On 4 Sep 2004 03:31:37 GMT, "lsmyer" wrote:

Here's an article from RadioWorld about how radio needs to reduce its
clutter.

http://www.rwonline.com/reference-ro...i_sept_1.shtml

This is a strong pet peeve of mine. As a one-time radio GM, our stations
held firm on clutter and price, but we were undermined by the competition
and our customers. Of course, my argument was still right... that too many
commercials is an incredible turnoff factor for listeners, and if people
don't listen, no one hears the spots. And our stations remained numbers one
and two, so I know we were doing something right.

Now that I am a listener, I am one of the first to turn away from a station
that plays too many spots, especially if the spots are totally uncreative,
boring and repetitive. Sometimes stations play the same spot twice during a
single set! How effective can that be to that customer?

It's really very easy to maintain a limited spot load -- when you
sell out, you raise your rates to the point where you're not quite
sold out...and keep doing that, over and over. This has the added
benefit of driving marginal businesses and slow-paying accounts off
your station and onto your cheaper competition. Salespeople make more
money with less work. Everybody wins. Once upon a time most
successful stations did this. Yes, you have to cut rates in slack
periods, but if managed correctly the overall trend is always up.

But then came the entrance of the huge publicly-traded corporations,
and Wall Street demands for revenue and cash flow increases that
wildly exceeded the rate of economic growth. I know of one major
company that insisted on 15% annual cash flow increases in a region
with 2% economic growth. This is not sustainable for more than one or
two quarters. But without such numbers, the stock would get hammered.
And some managers, such as one recently departed major figure whose
name will go unmentioned here, were so focused on the immediate
quarterly numbers that they simply refused to consider the long-term
impact on the industry. Somehow we forgot concepts like demand-based
pricing (a staple of the travel industry for decades) and grid rate
cards.

If it takes a Clear Channel to get the industry to wake up, then so be
it. The downside is that a lot of people will pay for this with their
jobs, as I'm sure short-term cash flow budgets won't change and the
cost-cutting that results will be brutal.

Mark Howell