Will the front offices of radio stations get the message in time?

[Bob1370]

An interesting report from the NAB Radio Show in Philly, courtesy of Inside Radio;

"In what was almost certainly the NAB Radio Show’s most provocative session, a gaggle of consultants, researchers and broadcasters aggressively challenged radio to step up the quality of programming, reduce spotloads, end voicetracking and tap fresh outside blood to foster innovation and change. “We are fast becoming an industry of old men with a glaring HR crisis,” Edison Research president Larry Rosin said at Friday’s Radio Stimulus Package session."

OK, they're finally figuring out that radio, to have a future, needs an infusion of high quality live local programming and a new wave of talent to produce and present it. Now the question is, will TPTB act in time to make this happen before the coming generation of listeners loses all interest and tunes us out?

 

[umtrr-author]

How old are TPTB themselves, and how far ahead can they look? The answers to those questions would probably help answer the original question.

 

[aaronread]

Am I crass in pointing out that a lot of consultants rather strongly advocated to do the exact things that got our industry into this mess? And now that we've ridden that eagle 'til it screamed, now they're all strongly advocating to go back to the way things were?

Let's be honest - when's the last time a consultant was brought in and said "Don't change a thing - you've got a good thing going here."??? Not really good billing in that approach, I guess. I ought to know, I used to be a consultant. Still am, sort of. Well, not really one of THOSE consultants (so to speak) but still, any consultant is gonna tell you that you have to change everything and the consultant is the only one who can guide you through those changes!

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Say you were a real estate investor and you bought a dozen apartment buildings with four rental units in each building as the market heated up, believing that you'd hold the buildings for a few years and sell them at a greater profit, take the money and retire to Del Boca Vista. You put 5% down and financed the remaining 95% at a variable rate mortgage with a baloon clause at the three year anniversary, but you didn't care because you planned to sell the buildings and be out well before that baloon payment was due.

Problem is, the bottom fell out of the market and the buyers disappeared. The baloon payment is due but you don't have the cash to make the note. The apartment buildings are worth less than you paid for them and you have maintenance costs and property taxes due, plus insurance payments on top of that. Add to that one in four of your tennants is late with the rent. One or two tenants have even moved out in the middle of the night!

The bank doesn't want your apartment buildings but you can't sell them at anywhere near what you paid for them. You're under water and the oxygen is running out. Compounding this, there are about ten other guys like you that invested in apartment buildings around the same time you did. Some of their apartment buildings are in better locations, but they're having the same problems you're having, except they've sold a few buildings that are better than yours and they got less than you paid for your buildings, which deflates the value of your apartment buildings.

What a mess.

 

[listener-in]

Consultants??? Many people on these boards, from inside or outside the industry, left or right, whether they are into talk, country, rock or what-have-you offer plenty of advice for free - if only it would be heeded.

What a mess.

It may get worse first, but it will get better when biggies start unloading a bunch of stations at deflated prices. Meanwhile, listeners are voting with their feet. Radio has learned to adapt to and live with competitive technologies before and can do so again. It will take a new generation in the front office, as in throw the bums out.

 

[therealjm12]

Consultants keep getting the blame. Sorry I don't think they are the villians in this. I have known some very good consultants. They have never recommended that a station lose its local presence. I have never known a consultant to say oh yeah, voice tracking is the key to success. Or fire your night guy and bring in John Tesh. They are the ideas of the bean counters in the front office. The consultants in the last 15 years or so have
pretty much been trying to work around these nincompoops. Their job is programing and to bring in ratings and they know a computer doesn't do that.
Computers just keep costs down. They do nothing for real programers.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Some front offices have, and will, heed the advice offered at the NAB. For several, there's no money to follow the advice, and corporate execs are simply collecting their fat paychecks for as long as possible while waiting for their lenders to decide when to force bankruptcy. Citadel is a case in point. As I understand it, January 15th is Black Friday for Farid & Co.

We'll see what happens when the debt burden is seriously reduced, and revenues begin to recover. Then we'll separate the contenders from the pretenders.

 

[dustintv]

Too little, too late. Syndication and voicetracking have been the norm now for the last decade at least since the 1996 Telecom Act. It has caused irreversible damage to a good number of stations across the country. Karma is a something that rhymes with witch, and the folks at Clear Channel and Citadel are finally getting theirs. And if I were Phil Boyce, I'd wonder why the world seems to hate me so much these days.

 

[Oldbones]

Consultants??? Many people on these boards, from inside or outside the industry, left or right, whether they are into talk, country, rock or what-have-you offer plenty of advice for free - if only it would be heeded.

And most of it is worth exactly what you paid for it.

