color=blue]Thanks TSB.[/color]
De nada.
I've heard that Entercom has a national contract with Limbaugh which requires WRKO to carry it - but don't know how long.
Don't know about the national contract, but I can't imagine why either Entercom or Limbaugh would want to end that arrangement, which would appear to be a marriage arranged in heaven.
So, having a conservative on PMD makes sense, except that with two talk stations competing for conservative talkers, it seems that each would end up with a smaller audience than if one went mod/lib.
Not necessarily so. If the talk radio consumer is overwhelmingly conservative, counter-programming a liberal puts you in the position of forfeiting the larger audience completely to the conservative competition while gaining yourself the lion's share of a much smaller liberal audience. Neither WRKO or WTKK are looking to cater to an underserved audience, they are trying to hold each other at bay by getting the bigger slice of the existing pie.
Using the numbers above *, half a larger conservative audience (21% * .5 = 10.5%) is less than all of a liberal one (16%). Sure, the one who gets 100% of the conservative audience would end up better off, but overall revenue would go up on commercial radio (37% combined vs 21% conservative only)
Except that's not how the game is played. If, for argument's sake, the available audience is 100 people, and you get 25% of them, that doesn't mean you are going to get 25% of the revenue. It could well mean you get 0% of the revenue. In a "reach & frequency" advertising environment with finite budgets, buyers will often opt for hitting that larger audience an extra time or two rather than trying to increase their reach by tossing a bone to the station with a smaller audience. That is why a powerhouse station such as WBZ can bill 300% more than a station with only a 50% smaller audience. Of course, there are few true "one station buys", and stations get bought for reasons other than pure numbers (clients like an on-air personality or have a personal relationship with him, value added incentives, and even just because the buyer personally likes the salesperson,), but up where the big money grows, it's harvested by the guy in first place. When I was selling this stuff for a living, the best sales managers didn't measure performance by asking "how much money did you get ?" but by asking "what percentage of the buy did you get ?" Good radio salespeople always outperform their station's ratings, but I can attest its a lot easier to outperform great ratings and it is to outperform mediocre ones.
since right now the liberals don't have anywhere to go except NPR or other media, and the station that goes lib increases from 10.5% to 16%.
You just answered your own question. The rise of talk radio, symbolized by Limbaugh, was a reaction to what was seen as a monolithically liberal traditional electronic news and information media. Conservatives staked out the talk radio ground as their battlefield, and made stars out of folks who, without it, would have remained household names in their own households. Success bred success. The underserved audience was conservatives, so talk radio served it. Since most electronic media, other than talk radio, has a liberal slant, liberal talk radio is a cure for which there is no known disease.
The alphabet TV networks' newscasts have been trending down in viewers for decades ( I think I remember seeing stats that showed that the number of folks who rely on the major networks for their information has fallen from around 90% in 1970 to around 47% today.) Viewer discontent with what they considered bias is what Fox news is all about. From its debut against CNN, which a lot of folks had come to consider as Ted Turners left-wing disinformation machine and indistinguishable from what they could get elsewhere, Fox now has 9 of the top 10 cable news programs, with only CNN's Larry King Live, which is often indistinguishable from Access Hollywood, managing to sneak in. MSNBC, which is the most openly liberal of the cable news nets, has trouble staying ahead of Headline News, and its tent pole prime time program, Keith Olbermann, turns numbers which would get you fired at Fox. They've been reduced to running NBC reruns and crime documentaries in order to keep the lights on. Liberals don't need MSNBC when they can get their fix on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, and the more established CNN. And the lowest rated network news program still turns far bigger numbers than the highest rated cable news program. All of which is why liberals don't need talk radio, and, apparently, don't listen to it.
And, since liberals don't tend to listen to commercial talk that much, it seems like a growth opportunity as opposed to conservative talk which has been around for much longer and is there more of a 'mature' industry. What am I missing?
Well, as AAR proved, just because you build it doesn't mean the people will come. As the Pew, and other surveys, show, people listen to talk radio to be entertained, and, IMHO, most folks aren't entertained by views diametrically opposed to their own.
Also, in your opinion, is pairing a liberal with a conservative not viable? Perhaps people just want the affirmation, not the debate?
Affirmative on affirmation. Probably the most well known radio program featuring both a liberal and a conservative is the Curtis & Kuby program running in AMD on WABC in NYC, and it seems to be successful, essentially doubling, according to station PR, the audience of the program they replaced 7 years ago. But they spent a lot of time honing their act in less important dayparts before making the jump to the highly competitive morning slot. And the NYC market is incredibly diverse and thus the radio market is really fragmented and with room for just about anything. But I don't know of too many others, which doesn't mean they don't exist, but I'd guess that successful pairings could probably be counted on your fingers. WTKK does have Eagan and Braude, a true to-the-ramparts liberal and, from what I can discern, a slightly nominal conservative, but its not in AMD and even WTKK isn't prepared to go with a straight-forward liberal program against Limbaugh.
The most successful pairing is cable's "Hannity & Colmes", but there is no doubt that Hannity is the star of that show, and Colmes is pretty much the low-key equal opportunity hire. Plus they have the clout to get just about whomever they want to interview, although I think Hannity is a crappy interviewer who never let's you forget that it's really all about him and his views.
Listeners obviously don't mind contention, or even mayhem, on the radio, just not the partisan political kind. This is evident from the success of WEEI, and especially The Big Show. As one of their talent observed in a magazine article I read, the show didn't really start to take off until Ordway, who I don't particularly care for but will admit is a genius when it comes to sports talk, instead of screening out nutcase callers, started letting them on the air, and then getting into shouting matches with callers and talking over cohosts. The numbers went through the roof. This stuff flies, but sports is the toy store of talk radio, and the blatant political content of the program is miniscule. Both liberals and conservatives can have a laugh at 'Tom from Shrewsbury's' expense.
and bjohns, if I am embarrassing myself again, I trust that you will not hesitate to let me know again. Thanks.
I can't remember the last time you embarrassed yourself. I think you're one of the better posters.
Regards,
TSB
