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Holy cow, KROQ...

TheBigA said:
I don't see it exactly that way. The larger radio corporations recognize the limitations of broadcast radio, and it's why they all are actively investing in other platforms. Platforms that have no limits, that have no regulations or restrictions, and platforms where they can at some point operate as subscription services rather than ad-supported operations.
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We have just seen some good examples of basic stagnation or mediocre attempts to improve the ratings and revenue. WPLJ would be a textbook case. We've talked about WKDF in Nashville having decades of fairly low numbers compared to what it could have been. Right now, they are on a temporary uptick. Revenues are good, but not great. I also understand that ratings vs. format don't always really matter when the right market is being served and bringing in more revenue than a hotter format that overall bills less my nit's nature.

I may well be wrong, but when radio markets had more owners that took swings at each other, formats changed more often because single owners could not bury their losses in hundreds of stations and had to be proactive to survive. There have been few format changes in the Nashville market in a decade. But, I am not saying it is even a dramatic difference in today's radio world verses the 1980's or 1990's. But, I seem to recall some pretty amazing head-to-head fights that often had dramatic winners and beat up losers. Agree with you on the limitations and platforms. Again, I don't disagree, with where you see radio and other platforms trending.

David - it's fun to read what you created. Seems like just yesterday!
 
Tibbs4 said:
I seem to recall some pretty amazing head-to-head fights that often had dramatic winners and beat up losers.
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You don't think Cumulus & iHeart battle each other pretty hard for country share? Or Cumulus vs. Cromwell for sports?

What I keep hearing is how the local ad market is shrinking compared to 30 years ago. That's where the problem is.
 
TheBigA said:
You don't think Cumulus & iHeart battle each other pretty hard for country share? Or Cumulus vs. Cromwell for sports?

What I keep hearing is how the local ad market is shrinking compared to 30 years ago. That's where the problem is.
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Or maybe radio doesn't deliver the buyers (not to be confused with the listeners) the same way it did 30 years ago. Radio executives keep telling us how radio still has over 90% (or whatever percentage they are using these days) population usage. I won't deny their studied percentage, but I will say that people use radio much differently now than thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, radio was perceived as an entertainment source, similar to TV, movies, and live events. Now radio does not have that kind of usage. It is used as a background jukebox by young people and as for old people - STOP! Of course radio doesn't care about old people, Silly. You thought I was going to go there, didn't ya?

But getting back to the kids, do you really think they are paying the same kind of attention to the radio as they are their devices? Have you seen any young people lately? It only makes sense that an ad that comes up on their device that they are paying attention to is going to have more of an effect than that background stuff they are not. This thread is about format, but formats come and go and evolve. What hasn't evolved is the radio itself. There is a reason that radio sticks now are only worth about half what they were a generation ago.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
Or maybe radio doesn't deliver the buyers (not to be confused with the listeners) the same way it did 30 years ago.
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Depends on the format and demo. It's hard to generalize. People pay attention to what they want to pay attention to. That applies to other people as well as devices. Attention span is shorter, there's less fascination with the device of radio, more about the specific communication. So that's why radio stations have returned to hiring air talent. Every sales meeting is about getting the talent to talk about products. Then after a while, the listeners tune out. So its all much more complicated.

As for station prices, the other side of that is conventional wisdom was stations were over-priced a generation ago. Buyers were fools to pay those prices. So you might say things are back to normal now.
 
KROQ (and Los Angeles) was (and should be) cutting edge for alternative rock radio. To have stations in St. Louis and Kansas City show up as more progressive in this realm is fairly eye-opening. It would be interesting to dissect KROQ's programming logic and understand the hesitancy to not be more cutting edge.
 
TheBigA said:
Depends on the format and demo. It's hard to generalize. People pay attention to what they want to pay attention to. That applies to other people as well as devices. Attention span is shorter, there's less fascination with the device of radio, more about the specific communication. So that's why radio stations have returned to hiring air talent. Every sales meeting is about getting the talent to talk about products. Then after a while, the listeners tune out. So its all much more complicated.

As for station prices, the other side of that is conventional wisdom was stations were over-priced a generation ago. Buyers were fools to pay those prices. So you might say things are back to normal now.
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But some of the generalization is the way that radio measures itself. I think the meter is a much better measure than the diary, but its weakness is that it treats all listening as equal. Whether one is in the car, where they probably are actively listening, or whether they hear a local station that they would otherwise not listen to simply because it is in the background when the meter-wearer walks into the local Subway to pick up a sub, the meter counts it all the same. It is not, no matter what they say, like (and I have seen this before) "subliminally, it doesn't matter, the brain hears what it hears". Sure it doesn't.

