"Michael Lawson" wrote in message
...

"Eric F. Richards" wrote in message
...
"David Eduardo" wrote:

Fewer and fewer each year.

There are 13,500 radio stations in the US and some 3,500 owners.
Most are
small.

1) Your statement doesn't address the trend towards fewer and fewer
stations each year. How many owners were there 10 years ago? 20
years ago?

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.

I don't have the data, but I'd take a guess and
say that the top 5 owners of radio stations
probably account for over half of the 13,500.

The top 5 owners account for 14.7% of the total. By the time you get to the
top 10, you still do not have 20% of the total. The #10 company only owns 68
stations. #20 owns 35. #30 owns 22. So there are less than 30 companies that
own more than the pre-consolidation 14/14 limits.

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

Radio and its myopic model is killing itself. It will doubtless
change as the problems become increasingly difficult to ignore, but by
then much damage will be done. The WSJ, home of the capitalist, will
have been one of the first in the business world to notice.

I suspect that IBOC will be a casualty of radio's decline and change
of direction. A poorly thought out solution to a problem that doesn't
exist.

Eduardo can sit, fat and happy with pockets full of wads of cash, but
radio itself will suffer because of what he does to it.
--
Eric F. Richards,
"It's the Din of iBiquity." -- Frank Dresser

"David Eduardo" wrote:

Actually, there are more stations every year.

But less content. Every one of them using the same playlist, put
together by "marketing research," run out of a skyscraper by a DJ
handling several stations at a time, all in cities he's never been to.


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.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. The WSJ is about
investments, not about the local market operation of radio stations.

See the first article in this thread:

Message-ID: m



--
Eric F. Richards,
"It's the Din of iBiquity." -- Frank Dresser

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.

"Eric F. Richards" wrote in message
...

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.

They are all in accordance with the FCC's technical rules. They do not
interfere in areas where, per the FCC's tables, the signals are usable. In
fact, signals are protected to far greater extremes in the USA than in any
other country in the world that has commercial radio in it.

For example, Mexico allows stations in the same city to be only 20 kHz apart
on AM, and only separated by one channel on FM. And they allow far higher
powers, yet allocate other stations on the same or adjacent channels far
closer together.

As to the content, radio programs what will get audiences large enough for
advertisers to be interested (with the exception of brokered and religious
staitons, which program whatever is paid for generally). That reduces the
chances of having a reggae station in Minneapolis or a Jazz station in
Cleveland. Since the US has realtively unregionalized taste, the same
formats are going to be available in every city in the country.


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.

A small station is one with low power and limited coverage. Period. It is
not a term ever used to describe a big station with local ownership.

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.

Actually, it is currently 1180 stations for Clear Channel, with nobody else
having over 400, and the 10th largest company not even havingg 70.

Voice tracking has been used since the late 60's, and is not that common
today compared with the 70's and 80's.

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.

The most you can have "in one building" are 8 in the US. Compare thaat to
groups with up to 14 in Mexico, where radio is economically far better off
than in the US.

Three are very few "lights off" operations except in small markets, where
automation has allowed stations to remain on 24/7 where they used to sign
off overnight.

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.

The article is a classic "jump the gun" publication. there are very few HD
radios out there, and until a few months ago, the only ones were targeted at
station engineers who were installing HD. The timetable for HD is to get
more HD-2 channels on in the top 50 markets this year, and roll out
advertising and new radios around the holidays and at CES 2007. This is a
multi-year project.

Eveyone I know who has listend to HD or an HD 2 channel loves it.

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.

You don't get it. One, I work for one company in the US and no one else. I
am not "brought in" for anything.

Second, markets are defined by a combination of the OMB and Arbitron's own
clients. Advertisers budget by market, and the market budget is spent on
local staitons, whether there are any non-locals being heard there or not.
To do any other thing is too much pain for no gain by the advertising
agency, so they do not do it.

Individual radio stations do not define markets.

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.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. Stations program for local
markets. This is because on air advertising is only one of the services they
provide. the most importent part of the services is the client servicing,
including commercial preparation, client consultation, remotes, in-store
promotions, marketing events, concerts, street appearnaces and dozens of
other things. None of this can be done for listeners outside the metro as
the costs vs. benefits do not have a favorable balance. And, mostly, because
the advertisers DON't WANT OUT OF MARKET STATIONS:

At the expense of listeners, the ultimate source of revenue. The
listeners have other choices now, and will go away.

No, the source of revenue is advertisers for radio. To get them, the station
must provide ears. More ears, more revenue. Better programming, more ears.

"Eric F. Richards" wrote in message
...
"David Eduardo" wrote:

Actually, there are more stations every year.

But less content. Every one of them using the same playlist, put
together by "marketing research," run out of a skyscraper by a DJ
handling several stations at a time, all in cities he's never been to.


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.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. The WSJ is about
investments, not about the local market operation of radio stations.

See the first article in this thread:

Message-ID: m

That is not about local radio sales and programming. It is about HD radio by
someone who does not understand radio written well before the new HD content
started to become available. Poppycock, in other words.

You addressed nothing of the real point. David consults radio.

Actually, I work fulltime for the 9th largest radio company in the US. I
only do consulting in Latin America when the time permits... which with the
present 70 hour weeks, it does not permit much of.

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.

Exactly. well stated, too.

Be yourself ready for the big EMF. www.lessemf.com/personal.html
cuhulin

David Eduardo wrote:
You addressed nothing of the real point. David consults radio.

Actually, I work fulltime for the 9th largest radio company in the US. I
only do consulting in Latin America when the time permits... which with the
present 70 hour weeks, it does not permit much of.


Thanks for the clarification.

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.

Exactly. well stated, too.


Yeah, well...45 years behind microphones, I should know SOMEthing.

Radio is an ART, accountants and advertisers do not, and never will
understand art. You can't sweep water up a hill, and you can't make a
pig sing. The money radio makes is not plowed back into the art, but
skimmed off for the business. Corporations are like sharks and only
notice whether the wallet is getting fatter or thinner, and will do
ANYTHING to keep it getting fatter. They also look down at their feet
while they are walking, which means they aren't looking where they're
going. This ensures that they will walk into walls or other
obstructions, this is why radio has been shooting itself in the feet
every step they take. Vampires ought pull out at least once in a while
to let the host recuperate. Go ahead, keep sucking, watch radio die.
The din of Ibiquity IS the sound of the last few drops of life blood
being suctioned out.