David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
In a stroke, anyone not in the desired demo/geo/psychographic pocket is
orphaned.

I agree with nearly all you say about radio being revenue driven with the
advertiser first in mind. But I do not agree here. Deregulation did nmany
things, but it did not kill the mass appeal radio station.

The mass appeal staiton was killed by the 1967 deadline to stop FM
simulcasts. FMs had t invent formats that were generally not duplicated on
AM to try to attract listeners. Oldies, AOR, Progressive rock (AOR without
listener input), etc. spran up all over the country. Each took a piece of
the audience of the Top 40 station.

Soon, country became cooler in the big city, and FMs and AMs adopted the
"hick" fomat and were successful, often at the expense of the MOR staiton.
And folks who grew up on Top 40 found AC and "chicken rock" (now called Hot
AC) to be more suited to their age.

The fact that most markets, in one fell swoop, went from having a half dozen
or so viable stations to as many as 20 created a need for fragmenting the
leading stations to create niche audiences.

As FM grew from the tiny shares of the late 60's to majority status by 1977
and to the 80% of listening position it has now, we have also seen things
like Docket 80-90 adding to the station inventory everywhere... cause for
further segmentation.

And all along, those formats, broader or narrower as they may be, had to
pass the single most important test of all; did they match an advertiser
need? If advertisers did not want a particular product, due to age,
ethnicity or image, the station either settled for low billings or changed.

Remember, it was not too long ago that Black staitons generally got perhaps
40% of the revenue that their market share should have commanded...
fortunately, advertisers have come closer to recognizing the minority or
ethnic markets in the US and are directing advertising towards them.

All these things determined formats, not deregulation.

The only thing deregulation (not to be confused with consolidation) did was
remove the burden of running programming that nobody listened to and content
(like news on a soft AC station in the noon hours) that the listener did not
want. Nobody was ever served if nobody was listening.

Fortunately, the requirements to program to no ears was eliminated.



I didn't say, nor mean to imply, that Radio struck the mass appeal
format due to deregulation. Mass appeal went the way of the Studebaker
due, as you correctly pointed out, fragmentation.

My point was that with deregulation, the public service commitment
evaporated, which permitted, again, as you say, "the requirements to
program to no ears" to be elimiated.

Deregulation did a lot of good things. But it also permitted the
baser instincts of far too many to come to dominate in an era when
making money on an Olympic scale was becoming a reachable goal to more
than a handful of robber barons. When the constraints came off, it
became a landrush to see who could build profit where obligation had been.

I'm not convinced, as we've discussed before, that the numbers truly
reflect the listening habits of the population.

We'll have to disagree on where there are 'no ears listening.'



The mass appeal radio station, fiercely competitive warfare within a
single format, and the huge and varied creative energies on the air that
come out of them, are over. Because the suits see no profit in it, when
they can make just as much money by doing what they're doing.

There are no mass appeal formats any longer. The Akon listener hates Kelly
Clarkson. The Waylon listener hates Rascal Flats, the Carpenters listener
hates contemporary AC. The Kingsmen listener hates REO Speedwagon. The Boy
George listener hates... well, er, ah, lt's try again... the Chapo de
Sinaloa listener hates Ramon Ayala. There is no consensus by any large
group, as we have been attracted to the subsets we like most.

When I listened to Top 40 before I ever thought I would program it, I
realized that of every three songs, i loved one, I accepted one and I hated
one. I was too young at the time to realize that Top 40 was really three,
maybe four, formats... AC, Pop and rock combined... because there were no
AC, Pop and rock stations. Biut as soon as AC and rock and pop split, each
took a portion of the listeners. Goodbye mass appeal.



In many markets, Mass Appeal was not music radio. KMOX and WGN come
to mind as non music, mass appeal stations. What Jack Carney, and before
him, Jack Buck, had in St Louis was legendary share. Neither were music
oriented. Nor was Wally Phillips in Chicago. The fragmentation of music
radio doesn't apply, here. At least not directly. But the wider choices
of available stations did splinter off share from these non music
blowtorches, and many of these migrants did go to music radio.


Personally, I enjoyed Top 40. Even as a young broadcaster, I found
very little not to my liking. I had my favorites, but rarely heard
something I didn't enjoy. Variety was the spice. And I relished it.

I didn't abandon Top 40 until it had succumbed to fragmentation, in
itself, and began to narrow it's playlist. Judging by the number of
listeners who fled as well, I wasn't alone.

To make up for the loss of the single mass appeal format, I had to
tune between several stations on the dial to get my doses of variety.
The narrow, vertical formats were exhausting.

Today, if I listen at all, I'll listen to The Drive, or when I can
get it, WLS. Other than that...my iPod rules.

Or XM.

And, apparently, there, too, I'm not alone.