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The future of O.T.A.

DavidEduardo said:


The US median age in metro areas is 34.9 years.

Phoenix has an average of 33.2. Of the group of cities that include LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, Phoenix has the oldest group, with others coming in as in the 32's. Rust belt cities like Buffalo and Rochester are in the upper 30's.

The ones I named are sunbelt cities, where living is attractive to younger, more mobile people. And, particularly, they are magnets for new immigrants. Phoenix is not one-third Hispanic, and we know that Hispanic families tend to be larger, swinging the balance on median age downwards with more children in households.

Scottsdale has a much higher median age as the costs there prevent it filling with younger entry level job holders. Older people have more of a "mall mentality". Millennials and immigrants don't.
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Hartford's is 29.7, but with a heavy Hispanic skew. But Meriden, a city of 55,000 where the struggling mall is, also has a big Hispanic populatiion, but its median age is 36.7. And that's where the mall is. Go figure.

PS--I think I see the ever-frustrating now/not typo in your post. You mean Phoenix is NOW one-third Hispanic, right? (I have similar typo tics, typing "that" when I mean "than" and "thought" when I mean "though." Turns my prose into gibberish sometimes.)
 
landtuna said:
We're getting off the radio subject here but one last comment which I read about last night and that was that some mall operators are actually wishing for Sear's and other big box anchors to fail. They are dividing up those giant stores into smaller ones and charging more per square foot in rent than they could make from the big anchors. Not sure this is a national trend but it was an interesting perspective.
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Malls do not survive without anchor tenants like Sears, Penny's, Macy's, Nordstrom, etc. Those are the places that bring in traffic and feed the mall as a whole.

Malls without anchors almost uniformly fail.

All of this is relevant to OTA radio, as with declining national buys for all but the biggest markets and biggest stations, sales have become increasingly local direct. The thinning of the herd of businesses small enough to buy direct and big enough to afford coverage of a whole market is thinning and there is no growth in retail as sales migrate to online providers.

I just checked my Amazon account and found that in the last 6 months I have made 267 purchases. Most of those are trips I would have made to the store in the past, and include everything from baking supplies to cleaning products to motherboards and CPUs. As more and more people shop this way, there will be less local revenue for radio.

Since, for a variety of other reasons, radio does not target older folks, and the newer generations have a lesser fascination with malls, this is a trend that affects both retail (malls specifically) and radio alike.

In many cases, local merchants who might have used local radio are putting more money into digital, as it allows them to reach consumers at the Point of Purchase (PoP) with valuable information. So they spend on everything from paid search rank to those little business icons that pop up on Google Maps.
 
CTListener said:
Hartford's is 29.7, but with a heavy Hispanic skew. But Meriden, a city of 55,000 where the struggling mall is, also has a big Hispanic populatiion, but its median age is 36.7. And that's where the mall is. Go figure.

PS--I think I see the ever-frustrating now/not typo in your post. You mean Phoenix is NOW one-third Hispanic, right? (I have similar typo tics, typing "that" when I mean "than" and "thought" when I mean "though." Turns my prose into gibberish sometimes.)
Click to expand...

The Hartford MSA (the OMB MSA, not Nielsen's) is 37.3. Typical Northeaster slow/no growth age median.

http://www.census-charts.com/Metropolitan/AgeSex.html is a useful resource. Unless a metro is redefined, or has huge rapid population migrations (like Puerto Rico) very little changes between the decennial Census reports. (The one I linked is from 2000, but it is so easy to read that I posted it anyway. The Census site is so tedious to read!)
 
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DavidEduardo said:


The ones I named are sunbelt cities, where living is attractive to younger, more mobile people. And, particularly, they are magnets for new immigrants. Phoenix is not one-third Hispanic, and we know that Hispanic families tend to be larger, swinging the balance on median age downwards with more children in households.

Scottsdale has a much higher median age as the costs there prevent it filling with younger entry level job holders. Older people have more of a "mall mentality". Millennials and immigrants don't.
Click to expand...

Phoenix metro also has substantial numbers of seniors in Sun City, Sun City West, and the Aluminum Capital of the World: the East Valley. These are not usually among the hordes of people hanging out at the malls however. In my neck of the woods it is young whites. On the West side it is young Hispanics. You don't see a ton of people over 45 at the malls. It would be interesting to take a poll of Millennials at the mall. I will bet they are in the majority.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Scottsdale has a much higher median age as the costs there prevent it filling with younger entry level job holders. Older people have more of a "mall mentality". Millennials and immigrants don't.
Click to expand...

Also of importance: "Scottsdale, Ariz., has the oldest citizens of any city with a population of 100,000 or more. The median age of 45.4 years is eight years higher than the national median age."
 
TheBigA said:
Partly true. Towers and transmitters no longer fit with that model. At some point, CBS will start selling TV stations. Same with ABC and NBC.

CBS will still be involved with radio in creating content. CBS Radio News is still part of CBS. CBS Sports Radio is still partly owned by CBS. This is very similar to how ABC News Radio, ESPN Radio, and Radio Disney are still owned by Disney.
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This time ABC Radio News exist in Podcasts for Slacker Radio Apps. But then again we are in the app age though just the way things are going now for broadcasting.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Also of importance: "Scottsdale, Ariz., has the oldest citizens of any city with a population of 100,000 or more. The median age of 45.4 years is eight years higher than the national median age."
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Yes, and their mall, Scottsdale Fashion, is doing just fine.
 
landtuna said:
Yes, and their mall, Scottsdale Fashion, is doing just fine.
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Just as Rodeo Drive and 5th Avenue are doing well. Not so well for most of the other thousand or so malls in the US.
 