 

[TheBigA]

"In what was almost certainly the NAB Radio Show’s most provocative session, a gaggle of consultants, researchers and broadcasters aggressively challenged radio to step up the quality of programming, reduce spotloads, end voicetracking and tap fresh outside blood to foster innovation and change. “We are fast becoming an industry of old men with a glaring HR crisis,” Edison Research president Larry Rosin said at Friday’s Radio Stimulus Package session."

If they really are "consultants, researchers, and broadcasters," they don't have to "challenge" anyone. They ARE the people. As Yoda said, "No try. Do." If they have all the answers, they just have to step up and do the work. Talk is easy. Work is hard. The front office is waiting to see a workable plan.

The problem with the "old men," particularly the ones on the air, is that a lot of them are popular. They are the only ones attracting audiences. So it's one thing to talk about getting rid of the old men. It's another thing to make a decision, as NBC did with Leno in late night, and dealing with the consequences. Once again, if the consultants, researchers, and broadcasters think it's a problem, perhaps they can show the way out of the forest.

But the current owners would love to get rid of the old men. It would cut their payroll by a huge amount. Replacing the old men with young women sounds great to me. So let's start seeing people step up to the plate and take a little risk. Anyone still got a pair?

 

[TheBigA]

It may get worse first, but it will get better when biggies start unloading a bunch of stations at deflated prices. Meanwhile, listeners are voting with their feet. Radio has learned to adapt to and live with competitive technologies before and can do so again. It will take a new generation in the front office, as in throw the bums out.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The new owners who buy stations at lower prices will run them with lower costs too. That means salary cuts, smaller staffs, and yes, syndication. That's what deflation leads to. The whole pool gets smaller and the water gets more shallow. Not just the owners get pinched, folks. So start learning to live with less.

As for the listeners, the new technologies they love don't have 24/7 live staffs, and don't focus on the local community. So don't expect that will be much of a draw. If radio is to compete with new technologies, employees should learn to work out of their homes or apartments, and learn how to use their imagination to create content. You have people who do it for free getting more audience than people who do it for a living. That doesn't say much for the professionals.

 

[aaronread]

Quote from: listener-in on September 25, 2009, 09:45:22 pm
Consultants??? Many people on these boards, from inside or outside the industry, left or right, whether they are into talk, country, rock or what-have-you offer plenty of advice for free - if only it would be heeded.

And most of it is worth exactly what you paid for it.

I was gonna say...

Although there's some truth to the point that a lot of the advice that WASN'T free was worth about the same amount as the free advice. (shrugs)

If they really are "consultants, researchers, and broadcasters," they don't have to "challenge" anyone. They ARE the people. As Yoda said, "No try. Do." If they have all the answers, they just have to step up and do the work. Talk is easy. Work is hard. The front office is waiting to see a workable plan.

Not to get off on a rant here, but this touches on something I've been hammering on with CPB lately: these wonderful little "digital media" grants that they're handing out left and right look oh-so wonderful and "new media" but they aren't worth mouse farts to most stations. Not when our revenues are down hard and we're struggling to keep something, ANYTHING, on the air. I don't need a grant to expand my website, I need a grant so I don't have to lay off an employee, ya know?

The problem with the "old men," particularly the ones on the air, is that a lot of them are popular. They are the only ones attracting audiences. So it's one thing to talk about getting rid of the old men. It's another thing to make a decision, as NBC did with Leno in late night, and dealing with the consequences.

FWIW, I thought Leno was getting good ratings? I haven't really paid much attention, though...am I wrong?

But the current owners would love to get rid of the old men. It would cut their payroll by a huge amount. Replacing the old men with young women sounds great to me. So let's start seeing people step up to the plate and take a little risk. Anyone still got a pair?

I think we've moved past that point...some of these stations aren't paying enough to even attract the "I just graduated in May" college kids that aren't anywhere near qualified for the job. And this has been a problem for years...I remember the full-time offer I got just over 10 years ago at a station in Boston that I'd been interning at, never less than 10 hours a week, for over two years...and it wouldn't even have covered my rent & utilities. And this was from a station that could've afforded to pay me double what they offered. These days, I think a lot of stations make outrageously low offers because that's literally all they can afford.

 

[TheBigA]

I don't need a grant to expand my website, I need a grant so I don't have to lay off an employee, ya know?

I've had that same exact conversation with CPB, and they want you to pay for employees with local money, not federal money. They want you to use the fed money strictly for R&D.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Consultants keep getting the blame. Sorry I don't think they are the villians in this. I have known some very good consultants. They have never recommended that a station lose its local presence. I have never known a consultant to say oh yeah, voice tracking is the key to success. Or fire your night guy and bring in John Tesh. They are the ideas of the bean counters in the front office. The consultants in the last 15 years or so have
pretty much been trying to work around these nincompoops. Their job is programing and to bring in ratings and they know a computer doesn't do that.
Computers just keep costs down. They do nothing for real programers.

