Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

[hotpatrick2004]

Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

like will they do anything to kabc or klos etc etc etc...HMMM Just like when you buy a house and want to make it your own you paint it or buy new furniture samething i would think with a radio sttaion i reckon time will tell...

Opnions

Hotpatrick out for now

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

It took Clear Channel a few years before they really started getting involved in nuts and bolts at their stations after buying them. The biggest problem Cumulus will have at first is handling their payroll and personnel systems. It seems pretty mundane, but there will take a lot of work to make sure all of their accounting systems work. That the money coming in gets to the right place, and everyone gets paid. That alone was the biggest problem initially for CC. They simply didn't have the structure in place to handle all the stations and employees. They went from a 20 station group to managing hundreds in a short time. It took years to get it in place. This is why I've been saying that Cumulus will run Citadel as a separate company for a while, using the structure that is in place. I don't think they'll get around to painting, equipment, or consolidating offices for a while. CBS New York didn't consolidate all of its radio operations until last year. Prior to that, they stayed in the same separate studios they'd used before various mergers. WFAN was in Queens for a long time after it was bought. The Infinity stations stayed on 57th street. WCBS AM & FM were in various buildings around New York. It was a mess. The same thing with programming. It's not going to be the first priority. Watch for management changes. That will tell you a lot. If they appoint new people to run the Citadel stations, or combine management with Cumulus, that will tell you what's about to happen.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

It took Clear Channel a few years before they really started getting involved in nuts and bolts at their stations after buying them. The biggest problem Cumulus will have at first is handling their payroll and personnel systems. It seems pretty mundane, but there will take a lot of work to make sure all of their accounting systems work. That the money coming in gets to the right place, and everyone gets paid. That alone was the biggest problem initially for CC. They simply didn't have the structure in place to handle all the stations and employees. They went from a 20 station group to managing hundreds in a short time. It took years to get it in place. This is why I've been saying that Cumulus will run Citadel as a separate company for a while, using the structure that is in place. I don't think they'll get around to painting, equipment, or consolidating offices for a while. CBS New York didn't consolidate all of its radio operations until last year. Prior to that, they stayed in the same separate studios they'd used before various mergers. WFAN was in Queens for a long time after it was bought. The Infinity stations stayed on 57th street. WCBS AM & FM were in various buildings around New York. It was a mess. The same thing with programming. It's not going to be the first priority. Watch for management changes. That will tell you a lot. If they appoint new people to run the Citadel stations, or combine management with Cumulus, that will tell you what's about to happen.

But their CEO did say he expects most of the synergies to come "in the 3rd quarter, once the deal is finalized".

Translation: The new drapes and the new slips will both be "pink" - for efficiency sake. And terminated employees don't need to go on the new accounting system. Consolidation problem solved.

With problem solving skills like these, I think I am almost qualified to work in the industry!

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Funny...it was almost as if Lew had read my post and was responding directly to it.

My response: We'll see.

 

[wdb2003]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Cumulus cleaned house at the Kansas City Topeka and Columbia clusters so I assume the same will happen here. Might not be for a while but those high salary jocks and sales people are gonna get effective by a pay cut or pink slip. Maybe im wrong hopefully becasue those are different markets but I have seen Cumulus do some shady things.

 

[calguy]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Cumulus cleaned house at the Kansas City Topeka and Columbia clusters so I assume the same will happen here. Might not be for a while but those high salary jocks and sales people are gonna get effective by a pay cut or pink slip. Maybe I'm wrong hopefully because those are different markets but I have seen Cumulus do some shady things.

High salary jocks and sales people? Not many of them left. Citadel already wiped out most of those. If anything, Cumulus should try to infuse some life and cash in the Citadel stations, but they will most likely cut what little is left. More sadness for the few left in the industry.

You know, at one time radio was a pretty cool industry, but 1996 changed all of that for good. It's not an industry that you can really make a living on anymore unless you are one of those few front line jocks or talent who have taken pay cut after pay cut, all the while taking on more work just to stay in radio. Someone is making good dollars from radio, but it sure isn't the people actually doing the hard work, just the few suits who occupy the corner offices...

 

[wdb2003]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Clear Channel is even worse they gotta pay Ryan Seacrast big salary smoehow LOL :

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

You know, at one time radio was a pretty cool industry, but 1996 changed all of that for good.

It was a cool industry when it had no competition. That's when the only place people could hear pop music was on the radio. Then things changed. It has nothing to do with 1996. Things had already begun to change by then. The Walkman had started to eat away at TSL. MTV took away a chunk of the audience. And music formats had begun to splinter. The reason radio needed ownership reform was because the FCC overlicensed the spectrum. Too many radio stations. Instead of getting 20 shares, stations were getting 6 shares because they were now competing against 3 times as many stations. If you want to blame something for ruining radio, you need to go back before 1996.