Measure active listening more accurately, report those results to your commercial buyers, and then you will start getting at the root of the problem. But of course, established radio execs will never go for it - they got there on this system of smoke and mirrors and they aren't about to let something closer to the truth ruin their revenue model.
 
adradio said:
KROQ (and Los Angeles) was (and should be) cutting edge for alternative rock radio. To have stations in St. Louis and Kansas City show up as more progressive in this realm is fairly eye-opening. It would be interesting to dissect KROQ's programming logic and understand the hesitancy to not be more cutting edge.
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First, being in LA is definitely not being in Kansas (City) any more. Ditto for St. Louis.

LA is 60% ethnic, even more in the 18-49 demographics. Add in another 10% or so of first generation immigrants from places like Persia, Armenia and Russia and the Middle East and you have a huge group that significantly under-indexes in usage of rock and, particularly, alternative rock.

Kansas City and St. Louis are barely 25% ethnic by comparison.

Just those market facts should show why you can not expect the same kind of alternative rock performance in LA as you find in Missouri.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
But some of the generalization is the way that radio measures itself.
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Keep in mind that the meter is just one way radio measures itself. I wouldn't put so much emphasis on it. Advertisers are ALWAYS measuring the ROI for the spots, and radio stations are active participants in that research, and that research goes beyond PPM. Advertisers don't spend millions based on someone else's metrics.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
Measure active listening more accurately, report those results to your commercial buyers, and then you will start getting at the root of the problem. But of course, established radio execs will never go for it - they got there on this system of smoke and mirrors and they aren't about to let something closer to the truth ruin their revenue model.
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Advertisers count impressions, not engagement.

While there is much discussion of activations and the like... measuring media and its relationship to purchase and usage... this is still a long way off and expensive, too!

I was on an Arbitron-formed committee of radio and ad agency executives back around 2010 following the introduction of the PPM. The objective was to develop an "engagement metric" based on statistical evidence of passion for a radio station such as use in multiple dayparts, length and frequency of listening, weekend listening, etc. After all was done and tests were conducted, both radio and agencies decided we did not need or want a new metric.

Agencies and buyers said they did not need yet another set of data to analyze as it slowed down buys and increased the cost. Radio did not want to give agencies yet another reason to cut rates or to negotiate. The idea died.

But the principal objection came from agencies, clients and buying services... not radio.
 
TheBigA said:
Keep in mind that the meter is just one way radio measures itself. I wouldn't put so much emphasis on it. Advertisers are ALWAYS measuring the ROI for the spots, and radio stations are active participants in that research, and that research goes beyond PPM. Advertisers don't spend millions based on someone else's metrics.
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I agree with that; I have a similar situation. I have an SEO contract for my business, and they provide me reports about my monthly website usage, clicks, references, etc. I hardly read them. I tell them there is only one metric that counts, and I calculate it. It is very simple - how many times a month does my business get new phone calls based on website usage? That number varies. It is funny, when the number goes down, I lean on them for better performance, and lo and behold, the next month my unsolicited phone inquiries based on website goes up. Amazing.
 
macattack said:
Maybe the problem is the music itself. Indie rock, in various forms, has formed the foundation of alternative stations, but it's always been accompanied by another genre or two. New wave during the 80's, grunge in the 90's, pop-punk and nu-metal at the turn of the millennium (and big beat for a brief period), etc. But none have clashed so flagrantly with indie rock as the current indie pop/alternative pop movement, which often doesn't even superficially sound like rock music. You can't segue from an Offspring recurrent to, say, AJR or SHAED with any grace, and the more rhythmic sound of alt/indie-pop has to be a turnoff for rock listeners. At the same time, fans of the more rhythmic alt/indie-pop sound have to be sick of hearing Soundgarden or The White Stripes inbetween their favorite songs. .
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There is nothing wrong with the current state of new music going into the format. I think there is definitely an audience for the current music going into the format. Today's Alt audience has a broader taste and is more open to different genres that make up the format. The problem arises when companies like Cumulus/Entercom/iHeart face up to commercial realities of finding a salable audience. This means skewing older, which means a reliance on burnt out gold tracks.
 
leethalweapon said:
This means skewing older, which means a reliance on burnt out gold tracks.
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I'm not sure that's the reason. The older audience considers them burnt. It's the millennials who say they sound fresh and new. The reason stations play them is because they're consensus songs that get a reaction. You can't build a commercial format around unknown songs by unknown artists.
 