There is one very popular and widely used consultant by a major group that doesn't believe in the people on the radio. He has made some very bland stations. You may even know him but I will not mention his name. I've never met him and never want to based on the kind of radio he does.

 

[therealjm12]

There is one very popular and widely used consultant by a major group that doesn't believe in the people on the radio. He has made some very bland stations. You may even know him but I will not mention his name. I've never met him and never want to based on the kind of radio he does.

Then that consultant is getting paid to tell his clients what they want to hear. That is an insult to all reputable consultants. As I said, there are many consultants that really want to make a station sound better. That is very difficult with no one on staff.

 

[SirRoxalot]

There are some consultants that are convinced that their "magic format" will make a station successful, and that jocks "just get in the way of the format". There are broadcast executives that LIKE that approach because it reduces their expenses. The question is "Does it really work".

The answer - over and over, as seen with "Jack" - is that it MAY work for a short period of time. That approach sometimes has impact, but rarely has "legs". Most "Jack" stations either evolved or disappeared within a couple of years. Part of their longevity was based on how the competition reacted. If the competition panicked and tried to "out-Jack Jack", then listeners in a particular genre had no alternative other than choose which jukebox had songs that suited them better. Increasingly, the answer was "my MP3 player".

Look at the most successful stations in each market. Those stations who break away from the pack usually have something more to offer than the "magic format". I suspect that talk radio's success is based on the fact that a lot of people turn on the radio for companionship, information, and active entertainment at least part of the time. People multi-task - and the elements that radio offers interspersed with the music genre presented are what make it more interesting and engaging than an MP3 player. Of course, that generally means paying "talent", which shows up on the "expense" side of the ledger. What some managers forget is that the result of what that talent offers shows up on the "income" side of the ledger.

 

[Bob1370]

"The answer - over and over, as seen with "Jack" - is that it MAY work for a short period of time. That approach sometimes has impact, but rarely has "legs". Most "Jack" stations either evolved or disappeared within a couple of years."

The Jack format was popular with station owners for a few years because it promised a broad range of listeners with virtually no expense beyond feeding the hard drive and keeping the power bills paid.

Its popularity with listeners is a different story. It struggles along in Buffalo because the station owner that inherited it from CBS (which probably put it in place to begin with because they were leaving town and didn't want to invest much in it) is struggling to keep up its cash flow after going deep into hock to fund its expansion. It struggles along in LA because CBS is too busy trying to fix a few of its other secondary stations while KNX and KRTH remain its cash cows. But in two of the three biggest markets where Jack debuted in 2005, it is dead, dead, dead. It was put out of its misery in Toronto and replaced with a personality-heavy CHR station. And we all know what happened in New York...it was a target of street demonstrations, listener anger and resistance, and advertiser rejection, and was blown up and replaced by...good old WCBS-FM, with live, familiar and well-liked people spinning the classic hits, just like old times. WCBS-FM promptly went from #22 to #2 in market #1 followinig the change, with the expected positive impact on the bottom line.

If there's any lesson in all that, the way of radio's future is back to the future, back to live people playing what people like, telling them what they need to know to get through the day, and making them smile along the way.

 

[TheBigA]

If there's any lesson in all that, the way of radio's future is back to the future, back to live people playing what people like, telling them what they need to know to get through the day, and making them smile along the way.

This kind of top-down "tell them what they need to know" mentality is exactly what is killing radio. This may work with boomers, who are used to it. But not with listeners under 40. Listeners have the power to get what they need and what they want on demand. They don't need some outsider telling them what music to like, or what opinions to have. That era ended a long time ago. If a station is going to have on-air people, they need to involve the listeners every step of the way, and not have this attitude that "what we're saying is what you need to know." Especially in music formats.

 

[alw]

Dear BigA:

Down Boy!

I don't think Mr. 1370 was indicating that a radio station should dictate the music you should or should not like when he said : "telling them what they need to know to get through the day, and making them smile along the way".

Methinks he was suggesting that someone on the radio might give you a heads-up about road conditions, or weather problems, or maybe even the time of day. And throw in a few light wittisims along the way to lishten ones load.

He did say "playing what people like", not "playing what I want them to like damn it".
There isn't a radio station, terrestial or satellite, that can play what everyone
likes....that's why there are more than one.

If you don't want to hear any of it.......go get your IPod and be the master of your own domain. (when I was young I did alot of that domain stuff)

Ain't it great to be an American?

 

[TheBigA]

Dear BigA:

Down Boy!

Woof woof. Point taken.

And I *AM* the master of my domain.