WHY CORPORATE RADIO IS KILLING OLDIES

[Thomps2525]

And there are hardly any "regional hits" anymore. In the 1950s-60s there were a lot of records that sold well only in certain parts of the country, partly because each record got played only by radio stations in the city where the group was formed and partly because of---gasp!---payola. (Don't ask me for specific details but I think my assumption is valid.) In 2013, and maybe even since the mid-'80s, thanks to computer programs and consultants and auditorium tests and callout research, almost every top-40 station in the US is playing the same 30 songs. Consolidations and cookie-cutter radio have made payola not only obsolete but not even possible.

 

[CTListener]

And there are hardly any "regional hits" anymore. In the 1950s-60s there were a lot of records that sold well only in certain parts of the country, partly because each record got played only by radio stations in the city where the group was formed and partly because of---gasp!---payola. (Don't ask me for specific details but I think my assumption is valid.) In 2013, and maybe even since the mid-'80s, thanks to computer programs and consultants and auditorium tests and callout research, almost every top-40 station in the US is playing the same 30 songs. Consolidations and cookie-cutter radio have made payola not only obsolete but not even possible.

There are still regional differences outside CHR, aren't there? I understand Cumulus isn't letting its new country outlet in New York City play several national hits that sound too "redneck," and I've seen anecdotal accounts of classic rock stations in the South and West playing less Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp than those in the East and Midwest. So maybe all radio isn't cookie cutter after all.

 

[doowopvault]

Funny David. When the money went to the DJ's it was called "Payola"...when it goes to the owners, as it does today, it's called "business".

The only problem with your comeback is that record companies don't pass any money on to radio stations these days in any form.

In fact, record companies continue to lobby Congress for a near-confiscatory royalty structure for analog radio that would severely impair the survivability of music radio (including your show) as we know it.

It is, however, not a crime for record labels to buy advertising on radio stations... just as it is not a crime to advertise shampoo.

It is a crime for an employee of a radio station to "take" airtime and use it to their own personal benefit unbeknown to the owner of the station... that is the definition of payola, a specialized form of theft which is no different than the butcher at a supermarket taking home some nice steaks without paying for them.

MAN ARE YOU DELUSIONAL, A SERVERE CASE OF DENIAL..LOL LOL
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123898&page=1#.Uec80dzD8dU
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-07-26/business/0507260246_1_sony-bmg-radio-companies-epic

The only thing wrong with your comeback is.....IT'S BASED ON FICTION!!

 

[michael hagerty]

Funny David. When the money went to the DJ's it was called "Payola"...when it goes to the owners, as it does today, it's called "business".

The only problem with your comeback is that record companies don't pass any money on to radio stations these days in any form.

In fact, record companies continue to lobby Congress for a near-confiscatory royalty structure for analog radio that would severely impair the survivability of music radio (including your show) as we know it.

It is, however, not a crime for record labels to buy advertising on radio stations... just as it is not a crime to advertise shampoo.

It is a crime for an employee of a radio station to "take" airtime and use it to their own personal benefit unbeknown to the owner of the station... that is the definition of payola, a specialized form of theft which is no different than the butcher at a supermarket taking home some nice steaks without paying for them.

MAN ARE YOU DELUSIONAL, A SERVERE CASE OF DENIAL..LOL LOL
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123898&page=1#.Uec80dzD8dU
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-07-26/business/0507260246_1_sony-bmg-radio-companies-epic

The only thing wrong with your comeback is.....IT'S BASED ON FICTION!!

And the only thing wrong with yours is it's based on outdated information.

The 20/20 piece you link to is 11 years old. The Baltimore Sun story is 8 years old.

