• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Women-oriented talk on scratchy AM signals?

S

smedge2006

A quote from Nancy Vaeth Dubroff, Greenstone Media COO:

"This is easier to sell to advertisers than, say, another rock station in the same market," said Vaeth-DuBroff, who works from her home office in Houston. "Women are listening to more FM stations than AM stations, and most of that is because of the current product on AM radio. A lot of it is that male-targeted talk that's not appealing to women."
Click to expand...

I think changing the product on AM stations is a waste of time because the technical quality of AM radio is more annoying to women than men. So is Greenstone doomed to fail unless dozens of FMs bail out of music and decide they need a talk choice that's female-friendly?
 
I think changing the product on AM stations is a waste of time

I think that worrying about whether women-oriented talk should be on AM or FM is a waste of time. The first thing is to figure out if there are enough women who want to listen to "women-oriented" talk radio to make it worth the time and effort to create such programming in the first place.

Then you have to figure out if the women want political talk, and if so, which side of the fence. And if they don't want political talk, do they want "lifestyle" talk or do they want entertaining chat & celebrity interviews and gossip.

Until you know if women want to hear anything on the radio that's just for them, and then what it is that they want to hear, worrying about whether to put it on AM or FM is a tad bit premature.

I'm reminded of the bit in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the people are discussing whether or not to invent the wheel, and some fool is worried about what color it should be.
 
Greenstone Media is on an FM station in Greenville, South Carolina. It used to be a Christian-oriented Country station (a stupid idea) and they changed it to "Women-oriented talk" (an even stupider idea). It went from a 2 share to a ZERO share.

I'm surprised Entercom still has the station (WGVC) on life support but I'm sure they will drop Greenstone sooner rather than later.
 
The women's talk network replaced Air America in Burlington VT (WTWK 1070), a weak daytime signal.
Just changing from one all-satellite format to another. It's also on weak signalled WNSH Beverly MA
(though they mix in TRN's Laura Ingraham, and it's all MALE hosts, like Michael Reagan and Jerry
Doyle, after 6 pm)

No local content.

http://www.eve1070.com
(well at least they have a proud sponsor of the "home interiors" weekend show; see site)

http://www.wnsh.com

Incidentally the GM of "EVE" posted on the station's messageboard an FYI on the change:
"The decision to leave the Air-America network was not an easy one. WTWK was struggling both in listenership and advertisers. WTWK was consistently a bottom tiered station in the ratings... While many advertisers agreed with the content, they did not want their business associated with perceived "Bush Bashing" for fear of offending potential customers*. After fighting the good fight for three years, a change had to be made."

cf. http://www.eve1070.com/665fb05e-e7be-4a47-b0a2-beb562691bcd-1033.html

*--...in the People's Republic of Vermont?!? The GM says that the ratings were zero.
 
a weak daytime signal

What gets me is that even a weak daytime signal should get some listeners. "Weak" means it doesn't travel very far, but when one is close to the tower, even a "weak" signal comes in fine. And being daytime should hurt the ratings of programs aired during the day. With Arbitrons broken down by day part, a daytime program on a daytime station should not be at any special disadvantage.
 
Good points; if anything talk does best during the daytime. Many talk stations at night go syndie (the ones
that aren't syndie already!) or do sports (or if they do talk it's a bit "lighter"). Anyway, am drive, middays,
and pm drive are the prime time for talk stations.

Local content is important, and when it comes to syndie hosts "only the strong survive". There seems to
be a glut of syndie shows and maybe the weakest are being winnowed out.
As for signal strength, yes in some ways it's not too bad, especially when one is in the car, but reception
at work is another matter. This has been cited as one reason why Boston's prog talk stations didn't
succeed: the 1200 and 1430 signals paled in comparison to 680, 1030, and 96.9. Not easily received in
buildings (for those who can't listen on the computer, etc.); subject to powerline interference, etc.;
not covering wide areas...low power (250w, 500w, 1kW etc) v. 10K, 25K, 50K et al.

>>even a weak daytime signal should get some listeners

Yes I would have thought even the all-syndie lineup on fairly weak WTWK would have at least got
some listeners (Franken, Miller, Schultz, etc.) but you wonder if the station's GM (Richard Delancey IIRC
acc. to the site) had a point about advertisers feeling that some listeners would be turned off by the
Bush bashing. But to be fair, there was more than enough Clinton bashing pre 1/20/01, and should
Hillary or Obama win, they'll be bashed as well by many talk hosts...

>>A move to 1390 had no effect on the listenership, so Air-America was moved back to 1070. In the Fall of 2006 the station had a 0 share in the Arbitron Book, making it the lowest rated station in Burlington/Plattsburgh.

He doesn't mention that 1390 replaced AAR with sports, considered an easier sell. Wider demo than
prog talk or just syndie talk in general...?
 
Good programming on a weak signal will still get "reasonable" ratings.

Case in point: When Rush Limbaugh aired on WCOL-AM in Columbus in the early 90's, he pulled between
a 4 and a 5 share during that daypart. (And now gets an 8-share or better on WTVN-AM, a station with a much bigger signal).

When WCOL aired Don Imus in late 90's, he, too got "respectable" numbers. If you can get "respectable" numbers on a weaker signal, the big stations eventually come calling.

Bad ratings typically occur because of poor programming, or programming to a target that either isn't there,
or wasn't as big as orginally thought.
 
Good programming on a weak signal will still get "reasonable" ratings

And, unless your business plan is to sit back and let your Arbitron numbers attract agency money to buy your air time, you're going to have your own salespeople out selling your spots. And a local business who knows he only draws customers from a 10 mile radius won't much care if your station won't carry his message to non-customers 50 miles away.
 
They pulled the plug on this format. It has failed. Frankly, I listed to it for about 15 minutes on their website and was pretty unimpressed. One rule in syndication......always have your BEST PRODUCT on your demo. As I listened to the demo of what I think was their morning show....all I could think to myself was......if this is the BEST they have to offer, this is going to be a tough sell. In fact, there was no real selling going on....just boring radio. I am sorry for those that lost their jobs but, the product was not that great.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom