Low Power FM Stations or LPFMs

[bturner]

You're right, the on air underwriting stream and internet only commercial stream is pretty much limited to a few LPFMs. And might I add not too many LPFMs are doing very well financially. That's certainly not to imply you need alternate streams to be financially viable, but instead, I find many LPFM operators have the same hang up about sales as I did when I went from jock to advertising sales. Plus with many LPFMs doing a Christian format, many of these stations look to the congregation of the church to fund the station.

When I did my tour of select LPFMs around the country I found 1 station with zero billing. The low end was $480 a year in billling and the high end was about $6,000. I talked with a couple of station that were doing in the neighborhood of $20,000 to about $75,000 a year but these were the exceptions. I might add, the one on the high end had a commercial oriented internet feed.

 

[bturner]

Another station I stopped by had been set up as a local station and intended to involve the school and other groups in the community. These were non-radio people who wanted to serve their town of a bit over 5,000 people. The impression I got was this group really wasn't that interested in running the station but was more interested in providing a venue where the community could realize their own community radio by active citizens taking part in the station.

I got the impression that the real motivation was to give fuel to the segment of the town that was not a part of the political movers and shakers, a pretty closed group. Many small towns have a good ol' boy mentality in at least perception. If you're not on the inside, well you're not in and likely will never be. But you don't fight the insiders. It's more like bringing a knife to a gunfight, a lesson I learned at an isolated small town.

This under the radar tension might be why the station has struggled. You see, everyone was welcome, but the movers and shakers wanted it to be all theirs so the operators flatly said it was all of the community or nothing.

The result was a smattering of local shows, some by students, some by churches and some by various adults in the community. Outside the live shows, a very wide mix of music aired with underwriter announcements. The music mix on the computer went all over the place from Frank Sinatra to Bill Gaither to George Strait to Metallica. It was way too wide a mix of music. I like almost everything but I even found the music mix too varied.

They struggled on underwriting. At times they might have 8 to 10 or more underwriters and the next month have 4 or 5. I saw two issues here. I think those who run the town might have mentioned something to a few underwriters because they'd mysteriously drop. I saw that in my personal situation. The other issue was pricing. They needed more money per client ($50 for 10 underwriter spots a day for a month is way too cheap). I suggested they charge something along the lines of what the local paper charged for a column inch or classified. If you get that rate, you can always give them some freebies. A really low rate says you're not worth buying in the mind of the business owner and yes, I know we are talking underwriting but business owners don't draw the line in the sand between ads and underwriting as the FCC makes us do.

Eventually they convinced a radio station in the next town to watch things and that station sold the underwriting. The original group still runs things but this situation was seem as more favorable to the people at the top.

I will not call the station successful but I will say this arrangement has brought a better product to the town and I doubt it will be going silent anytime soon. Plainly put, the station gets the attention it needs and still reflects the local community radio image the original group wanted.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Another station I stopped by had been set up as a local station and intended to involve the school and other groups in the community. These were non-radio people who wanted to serve their town of a bit over 5,000 people. The impression I got was this group really wasn't that interested in running the station but was more interested in providing a venue where the community could realize their own community radio by active citizens taking part in the station.

What you described in this post is a "poster child" of what LPFM was supposed to be... after the politicians in congress, the bureaucrats at the FCC, the activists at the lobby groups who fought for LPFM, and the broadcasters who wanted to make sure LPFM was not dangerous to them got through mixing up their "witches brew". Particularly here in a forum populated by people who are (1) in traditional broadcasting (2) used to be in (3) always wanted to be in (4) "groupies" of traditional broadcasting, there seems to be a strong bias to see how we can "cheat the system" and do what WE know LPFM ought to be.

As I read this particular station description and your description of the people who drive it, I am reminded of a post that I think our friend BigA wrote a year ago maybe, in which someone was waxing poetic about what they wanted their LPFM to be like and he suggested that maybe they should forget the FCC and the transmitter and get an old house or something and open up a coffee shop/coffee club where they could gather and talk about local politics and books and enjoy one another's company. I took it that the implications was: Your audience size will be about the same... with or without a transmitter. Someone has also suggested maybe getting some obsolete space and organize a model railroad club for the community. Or if you are in lake country, organize a yacht club and promote safety and sailing clinics.

I'm really not being cynical or sarcastic or putting anyone down. I am suggesting that considering all of the above activities and other similar ventures is a good mental exercise for people contemplating an LPFM. I see far too many of us 'broadcast vetrans" who have a very limited, very traditional view about what we would expect our LPFM to do. Here is the ugly truth: there is absolutely little or no use on the face of this earth for the little tea-kettle sized radio stations that many of us visualize. 20 years from now when our obits are written, if the station is even mentioned, most readers of the obit will be puzzled and ask... what was that about. Never heard of it.

 

[bturner]

This one might be considered off topic because it is not classed as a LPFM but as a commercial FM. In reality it is almost identical to a LPFM.

Located in a small town in a border state, the town is a quiet community outside winter when people come to spend the winter months in this town.

The station, while commercial, operates at under 250 watts. It's tower is a telephone pole in the yard of the private residence that houses the station that has never had an employee, only the owners.

When they got their CP one of the tasks was to create the format. Being a retirement community, a nostalgia format was selected. With the budget, the owner smartly went to the community, borrowed personal music libraries and then bought a good number of albums. With selections picked, they were recorded on reel to reel tapes, fully announced with an ID added every 3 songs. This way they were playing songs people in town liked enough to add to their music collections (grassroots research at its best). Keep in mind a personal computer was years away at this time.

The operation was playing the reels of music and manually inserting commercials, PSAs, Promos, etc. Weather and community announcements were added 3 times a day every day.

Since the population swelled in winter, I'm guessing 90% of the annual billing came in winter as they had only 1 advertiser on the air the rest of the year. I got the impression virtually every advertiser was based in the town. I think they charged $6 for a thirty second spot, so the spot load was always minimal.

It was not that $6 was an expensive commercial rate. Let me stop here and share some observations. Like it or not, most listeners tune to radio for music. If you have great programming, the radio stays on all day. Very long TSLs. When it comes to the number of commercials you need to keep yourself 'top of mind', it is minimal on stations where listeners tend to stay with the station. This station enjoyed this. Thus, you might spend $15 on cheaper spots on another station to get the results you get off a $6 spot on this station. In this respect, great programming, little competition and fewer commercials can provide exceptional value to the client even if the rate is considered high priced compared to competitors. Another point is in a small town, most advertisers want what is generally considered an underwriting spot. The point of advertising is to stay 'top of mind' not to advertise sales or price and item. Considering the business comes in winter, the business is more apt to want to say hey, we exist and here's what we do and how to reach us.

As for billing, annually the total might pay a salary for a non-skilled or semi-skilled employee but that was okay for the owner who was not reliant on the station's income. Sure, if he chose to sell in area towns he could have billed many times that but selling local accounts and serving his community was his purpose.

I mentioned music as being why people listen and this town is no exception. When I visited the format was on computer, sounded great and music had been updated to oldies based lite-rock. It ran a traditional beautiful music clock. By this I mean unannounced music and liners or ID on the quarter hours. The station does no news or weather, just music with a 5 minute daily devotional each weekday and a 15 minute program Sunday morning. PSAs dropped by the station get aired a couple of times a day, what few are dropped off.

The station, when I visited, had no advertising outside the winter months. It was wall to wall music with liners and IDs. The town loves and listens to the station loyally.

To me this station has honed in on what the small community wants and does it well, is located in a home, was built on a tight budget and is confined to serving the town even though they could increase power and sell in area towns. While a commercial station, this one, in my book, it a Low Power FM at heart.

 

[bturner]

You make some good points. Many LPFMs serve only a tiny, tiny segment of the minute population they cover. They are unknown to those in their listening area and struggle to pay the bills. Most give up and turn it off after a few years.

The place where LPFM can really make a difference in my mind is the smaller communities where a full power station would be too costly. In fact I relate such a LPFM as being the audio newspaper for the community with the music as a filler between the bits of local information. A town of a thousand or two with a healthy business community might be able to pay a person a liveable wage identical to that of a small town newspaper publisher does by reflecting life in the community.

If the radio dial offers a good deal of choices, the LPFM will likely be fairly unsuccessful. It would be hard to make it in that case. The more underserved a community is by media, the better. The trick is that there's enough business there to fund it and those are rare. Most little 'stashes of cash' have been found and milked already. Still, there are places where the cost of living is dirt cheap where you might be able to live alright on billing $2,000 a month. Granted much of that billing will come from the attention you give to school activities.

Of all the LPFMs out there, it is likely a single digit percentage really have the loyalty of the community at large. Most, however, have a handful of listeners, are relatively unknown and lack the programming to affect the community they serve. When your church has a membership role of 20 and half that at the weekly service, that satellite service of denominational programming you're doing sure is lucky to have 1 listener tuned in at any given time in a town of 5,000 people. That ultra left programming you do for that total audience of 4,000 might attract 100 listeners and 2 actually donate to the station. Doing your freeform jazz show that reaches 5,000 people might not have more listeners that you have fingers on one hand. These such stations are more common among LPFMs than not.

On the other hand I visited stations in towns of say, 500, where all the businesses in town had the station playing and people relied on the station to announce funerals and such because the newspaper only came out every other week and there was no other station on the dial. I saw firsthand these tiny town stations had about 10 times the listeners and revenue than the station in a town 10 times larger that opted for the non-mass appeal programming.

In short, it's not whether the LPFM follows the norms of established radio programming, it's whether the station is the community. Hearing a kid do a legal ID including his name and that can barely be understood beats the slickly produced liner talent hands down. After all, the listeners know who the kid is! Listeners don't care about how professional you sound but if they can identify with the station. To cite an example, a woman I knew who could pick up about 50 metro stations from the small town she lived in said she didn't care much about country music but listened all day to the only radio station in her town. She laughed and said they weren't very professional and they are pretty hoaky but they sound friendly and they talk about people, places and stuff I know. She remarked that when a lady came in the insurance office where she works, she congratulated the customer on her first grandchild...hearing about the birth on her town's local station.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

In short, it's not whether the LPFM follows the norms of established radio programming, it's whether the station is the community. Hearing a kid do a legal ID including his name and that can barely be understood beats the slickly produced liner talent hands down. After all, the listeners know who the kid is! Listeners don't care about how professional you sound but if they can identify with the station. To cite an example, a woman I knew who could pick up about 50 metro stations from the small town she lived in said she didn't care much about country music but listened all day to the only radio station in her town. She laughed and said they weren't very professional and they are pretty hoaky but they sound friendly and they talk about people, places and stuff I know. She remarked that when a lady came in the insurance office where she works, she congratulated the customer on her first grandchild...hearing about the birth on her town's local station.

In past years, hometown radio during the noon-hour might have a short broadcast by the county agent, maybe during the breakfast hour a short broadcast by the high school coach. County agents always sounded like they had mud or something from the barn-lot on their boots, and coaches always sounded like they smelled a little bit like a locker room. A coach or a county agent who sounded like a radio announcer was worthless. Didn't sound authentic.

Here is the tough, tough, tough decision that the operator of an LPFM has to make early in the process. In your previous post about the commercial station in a neighborhood with a "snow bird" season migration (sounded like a community built in an orange grove near where I grew up!). You described programming (if my memory is working today) what was pretty much wall to wall music with minimal interruptions. In thast post with high school kids doing station breaks and or other spoken bits, and a station taking the place of a non-existant community news paper, the amateur chatter about newly born grandchildren, etc gets crossways with the folks who say: "No, no, no. Peoply only want music. Cut out the chatter and play the music. That is the modern way."

This strikes me as one of the first forks in the road that an LPFM station faces. Once you choose one choice or the other, a lot of other decisions have already been ghosted into you planning. For example, it probably takes some different choices in basic audio equipment to handle local chatter as opposed to lots and lots of music. Floor space changes. A hard drive full of music fits in a closet. High school kids recording station breaks; Our modern day version of Miss Manner and Helouise giving out births, anniversaries and obts need a space to do this talking. (With the Internet and mp3 files, I guess they can use space a school, or space in the back bedroom of each voice-donors home. But always working alone from your own monestary may harm the tone and direction of the local chatter.