TheBigA said:
You don't think Cumulus & iHeart battle each other pretty hard for country share? Or Cumulus vs. Cromwell for sports?

What I keep hearing is how the local ad market is shrinking compared to 30 years ago. That's where the problem is.
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Depends on what you call a "battle." :) If you mean remodeling the Music Row iHeart studios, then yes. It took 'em half year. They look empty, btw. But all out knock down wars like the old remote territory dispute days? Not so much. I think they all gently position themselves "away" from each other, knowing that no country station is going away and tuck their heads down and sell the best way they can. Do you see any gorilla marketing or decisive tactics to hurt the competition? (They may be there, mind you BigA, I don't have time to focus on what they do.) As for talent, I have friends that work at those stations. The only "war of words" battle that I have heard of is WSIX's Bobby Bones going on the air to POLITELY call out the morning team at WSM-FM for saying bad things about his ability and how it hurt him. I respect Bobby x a million. I don't even know the name of the female morning host on WSM that said negative comments. That is not a good ole fashioned on air barb. That's unrefined talent that has not been around long enough to totally understand the industry. Does that make sense? You may be right, I am just thinking about it as I type. What battles do you see or hear?

On this board, we can compare Cromwell and Cumulus in a sentence. But, you cannot really do that on the ground and in the trenches. Cromwell is small potatoes with no budget and mostly local ads and a few salespeople who go at it day after day. Cumulus swims in a different ocean. To be honest, my guess is Bud Walters probably lost a few years of his life stressing over the overhead of the sports format, but is too nice to just yank it and replace with an auto-pilot format that will bring in 1/2 the revenue, but probably MAKE himself more money. I believe that to be the Truth 100%. He has been moving away from programming his stations and I wonder if and when he finally takes a final bow and retires.

I am not sure that local ad revenue has declined in Nashville. The city has grown so much that my guess is the local ad "revenues" are actually UP rather dramatically. But the smart businesses have found other forms of less costly ways to market than radio. I see the problem here being that radio is not capturing "our" fair share of the advertising revenues from all the potential businesses, because, radio still tries to sell radio like it has for decades. (You and I have discussed my out-of-the-box thinking and strategy on that.) So, would it make sense that the local ad market is strong, bit the success of radio getting the dollars is the problem? I think TV is in even worse shape. I may be wrong, so again, I am just going from what I see happening on a daily basis.
 
. Buyers were fools to pay those prices. So you might say things are back to normal now.[/QUOTE said:
Now wait minute. Buyers were fools? LOL. No doubt. But, they were calculated fools, who thought they were untouchable. "Build it at all costs and we will figure out how to pay for it later." The main buyers (corporations we all love to bash today - funny my spell check put in "Nash" when I typed "bash" ) that paid the insane multiples were the very same people who sat there and saw what the ad revenue HAD to BECOME to just pay the bills. I dealt with a bit of the insanity because they bought a station from me in 1997 at a price so high that it still would not have generated enough sales to just pay for the price of the stick, excluding interest and time.) I am not sure that even the "fair" prices being paid today are still proper and on track or normal when one considers the decline of the industry over the next decade. In fact, I think smart CEO's are looking at EMF and others as their last chance to jump off the train before it leaves the tracks. I have always thought that the word "multiple" was a word for "we just got screwed." The old saying about the most important price in a business is what you pay for the business or cost of the goods. Just because someone says it's worth 15 times "x" doesn't mean it really is. EMF may well generate $5M a year from WPLJ. So it will pay for itself in a decade. Then again, maybe things change and they sell the station to one of us for $10M and are happy they got out of that station. Was $50M a good and fair price?
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Tibbs4 said:
Depends on what you call a "battle." :) What battles do you see or hear?
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Let's bring the conversation back to LA, since that's the board we're on. I see lots of battles, and they're fought every day. Just a few years ago, there was the battle over morning DJ Big Boy, who was hired away from Emmis by iHeart. That was not a pleasant situation. That kind of battle over talent might bring to mind the battles CBS & NBC fought back in the 1930s. There are battles companies fight over clients. You may not read about them in public, but they happen. You may pine for the good old days when small stations fought over ratings. But these days, the battles involve billion dollar corporations with lots of lawyers, and most of the battles happen in court rooms, not on the air. So while not as romantic as they once were, they still happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Boy_(radio_host)
 
