clifto wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:
But consider this: As competitive alternatives present themselves,
and Radio adapts to survive, the negative impact of current advertiser
policies and practices will have to change as well. This is the impetus
behind CCU's "Less is More" policy. Its the reason, the VERY reason, why
XM changed their own advertising availablities while they still had
control over them, shifting primary revenue focus from advertising to
subscription.

As soon as they think they have a critical mass of subscribers,
they'll see the profit in advertising.


No question. But that was not the point. The point is that Radio is
responding the the age old complaint about commercial load. Radio does
this frequently, btw. Then returns to maximizing profits through load as
soon as the heat is off again.


They don't want to stop
attracting users who want the commercial-free broadcasts until
critical mass, but as soon as they believe they'll retain a
sizeable enough subscribership while advertising they'll start
commercials.

Mel Karmazin, current head of Sirius, said in a meeting at CBS when I
was there, that if a station isn't running at least 16 units an hour,
that they're wasting their time. This in the face of recent (at the
time) research presented the Radio division that said that listener
fatigue began to produce drop off after 12 units.

Karmazin's position was then that there is a tipping point of ratings
lost versus revenue gained. And that it makes better business sense to
push the unit count to THAT point, than lose potential revenue by
running minimum effective spot load.

There is no reason to suggest that this thinking will affect
decisions at Satellite, as well.




People laughed at me when The Stain first started on television,
and I predicted that it wouldn't stay a tiny, translucent
broadcaster logo but would evolve into full-color, obtrusive,
animated advertising. People laugh at me now when I predict
that TV will eventually reserve a significant part of the
screen (probably the bottom 15%) for advertising during the
programming. Just watch and see what happens.



There's more than that. Karmazin also announced, virtually jointly
with other companies, as NBC and Time Warner made the same announcement
vitually simultaneously, that as HD TV catches on, that full bandwidth
HD TV will disappear, and bandwidth will be stolen from the HD stream to
create secondary, and subscription based, programming on the same
channel. That his goal was to use the digital buzzword, but not actually
broadcast much more resolution that NTSC does now, to carry his
broadcasts. That much resolution was unnecessary, and that most viewers
can't tell the difference between full HD and ED Tv anyway. That the
future of all media are in multiple revenue streams from each property.

Radio will do the same.