 

[hm insulators]

I'm another one who wishes radio stations would play more variety instead of the same songs over and over and over again (the next DJ in Phoenix that plays "Brown Eyed Girl" is going to get whupped upside the head with a pillowcase filled with rolls of duct tape! ;D). Unfortunately, as Michael Hagerty has pointed out, the radio (and television, for that matter) business is out to make the sponsors happy. It's really all about selling one more SUV, an extra half-dozen Big Macs or another handful of those funny blue pills for a certain part of the male anatomy. If that sounds cynical, it's because I am and find it hard to believe that radio listeners are willing to sit through blurb after blurb after blurb for five or six minutes at a time (blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...). Perhaps I'm different than most people because the minute a commercial comes over my car radio, that's it! I'm going to another station, and if it's playing a commercial, I'm moving on again, and if that station is playing "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Hotel California" for the 12,846th time, I keep going. As I mentioned on another thread in the Los Angeles radio forum, I seldom listen to the radio at home because I don't want to keep bouncing up and down out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box gone berserk to change the station. When I listen to music at home, I'll put a vinyl LP on the turntable and enjoy the lack of commercials.

 

[michael hagerty]

I'm another one who wishes radio stations would play more variety instead of the same songs over and over and over again (the next DJ in Phoenix that plays "Brown Eyed Girl" is going to get whupped upside the head with a pillowcase filled with rolls of duct tape! ;D). Unfortunately, as Michael Hagerty has pointed out, the radio (and television, for that matter) business is out to make the sponsors happy. It's really all about selling one more SUV, an extra half-dozen Big Macs or another handful of those funny blue pills for a certain part of the male anatomy. If that sounds cynical, it's because I am and find it hard to believe that radio listeners are willing to sit through blurb after blurb after blurb for five or six minutes at a time (blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...). Perhaps I'm different than most people because the minute a commercial comes over my car radio, that's it! I'm going to another station, and if it's playing a commercial, I'm moving on again, and if that station is playing "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Hotel California" for the 12,846th time, I keep going. As I mentioned on another thread in the Los Angeles radio forum, I seldom listen to the radio at home because I don't want to keep bouncing up and down out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box gone berserk to change the station. When I listen to music at home, I'll put a vinyl LP on the turntable and enjoy the lack of commercials.

I get it, but it's always been an advertising medium.

From the beginning, it's been "How do we sell advertising for the most money?" The answer: Attract an audience the advertiser wants to reach.

It was never "Let's put on a show, tell jokes, play some music we like...and as a bonus, we can sell ads."

 

[michael hagerty]

And there are hardly any "regional hits" anymore. In the 1950s-60s there were a lot of records that sold well only in certain parts of the country, partly because each record got played only by radio stations in the city where the group was formed and partly because of---gasp!---payola. (Don't ask me for specific details but I think my assumption is valid.) In 2013, and maybe even since the mid-'80s, thanks to computer programs and consultants and auditorium tests and callout research, almost every top-40 station in the US is playing the same 30 songs. Consolidations and cookie-cutter radio have made payola not only obsolete but not even possible.

Regional hits were rarely a by-product of payola. I don't think there is or was necessarily a part of the country more open to corruption in adding records.

And the records that payola was behind that hit, hit nationally.

Also, regional hits really dried up in the 70s. Once Paul Drew got the national PD gig at RKO in '73, the handwriting was on the wall.

Now it's not computer programs (used to interpret and visualize existing data), consultants (virtually extinct) or auditorium testing that prevents records from breaking regionally...it's the fact that regional bands use global platforms to get attention today. If a bunch of high schoolers from Hawthorne's YouTube video is good enough, they'll be famous worldwide a lot quicker than a promo rep can get an appointment with John Ivey at KIIS.

 

[davideduardo]

And the only thing wrong with yours is it's based on outdated information.

The 20/20 piece you link to is 11 years old. The Baltimore Sun story is 8 years old.

And it's hard to find more than a couple of cases like this in the last 20 years.

About the only other well documented case, from over a decade ago, involved a Spanish language record label that turned itself in when the top management found that employees were giving favors to radio programmers. Even in that case, there was only one indictment handed down and it resulted in a nolo contendere and a small fine.

Aside from the well disgraced Elliot Spitzer's witch hunt / publicity stunt in New York about legal promotional practices and which the record companies resolved with the offer of fine payments, there have been very few payola cases ever since the term was invented.

Nobody denies the past occurrences of payola. But the fact is that you can't make a hit out of a stiff no matter how many times you play it... so what is played on the radio, particularly on gold-based stations, is based on listener feedback, not payments.

 

[TheFonz]

I'm another one who wishes radio stations would play more variety instead of the same songs over and over and over again (the next DJ in Phoenix that plays "Brown Eyed Girl" is going to get whupped upside the head with a pillowcase filled with rolls of duct tape! ;D). Unfortunately, as Michael Hagerty has pointed out, the radio (and television, for that matter) business is out to make the sponsors happy. It's really all about selling one more SUV, an extra half-dozen Big Macs or another handful of those funny blue pills for a certain part of the male anatomy. If that sounds cynical, it's because I am and find it hard to believe that radio listeners are willing to sit through blurb after blurb after blurb for five or six minutes at a time (blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...). Perhaps I'm different than most people because the minute a commercial comes over my car radio, that's it! I'm going to another station, and if it's playing a commercial, I'm moving on again, and if that station is playing "Brown Eyed Girl" or "Hotel California" for the 12,846th time, I keep going. As I mentioned on another thread in the Los Angeles radio forum, I seldom listen to the radio at home because I don't want to keep bouncing up and down out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box gone berserk to change the station. When I listen to music at home, I'll put a vinyl LP on the turntable and enjoy the lack of commercials.

Don't expect commercial radio to change. Try satellite radio.

 

[Time Traveler]

What I do not understand is the fact that the 50s/60s Oldies demographics are considered unsellable by corporate radio these days...but so called "Adult Standards" type stations....The music of the deceased parents of baby boomers lives....continues to thrive...Can someone explain this to me???

 

[michael hagerty]

What I do not understand is the fact that the 50s/60s Oldies demographics are considered unsellable by corporate radio these days...but so called "Adult Standards" type stations....The music of the deceased parents of baby boomers lives....continues to thrive...Can someone explain this to me???

It doesn't.

The stations that are surviving have added 70s and early 80s AC music to the mix and most of the revenue is non-traditional.

 

[doowopvault]

Funny David. When the money went to the DJ's it was called "Payola"...when it goes to the owners, as it does today, it's called "business".

The only problem with your comeback is that record companies don't pass any money on to radio stations these days in any form.

In fact, record companies continue to lobby Congress for a near-confiscatory royalty structure for analog radio that would severely impair the survivability of music radio (including your show) as we know it.

It is, however, not a crime for record labels to buy advertising on radio stations... just as it is not a crime to advertise shampoo.

It is a crime for an employee of a radio station to "take" airtime and use it to their own personal benefit unbeknown to the owner of the station... that is the definition of payola, a specialized form of theft which is no different than the butcher at a supermarket taking home some nice steaks without paying for them.

MAN ARE YOU DELUSIONAL, A SERVERE CASE OF DENIAL..LOL LOL
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123898&page=1#.Uec80dzD8dU
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-07-26/business/0507260246_1_sony-bmg-radio-companies-epic

The only thing wrong with your comeback is.....IT'S BASED ON FICTION!!

And the only thing wrong with yours is it's based on outdated information.

The 20/20 piece you link to is 11 years old. The Baltimore Sun story is 8 years old.

OOOOH, Michael.....so that means it doesn't exist anymore lol lol, David and yourself need to tap your heels together and stop living in your make believe world. You people are so disingenuous. David said "it didn't exist", I bring up cases of it's existence then you say they are 8 years old. It's people like you that allow it to exist by dismissing it as "business!!!

 

[michael hagerty]

Funny David. When the money went to the DJ's it was called "Payola"...when it goes to the owners, as it does today, it's called "business".

The only problem with your comeback is that record companies don't pass any money on to radio stations these days in any form.

In fact, record companies continue to lobby Congress for a near-confiscatory royalty structure for analog radio that would severely impair the survivability of music radio (including your show) as we know it.

