Big A, I meant that the in-house fighters have been silenced by decisions made across the planet that have no avenue for tweaking. How many people in radio yesterday (old way radio) vs. today (bored way, over thought radio) that are (live) local guys who have a fight in 'em? 100%. The difference its harder or impossible for most stations to take the fight local and turn local staffs ideas into a brilliant action plan when everything is written in stone elsewhere. I'll just say that despite all the current methods of success, nothing beats a few punches from "the old way" to secure that win. I could digress. I think we're on the same page on this, maybe just communicating differently. From crappy lifeless websites, to one size fits all playlists, the list is endless of what could make a ton of differences.
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Reports of Radio's Death Greatly Exaggerated
- Thread starter bobbybeth
- Start date
Tibbs2 said:Big A, I meant that the in-house fighters have been silenced by decisions made across the planet that have no avenue for tweaking.
What are you talking about? Did you ever see "Private Parts?" NBC Radio in DC was run from a conference room in NY. That was 30 years ago.
These days, the companies are too spread out to micro-manage that way. I watch local ideas turn into reality on a regular basis. The home office isn't involved. That includes the playlist. Only CC has a centralized web site system. The rest of the companies are all local operations.
"i" agree with that. nothing is 100% is it. depends on how far back you go, but when everything was pretty much live and local, uno and dos ownerships, local owners, etc., it was a bit more fire in the foxhole in my opinion. Now, too many people are in fear or even being noticed. I guess radio is like old amusement parks...
Tibbs2 said:Now, too many people are in fear or even being noticed. I guess radio is like old amusement parks...
My view is that people need to get over their personal fears, and focus on building audience. If they do that, they have nothing to worry about.
TheBigA said:Tibbs2 said:Now, too many people are in fear or even being noticed. I guess radio is like old amusement parks...
My view is that people need to get over their personal fears, and focus on building audience. If they do that, they have nothing to worry about.
Of course, when it comes to building an audience, no on-air personality nowadays has much influence over anything that determines whether people tune in or not. If the music director insists on playing a song that makes half the listeners immediately change the station, it's the DJ who gets fired for bad ratings, not the music director who can point to computer printouts that prove he picked the right songs.
Talk_Dude said:Of course, when it comes to building an audience, no on-air personality nowadays has much influence over anything that determines whether people tune in or not.
Depends on the format. I'd suggest that DJs are very active in country, urban, classic hits, and CHR. Especially in morning and afternoon drive.
TheBigA said:Talk_Dude said:Of course, when it comes to building an audience, no on-air personality nowadays has much influence over anything that determines whether people tune in or not.
Depends on the format. I'd suggest that DJs are very active in country, urban, classic hits, and CHR. Especially in morning and afternoon drive.
I on't argue that the DJ's aren't active. I just don't think they make that much difference. I've yet to meet an ordinary listener who would pick a station playing bad songs with a good DJ over a station playing good songs with a bad DJ. But, that's just me. I've never seen anyone change stations because of a DJ, but I've seen lots of people change stations if a song they don't like comes on.
Here's the thing. It's not a purely black and white issue. Radio is not "alive" one day and "dead" the next. It's a very grey area.
The problem is that it's getting to the point that so many other mediums have taken a piece of the radio audience that there isn't a large enough audience out there to support the advertising revenues needed to run 40+ individual stations in a market like Atlanta.
Large companies like Cumulus and CBS aren't pillaging these stations because they don't know what they're doing. I think they know exactly what they're doing!
As I theorized in another post, I think the day is coming very soon where these large companies will develop super stations out of their best performing stations now, and simulcast entire an entire station format to 20 or 30 markets or more. For example, Cumulus might take 102.7 Kiss-FM in L.A., bring in some talent from it's other CHR stations and create one "Kiss-FM" station that's simulcast in it's entirely to other markets. They can still insert local news breaks and commercials but the advertising might become more national. And they create a superstation for each of their primary music formats. I think these super stations could a large part of what you hear on the radio - at least for music.
