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

There's a lot more behind the scenes going on with WRR than meets the eye. I can't imagine any decent radio executive wanting to get involved in this mess.

Just the basics of this plan should tell you this wasn't a good idea. It would have cost $84,000 to set up the HD2 and another $50,000 a year to run it. All to allow the main station to supposedly generate an extra $80,000 in ad revenue for the times the council is on. The reality is that the council meetings don't cost them that much revenue. They wouldn't gain much revenue by getting rid of them and adding the cost of the HD2 would eliminate all or almost all of the benefit they might get from it.

I would disagree. Agency buys are based on a cost per thousand rate for the market. When the meetings run the ratings are consistent. When they didn't, there was a big spike in listening. So, loss of commercial units missed by the meeting coupled with higher spot rate, I believe is far above the cost. I can tell you from doing sales, not many are interested in talking to you with WRR's numbers but when they have stepped away from the meetings and seen a nice spike, then, with those numbers more businesses would invest the time to learn about the station and eventually buy.

Then again, if the city creates this problem, they have to live with it. They own the station, it produces a consistent amount of revenue, and obviously the city is satisfied. If they wanted to increase revenues, they would have voted for moving the meetings to another platform. Bigger picture, if the council really wants to increase revenues, they can vote to enact a format change. They're doing something that they believe is in the public's interest. That's what they're supposed to do. It's bad radio, but so is having the FCC mandate public affairs programming on stations.

I would contend that the format for WRR is probably just fine. They have no competition. They have a loyal fanbase that's actually rather wealthy.

My earlier point about the plan the council voted down still stands. I agree that ratings would be higher. But their own estimate was that they get $80,000 a year in extra revenue (which I think is high) by ditching the council meetings. Even if the 80k number is true, they will eat up most of that by putting the council meetings on a new HD2 channel. The numbers I quoted above (84k for the cost to create it and 50k a year to run) are from the council's own briefing material. So maybe this would have generated 30k a year toward the bottom line, but I think it would likely be less than that or perhaps even a money losing proposition.

If they had just had a plan on the table to stop airing the council meetings without trying to put them on an HD2, it would have made more sense.

I totally agree. Why HD2? If suggested early on to tape delay the meetings to ultimately Sunday morning or Sunday night versus live. These would be times that are very non-prime and affect the smallest number of listeners 6 am to Midnight. Say,7 to Noon or 6 or 7 pm to 11 or Midnight.