 

[calguy]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

You know, at one time radio was a pretty cool industry, but 1996 changed all of that for good.

It was a cool industry when it had no competition. That's when the only place people could hear pop music was on the radio. Then things changed. It has nothing to do with 1996. Things had already begun to change by then. The Walkman had started to eat away at TSL. MTV took away a chunk of the audience. And music formats had begun to splinter. The reason radio needed ownership reform was because the FCC overlicensed the spectrum. Too many radio stations. Instead of getting 20 shares, stations were getting 6 shares because they were now competing against 3 times as many stations. If you want to blame something for ruining radio, you need to go back before 1996.

As I'm fond of saying it's a matter of opinion. Not many people could foresee the future of radio in the early 90's and few knew that the internet would play out as it has, but we all knew that technology was moving rapidly and other entertainment platforms were already competing for radio's audience. What I speak of is the wholesale movement of stations from small groups to being housed under a few giant radio companies and firing two thirds of the people working in radio over a period of a dozen years or so. I speak of the homogenization of radio programming with syndication, voice tracking and the killing off of creativity because you only have 30 seconds to say what ever it is you need to sell, less if you’re a jock on the air. Then there is the fact that those left are now working four times as hard for less than half what their jobs used to pay. I could go on...

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

As I'm fond of saying it's a matter of opinion.

The facts are very clear. We're talking about history, and it's documented in dates and numbers. I can tell you the exact year that Walkmen started to affect radio TSL. I can tell you the exact year that the expansion to FM and the expansion of new stations due to Docket 40-50 began to affect station share. I can tell you the exact year that music taste started to splinter and become more personalized. So no, this is not opinion.

What I speak of is the wholesale movement of stations from small groups to being housed under a few giant radio companies and firing two thirds of the people working in radio over a period of a dozen years or so.

Maybe you can cite a source for the two-thirds number. Most of the firings you're talking about had nothing to do with consolidation, because they mostly happened more than 8 years after the stations were sold. It happened as a result of declining shares and advertising dollars due to increased competition. So factually speaking, those exact circumstances would have hit those same stations regardless of ownership. Had deregulation not happened,most of those same people would have been fired. And I can say this factually because if you look outside of broadcasting, you'll see that people have been fired in large numbers in virtually every industry.

I speak of the homogenization of radio programming with syndication, voice tracking and the killing off of creativity because you only have 30 seconds to say what ever it is you need to sell, less if you’re a jock on the air.

The short time to speak began with the Boss Radio period in the 60s. You only had ten second sunder Bill Drake. So 30 is a luxury. The homogenization began with the rise of consultants in the late 70s. Syndication really hasn't increased to a large degree, except for talk, until the last two years. And actually right now, we're seeing a lot of stations dropping syndication for a return to local. That's happening specifically at Entercom and CBS. Cox never really used much syndication outside of talk. The voice tracking thing is something you blame on technology. It was invented in 1993, before consolidation, so it would have become a factor regardless of ownership. As for people working harder, perhaps you should spend time studying other industries. People are working harder in just about every line of work. In fact, longer hours at work is one of the factors affecting radio TSL.

 

[briancraig]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

But 1996 did help bring about the awful homogenization of today's radio. I'm not advocating for a return to the days when you could only own 14 stations nationwide, but it is not in the public interest for Cumulus or Clear Channel or anyone to own 850 radio stations.

The consultants of the past did not homogenize to the extent they do today. Even using the same basic formula, Bill Drake's stations did not sound the same. KHJ was a lot different than KFRC which was different than WRKO which did not sound like WHBQ.

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

But 1996 did help bring about the awful homogenization of today's radio.

Sorry, but you're wrong. National airplay charts started the process. Then national PDs (the first ones in the 60s) followed by national consultants in the 70s did it many years before 96. Then MTV came along in 1980 and that nationalized popular music almost overnight. There are a lot of myths, and a lot of people who will believe them. But the facts don't lie, and I'm giving you the facts.

The consultants of the past did not homogenize to the extent they do today.

Really? Would you like to see some memos from the 70s? Bill Drake got more controlling as he got older and more powerful. His memos prove it. Mike Joseph was another controlling PD. Lee Abrams didn't give local programmers much independence, and he admits it today.

The other fact that homogenized radio was the music. Small local record companies were replaced by a handful of major national record labels by the 80s that controlled who was signed, what they recorded, and what radio played. By the end of the 80s, with fewer record labels, the power of MTV and other national TV shows, and the pressure on radio stations to increase audience and revenues, radio stations stopped taking chances with music. The most obvious example of this was grunge music, which was basically ignored by popular rock stations at the end of the 80s. It's part of what alienated the Gen Xers from radio, and has continued to this day. All of this was 10 years before deregulation.

