probably many other predictors including level of education, type of occupation etc. There are always exceptions, but NPR probably has more PhDs in its audience than Rush does.

I agree completely. Which may be why a liberal version of Rush/Beck/Hannity doesn't do well among liberal listeners. The better educated listener seems to prefer the more thoughtful, well presented in an "educational/professorial" manner discussion of the issues without the hype, ranting, hate speech, etc, that is what much of right wing talk radio has become. I believe the statistics show that liberal audiences are generally better educated, I didn't say SMARTER, than conservative listeners. That's not a shot at conservative listeners, but if you're targeting a certain demo to your station, then you would want to know what appeals to THAT specific group.

My point earlier was that spoken word formated stations ARE in competition (for folks who don't want to listen to music on the radio, but want a spoken word format such as talk, news, business/stock info, sports, sports/talk, news/talk, religious programming, lifestyle programming, etc,etc; as Rock Stations are in competition with each other vs Urban stations are with each other, etc. So it appears that in the Philly market that there is a larger audience that prefers NPR style spoken word programming than right wing conservative talk. Sports/talk scores higher on WIP-FM than conservative talk on WPHT.

Now you can sub divide the spoken word format and say that in the right wing talk format, WPHT does better than WNTP. In that case WHYY-FM wouldn't be considered as it isn't carrying a right wing talk format. So as it appears that the right wing talk listeners in Philly are divided between WNTP and WPHT, will the new WWIQ take listeners away from 990 and 1210 or bring in new listeners.

My guess is, a little of both. Those in Philly who want Rush/Beck/Hannity and have had to listen to an out of town station on WABC in New York, WILM in Wilmington, or WHP in Harrisburg will probably switch to 106.9 WWIQ. There may be those who can't get Rush on any of those stations including 1210, but will now be able to get him on FM 106.9 who will make the switch. There will be others in Wilmington who listen to WILM, but will prefer the FM sound and also jump ship to 106.9.

My guess is,WPHT is hoping to do what both WDEL in Wilmington and WBAL in Baltimore did a number of years ago, by going all live and local during the day parts and those two stations have done quite well against their Rush/Beck/Hannity competition in their respective markets as both have better ratings (Smirconish is a national show with heavy Philly roots). WDEL has better ratings than WILM. WDEL has far more local spots than WILM. So Philly's WPHT could be the winner in the right wing political talk battle as they may pull in listeners who want that sort of political talk, but frankly don't want the ranting of the big 3 and WPHT could be the real winner in billing far more local spots than either WNTP or WWIQ.

So the future PPM results for Philly's conservative talk stations will be interesting to watch.

I may view this differently than most, but I lump all spoken word formats into one group and then sub divide for more specifics as I just did above. Sorry for any confusion.
 
The problem for NPR is that there are very few PhD's out there. Good luck to PHT. I think they will struggle after November with the new focus.
 
MDefl said:
The problem for NPR is that there are very few PhD's out there. Good luck to PHT. I think they will struggle after November with the new focus.
Click to expand...
No, one of the problems with NPR, is they don't have to sell a rate card.

What would we call a person who looked for handouts?

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
Robbien said:
What about the Salem conservative talk station? Where do they fit in all of this?
Click to expand...
Salem concentrates on clearing their syndicated secular talk programs on the stations they own, rather than achieving top ratings. WNTP is running ads for local salespeople and seems intent on selling the quality of its local audience over quantity.

Phil Boyce, former WABC program director and the new Vice President, Director of Spoken Word Format for Salem, has discussed improving Salem's New York City secular talk outlet without really having to compete with the other talkers, so Salem's approach to the format is a bit different from CBS and Merlin.

I know NTP has a high quality audience, as I'm a regular listener to Hugh Hewitt. :)
 
Salem is, apparently, using a very different business model than most competitive major market radio stations.

It, apparently, doesn't subscribe to Arbitron ratings and with the new rules, the public will not see any ratings reports on Salem stations again.

WNTP is a 50-kw station that was once a leader in a market of 4.5-million, and in February it managed to draw an average of 141,000 different listeners a week.

Salem's New York station, WNYM, is also 50-kw and in a market of 15-million and in February it had a weekly audience of 148,000.

And that same kind of "bottom of the barrel ratings" is repeated in markets around the country where Salem has secular talk stations. The audience size of its religious stations is even smaller, WFIL had a total of 41,000 listeners "a week" in February, and WMCA in NYC had 105,000.

Somehow, Salem, as a company, is profitable. It earned $450,000 in the latest quarter. Its stations are essentially relays, that don't generate much programming. The staff is, probably, minimal. And it is squeaking out a profit by keeping costs low.

Since it doesn't have ratings figures to sell commercial time with, and its publicly available figures are very low, you have to wonder what Salem's advertisers are buying? Possibly if you put all its secular talk stations together you might have a national audience the size of one highly rated major market station. The stock market currently values the entire company (market cap) at about $50-million, or a few million more than twice what Merlin recently paid Family Radio just for WKDN.
 
Robbien said:
...no local presence? All syndication? 50,000 watt signal, seems like a waste.
Click to expand...

Obviously, WPHT didn't get the memo about New York's "50,000 watt beacon of freedom [and little local content]", WABC. ::)
 
DToTheJ said:
Robbien said:
...no local presence? All syndication? 50,000 watt signal, seems like a waste.
Click to expand...

Obviously, WPHT didn't get the memo about New York's "50,000 watt beacon of freedom [and little local content]", WABC. ::)
Click to expand...
I got "goose bumps" the first time I heard that.

I still do...

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom