Why so many pirates in Houston?

[FreddyE1977]

In passing by this Houston board, I have noticed that there seems to be an awful lot of
chatter about pirate stations down there.

Why do you suppose pirate stations are so prevalent in Houston? I am in Pittsburgh and it's been
at least ten years since I've personally tuned one in. There was Radio Carson, a techno-pop dance
music station on the South Side that was notoriously raided and taken down. And someone in
Mt. Lebanon broadcasting old-time radio shows at 103.9. Those have both been gone for at
least a decade. And I am around in my car scanning my dial all the time.

Is it simply a matter of Houston being a much bigger market, or is something else
driving this?

 

[Night Hawk]

I suppose it's the 20 music "safe list playlist" that drive listeners away? Just Sayin'.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

The population demographics of Greater Houston have substantially changed in the last two decades. Most of the affluent crowd has moved into distant suburbs, even way out in the country, to escape the filth, crime, and violence. Inner city Houston now has a lot non English speaking immigrants. The radio stations in Houston have found it increasingly difficult to make money programming their usual fare to an audience that lives too far out to attract advertisers. A scan down the dial now finds Chinese, Pakistani, Hindu, and numerous Spanish stations. From a credible source, I was told that one of these foreign stations -- an AM with a 250 watt translator -- is billing more ads than some of our full power FM channels.

Most of the remaining English stations have become boring automated voice tracked jukeboxes that irritate folks with their limited playlists. In a nutshell, radio in Houston simply sucks. The unlicensed stations in League City, Ashford West, and The Woodlands all play a mixture of classic hits that appeal to folks in the suburbs who simply can't stomach the garbage they hear on their radio. For anyone over 40 years old, it is literally "that bad."

I know a lot of people under 40 that say the same thing. There is a whole lot of satellite and iDevice listening going on in cars. For the other people that don't have HD radio in their cars, or don't know how to use it if they do - they just leave the radio off. Parents are letting the kids in the back seat play movies.

You can focus group and refine formats to the point that they appeal to nobody. I think that is Houston's problem.

 

[b-turner]

So, let me see if I understand the second post correctly:

1) Radio stations in Houston have discovered the key to success is to intentionally ignore the desires of the market to create a successful business model. Only by driving listeners away can you be successful financially.

2) Houston is filled with people one would classify as undesirable as a neighbor. Anyone worthy of making a good neighbor now lives so distant to Houston that Houston radio stations no longer can reach these people because they have moved far beyond the reach of the Houston radio station...about 90 miles, I'm guessing since the typical 100,000 watt FM reaches that far. Certainly they no longer commute to Houston to work.

3) People in Houston are generally seeking foreign language broadcasts or formats aimed at what might be jumbled under the title of 'minorities'. Anyway nobody over 40 lives in Houston anyway.

4) Somehow these pirates are serving the very community that does not exist in Houston because they moved beyond the reach of Houston stations.

5) Houston radio hasn't a clue what Houston wants to hear regardless of the research, ratings and revenue that indicate otherwise.

This is my understanding of the above post. Certainly the pirates would have no listeners since the target audience has already run to the hills.

I'm sure you wouldn't post this without proper research to point to your conclusion. I'm sure Houston stations would be interested in your findings.

My observation as a GM at a brokered Houston station, one of the 14 in this city: Our clients are the ordinary people who have a plan to reach a certain part of the Houston market, have done the research and found the investors/money to do so. They educated themselves, live in the real world and work their plan. You might be our next client if you were willing to do the work to create something. I find the complainers mostly know nothing but think they know it all. If it's as bad as you think, quit complaining and do something about it. Develop a plan and make it happen. It is not that hard and I've seen it done. In fact, I can even give you so tips or should I say some traps you don't want to fall in to. And no, you can start small, likely with less than a week's pay.

I knew of a guy in a major city that bought a couple of hours a day on a station. It worked. In time he leased the whole 24/7 broadcast day. He wound up buying the station, was a major player in the market and sold his station. He walked away with millions. It only took about 8 years from start to finish. Are you ready to put your complaint in to action or are you just going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing or eliminate any potential of doing anything by resorting to unlicensed broadcasts?

Classic rock became a format thanks to one guy buying time on a station to play the stuff he believed people wanted to hear. The station, as it was told to me, hired him and took the format fulltime.