There will still be some independent local stations out there. And I think there will always be a place for local news and sports. But the biggest change I think we might see is radio develop more localized and niche information content. I also think you could see some radio stations focus on more on playing local music.
So radio may not ever be "dead", but certainly the days of high-paid local talent and music programming for individual stations is probably on it's way out.
The problem is that it's getting to the point that so many other mediums have taken a piece of the radio audience that there isn't a large enough audience out there to support the advertising revenues needed to run 40+ individual stations in a market like Atlanta.
Large companies like Cumulus and CBS aren't pillaging these stations because they don't know what they're doing. I think they know exactly what they're doing!
As I theorized in another post, I think the day is coming very soon where these large companies will develop super stations out of their best performing stations now, and simulcast entire an entire station format to 20 or 30 markets or more. For example, Cumulus might take 102.7 Kiss-FM in L.A., bring in some talent from it's other CHR stations and create one "Kiss-FM" station that's simulcast in it's entirely to other markets. They can still insert local news breaks and commercials but the advertising might become more national. And they create a superstation for each of their primary music formats. I think these super stations could a large part of what you hear on the radio - at least for music.
There will still be some independent local stations out there. And I think there will always be a place for local news and sports. But the biggest change I think we might see is radio develop more localized and niche information content. I also think you could see some radio stations focus on more on playing local music.
So radio may not ever be "dead", but certainly the days of high-paid local talent and music programming for individual stations is probably on it's way out.
kal30005 said:I think the day is coming very soon where these large companies will develop super stations out of their best performing stations now, and simulcast entire an entire station format to 20 or 30 markets or more.
Not a unique idea. ABC planned on doing that over 25 years ago with the talent from WABC. CBS did it with Howard Stern and Imus. That's a great deal if you happen to be one of the successful air talent, and your show becomes syndicated. Not so good if you're one of those who gets replaced.
The issue they'll run into is if BDS and Mediabase see that a station is running a national playlist instead of a local playlist, they'll be dropped from the reporting panel. Or grouped into a single reporter, as Mediabase did with CC Premium Choice stations. Stations don't want to be dropped from the panel.
The thing radio needs to come to grips with is that the public is in charge here. Their patience level is very low. It doesn't matter if you're live & local. It matters if you're good. The days of average talent getting on the air because they happen to live near the station are over. Too many choices. Same thing with local music. If it's good and well promoted, it might have a chance. But if it's just thrown on a MySpace page with the other 2 billion acts, it'll get lost. Local music and local programming requires a lot of work, because it's competing against the big national acts that everyone knows. If you're not aggressively out doing local marketing, face to face, building a fan base, you might as well run a national show.
TheBigA said:kal30005 said:I think the day is coming very soon where these large companies will develop super stations out of their best performing stations now, and simulcast entire an entire station format to 20 or 30 markets or more.
Not a unique idea. ABC planned on doing that over 25 years ago with the talent from WABC. CBS did it with Howard Stern and Imus. That's a great deal if you happen to be one of the successful air talent, and your show becomes syndicated. Not so good if you're one of those who gets replaced.
No, it's not a unique idea. But what is really being discussed is rolling back the clock about 75 years, to the days of network radio. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear with NBC Red, NBC Blue, CBS, and Mutual were what radio was all about.
Talk_Dude said:No, it's not a unique idea. But what is really being discussed is rolling back the clock about 75 years, to the days of network radio.
When you ask people to talk about radio in that era, it's all they talk about. They call it the Golden Age of Radio.
TheBigA said:Not a unique idea. ABC planned on doing that over 25 years ago with the talent from WABC. CBS did it with Howard Stern and Imus. That's a great deal if you happen to be one of the successful air talent, and your show becomes syndicated. Not so good if you're one of those who gets replaced.