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

The biggest piece of mythology is the assumption that a company needs to own a station in order to program it. Since 1926, radio stations have been outsourcing programming to services like radio networks, taped format automation services like Schulke and Bonneville, and satellite distributed services like TranStar, Satellite Music Network, and Jones. All of this happened before 1996. The real trend in the years before deregulation was the growth of LMAs. I have every reason to believe that had deregulation not happened, we'd be in a very similar place right now, with a handful of companies controlling, although not owning, large numbers of radio stations. It was inevitable.

 

[briancraig]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

For the record, MTV started in August of 1981 and really didn't become widespread until 1983 or 1984.

I don't think anyone is saying that these trends didn't start until 1996 and yes certain formats were pretty similar by the 1970s. Obviously, a station using the Schulke beautiful music format sounded the same if it was in Spokane or Tallahassee and the Abrams "Superstars" AOR stations were pretty similar.

But the local Abrams consulted AOR station here in Memphis still played lots of local bands even up until the mid 1980s. Groups that weren't being played by Abrams stations in other cities. That is not an option if you are using CC's "premium choice."

I don't know how much RKO radio under Bill Drake you heard in the 1960s or how much you heard when Paul Drew was RKO's consultant in the 1970s but 1978 WHBQ was nothing like 1978 KHJ. Look at the playlists of the RKO owned rockers from any week in say 1968 and you will see that KHJ, KFRC, WRKO and especially WHBQ and CKLW played very different music. 1960s WLS is very different from 1960s era WABC despite both being owned by ABC.

When Mike Josephs was consulting NBC in the mid 1960s, WMAQ in Chicago, KNBR in San Francisco and WRC in Washington were very different sounding MOR stations. WNBC was talk at the time.

Yes, there have been national hits since the days of Your Hit Parade but to say that radio music formats of the 1960s and 1970s and even 1980s were as homogenized as today is simply not accurate.

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Yes, there have been national hits since the days of Your Hit Parade but to say that radio music formats of the 1960s and 1970s and even 1980s were as homogenized as today is simply not accurate.

Believe what you want to believe. First of all, there are a lot more formats today than there were 30 years ago. So in that way, there's more variety. But a radio station plays the hits. It doesn't matter of the music is original, different, or local. The goal isn't to be un-homogenized, the goal is to win. What matters is the songs are hits, the public responds to them in a mass way, and keeps listening. And they do today, even with all the other options. Despite your belief, radio is basically reaching the same numbers it did 30 years ago, even with the internet, satellite, and other device options. The reason the consultants won and progressive rock lost is because homogenized hits deliver numbers. And when an act performs on Leno or the Grammy Awards, you better be playing those songs the next day, or your listeners will go where they can find them.

But your post completely ignored my point about record labels. Thirty-five years ago, Frank DiLeo at CBS Records had more to say about what a rock station played than the local PD. He'd do what Frank told him. Now it doesn't matter. Major labels have lost control and we see lots of indie labels with #1 hits. You wouldn't have seen that 30 years ago.

 

[briancraig]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

It is not a matter of believing what I want to believe, it is a matter of what the facts are.

We may be arguing different points. My point is that when one company can own 800 stations nationwide, formats tend to sound the same coast to coast.

This simply was not true in the past. West coast top 40 had a different sound and different formatics than east coast top 40. Southern top 40 stations didn't sound like either coast.

Even in the 1980s, KRTH sounded like a California oldies station while WCBS sounded like New York. This is something we have lost over the last 20 years.

This is not just true in radio, look at music. The Beach Boys could have only come from L.A. Guns N Roses is a very west coast hard rock sounding band where Bon Jovi has a very east coast sound. The Offspring could have only come from Southern California where Green Day could have only come from Northern California. Public Enemy was East Coast hip hop where N.W.A was West Coast. Today, pop music acts don't have the same regional identity that they did even 20 years ago.

It has happened in most industries. Today everyone gets their prescriptions from Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid. 30 years ago, you went to Sav On and Thrifty in L.A., Duane Reade in New York, Eckerds in Florida, and Walgreens and Osco in Chicago.

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

We may be arguing different points. My point is that when one company can own 800 stations nationwide, formats tend to sound the same coast to coast.

But as I said, they don't have to own them to get that result. Bonneville and Schulke had hundreds of stations running their beautiful music tapes in the 60s. Meanwhile, less than half of the CC stations run Premium Choice. Why? Because those stations lose their reporting status in the trades, and that costs them money. The fact is that ownership doesn't care about programming. They care about results. If you can get great results playing local music, then more power to you. But if your numbers are going down, and you as a local programmer seem unable to fix the problem, you can expect someone in the company will find a way to solve your problem.

