Eric F. Richards wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:


Single owners are down. They do still exist, though. But usually in
smaller markets, and nearly always with signals not desireable by
heavier investors.

The number of stations, however, is still quite high. And some will
be going dark because there are just too many of them for them all to be
profitable. And in the US radio is and always has been about the money.

13,500 is a LOT of signals.

It doesn't matter if they all are piled on top of each other,
interfering with each other, and programmed 12 at a time out of a
single building playing the same boring pap.

It's a lot of *signals* but not a lot of *content*. Remember the
song, "57 channels and nothing's on?" Now it's radio that is that
way.





2) 3500 is much less than half of 13,500, implying that the majority
of owners own more than one station. "Most" are small? NO.


Small stations are not defined by their ownership, but by the
installation,

Eduardo's response, and my response to it, were based on Mr. Lawson's
comment about a small station in the Cincy market. I suspect he
wasn't referring to a 100 Watt flea-power station but rather a strong
local *indepenent* station. In that sense, it is small.


The industry may be influenced by CCU and CBS, but it's not owned by
them. The largest company owns less than 11% of the properties. The
next, a fraction of that. Everything else is smaller by definition.


1450 stations based on perhaps 6 formats, all playing the same
computerized lists, with "DJ"'s (in name only) handling a dozen
different stations with a canned set of remarks.

That's domination.

And the other large owners do exactly the same thing. It's those with
the shallow pockets who can't afford to run 100 lights-out operations
from one building who are "forced" to give real programming.


I deal in the Census, proprietary data and talking with listeners. Market
research is simply speaking, one by one, with real listeners. Your
contentions are simply stuff you blow out of your butt.
Tell it to the WSJ.


WSJ is in the business of serving investors. Not in the business of
encouraging creativity, or manufacturing innovative products. They serve
investors. And investors are interested only by dividends. WSJ serves
that interest, nothing else.

Except that this thread was started by Carter on March 2 in

Message-ID: m

where he referred to a WSJ article about the *listener
dissatisfaction* with IBOC. No listeners, no ad revenues, no matter
what the crappy model shows. WSJ picked up on that. The "experts"
didn't.


Complaining in a USENET newsgroup is not likely to make a big
difference. Because there's no easy money in it.


No, but I'm not letting Eduardo off the hook just because I can't
change it alone.


Don't try to tell a statistician about the infallibility of
statistics. You have improper assumptions about your listener market,
your station reach, and how to measure the power of that reach. You
don't even consider much of your listener base to even exist. You,
sir, are full of ****.


That's really unnecessary, Eric. And beneath you.

Why? Seriously, why?


Because, you're smarter than that.



Some station is fulfilling a niche market and making a good steady
profit, but wants to stretch a little. Eduardo's "services" are
brought in, and he tells them, nonono, you don't have listeners 22
miles away, but you do 21 miles away -- this chart proves it. And
you'll never make any *real* money in your niche; you have to sell the
same bland pap as the other 15 stations that can be heard on your boom
box but don't really exist here, but the listeners 22 miles away hear
perfectly. Switch to the pap and you'll be rich, Rich, RICH!!! Here's
my bill -- cash, small bills, nonsequential only.

That's bull****. And he peddles it. And radio is poorer for it.


For that you look at what's under the bell curve.

STOP RIGHT THERE!!!!

Who the **** says that a bell curve -- a normal distribution --
applies to the model? Prove that the assumption is valid before
continuing at all.

The mean plus one
standard deviation, if that.

Which picks up a big chunk of non-normal distributions even though
sigma may not apply. Because they pick up *some* people, they assume
they got most of them.

They are wrong.


Strictly commodity thinking.

Yup, going for the lowest hanging fruit because it's easy. 13,500
stations fighting for them, while the rest of the tree is ignored.

Does this orphan real listeners? Yes. Are there numbers of them? Yes.
Do they matter? No, because expressed as a percentage of the defined
target, they're statically insignificant, AND they are more likely to be
wasted impressions.

Only based on the model. The model must be validated, first, and I
don't believe it is remotely close.

It's cold. But this is how the agencies actually spend money. And
advertisers call the shots.

But they get their info from people like Eduardo, with a broken model.
It doesn't matter if everyone tells you the sky is green -- it isn't.
No amount of marketing will change that.


You addressed nothing of the real point. David consults radio. But
the data are created, modeled and excecuted by ADVERTISERS. David
doesn't create the model...Advertisers do. David only tells the stations
how to maximize their performance within the model created by
advertisers and those who serve them. That's not David. He doesn't
create the tool. He only shows how to use it.

But you're not paying attention to tha that point. And that, too, is
beneath you, Eric.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your frustration. I'm no less
frustrated than you are. But the business doesn't work to serve the
likes of you and me. It works to serve itself. And we're not the ones
being servered today. There are, however MILLIONS who do believe they're
being served by Radio today (whether or not they really are), and as
long as they continue to use radio as they are, advertisers will
continue to use Radio as THEY are.

That's not David's fault. He doesn't create the tool, he only shows
the stations how to use it to meet advertisers wants. It's the
advertisers who create the tool. If you want to be angry at someone,
start there.

Affect the bottom line, you creat change.