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What makes some of the smaller town stations better?

oldies76 said:
What makes small town radio stations better??

Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.

More old school style broadcasting and programming.
Larger, thorough playlists
Weekend specials, if desired
Less advertising on some occasions
No worries about spending a fortune on research and music testing and other large market expenditures
Attracting a specific audience that will accept your style and presentation

Yeah, they usually rate much lower, but frankly, who cares if you are pleasing the smaller audience you are targeting. They are happy and that's what matters.
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What matters is attracting enough listeners for advertisers to get results. Then you can make a little money and justify the investment.

Having "happy" listeners is not the endgame. Attracting repeat listeners who will respond to advertising messages is.

It's a business. Listeners are the product we sell to advertisers.

Thankfully there are plenty of them to go around, whether an LPFM or a small AM. The mom and pops of radio. I'll gladly take their great music over any 200 song playlist any day of the year.
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LPFMs do not have "less advertising" as they are not allowed to run any. And the coverage areas are so small that it is hard to achieve any real impact.

AM's playing music appeal to a nearly extinct older crowd (with the exception of some special case ethnic stations such as KIRN in LA). We are starting to see more and more of them go off the air unless they have a decent translator, and when they do, they don't program for older audiences or go for highly niched formats.

We are also seeing a reduction of that kind of station being able to stream due to the recently increased royalties which have even caused some independent streaming services to shut down.
 
oldies76 said:
What makes small town radio stations better??

Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.
Click to expand...

And yet you have that right now in Los Angeles. Don't you? No, this is not a small town thing.
 
i agree with Oldie76 "Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.”
One of my first jobs was at a small station on the coast in NC. We were poor, but had a load of fun with goofy promotions. Played the same songs you could get at the big rock stations in Raleigh, but our promotions were truly fun. No big prizes but fun on the air and people loved it. We did well in the ratings and made enough money to keep us going, but mostly it was a fun place to work and a fun station to listen to, and a loyal audience.
 
sack said:
i agree with Oldie76 "Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.”

One of my first jobs was at a small station on the coast in NC. We were poor, but had a load of fun with goofy promotions. Played the same songs you could get at the big rock stations in Raleigh, but our promotions were truly fun. No big prizes but fun on the air and people loved it. We did well in the ratings and made enough money to keep us going, but mostly it was a fun place to work and a fun station to listen to, and a loyal audience.
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As it should be....awesome!!
 
sack said:
i agree with Oldie76 "Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.”
One of my first jobs was at a small station on the coast in NC. We were poor, but had a load of fun with goofy promotions. Played the same songs you could get at the big rock stations in Raleigh, but our promotions were truly fun. No big prizes but fun on the air and people loved it. We did well in the ratings and made enough money to keep us going, but mostly it was a fun place to work and a fun station to listen to, and a loyal audience.
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Back before things like SiriusXM, streaming, or IPods, small market radio was pretty much your only choice for audio entertainment. Obviously, not the case anymore.

I've told friends who haven't been professionally in the broadcast business that really do believe if they had their own small market station, that their personal music library and musical tastes would suffice as a sustainable business model. I always hate to rain on their parade that running a radio station, especially a small market one, takes SO much more than what music you play. Sure, the music is the thing that brings in the listeners, but your personal music tastes won't translate to 10% of your potential listening audience. An example: Back in the 80's a local rich guy wanted to get into the radio biz, so he bought a local small market station with me rebuilding it. He jocked/hosted a daily show, where he basically played what he wanted. He had eclectic music tastes with a very broad playlist. At first, listeners seemed to embrace the difference from what they had heard from larger market stations...for about a month. Local advertisers were concerned that those who came into their places of business were indicating the music on his station was too weird and quirky, so naturally, they stopped advertising on the station. The station owner insisted he bought the station to play his music, and that's what he was determined to do. After three years of shoveling money into the station, with little to no return, he finally have up.

As mentioned; this was all before things like IPods, smart phones, streaming, or satellite radio.
 
sack said:
i agree with Oldie76 "Well......the "freedom" of being able to do more what you want without worrying about corporate consequences.”
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That's a function of ownership, not geography. If you work for a corporate station in Nags Head, you play what the corporate owners want. If you work for Saul Levine in LA or the new owner of WABC in NY, things might be different.

Ultimately someone has to own these stations. It can be big corporations or it can be rich individuals. If it's a corporation, the goal is to maximize profit for shareholders. If it's an individual, it's up to him.
 
97chris said:
What makes the smaller town stations better?
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Depends on the playlists? But that does not matter anymore in the era of Podcasts, and people finding the playlists on internet radio (note internet radio has to deal with the royalty fees increase) on YouTube and Satellite radio.
 
RadioPatrol said:
and to this Politico article on radio stations not owned by Entercom, Cumulus, Alpha, I heart and Salem. These are "community owned" stations and how they serve their demos on the article plus shows not seen on the big radio outlets.
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The first station in that article is owned by Radio One, which is a big radio corporation. They just happen to be black-owned, so they support that agenda.
 
It is funny how people don't think of radio as a business (and that includes public radio). If you were opening a grocery store would you stock only foods you like or what the local customer base wanted? If you were an auto repair shop would you only service makes and models you like or any model or make you had the ability to repair? The biggest statement I can make is: radio is not about you but about the listeners. If you go to a burger restaurant, it's not about the cook but about the burger and if you don't like the burger served, chances are you won't be back even if it's the burger the cook likes best.

If you want to change radio, you have to change the listener first. That's not to say creativity should be set aside but unless it is what your listeners want, it won't work.

Small market stations that aren't computers in a closet or satellite delivered tend to be more willing to try something new perhaps because the risk is a bit less. On the other hand I found many small market stations resist change with a passion. If it isn't broke, it doesn't need fixing. Any change had to be sustainable long term. In other words, it it left when you got that next gig or would have to stop when low billing months hit, it was never going to happen because the station never would take a step back since that could be perceived as failure.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Other than anecdotal personal experience, what evidence do you have that Dallas metro residents listen at all to those stations?

Before the new listing rules, KHYI and KLAK never got above a 0.1 in the Dallas book, and usually got a 0.0
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If KLAK and KHYI had better signals in Dallas I'm pretty sure they could get more than a 0.1. I think the only reason they don't get more is because their signals are probably rimshots.
 
97chris said:
If KLAK and KHYI had better signals in Dallas I'm pretty sure they could get more than a 0.1. I think the only reason they don't get more is because their signals are probably rimshots.
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If they had better signals, it's likely their programming would be different.

They do what they do because of what they are.
 
TheBigA said:
Not everyone runs radio stations as a business. Some run it as their personal fiefdom. We may start to see more of that.
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You mean like Pacifica Radio? I know everybody talks about their leadership as a corporate fiefdom like how it fits their niche agendas while failing to look at the business side of their operations.
 
97chris said:
If KLAK and KHYI had better signals in Dallas I'm pretty sure they could get more than a 0.1. I think the only reason they don't get more is because their signals are probably rimshots.
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Both stations get fairly good signals into Collin and Denton counties, which are approximately 25% of the population of the Dallas MSA.
 
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