 

[Night Hawk]

The first duty of the broadcaster (the old dayz) is first, the listener, second, the advertiser, and last themselves......none of them give a tinkers "darn" in that sequence of duties......additionally, the broadcasters are only broadcasting for each other and then go on slapping each other on the back sayin' what a fine job that they are doing.....

 

[FreddyE1977]

1) Radio stations in Houston have discovered the key to success is to intentionally ignore the desires of the market to create a successful business model. Only by driving listeners away can you be successful financially.

Spoken like a true consultant!

 

[b-turner]

Such lies. You must have never set foot in a radio station in your life.

Here's reality: Money is first. Why? Quit your job, don't collect unemployment and see what that gets you. You need money to exist.
Second: if you don't have listeners, you don't have advertisers. No advertisers is no money. No money and you fail to exist. See point one.
Third: You have to be competitive. If you can't build a better mousetrap, your competitor will. You must be your best every day.
Last: Radio is a business. Anything is a business. If you are a clothing store, you are a business. The way you make a business succeed is by delivering a good product people want at a price they like.

Failure to do any of these 4 points is failure. You will not exist. Eliminate any of the above and you have no money to operate.

Can anyone explain how a business succeeds and stays in business by doing what people do not want? You claim that happens with radio. Explain how. If people aren't listening then advertisers don't get results and you have no money to operate. This is universal from your personal finances to the biggest company, so explain how you don't deliver what people want and you create a successful business model by doing so.

And for FreddyE1977: Just like in passing gas, the one that smelt it, dealt it. I'm sure you are a very successful consultant sir.

 

[frankberry]

The goal of commercial broadcasting is, and has been since stations began airing spots, to make a profit.
A station uses it's programming as bait to attract listeners.
The listeners are the product which the station delivers to their advertisers.
The advertisers pay the bills.

It's as simple as that.

 

[chrocket87]

In passing by this Houston board, I have noticed that there seems to be an awful lot of
chatter about pirate stations down there.

Why do you suppose pirate stations are so prevalent in Houston? I am in Pittsburgh and it's been
at least ten years since I've personally tuned one in. There was Radio Carson, a techno-pop dance
music station on the South Side that was notoriously raided and taken down. And someone in
Mt. Lebanon broadcasting old-time radio shows at 103.9. Those have both been gone for at
least a decade. And I am around in my car scanning my dial all the time.

Is it simply a matter of Houston being a much bigger market, or is something else
driving this?

Too many thugs and not enough enforcement to shut said thugs down.

 

[CTListener]

I know a lot of people under 40 that say the same thing. There is a whole lot of satellite and iDevice listening going on in cars. .

How can there be a whole lot of satellite listening going on in any one market when the nation's satellite radio monopoly, Sirius XM, has only 30 million subscribers?

 

[Night Hawk]

The goal of commercial broadcasting is, and has been since stations began airing spots, to make a profit.
A station uses it's programming as bait to attract listeners.
The listeners are the product which the station delivers to their advertisers.
The advertisers pay the bills.

It's as simple as that.

Well said, Frank.....I agree!!!!!

 

[davideduardo]

The population demographics of Greater Houston have substantially changed in the last two decades. Most of the affluent crowd has moved into distant suburbs, even way out in the country, to escape the filth, crime, and violence.

Urban sprawl, for whatever reason, began shortly after World War II. That's 70's years ago, so perhaps you should update your misconceptions of Houston's demographics.

And "Greater Houston" is your own construct. The Houston MSA for radio (Metro Survey Area, not Metropolitan Statistical Area) consists of 11 counties, and 33% of the population is outside Harris County.

Inner city Houston now has a lot non English speaking immigrants. The radio stations in Houston have found it increasingly difficult to make money programming their usual fare to an audience that lives too far out to attract advertisers.

Just not so. If a market includes a group that predominantly or preferentially speaks a language other than English, and advertisers want to reach that market, then one or more of the lower performing stations will stake a claim to that market. That's why in the 40's in New York City we had stations in Italian and Yiddish, among others.

In any case, there is no "inner city" market. Advertisers who buy based on ratings are trying to reach the entire market, all 11 counties. Those that don't buy on ratings are trying to reach their consume; if a business is located in a predominantly Vietnamese are, they likely buy Vietnamese-language media and have native speakers in their store.

You see, the free market lets stations adapt to serving both the available audiences and the available ad dollars.

A scan down the dial now finds Chinese, Pakistani, Hindu, and numerous Spanish stations.