RadioPatrol said:
This time ABC Radio News exist in Podcasts for Slacker Radio Apps. But then again we are in the app age though just the way things are going now for broadcasting.
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Radio is not strictly OTA. In keeping with the topic of this thread, that's the future of OTA: Multi-platform presentation. You do on air, but you also put that same content online and in podcasts. That's also what's going on with TV and cable. Multi-platform.
 
TheBigA said:
Radio is not strictly OTA. In keeping with the topic of this thread, that's the future of OTA: Multi-platform presentation. You do on air, but you also put that same content online and in podcasts. That's also what's going on with TV and cable. Multi-platform.
Click to expand...

Also the way things are going in 2017 TV networks have to go after the crowd that watch TV on Youtube, Netflix, Crackle and Hulu to remain relevant to the demos.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Also the way things are going in 2017 TV networks have to go after the crowd that watch TV on Youtube, Netflix, Crackle and Hulu to remain relevant to the demos.
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The problem with those other platforms is some are not counted by traditional ratings. Same with radio streaming.
 
TheBigA said:
The problem with those other platforms is some are not counted by traditional ratings. Same with radio streaming.
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Then something "traditional" will have to become something "outmoded," won't it? When we buy a new car, we aren't obligated to buy a useless buggy whip for it just to keep a "traditional" business going, are we? Either Nielsen will have to find a way to collect data on nontraditional listening/viewing or someone else will. And if "new media" find a way to make themselves relevant and salable to advertisers before broadcasters figure out how to do so, then it's RIP Traditional Radio and TV.
 
CTListener said:
Then something "traditional" will have to become something "outmoded," won't it? When we buy a new car, we aren't obligated to buy a useless buggy whip for it just to keep a "traditional" business going, are we? Either Nielsen will have to find a way to collect data on nontraditional listening/viewing or someone else will. And if "new media" find a way to make themselves relevant and salable to advertisers before broadcasters figure out how to do so, then it's RIP Traditional Radio and TV.
Click to expand...

Neilsen has in testing a system that combines platforms. Part of it was MRC accredited just last week. It integrates all forms of consumption of all forms of media and is platform agnostic. Or so they claim.
 
RadioPatrol said:
http://www.parrotanalytics.com/

http://www.parrotanalytics.com/news/hbo-v-netflix-has-stranger-things-changed-things-for-netflix/
http://www.parrotanalytics.com/news/netflixs-originals-new-hits-vs-old-favorites/

I noticed Parrot Analytics have been cited for recording ratings for Netflix. This group has been compared to Nielsen but for on demand shows that appear on Netflix.

Youtube data more like internal recording from Alphabet/Google when it comes to views though.
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Paid on demand services don't have ratings in the conventional sense. They monitor the different shows and episodes to determine the things that draw subscribers. It's more like inventory control, and helps them to know what shows to buy and what custom productions to renew.

Since they know the subscriber data, their universe is only their own audience base, not competitors.
 
TheBigA said:
What makes you think more regulation will help? There are no ownership regulations in any other business. WalMart can own as many stores as they want Trump can build as many hotels as he wants. Broadcasting is one of the few businesses where the government restricts the number of outlets. Viacom has no restrictions on the number of cable channels. Even Sirius has no government regulations on the number of channels they can offer. Their only limitation is bandwidth. Perhaps the lack of growth in radio is because the government has placed caps on how big it can grow. Don't you think that might be the issue?
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Broadcasting like OTA TV and OTA radio has ownership limits. But Radio App aggregates or TV app Aggregates don't have limits on outlet ownership though I don't see that much government regulations for Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, 8tracks, Tunein, Vimeo, Crackle, Radionomy, Filmon and Newson for now except Terms and conditions for the companies, SEC regulations and in some cases law enforcement checking these apps for questionable content based on how a jurisdiction defines it.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Broadcasting like OTA TV and OTA radio has ownership limits. But Radio App aggregates or TV app Aggregates don't have limits on outlet ownership
Click to expand...

Besides ownership limits, there are also payola laws that only apply to broadcasting, not digital media. So payola is legal at Pandora or Spotify.
 
TheBigA said:
At some point, CBS will start selling TV stations. Same with ABC and NBC.
Click to expand...

Network O&O TV stations in the top 20 markets are generally very profitable for their parent companies. Depending on the network (NBC/Comcast, for example). Having O&O's are also a great way to control retrans sub agreements. It wouldn't surprise me to see CBS parlay radio proceeds into actually increasing their local TV station count. It's the trend.
 
secondchoice said:
Big payroll (news talk) while 104.7 (CCM) with a smaller staff on the same tower but at a lower power is rumored to be billing twice what WYAY is.
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Maybe people like the message from the fishy people better.


Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
DavidEduardo said:


There is not going to be an expansion of either band. Listening to OTA radio has declined more than 50% in the last 6 years in the major markets, with PUR going from around a 17 to 18 range to an 8. In the 90's, PUR was around 20 to 21 in many markets based on 6 AM to 12 MN listening levels.

PUR: persons using radio expressed as a percentage of the universe using radio over a specified time period.
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IN another thread a month or so ago, you mentioned that radio listenership hasn't dropped that much; I forget the numbers quoted.

Now you mention that it's dropped by 50%.

So does the other 50% now listen to radio stations online? Just curious, because if it keeps dropping as you've mentioned -- 50% a decade (or less), it looks like OTA radio itself may soon be finished. At least, that's how it looks from your numbers here. 50 percent is quite a drop.
 
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