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Strategy

G

gordontalk

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I've been pontering this, but just can't seem to make sense out of it. I've seen radio stations spend more money to try to become number 1 than most of us will probably make in our life times. K104 was on top for a really long time and to my knowledge is currently sitting where a lot of stations would love to be. They might not be number 1 at the moment, but the Bone would probably love to be where they are. I'm sure that it would be a lot easier for K104 to become number 1 again than it would be for most stations. So what do they do: fire some of the people that were a part of their success. It seems that the longer a station is at the top, the quicker they will clean house the moment that they lose a spot. Kind of reminds me of Jerry Jones when he fired Jimmy Johnson. He has probably spent 100 times the money to try to get back to where he was when he fired Jimmy. I would love to hear other stories of stations doing this. A big waste of money if you ask me!
 
There are some management teams that would indeed clean house if they were number one for a long time and suddenly found themselves dethroned. Most smart ones would not.

One bad book doesn't usually affect revenue quite as bad as you might think. Five bad books surely will. I think the smart management team would look at the situation and see if there was any specific element of the operation that may have caused the hiccup. If so, that might be dealt with. Did we cut back and that caused some quality control issues? Did someone leave? Were there technical issues? Did a promotion not develop as planned? Did another station appear and come at us during this time?
A lot of things can happen...typically what happens after one or two bumps in the ratings is a good long look is taken to see if anything MADE it happen or if it JUST happened. Either might require correction or not. By the third hit, my guess is SOMETHING happens.
Over-reacting can be just as dangerous as not reacting.
 
Steve Eberhart said:
Over-reacting can be just as dangerous as not reacting.
Click to expand...

AMEN!

R
 
And everybody needs to remember the inherent instability of the arbitron system. It's entirely possible to have 2 "average" trends and then disappear in the 3rd. So let's say you have a 3.0, a .5 and a 3.0 in a given book. Do you really think that you had listeners in october, all but 1/6th of them disappeared in november, than they all came back in December? Doesn't that strain credibility?

But that's what Arbitron wants you to believe on a regular basis. In my 20 some years in radio, I've seen most GM's usually try what Steve mentioned. Is there market-wide trends that could reflect why your individual station went down. (For example, many times ALL talk stations seem to tank at the same time- which doesn't make a lot of sense- you'd think that if people were sick of Rush, his listeners would show up at KLIF or 660, or KRLD, or sports or SOMEPLACE, but often they'll ALL be down or flat in teh same book...Well, where did all that share go to?)

And steve has something else right- many, if not most big advertisers (and most/all agencies) buy based on 4 book averages...Because they now that they can get absolutely screwed on rates if a station has a GREAT book...It also helps to flatten season trends...Whether it be mor ekids listening to 106 and 104 during teh summer when their out of school, to the Ticket picking up listeners during football season, a 4 book average works for most advertisers...
 
little1 said:
And everybody needs to remember the inherent instability of the arbitron system. It's entirely possible to have 2 "average" trends and then disappear in the 3rd. So let's say you have a 3.0, a .5 and a 3.0 in a given book. Do you really think that you had listeners in october, all but 1/6th of them disappeared in november, than they all came back in December? Doesn't that strain credibility?

But that's what Arbitron wants you to believe on a regular basis. In my 20 some years in radio, I've seen most GM's usually try what Steve mentioned. Is there market-wide trends that could reflect why your individual station went down. (For example, many times ALL talk stations seem to tank at the same time- which doesn't make a lot of sense- you'd think that if people were sick of Rush, his listeners would show up at KLIF or 660, or KRLD, or sports or SOMEPLACE, but often they'll ALL be down or flat in teh same book...Well, where did all that share go to?)

And steve has something else right- many, if not most big advertisers (and most/all agencies) buy based on 4 book averages...Because they now that they can get absolutely screwed on rates if a station has a GREAT book...It also helps to flatten season trends...Whether it be mor ekids listening to 106 and 104 during teh summer when their out of school, to the Ticket picking up listeners during football season, a 4 book average works for most advertisers...
Click to expand...

Yes stations CAN dive one month and come back the next month. It's called Diary Placement.
 
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