Tibbs4 said:
I am not sure that local ad revenue has declined in Nashville. The city has grown so much that my guess is the local ad "revenues" are actually UP rather dramatically. But the smart businesses have found other forms of less costly ways to market than radio. I see the problem here being that radio is not capturing "our" fair share of the advertising revenues from all the potential businesses, because, radio still tries to sell radio like it has for decades. (You and I have discussed my out-of-the-box thinking and strategy on that.) So, would it make sense that the local ad market is strong, bit the success of radio getting the dollars is the problem? I think TV is in even worse shape. I may be wrong, so again, I am just going from what I see happening on a daily basis.
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The radio revenue is projected to grow at a rate of -0.6% per year over the next 5 years. It has been off about 0.8% annually over last five years.
 
leethalweapon said:
There is nothing wrong with the current state of new music going into the format. I think there is definitely an audience for the current music going into the format. Today's Alt audience has a broader taste and is more open to different genres that make up the format. The problem arises when companies like Cumulus/Entercom/iHeart face up to commercial realities of finding a salable audience. This means skewing older, which means a reliance on burnt out gold tracks.
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There is more than that in LA. Older tracks appeal to the only segment of the LA audience that is interested in alternative.

In 18-34, the market is approaching two-thirds Hispanic. Add in Asian, African American and others who have a heritage where alternative has no impact and you have a very small younger core that is interested in music discovery.

While there are some members of the different ethnic communities that like alternative, as a percentage they are much, much, much fewer than non-Hispanic whites. Alternative has had very little success in Latin America, while some of the now classic rock artists tour regularly and some have had record ticket sales.

And if a track gets good like and love scores among the older potential listeners, it is not burnt out. A song is not burnt out based on the number of plays over time; a song is burnt when a majority of listeners say they dislike it and are tired of it.
 
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Big A, I was speaking to your comments specifically. Fair enough. Sure, companies fight. Look at the situation with the old Clear Channel/iHeart entertainment. Some say it was/is a monopoly. Lock in the popular acts, promote the shows and watch the competition squirm every time they play a top rated song from the very act that will soon be on YOUR stage. Talent is another topic for sure. When there were a dozen owners in a radio market, talent wars were much more obvious. When the big guys bought a handful of stations in the market, you at least settled down the competition and brought it under the same roof. In fact, as you have heard with the demise of PLJ, and other stations, the complaint was the corps absorbed stations and killed of once competitive stations to build up the station they wanted to be the powerhouse biller. I would say the chances of Dave Stewart or Jim Kerr being on a competitor's dying station twenty years ago would be slim. I think the corporate mandates, national playlists and creation of a nearly uniform sound nationwide simmered down the fights and people are competitive, but they have to tow the corporate lines of professionalism. I cannot speak to the big battles over clients, but you are right there. Then again, when you have only three or four big players in a market, the buys are going to come your way when you have a total package wrapped in the cluster. I don't pine for the old days. They are Not coming back. Honestly, this talk of more regulation scares me for the industry. You may recall, I caught a bit of flack for suggesting the hourly ID's needed to drop down two several times per day. Nostalgia doesn't pay a lot of bills. Usually.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


The radio revenue is projected to grow at a rate of -0.6% per year over the next 5 years. It has been off about 0.8% annually over last five years.
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So over a decade, you are saying radio's down by 7%. Not small change, but considering all the sources of entertainment that have come along, I would say that is "almost" growth for radio. I have dealt with businesses that have seen 20-50% of their revenue taken away literally overnight with governmental changes. You get an expanding city like Nashville, then you have little or no decline. That's pretty good news for radio.
 
Tibbs4 said:
Then again, when you have only three or four big players in a market, the buys are going to come your way when you have a total package wrapped in the cluster.
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Which is why I say the only person who defines your business is you. Is it the radio business, built around towers and transmitters, or the audio business built around creating and distributing audio content on multiple platforms? It's up to you to define it. So if the towers & transmitters business is stagnant, my suggestion is to diversify. Seek out new revenue streams using the talents and resources you already have. If that means redirecting resources from regulated media to unregulated media, then that's what it means. We can all walk and chew gum at the same time.
 
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