> An AC listener in Farsi wants the same thing as
> an AC listener in Spanish or English.
> >
Dave, slow down, here! We're not talking about foreign countries! We're talking about Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Birmingham, Des Moines, etc.
> Actually, I train jocks and talent, mostly morning and talk
> shows. But I train them to understand listener expectations
> and moods. This is why the morning show I did in the
> Dominican Republic has been #1 for 20 years, with shares
> higher than any TV show in the nation. And why I did the
> first hot talk personality FM in Puerto Rico, #1 for 19 1/2
> years with 6 morning shows all day long. Or on the music
> side, AC's like KLVE in LA where the talk meets listener
> expectations for that format.
>
Like I said, Dave....we're talking to two different groups of listeners.
>
> You gotta' know which songs to identify. If listeners don't
> know the artists and titles of the gold, you are playing the
> wrong songs. In other words, the PD has not constructed the
> station well. And the GM has not hired well.
>
Good point about the gold, but, the gold isn't what I'm refering to. In fact, if it's been a long time since a "gold" tune has been heard, you can still "sell" it without patronizing the listener. It just takes a little intelligence.....something that's not, generally, found in management.
>
> Actually, it is too much talk and boring content in most
> formats. If you look at real time programming with the kind
> of EKG display used for testing political speeches or TV
> commercials, you see a huge fall-off in appeal with
> multi-song backsells, and very limited appeal of backselling
> artist and title.
>
Oh, geeze, Dave. Get your head out of the clouds! This psychobabble is grating on me. This is freakin' RADIO! Not Space Shuttle science. Trust your gut! Example...when you say you can't distinguish voice-tracked content from live, you're listening to the mechanics....not the SOUL of the content. It's perfectly okay for a jock to, occasionally, say, "Um", or to stumble over a word, laugh, or even step on a vocal. If he's clever enough to come up with a great recovery, the audience was just entertained. No one died. No blood was spilled, and someone got a laugh out of it. My old friend, J R Nelson of Detroit, was a master at that sort of thing.
>
> Gee, I only spent a cupla' million in the last year talking
> to real listeners recruited using solid random probability
> samples.
> >
Bully for you! A couple of million would've gone a long way toward buying some better talent.....both, on and off the air talent. Maybe "half of all radio stations" wouldn't be losing money.
>
> Really? Mexico has an immense middle class, the second
> largest in Latin America. They sell huge quantities of iPods
> and other portable players there, have satellite TV, and a
> higher usage of cell phones than the US.
> >
I didn't say Mexico didn't have that stuff. However, I am very aware of Mexico's racial divide....and it's huge! It translates, directly, into a huge economic divide, (witness the influx of illegal aliens into the U.S.). In Mexico, there is a far greater dependence on radio, than there is in the U.S.
> I owned a group that included 9 stations in a market of
> about a million in the late 60's. Because I learned how to
> do consolidation in Mexico, I knew I could do a spectrum
> that included formats that as stand alones would not be
> viable. I believe firmly in allowing multi-station clusters
> because it expands format options instead of 20 operators
> doing the biggest format as happened before.
>
Yeah, and explain to me why, independently owned stations can't engage, by way of business association, in program sharing. It's been done for years. But, what has happened in the USA, with consolodation, is the demise of local, privately-owned radio, and, to a great extent, minority ownership.
>
> You have OBVIOUSLY not been in Mexico lately.
>
Obviously? Wrong!
>The cities have every convenience that is available in the US or
> Europe. Cable, satellite, DSL (cheaper, in fact) and a much
> more modern phone system in some cities. And, as I said,
> there is a huge urban middle class.
I hear they have hot & cold running water, too!
> In the US, on the other hand, about half of all stations have not been
>profitable from as far back as the 50's. Too many stations, complicated by >the " arrival" of FM, Docket 80-90, and other related factors over-radioed the >US.
>
Aha! There's the problem! You are so right! Now, how to fix the problem. Importing Atlanta programming to six, or more, radio stations in Houston isn't how to fix sliding numbers. You have to be local, local, local. And, Dave, try to understand this: YOU HAVE TO BE LIVE!
Here's how to fix it:
1) Quit paying 4/5ths of your on-air budget to the morning show. Back off of that a bit. Take some of that money and beef up the other dayparts. If you want to make your station more than just "noise on in the background", you've got to be live, topical, entertaining, AND, play a boatload of music. Yes, Dave, you can do that.
2) Get out in the public. Send your promotions people out, during the day, where they can be seen, and get the jocks out there, too. They need to understand that working out their hitch with the station from the studio just won't cut it. They're going to have to get out and meet the listeners. Meet them at work, at the convenience store, at the concerts, at public service events. But, for gawd's sake, do it!
3) Cut back on the freakin' consultants. A consultant in San Diego doesn't know crap about the Houston audience, and, I'm sorry Dave, there isn't a budget big enough to place an out-of-town-consultant in town long enough to make him understand the local culture. You can only do that by living here. I watched ABC-owned KXYZ & KAUM get their signals knocked into the dirt by KILT & KNUZ because ABC couldn't figure out that programming Houston stations from New Yawk just doesn't work. It didn't work back then....and it won't work today. Program locally! If you don't trust your program director and music director to get it right for the local market, then maybe, you should own a TCBY.
> Mexico has fewer stations per capita than the US, and radio,
> via consolidation, has always maintained a higher presence
> than the industry in the US.
>
Mexican consolodation is a requirement, because, there are darned few people, down there, who can afford to get into the ownership game.
> Back in the 60's radio promoted as a medium very aggressively... something >the industry does not even do well today in the US.
>
You, certainly, have that right. For the kind of medium radio is, an advertising medium, they sure do a lousy job of promotion. If radio were to approach me to advertise, and they pitched all the virtues of advertising to me, I'd like to see some example of that on their part. Rather hypocritical, wouldn't you say?
> In addition, Mexico intelligently did not licence the
> quantity of inferior signals that the US did... low power
> directional daytimers on 1550, Class A FMs in major markets,
> and such things that inhibit the ability to compete. They
> also allowed up to 250,000 watts on AM and up to the same
> ERP on FM so listeners get good signals.
True enough! But, that's in large part to the way the population clusters are laid out, in Mexico. You have incredibly large cities, and vast expanses of desolate area. Those signals have to go far. You don't have a lot of small towns with the kind of business activity that would support a small station, as was the case, here, in the US. Let's talk Mexico, and Dominican Republic, and Tibet, if you want to. You're comparing apples to oranges, and you're still coming up with a half-baked fruit salad.