Your post ignores the facts that CC is very successful with its so-called homogenized formats, and quite often has three of the Top 5 stations in most major markets, including Los Angeles! No one, except a small minority of music freaks care if a station sounds homogenized. What matters is that the station plays hits and makes money. That's it. And to be honest, that's been the goal for the history of broadcasting.

Regional idenity doesn't matter today because of the internet. Do millions of screaming girls care if Justin Bieber is from Canada? No. If the Beach Boys had remained in LA and hadn't toured and had national hits, no one would know who they were today. But what happened was that radio stations in other parts of the country chose to play an act from California rather than one of their own home-grown bands. So the Beach Boys can thank homogenized radio for helping make them immortal international stars. Meanwhile Brian Wilson couldn't surf. He barely could swim. It was all an act. So who cares where they came from?

 

[LKellerIII]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

I speak of the homogenization of radio programming with syndication, voice tracking and the killing off of creativity because you only have 30 seconds to say what ever it is you need to sell, less if you’re a jock on the air.

The short time to speak began with the Boss Radio period in the 60s. You only had ten second sunder Bill Drake. So 30 is a luxury.

Even before Bill Drake and Boss Radio, jocks were on the clock to a great extent. Drake tightened it up even more than before, and eliminated all the clutter (time tones, sound F/X, etc). But programmers like Chuck Blore (KFWB) kept DJs on a fairly short leash. If you listen to early 60s air checks of KFWB or KRLA, you'll see that jocks stuck primarily to song/title, call letters, time/temp and into commercial - usually in less than 30 seconds. There were a few exceptions, like Bill Ballance or Dave Hull with their jokes, or Casey Kasem with his pop-trivia-gossip schtick. But for the most part, the "legendary" DJs were not big talkers.

Yes, there was MOR radio in which the jocks could talk at a more leisurely pace, but it was part of the format, and the target audience (middle aged adults), were expecting full service radio with talk, news, and sports - they weren't bothered if they only heard a half dozen songs per hour.

Then there were the very popular "Beautiful Music" stations, which were automated, and jock-less. In the early 70s, the most popular progressive FM rock station in LA was KLOS, because they had a tight play list and the DJs were allowed even less time to talk than Drake's Boss Jocks.

 

[TheBigA]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

West coast top 40 had a different sound and different formatics than east coast top 40. Southern top 40 stations didn't sound like either coast.

Depends on what you call "formatics." I've spent a lot of time listening and studying airchecks. The jingles were largely made in the same place with the same singers. The fact that so many of these stations used jingles at all is homogenous. The fast talk and the patter was homogenous. The ratio of music to commercials was about the same. You had syndicated features like Chickenman. For the most part, they all played the exact same music. Sure there was the occasional local hit. But an artist didn't get a #1 record without getting airplay at almost all of the reporting stations. If a station had 20 currents in the playlist, typically 18-19 of them were national hits. If you traveled from city to city, you could quickly find a station that was similar to what you knew from home, because these radio stations knew what worked, and they watched each other carefully. The only thing that consistently distinguished one station from another was the talent, and that started to change when FM took over. Then all of a sudden, Johnny Dark popped up everywhere. Justin Case was another one. Different people, same name. Then the rise in syndication with King Biscuit Flower Hour. American Top 40. People loved it. It made radio seem bigger than it was.

 

[calguy]

Re: Wonder if the purchase of citadel by cumulus will affect any of there stations?

Others have made the points that I would have responded with if I had the time, but I was multi-tasking the jobs of two people as usual. I will say this. While all of the trends that TheBigA mentioned started long before the Communications Act of 1996, it was the signing of this act that opened the floodgates with groups buying and selling stations at a furious rate and combining operations that in turn reduced staff levels.

Voice Tracking has been around long before 1992 as you stated. Automation systems were in wide use back when Nixon was President. Radio has had outside the spectrum competition since the late 40's, but nothing to the extent that technology brought to the industry in the 90's and now. Large groups like CC took that technology and used it to make major staff reductions starting around 2001 when Prophet was implemented at all stations in the company, eliminating overnight, weekend and lately even major daytime day parts. Start looking at the numbers and you'll realize that layoff's/terminations on-air as well as in the backroom operations have reduced the industry population like no other time in history save for the days when network radio was moving to television. You sound like you know what your talking about, very official sounding, but you've made assumptions based on only a fraction of the reasons for the industry's decline, a decline that has been hastened by cheapskate operators who bought high and accrued huge dept. So much debt that they may never dig themselves out, and all because of their own greed and ignorance.