That's right. See how close Palm Springs is to the beach and blame it on the seniors... ;D
(...just COULDN'T help that one...)
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- Thread starter BIGSTICK
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(...just COULDN'T help that one...)
again, more corporate talk from an industry drowning in debt, with a business model based on 20 year old thinking that will be as history as cassette tapes and landline telephones are today. Keep doing what you're doing corporate man, let's see what the landscape looks like in 10 years when LTE/5G is in every iOT and the need for bloated border blasters is eliminated. How much gas is left in that tank? Keep sticking on the 18-54 year old demo and nothing else. When they don't like the same 75 song stop sets, tell em to go subscribe to SXM or Apple Music and go away. Great business model! Where do I sign up to invest! Penny stock for sale?
No one is demanding anything. The fact that subscription services exist and are growing, data consumption on cellular networks has tripled since 2017 alone, with streaming audio and video being the number 1 data traffic on mobile networks. Pretty clear to see where this is headed. If OTA radio wants to capture the ever growing PAYING consumer of said services, than the formula is simple:
Offer QUALITY programming! Advertisers will pay to be affiliated and underwrite delivery of quality programming.
It's FREE to get (aside from the cost of the receiver and electricity to run it)
The fact that mass numbers of people shell out bucks o month to NOT listen to the tired corporate crap speaks volumes: OTA radio, for the most part, sucks worse than a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Absolutely. The question is, how can OTA radio compete with a more advanced medium (streaming) and content galore? I don't think it can. The days of "big box" radio stations are coming to an end just as "big box" retail and malls are dying. The market is evolving and those who aren't offering QUALITY content not just on the air but online are writing their own obituary. The numbers don't add up. The debt load of the giants is astounding. Any freshman investor will tell you to RUN, not walk away from putting money into this business.
But corporate media dominates the limited radio spectrum available for OTA radio, so the analogy of "free pizza" and "music delivery" goes out the window when you're using licensed radio spectrum. The public interest and public value comes to mind. Local radio, since taken over by corporate giants, has become nothing more than essentially a hard disk array and automation software with no local public value. Ask anyone during Hurricane Sandy how the corporate full service FM stations dropped the ball. Sure, there were exceptions, but excuse me, at the end of the day, a license to broadcast on limited radio spectrum means you either do something of value to the community a station serves, or get off the air and allow someone else a chance to play the game.
Corporate radio sucks and is doing it's level best to not exist. The smaller stations both commercial and non-commerical, who do actually serve their respective communities offering quality LOCAL programming and public service will be around and either advertiser supported, listener supported, or both (a hybrid, if you will). Almost as if OTA radio returns to it's roots.
God I can't wait for that, it's coming sooner than you might expect. Watch, listen and see.
Broadcasting on radio spectrum is a privilege not a right which it's why it is licensed. Corporate America has wrecked it and it's about time the marketplace teach it a lesson. Your bad, the lobbyists conned garbage and deregulation down our throats, filling up the FM dial with low rent translators that occupy every MHz of spectrum, lobbied hard against LPFM and non-commerical radio and robbed the industry of creativity, talent and local flavor. Well guess what, technology is making this business model extinct and turning the tables. Podcasts are the way forward for talk/commentary versus right wing mouthpieces dominating border blasters. Musicians can skip the payola and upload directly to their audience.
Now those who have squatted on the FM and AM dial will soon be gone and those remaining will actually exist for a purpose, and hopefully thrive with support of their local listeners and advertisers.
As you point out, the radio companies don't own their frequencies, they're just licensees. I for one own stock in both of the companies you mention, so I win either way. Most broadcast companies are phasing their content from broadcast to online, so they've already made their decision. Life will be much better when we don't have to live in the regulated world of broadcast.
You want QUALITY? Listen to WABE. Advertisers don't buy quality, they buy numbers. Welcome to the real world. There's lots of quality on the radio. You want what you want, and you want it for free. You're not lecturing me about broadcast radio because you want to help me make money. You're doing this so you don't have to pay for what you want.
Here's some news for you: Check out the debt load of companies like SiriusXM. Do you know how much debt they have thanks to buying Pandora? Ask a stockholder. It's easy to grab the low hanging fruit in broadcast radio. It takes a little work to discover the underbelly of the things you think are successful.
That's actually NOT the reason why it's licensed. Back in the 1920s, the government didn't want to get into the station operation business (as opposed to most of the other countries in the world). So they came up with this public/private partnership idea. However, all that went to hell in the 1980s, and now the FCC is in the business of selling spectrum. That's what Verizon and AT&T are buying. At some point, the FCC will also sell broadcast spectrum. So really, the way the FCC operates, radio owners have rights to the spectrum, and they can do what they want.
What's stopping you from doing it yourself right now? You could buy an AM station near Atlanta for less money than a decent house. Let's see how you program it.
Most radio companies today are not "drowning in debt". iHeart was the victim of an investment banker group's LBO, done right before the recession which, like a bell, could not be un-rung when the economy tanked; they did a reorganization and are profitable now. Cumulus failed due to a bad expansion plan, bad purchases and management issues; similarly they have reorganized and are now profitable.
Nearly all the other large broadcasters and even the medium size ones in regional areas or medium to small markets are doing fine, but have to operate frugally in a changing environment.
I have no idea what a "bloated border blaster" is. There have been no "border blasters" on AM for decades.
And radio companies are moving content to podcasts and streams, because we are not and never have been in the transmitter business... we are in the content business.
The real impediment to moving entirely to "new media" is that there is no profitable, viable business model for those delivery methods due mostly to the incremental digital music licensing costs. But radio is ready to move when a sound business model arrives .
There is infinite gas left as we create curated content. Were I an owner of Gates Air or Nautel, I'd be more worried.
We "stick to the 18-54 year old demo" because we sell advertising and that is generally our only revenue stream, analog or digital. Advertisers do not want teens and they do not want persons over 55 as a general rule; the ability to sell a very old or very young audience is limited by what advertisers will buy. The larger the market, the more sophisticated the advertisers are and, outside of very small and rural markets, appealing to 55+ will make you go broke rather fast.
In radio, a "stopset" is a commercial grouping or cluster. A group of songs back to back is a "sweep".
Advertisers don't look for "quality" of listeners. They look for quantity of potential consumers. It's been that way since the 1920's.
People pay for on-demand services and satellite for many, many reasons. Some pay Sirius because they travel a lot and want one signal everywhere. Some stream or use Sirius because they want commercial free programs (I get Hulu because I like some network TV, but want it without commercials). Some like the on-demand services where they can ask for specific songs and artists and create personal playlists. It's the new way of buying music... you rent instead of owning.
Again, wrong. Most broadcasters have manageable debt loads or even some with no debts. Stations that don't make money are generally ones that are either challenged AMs (directional, daytime, tiny markets) or deficient FMs. But the well rated and highly listened to stations are very profitable and will be for some time as they build their bridges to new media and related non-over the air revenue streams.
The largest corporate owner (and nearly 100% of stations are owned under a corporation anyway) has less than 5% of all stations. And they are nicely profitable and a leader in the march to new media.
But was there coverage of Sandy? There was tons of it on the stations that were staffed to cover news, and they did a marvelous job.
Radio has been highly specialized since at least the 70's when some stations decided to be news and information leaders and others decided to be music specialists. Listeners loved the options. Most listeners hated it when their music station did hourly newscasts and things like that (And I have ongoing research going back to that time to support this fact). "More music" to many was a public service. And more news on other stations satisfied the information need of some. In emergencies, people knew where to go for news. Having stations that had no news department try to cover critical, life-endangering events would have been the dangerous opposite of a service.
I learned a lot during Hurricane David in 1979. I decided I would take the Puerto Rico, USA, market's #1 music station and do wall to wall hurricane coverage. Nobody listened. They abandoned us totally as they did not expect we could do good coverage (we actually did excellent, maybe superior coverage) because we were famous for music, not news. But there were several news and information stations that got all the audience. We should have said on the air, "If you want the latest hurricane news, listen to WKAQ 580 AM or WUNO 1320 AM or WIAC 740 AM... and then come back for music while you wait out the storm... we'll keep you warm even if it's raining outside".
You do not understand what listeners want and need from radio. You don't understand that most stations are not owned by big corporations. You don't understand that even the big corporations are really not that big. You think all stations are mired in unpayable debt, when that is as far from the truth as we are from the next habitable planet.
You are using a set of false premises to build a theory. Thus, your entire argument fails.
Oh, did I mention that the bigger radio stations spend millions a year to research what listeners want? And the stations that win deliver to listener expectations.
WABE has good numbers, earning a 3.5% share in Persons 6+.
As far as advertisers not buying quality, that depends. I can't speak for everyone, but when a product's target audience includes qualitative factors, I make heavy use of Scarborough as well as the regular monthly numbers. I've found WABE's audience very attractive for certain products.
That's what I was saying. On the other hand, I sat in a meeting with a major car maker, and all they cared about was numbers. Nothing else.
Amazing the number of folks who really believe that the all-streaming Utopia will mean millions of people listening to guys in their basemant playing obscure indie bands. No, whoever has the most money for infrastructure and promotions will win. That's going to mean the iHearts of this world, not your 10,000-B-side oldies operator.
And what people are ignoring is that the "streaming utopia" is quietly and secretly losing tons of money. They can't keep operating this way.
The small basement online broadcasters who use various platforms like Live365 know what I'm talking about.
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