It is, however, not a crime for record labels to buy advertising on radio stations... just as it is not a crime to advertise shampoo.

It is a crime for an employee of a radio station to "take" airtime and use it to their own personal benefit unbeknown to the owner of the station... that is the definition of payola, a specialized form of theft which is no different than the butcher at a supermarket taking home some nice steaks without paying for them.

MAN ARE YOU DELUSIONAL, A SERVERE CASE OF DENIAL..LOL LOL
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123898&page=1#.Uec80dzD8dU
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-07-26/business/0507260246_1_sony-bmg-radio-companies-epic

The only thing wrong with your comeback is.....IT'S BASED ON FICTION!!

And the only thing wrong with yours is it's based on outdated information.

The 20/20 piece you link to is 11 years old. The Baltimore Sun story is 8 years old.

OOOOH, Michael.....so that means it doesn't exist anymore lol lol, David and yourself need to tap your heels together and stop living in your make believe world. You people are so disingenuous. David said "it didn't exist", I bring up cases of it's existence then you say they are 8 years old. It's people like you that allow it to exist by dismissing it as "business!!!

Doowop, the reason your articles are 11 and 8 years old is four-fold:

In the early 2000s, record labels tried the concept of song-length commercials, billboarded front and back, clearly identified as airtime bought by the label. It didn't move the needle on sales, so they stopped.

In the mid-2000s, then-New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer uncovered evidence that Sony/BMG was engaging in old-school payola (cash, trips) and got a muti-million dollar settlement in the case. He also pursued the other major labels and was looking at the major radio clusters when his hooker scandal erupted. The radio chains cleaned house and have pages of their employee manuals that make it very clear there is a zero tolerance policy when it comes to payola.

The record business has changed so much (declining revenues, major artists releasing on non-major labels) that the labels don't spend that much on getting airplay anymore. The focus is on creating a viral buzz about the artist, song or album so that radio feels compelled to join in.

And radio, in the course of making sure its own house was in order, realized what David said: Airplay won't turn a stiff into a hit..and in the PPM world, you're driving your audience away and can see when it happens.

The two articles you linked to were accurate when they were written, but 8 and 11 years is a long time. They're now as relevant as articles like "One Year After 9/11: Will America Ever Find Bin Laden?" or "Big Gamble: Apple To Make Phones".

 

[CTListener]

What happened to the payola probe after Spitzer was forced to resign? Did his successor decide there was nothing more to look at and just let the whole thing die, or was the investigation just forgotten in the transition? If Spitzer was on to something involving Big Radio when he was exposed as Client No. 9, would he have passed that information on to his successor or just held on to it out of spite?

 

[michael hagerty]

What happened to the payola probe after Spitzer was forced to resign? Did his successor decide there was nothing more to look at and just let the whole thing die, or was the investigation just forgotten in the transition? If Spitzer was on to something involving Big Radio when he was exposed as Client No. 9, would he have passed that information on to his successor or just held on to it out of spite?

Spitzer didn't work alone. There were teams of investigators and prosecutors involved.

But Spitzer had already stopped it on the record company end and the radio chains cleaned house and instituted strict, zero tolerance policies. Andrew Cuomo had other priorities and moved on.

 

[davideduardo]

What happened to the payola probe after Spitzer was forced to resign? Did his successor decide there was nothing more to look at and just let the whole thing die, or was the investigation just forgotten in the transition? If Spitzer was on to something involving Big Radio when he was exposed as Client No. 9, would he have passed that information on to his successor or just held on to it out of spite?

Spitzer didn't work alone. There were teams of investigators and prosecutors involved.

But Spitzer had already stopped it on the record company end and the radio chains cleaned house and instituted strict, zero tolerance policies. Andrew Cuomo had other priorities and moved on.

And the record companies, recognizing that Spirzer is a political prima donna, negotiated a fine and paid it. In other words, they handled it as many companies handle nuisance suits... pay something, admit no guilt, make it go away.

Spitzer picked some high profile areas to investigate... ones that would guarantee media exposure. In the case of payola, it involved artists, music, radio, records... all things that the average voter enjoys and is interested in.