Nobody said it was unique. But I'm not talking about syndicated morning shows or network programming of a portion of the day. I'm talking basically an entire syndicated station. And yes, it would really suck for the talent that gets knocked out.
kal30005 said:TheBigA said:Not a unique idea. ABC planned on doing that over 25 years ago with the talent from WABC. CBS did it with Howard Stern and Imus. That's a great deal if you happen to be one of the successful air talent, and your show becomes syndicated. Not so good if you're one of those who gets replaced.
Nobody said it was unique. But I'm not talking about syndicated morning shows or network programming of a portion of the day. I'm talking basically an entire syndicated station. And yes, it would really suck for the talent that gets knocked out.
Don't you mean an entire syndicated network? There are already plenty of individual stations that carry nothing but syndicated programming 24/7/365.
And yes, it would suck for any person whose self-definition was "radio talent". For people whose self-definition was "spoken-word performer", it just means exploring other venues for employment. A radio talent who was more than "talent" in name only should be able to transition to doing animated cartoon voices, commercial and industrial voice-overs, stand-up comedy, theatre, or other such gigs. Of course there's no sort of job security, but that's show business. Anyone who enters show business, whether as an actor, a singer, a radio DJ, or any other speciality, hoping for job security is a fool.
Talk_Dude said:Don't you mean an entire syndicated network? There are already plenty of individual stations that carry nothing but syndicated programming 24/7/365.
Yes, I know many stations, especially in smaller towns have basically syndicated their entire programming line-up for decades. And yes, this is somewhat similar.
But instead of a radio station picking and choosing which individual syndicated programs to run, in this case, it would be the parent company (like a Clear Channel) running one station per format and simulcasting that station in several markets 24 hours a day.
The thing radio needs to come to grips with is that the public is in charge here. Their patience level is very low. It doesn't matter if you're live & local. It matters if you're good. The days of average talent getting on the air because they happen to live near the station are over. Too many choices. Same thing with local music. If it's good and well promoted, it might have a chance. But if it's just thrown on a MySpace page with the other 2 billion acts, it'll get lost. Local music and local programming requires a lot of work, because it's competing against the big national acts that everyone knows. If you're not aggressively out doing local marketing, face to face, building a fan base, you might as well run a national show.
[/quote]
Shhh! "They" will read that and suddenly figure out how to be suc-success---ful. Oh, as for the Golden Age. I dunno if it was so golden, but it was more like the Wild West.
[/quote]
Shhh! "They" will read that and suddenly figure out how to be suc-success---ful. Oh, as for the Golden Age. I dunno if it was so golden, but it was more like the Wild West.
kal30005 said:Talk_Dude said:Don't you mean an entire syndicated network? There are already plenty of individual stations that carry nothing but syndicated programming 24/7/365.
Yes, I know many stations, especially in smaller towns have basically syndicated their entire programming line-up for decades. And yes, this is somewhat similar.
But instead of a radio station picking and choosing which individual syndicated programs to run, in this case, it would be the parent company (like a Clear Channel) running one station per format and simulcasting that station in several markets 24 hours a day.
Exactically! Now you're getting it! A company that provides national program content that's carried on multiple stations across the country is called (drum roll please) a network. Granted, it might only be network programming 6:00 AM to midnight, or there might be breaks built into drive time for local drop-ins like weather and traffic reports. But what everyone has been describing is pretty much a throwback to the olden days.
And, if you think about this a bit, there are probably more stations than there are possible networks. Once a city has one network station for each of the main formats and they dominate those formats, then the remaining stations will be forced to compete by counter programming what the networks cannot provide, which is ultra-local content. If all of the "wall-to-wall songs with a DJ reading a liner-card every three songs" formats are on national networks, the stations who can't get a network affiliation will have to counter with something different, not just the same things done by some guy sitting in a local building. That could translate to more career opportunities for local radio talent, not less. It would put the people who can't do anything other than read liner card reads out of work, but it could give people with the talent to actually entertain audiences over the radio more opportunities than ever before.
Then again, maybe not. Nothing is a sure thing. Radio hasn't exactly been famous for embracing radical new ideas for at least half a century. People with innovative minds are looking for work in industries who want innovation, which leaves out the terrestrial radio industry.
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