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Dallas City Council meetings are killing WRR's surprisingly good ratings

Y2kTheNewOldies

Y2kTheNewOldies

Walk of Fame Participant
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/...ion-isdoing-surprisingly-except-city-councils

The article cites that Dallas City Hall meetings can be seen in other places though as reason to cut City hall meetings from WRR-FM.


Here's something that caught me off-guard: WRR-FM — the classical-music station you and I and every other Dallas taxpayer owns — is a ratings juggernaut. Well, OK. Not quite. But it is a Top 25 radio station in this very competitive market.

According to the latest Nielsen trend reports, the City Hall-owned station — one of the few like it anywhere in the country — pulls in more listeners than ESPN's FM talk station, KERA's all-music offshoot KXT-FM or KLIF-AM's right-leaning talk-talk-talk.

That is, until the Fair Park-based, 100,000-watt station swaps Mahler for the mayor at 9 a.m. every other Wednesday. And then nobody's listening. Close enough, anyway.


According to station officials, in October alone, an average of some 11,300 people listened during any random 15-minute period every weekday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. That doesn't seem like a lot compared to top-rated KISS-FM, which garners tens of thousands of pairs of ears during the same time period. But WRR's idea of a hit-maker is Sergei Rachmaninoff, not Post Malone. Kids today.

But on those every-other-Wednesdays when WRR broadcasts Dallas City Council voting meetings, ratings fall off a cliff to just 1,900 listeners.

"We lose about 80 percent of our audience," said the station's interim general manager Mike Oakes. For those, like me, who are bad at math.
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Plus they don’t have ANY commercials during the council meetings so that’s more lost revenue.

I get that, as a city-owned station, the council meeting coverage is their main public service. But if hardly anyone’s listening, is it really a public service at all?

As a WRR fan, I’d prefer to have the music. Too bad they don’t have an HD-2 channel for the council. There would still be no one listening, of course.
 
Maybe they should buy back 13~Ten :))

City Council coverage is a real format buster, but the City calls all the shots because of their ownership. HD~Too would solve the problem...if the City actually believes there's a problem!
 
It's one of the few city-owned radio stations left, especially in the commercial band. At one time, the City of New York owned WNYC-AM & FM, but they were spun off to a non-profit community group. WNYC-FM is at 93.9 in the commercial band, but operates as a non-commercial station. The City still owns WNYE-FM, which is at 91.5 in the non-commercial band.

WRR is a commercial station and sells advertising, so this can be a problem.
 
I would hate to be talking to agencies about buying advertising on WRR FM and after winning the fight for those dollars, having to get past the every other week City Council meeting. I could see it if meetings began at, say 7 pm versus 9 am.

Given the presumed idea the revenue versus cost of operation is a factor, why would the meeting be aired live but rather replayed on a Sunday morning or Sunday evening when many more that might want to hear city government play-by-play could do so (as daily work would interfere on a Wednesday daytime meeting). Certainly demand for airtime from advertisers is less Sunday AM or Sunday evening. I would think this common sense reality would have already happened. I do like the idea of a government entity being open enough to do this but running what would be a very lengthy meeting in prime daytime hours in a top 10 market in today's age is insane on a commercial station.

Anyway, it would give WRR the option to edit those parts that are not radio friendly (ie: silence such as when a speaker is coming to the microphone). A bit of editing can help just like tape delay on a church service for those ratings spiking times when the preacher asks everyone to bow their heads for a moment of silent prayer or that always exciting sounds of the offering plate being passed pew to pew.
 
And on more than one occasion the City Council started looking at the revenue to be earned by selling the station.
 
K6JHU said:
And on more than one occasion the City Council started looking at the revenue to be earned by selling the station.
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I hope they're not too hasty about this. There are ways to retain the very unique format and also obtain a lot of revenue. But if all they focus on is revenue, this very wonderful format will likely go away. But yes the chances of the city holding on to this station are not good.
 
The politics of selling this station or changing its format have proven to make either unlikely for the forseeable future.
I think ditching the council meetings on WRR is a great thing. It's apparently already baked in to the budget.
The station had some of the highest ratings it's had in decades in the past few months. Then the council meetings came back and they dropped back.
 
Here's an update on this story. The city council's arts committee appears willing to go along with this plan, but also wants the city to add audio streaming of the council meetings to the city's website in additon to spending the money to create and HD2 channel for WRR that would broadcast the meetings. See here: https://dallascityhall.com/governme...-meeting-broadcasts-on-wrr-fm_memo_011419.pdf
One of the things I find fascinating about this is the cost needed to run it: $50,000 in an initial capital expenditure and $84,000 a year to operate it.
One wonders what WRR would put on an HD2 when there is no city council meeting.
 
tested said:
One of the things I find fascinating about this is the cost needed to run it: $50,000 in an initial capital expenditure and $84,000 a year to operate it.
One wonders what WRR would put on an HD2 when there is no city council meeting.
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TTBOMK WRR doesn't currently have an HD2 channel or encoder. So they'd have to purchase the equipment, and the operation of it requires a royalty payment to the copyright owner. Plus the time it would take to program the channel.

What would they put on it? Anything they want.

I thought I read where the meetings are also broadcast on cable TV.
 
My thought is if the meetings are aired on Cable TV (government/public access channel) and if they can be streamed live on the city website, why include the FM. My thinking is an HD channel is not going to be more accessible to the general public than the option of website or cable. As WRR is commercial, airing the meetings is not helping the revenue end at all but rather costing them large sums of cash. Perhaps a tape delay to Sunday morning or Sunday night for meetings if they insist on using WRR would be a better option.
 
My view: this is a huge waste of money. Unless they can figure out a way to program something on the HD2 that covers the cost or generates a profit, this just seems exceedingly foolish to me.
 
tested said:
My view: this is a huge waste of money. Unless they can figure out a way to program something on the HD2 that covers the cost or generates a profit, this just seems exceedingly foolish to me.
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Then again, government isn't in the profit business. They're in the service business. Which is appropriate, since there's no real way to make a profit with HD2. We're talking about broadcasting council meetings, not entertainment.
 
I got this email from WRR today.

Dear Friend,

On February 13, the Dallas City Council will vote on whether to discontinue broadcasting its biweekly meetings on WRR.
 
If I recall correctly, WRR's profits are assigned to help provide advertising funds for the Dallas Convention and Visitors bureau. So in this case, WRR is in the profit business.
There's a lot more going on there than meets the eye.

I suspect the council will say yes to this plan to add an HD2 for the council meetings.
 
Just be glad WRR's format is classical. Can you imagine the trouble if it were a pop or rock with these meetings?
 
Bongwater said:
Just be glad WRR's format is classical. Can you imagine the trouble if it were a pop or rock with these meetings?
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I can imagine some of the city council members questioning the lyrics of a pop or rock format!
 
Dallas City Council votes to continue broadcasting meetings live on WRR.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/D...s-to-Keep-Broadcast-on-1011-FM-505810841.html

I understand why they wouldn't want to put the meetings on an HD-2 OR -3 channel. I have HD radio in my vehicle and I love it, but most people don't.

I wonder if one of the lower-rated AM stations in the market might have welcomed the meetings—at a cost lower than the 80k WRR hoped to gain by dropping them.
 
One has to wonder how many applicants for the advertised position of General Manager of WRR will be put off from applying in light of the Council's decision. The real cost is minimal compared to the potential loss of income in advertising revenue. I have to wonder if that has been considered.
 
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