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?

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.

The earth isn't flat; the sky isn't green; and the model is wrong.


And again, it's not radio stations that create these models. It's
advertisers. Do radio stations adopt them? Sure they do. There's money
in it.

Sure, everyone goes for the least effort. But they aren't maximizing
their reach.

But they don't create them. They get them from resources serving
the people with the money.

That's Eduardo. And he still is full of ****.


So, while I don't really have any use for consultancies in Radio,
what David does is show the Radio Station how to maximize it's
profitability. So the station may serve it's investors/stockholders.

At the expense of listeners, the ultimate source of revenue. The
listeners have other choices now, and will go away. The points I made
to Mr. Lawson about why anyone wants to listen now are valid, but that
isn't the music biz -- that's the news junkies. They're only a
moderate amount of the market, and the other formats will slowly
shrink.


I"m not defending it. But it is what it is.

I disagree. You are defending it -- passively -- by being fatalistic:
"I can't change it so it will be that way forever and ever, amen."

Actually, it's more simple than that. I'm among those no longer
being served. So I, too, have largely abandoned Radio as a member of the
audience. I listen far less than I used to. They don't care, they won't
miss me.

And I can't change the way Radio does business. My influence, even
from the inside, was minimal. Why? Because the issue isn't coming from
within Radio. It comes from the outside through advertisers and
investors. I actually have more influence now, by directly consulting
advertisers, than I ever had on the inside at Radio.

But the effect is still minimal. Because the mechanics of how money
is spent on advertising works. There's little motivation to change it.






But it won't be -- the rest of the world is changing and more
entertainment options are out there and that number will increase.


Yes, it will. And Radio will adapt. In the car I listen to my iPod.
At home, other than shortwave (what's left of it), there are a couple of
stations I listen to occasionally for music. WFMT, WDRV are two. And
WLS when I'm in the mood for talk. And some WBEZ on weekends. The AM
dial is trashed by IBOC hash, here...even WGN is tough to read cleanly.
So, my listening options are getting slim, but of what's there, little
interests me. The bulk of what I listen to are Radio alternatives: XM,
CD's. A bit of occasional vinyl. Or just sitting out on the banks of
the lake with a Dr Pepper and the dog listening to the birds, the waves
and the boats. Which saves a lot on batteries.