So? Considering that there are many speakers of other languages, once any group gets to the point that some station can do better serving a piece of that group than doing whatever they are currently programming, we see stations going after those audiences. For examplehte Houston MSA is now about 38% Hispanic, and about 80% of that group is either Spanish dominant or bilingual. So expect about 25% of the stations in the metro to be in Spanish. And so on through the groups.

From a credible source, I was told that one of these foreign stations -- an AM with a 250 watt translator -- is billing more ads than some of our full power FM channels.

There are no "Foreign" stations in Houston. They are all American stations (unless you are a DXer like Brucie).

Your credible source is totally in-credible.

Among the highest billing non-English language stations are KLOL, KOVE and KLTN which are all Spanish language and all in the top 10 billers in the market. The highest billing non-Spanish language station is ranked at about #25, and it is brokered Asian programming. All of the "Full signals" that are not rimshots bill from 4 to 12 times more than that one.

Most of the remaining English stations have become boring automated voice tracked jukeboxes that irritate folks with their limited playlists.

Gee, back in the late 50's grumpy old guys were saying that about that McLendon guy's KILT: "Its the same 30 or 40 songs over and over and over". Of course, KILT had about as many listeners as all the other stations combined.

In a nutshell, radio in Houston simply sucks.

In your opinion. And we have learned that your opinions on everything from the rule of law to music are totally suspect.

The unlicensed stations in League City, Ashford West, and The Woodlands all play a mixture of classic hits that appeal to folks in the suburbs who simply can't stomach the garbage they hear on their radio. For anyone over 40 years old, it is literally "that bad."

Again, the "Pirate Manifesto" rears its ugly butt: "I know what good music really is, and those money grubbing stations have their head shoved so far up that they don't know that millions of people share my fine taste in music so as payback, I'm going to start a radio station. I'll show 'em!"


P.S. Why do you think people over 40 all want to hear classic hits? Some do, but most don't. They want country, AC, talk, urban AC, classical, jazz, Mexican regional oldies, Spanish language pop oldies, classic rock, etc., etc.

 

[davideduardo]

The first duty of the broadcaster (the old dayz) is first, the listener, second, the advertiser, and last themselves......none of them give a tinkers "darn" in that sequence of duties......additionally, the broadcasters are only broadcasting for each other and then go on slapping each other on the back sayin' what a fine job that they are doing.....

Wrong. The first duty of a station owner is survival. To survive, you must have an income. To have an income, you must sell something.

As Frank said, you attract a desirable audience which advertisers want to reach. You sell ads to those advertisers, and you get revenue.

You attract more listeners, you get more revenue.

Radio ratings began in around 1930 to measure the reach of radio and to set pricing. The stations with more listeners got more money. It has been the same way for the last 86 years.

 

[Night Hawk]

I have agreed with Frank-O. This little-old “participant observer” with
Respect to Sociology states (means) the Listener-Advertiser or Advertiser-Listener
Complement one another like “Primary Colours” complement “Secondary Colours.”
Additionally, the Corporate Raiders such as a Bean counter does not a broadcaster
Make has ruined both TV and Radio. That means the ratings, a moot-point, do not count for
Multi-station owner-ships with homogenized/overlapping formats. There is a Law
Of Diminishing (Yes, I stand corrected) Returns working here. The Eloi Listener is so dumbed-down by the
Morlock Broadcaster of today that they (the listener) cannot appreciate how “formula top-40,” nor
“formula Rock and Roll” from “whence it (the music) came” how was the music ever created!
No reference to the music that preceded today’s music. That’s all. So may it be…..

 

[johndavis]

I have agreed with Frank-O. This little-old “participant observer” with
Respect to Sociology states (means) the Listener-Advertiser or Advertiser-Listener
Complement one another like “Primary Colours” complement “Secondary Colours.”
Additionally, the Corporate Raiders such as a Bean counter does not a broadcaster
Make has ruined both TV and Radio. That means the ratings, a moot-point, do not count for
Multi-station owner-ships with homogenized/overlapping formats. There is a Law
Of Demising Returns working here. The Eloi Listener is so dumbed-down by the
Morlock Broadcaster of today that they (the listener) cannot appreciate how “formula top-40,” nor
“formula Rock and Roll” from “whence it (the music) came” how was the music ever created!
No reference to the music that preceded today’s music. That’s all. So may it be…..

Huh?

