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Back in... Five?

Hot Hits said:
More old people watch and listen to TV than the Radio, everyone would know that?
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For what it's worth, my mother-in-law (RIP) suffered from macular degeneration, and could not watch TV, but she listened to it, never the less. She was also a big fan of NewsTalk and SportsTalk radio.

Anticipating David's response - I believe he would say that older people are set in their ways, and generally can't be convinced to buy something new or different, so they are not a successful demographic for advertisers, even though they may be listening.
 
wadio said:
Huh? Is there data to support that? People's eyes generally don't get better with age and radio gets a hefty share of the older demo.
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The simplest data is provided by viewing the ads that are obviously targeted at seniors.

The ad for a calcium supplement that shows a senior woman working in her garden with her hands. The ad for the European river cruises that shows beautiful scenes of the European countryside and picturesque views of the old cities. The "boner pill" spots that show romantic scenes that could only end well with the use of the medication. The "people like me" ads of older diabetics living an active lifestyle thanks to a shot or a pill. The chair lift ads or scooter ads that show how easy and comfortable it is to stay in your two-story home even if a flight of stairs is hard to handle.

All of those, and many more, require "apetite appeal" visual presentations of the benefits of usage. They create scenes where the product or service are shown to be quality of life enhancers.

Oh, I forgot the one of the woman dancing and dining with great gusto because she was wearing an adult incontenence product.

You have to get the point of what "visual" does to market the goods here. Or pick up a copy of the AAARP magazine, one of the most successful print journals in the nation. Do any of the advertisers use radio? Do the ads require something visual (whether it be imagry or a table of returns for a mutual fund family)? Yep... almost always.

I don't doubt that there's money to be made selling to older demos but I don't see the "visual" connection. Repetition is likely more important, and saturation is cheaper on radio.
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There is definitely some local direct, mostly in smaller markets, for older leaning stations. But in large markets, it is not very much.
 
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TheBigA said:
We'll see how much you love it when it's all behind a paywall.
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You've been talking about this for years, BigA, so we will see. Like LandTuna, I also watch 90% of my TV recorded and skip through the commercials. On my commute I listen on a bluetooth-enabled sound system in my car (had it put in my older car back in December, hands free cell phone is Super) and I listen to either recorded programming usually from several AAA stations I record at home, using no extra data on my cell phone using the Tune In Radio Pro app. Use it EVERY single day. I record WXPK 107.1 The Peak (NYC area), or WXRV 92.5 The River (Boston), or some others. Also a great oldies station WDJO Cincinnati. I record overnights while I am sleeping thus minimizing any commercials that might play. Or I can zip through the commercials as swell. Once in a while like last night I might listen to one of those stations live as I'm driving. If I want to hear talk like on KFI or like KLAA sports talk, I'd rather "Tune In" on the Tune In app or the IHeart Radio app as the sound quality is 100x better than the AM sounds on the radio in my car. I even use the MLB At Bat app if I want to hear a Mets game and even an Angels game sounds better through the app than from the radio.

Having said all this, if I have to pay to get through a firewall, IT WILL BE WORTH IT!! Just to avoid SoCal commercial music stations that don't offer enough of what I prefer. I have 12 "buttons" for FM and 6 more for AM and I basically never use them.
 
SuperRadioFan said:
You've been talking about this for years, BigA, so we will see. Like LandTuna, I also watch 90% of my TV recorded and skip through the commercials. On my commute I listen on a bluetooth-enabled sound system in my car (had it put in my older car back in December, hands free cell phone is Super) and I listen to either recorded programming usually from several AAA stations I record at home, using no extra data on my cell phone using the Tune In Radio Pro app. Use it EVERY single day. I record WXPK 107.1 The Peak (NYC area), or WXRV 92.5 The River (Boston), or some others. Also a great oldies station WDJO Cincinnati. I record overnights while I am sleeping thus minimizing any commercials that might play. Or I can zip through the commercials as swell. Once in a while like last night I might listen to one of those stations live as I'm driving. If I want to hear talk like on KFI or like KLAA sports talk, I'd rather "Tune In" on the Tune In app or the IHeart Radio app as the sound quality is 100x better than the AM sounds on the radio in my car. I even use the MLB At Bat app if I want to hear a Mets game and even an Angels game sounds better through the app than from the radio.

Having said all this, if I have to pay to get through a firewall, IT WILL BE WORTH IT!! Just to avoid SoCal commercial music stations that don't offer enough of what I prefer. I have 12 "buttons" for FM and 6 more for AM and I basically never use them.
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Oh, I know Big A's response already (and you do too!) : You are a high maintenance outlier of a listener who radio can never serve, paywall or not due to your taste in music that frankly isn't very popular and the lengths you will go to to get it. Radio is not designed for people like you.

As for me I gladly pay about two or three SiriusXM subscriptions to ensure I have a good commercial-free listening experience in both my car, wife's car, and in the home. I would be glad to pay even more if the channels were better (like they were on XM before the merger).

I have also subscribed to some online services over the years that offer even more variety.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
Oh, I know Big A's response already (and you do too!) : You are a high maintenance outlier of a listener who radio can never serve, paywall or not due to your taste in music that frankly isn't very popular and the lengths you will go to to get it. Radio is not designed for people like you.
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Sounds familiar. Let me explain: I spent some time in non-commercial radio, so I can tell you that if traditional FM radio could survive on the financial support of its users, it would prefer to operate that way. We jump through a ton of hoops just to satisfy advertisers. The whole ratings thing is done because advertisers want it. The whole demographics thing is about advertisers. The tight playlists, the narrow formats, and everything else people complain about is for the advertisers. They're the ones paying, so they get to define what we do. If we could escape all of that, and simply depend on the listeners, it would make for better radio. But what we see is that on average, less than 10% of users will pay. That means less than 10% of the listeners to non-commercial radio, and less than 10% of the population will subscribe to Sirius. We in commercial radio survive on the other 90%. That means there are a lot of cheap people who basically don't care about the music or the number of commercials. The law says we can't put AM-FM radio behind a paywall. We have two choices: Beg for money from listeners, or run advertising. I've done both. I live better doing the latter.
 