 

[CTListener]

What happened to the payola probe after Spitzer was forced to resign? Did his successor decide there was nothing more to look at and just let the whole thing die, or was the investigation just forgotten in the transition? If Spitzer was on to something involving Big Radio when he was exposed as Client No. 9, would he have passed that information on to his successor or just held on to it out of spite?

Spitzer didn't work alone. There were teams of investigators and prosecutors involved.

But Spitzer had already stopped it on the record company end and the radio chains cleaned house and instituted strict, zero tolerance policies. Andrew Cuomo had other priorities and moved on.

And the record companies, recognizing that Spirzer is a political prima donna, negotiated a fine and paid it. In other words, they handled it as many companies handle nuisance suits... pay something, admit no guilt, make it go away.

Spitzer picked some high profile areas to investigate... ones that would guarantee media exposure. In the case of payola, it involved artists, music, radio, records... all things that the average voter enjoys and is interested in.

He also picked a fight with the perceived fat cats of the New York Racing Association, pouncing on some rather minor misdeeds by the mutuel clerks as an excuse to monitor every minute detail of its operation of the state's three major tracks. There were even signs posted all over Saratoga Race Course basically telling the racegoers that the attorney general knows something suspicious is going on and the track will have to play by Spitzer's rules or else. Of course, it was all grandstanding -- positioning himself as the people's champion against a clique of rich, old, WASPy men, whose only sin, as it turned out, was being rich, old, WASPy and male.

 

[davideduardo]

OOOOH, Michael.....so that means it doesn't exist anymore lol lol, David and yourself need to tap your heels together and stop living in your make believe world.

The music companies are not spending on promotion to radio. Even totally legal things, like providing promotional appearances to radio stations (where both benefited from the exposure and publicity), have been virtually eliminated: the labels have no money to expense these gigs and the artists, who no longer make much from recorded music, need to charge for every single appearance.

And, as I said, the record industry is trying to get radio to pay performance royalties because they no longer can make (much) money off the sale of recorded music.

You people are so disingenuous. David said "it didn't exist"

What a lie. I said "Nobody denies the past occurrences of payola." I did try to put your comments in perspective as referring to single, isolated occurrences. Ever since "payola" came into the limelight with the Alan Freed incidents, there have been only a handful of indictments... in a 54 year period.

I bring up cases of it's existence then you say they are 8 years old. It's people like you that allow it to exist by dismissing it as "business!!!

There will always be some people who break the law, whether they work in radio, education, the public sector or at amusement parks. Using two isolated incidents from about a decade ago to indict an industry with 15 thousand radio stations and well over 100 thousand employees based on two events (one of which was political grandstanding by a disgraced pol) is simply absurd.

 

[Whiplash]

Watch and reading most of DE's 25214 posts have so bored me over the past ten years. There are very few true oldies stations left, because the demo is dying and the passion and creativity in our business has been taking a dirt nap for over the last five years or more.

Its not rocket science......

 

[michael hagerty]

Watch and reading most of DE's 25214 posts have so bored me over the past ten years. There are very few true oldies stations left, because the demo is dying and the passion and creativity in our business has been taking a dirt nap for over the last five years or more.

Its not rocket science......

You've got it half right. The demo is dying. And seat-of-the-pants programming won't raise the dead.

Passion and creativity may have been rewarded by our (I assume you're a Boomer too) geoneration, but maybe it wasn't.

Chuck Blore is a genius if ever there was one. But KFWB lost its dominance to a much less creative, not as freewheeling KRLA in just five years. And KRLA, in turn, had the crown taken by the machine-like precision of KHJ in just two years.

Since stations started finding out what the typical listener the advertiser wants most wants to hear, and delivering on expectations, stations have had longer, more successful runs. KIIS-FM is at 32 years and counting.

It's a shame David's posts bore you, because they're an accurate reflection of how people use radio. If he hadn't written a single one of them, oldies radio wouldn't be any healthier.