 

[davideduardo]

I have agreed with Frank-O. This little-old “participant observer” with
Respect to Sociology states (means) the Listener-Advertiser or Advertiser-Listener
Complement one another like “Primary Colours” complement “Secondary Colours.”

You agreed, then, with a principle that has been unchanged since radio discovered it could finance itself with advertising rather than being a hobby or a "voice" of a department store, insurance company, car dealer or radio manufacturer.

Additionally, the Corporate Raiders such as a Bean counter does not a broadcaster
Make has ruined both TV and Radio.

There were no "raiders". Consolidation came about 20 years ago because small radio companies (the only kind allowed under the law) wanted to become big radio companies. While small groups had trouble financing growth, big ones did not and attracted investment capital which loved the high margins of major market radio stations at the time.

If anything "ruined" broadcasting in the past, it was the addition of thousands of stations and the move of many more due to Docket 80-90. And recently, the Great Recession and new media have stressed the revenue stream so that the industry, in real dollars, is contracting. None of these factors is attributable to ownership, but it affects how much can be spent on programming, promotion and operations in general.

That means the ratings, a moot-point, do not count for
Multi-station owner-ships with homogenized/overlapping formats.

Ratings count today even more than ever in larger markets. With programatic buying increasing in usage (that is time buying via computer with no relationship selling and a pure audience delivery vs. spot rate evaluation) larger groups will be all the more competitive for ratings in each cluster and on each station.

I owned a 9-station cluster in a larger market many years ago. In the key sales demographic, we had over half the listening in a 42 station market. We focused most management time on programming, sound, and promotion. With those numbers, the stations literally sold themselves. There is no necessary relationship between large clusters and bad programming; my experience was that large clusters allowed secondary formats to thrive due to the ability to sell them in a total audience package.

There is a Law
Of Demising Returns working here. The Eloi Listener is so dumbed-down by the
Morlock Broadcaster of today that they (the listener) cannot appreciate how “formula top-40,” nor
“formula Rock and Roll” from “whence it (the music) came” how was the music ever created!
No reference to the music that preceded today’s music. That’s all. So may it be…..

I do not know what "Demising Returns" means. I presume you mean "diminishing returns" and will address that.

Music listeners want to hear the songs they like. They don't want a history lesson about musicology. Stations ask listeners what they like and dislike, and the songs within a particular listener group that are broadly liked get played and the ones that don't have mass appeal are not played. So, in the broadest of terms, stations are guided by listeners in what they play and how many total songs to play.

If this is done successfully, returns will increase, not diminish. However, in a revenue-stagnant medium, diminishing returns can be seen if too much is spent on product and there is insufficient revenue to sustain the expenditure level; this encourages creative solutions to the need to sustain or increase audience levels.

There is no "formula Top 40" or whatever. There are hit based stations that play the best of current music and try not to play stiffs. The same applies to country, pop, hip-hop, or even regional Mexican or K-pop. Gold based formats play the songs that, today, people still want to hear. The "formula" is to play songs that don't annoy listeners.


P.S. Nielsen does not sample the Eloi population as they deal in science, not science fiction.

 

[Night Hawk]

"Formula" is the term that means the manner in which songs (tunes) have been conceived, formatted and recorded, etc., etc., and so-on and so-forth...don't cha know?

 

[davideduardo]

"Formula" is the term that means the manner in which songs (tunes) have been conceived, formatted and recorded, etc., etc., and so-on and so-forth...don't cha know?

No, I do not "know" and your explanation is of no help in knowing. Yoda you are not.

With the exception of "pure art" projects and endowments, most songs are conceived and recorded with the hope of reaching a sizable audience who will buy them, attend concerts, etc.

Radio is a platform for exposure, just like a stage.

Radio is not involved to any extent with the creation of music. From watching what becomes popular, including radio airplay, the creatives in music see what works and what does not.

 

[Night Hawk]

I do not claim to be Yoda, Adolf Zukor, Louis Mayer, Carl Laemmle, Allen Koenigsberg, a Genius nor God. I am merely recently retired fellow that has an interest and desire to grasp the concept of, on, about The Sociology of Broadcast Music via Radio. And, I thank Frank for his patience and informative answers to my suppositions and the rest of you guys, too! Thanks. I am certain Mel Brooks could and should write a film feature script out of all of this hi-jinks presented here-to-fore. I do get a chuckle…..really I do….<grins>.

 

[DJboutit3]

Where did these 3 to 5 trolls come from it is like they just fell out of the sky this thread went way off topic after 3 or 4 replys