SuperRadioFan said:
You've been talking about this for years, BigA, so we will see. Like LandTuna, I also watch 90% of my TV recorded and skip through the commercials.
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I read an interview recently with Les Moonves of CBS. He was explaining why he sold CBS Radio. He sold it because it's strictly an ad-supported medium. He feels that is a declining market. The audience is fragmenting, and as a result, ad rates are dropping. He's also seeing it in TV, for the same reason. The audience prefers to watch on its own schedule, rather than on the network's schedule. The bad news is the network only gets credit if you watch a TV show within a few days of its airing. If you wait a few weeks or months, and binge-watch, as some people do, the network doesn't get credit for you as a viewer. That affects the ad rate. That's why Moonves feels the future for him is in subscription TV. Thus, the paywall. They can't do that with broadcast radio. The expense of digital radio (streaming) is prohibitive, so it's not a business he's interested in. Pandora, the most popular streaming service, seems to be telegraphing some major changes. They've already launched a premium pay service, but even that isn't delivering the kind of money they need. OTA FM stations that stream on TuneIn also pay a high royalty rate for the music, and they don't benefit from the ad revenue. So that is a loss leader. At some point, FM stations will no longer be able to afford free streaming. It's a huge expense with no real upside. That's why I say at some point, all media will be behind a paywall. It's either do that, or go out of business. Either way, the future won't be like the present. So be prepared.
 
TheBigA said:
I read an interview recently with Les Moonves of CBS. He was explaining why he sold CBS Radio. He sold it because it's strictly an ad-supported medium. He feels that is a declining market. The audience is fragmenting, and as a result, ad rates are dropping. He's also seeing it in TV, for the same reason. The audience prefers to watch on its own schedule, rather than on the network's schedule. The bad news is the network only gets credit if you watch a TV show within a few days of its airing. If you wait a few weeks or months, and binge-watch, as some people do, the network doesn't get credit for you as a viewer. That affects the ad rate. That's why Moonves feels the future for him is in subscription TV. Thus, the paywall. They can't do that with broadcast radio. The expense of digital radio (streaming) is prohibitive, so it's not a business he's interested in. Pandora, the most popular streaming service, seems to be telegraphing some major changes. They've already launched a premium pay service, but even that isn't delivering the kind of money they need. OTA FM stations that stream on TuneIn also pay a high royalty rate for the music, and they don't benefit from the ad revenue. So that is a loss leader. At some point, FM stations will no longer be able to afford free streaming. It's a huge expense with no real upside. That's why I say at some point, all media will be behind a paywall. It's either do that, or go out of business. Either way, the future won't be like the present. So be prepared.
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Yes - I get this. I can see a day in which most of our TV watching is through subscription services. I already have a couple of them. Whether or not it will be more or less expensive than cable or satellite - remains to be seen. I realize that content providers have to be paid for their product, and make a profit - or the content will stop.

Everybody will have to prioritize. For example - I like Sirius/XM whenever I've had it (rental cars, the first 90 days of my new car, etc.), but I decided that I pay enough for other services, and don't really want to pay for another, for what would probably be just a few hours of listening per month. Then again, I rarely listen to music on FM radio any more, either - just run my MP3 (or is it MP4, now?) through Bluetooth.
 
LKellerIII said:
I decided that I pay enough for other services, and don't really want to pay for another, for what would probably be just a few hours of listening per month.
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Exactly, and so money will become the limitation people will have for the media they consumer. We're already at a point where we no longer see or hear "everything." There was a time when an AM station played all genres, and our experience to music was based on what we heard on that station. Now with the "infinite dial," we can get whatever we want. The negative here is that there always will be music or news or a TV show or a movie we MIGHT like, but don't know about it, because it's not in our universe. I'm like that with some pay TV channels. Some of my friends are addicted to some HBO shows, and I don't subscribe, so I'm out of the loop. What we sacrifice is something called "shared experience." Sociologists say it's what helps tie together all of us as a people. Hearing the Star Spangled Banner is shared experience. Songs like that are becoming few and far between. But there's really nothing we can do about it. I read a lot of posts about the "problems with FM radio," and usually they're talking more about personal taste than anything radio is doing. The only way radio can satisfy everyone today, given individual taste, is have a single station for every person. Kind of impractical, unless we're talking about a Pandora channel.
 
TheBigA said:
The only way radio can satisfy everyone today, given individual taste, is have a single station for every person. Kind of impractical, unless we're talking about a Pandora channel.
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Until someone invents the equivalent of "broadcast TCP/IP" it is still wildly impractical. That one limitation just might keep broadcast radio alive far longer than we all think.
 
landtuna said:
Until someone invents the equivalent of "broadcast TCP/IP" it is still wildly impractical. That one limitation just might keep broadcast radio alive far longer than we all think.
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My "personal station" is my MP3 player, and Spotify playlists. I like DJs, so if I could afford to hire one to intro/outro my songs, I'd do so...:rolleyes:- but I don't miss DJs enough to listen to FM radio and put up with commercials...especially not the voice-tracked, open the mike 4 times an hour type.
 
I don't know if it is a geezer thing or not but I don't find myself listening to music much any longer. Most of the time I am either watching sports (GO LEAFS!) or reading. And I find myself enjoying the peace and quiet more than any background music.
 
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