"David Eduardo" wrote:


"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Eric F. Richards wrote:
"David Eduardo" wrote:


Maybe they _wanted_ to continue to work for the company. If they didn't,
they could have resigned and been hired elsewhere. There are no slaves
in US radio.

Of course. Because everyone knows how easy it is to start a new
career in mid-life.

Idiot.



Actually, I highly recommend it.

Yep. I find I can not usually go more than 8 years max with one company.

He didn't change *jobs* -- he changed *careers.*


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

"David Eduardo" wrote:


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



Maybe they _wanted_ to continue to work for the company. If they didn't,
they could have resigned and been hired elsewhere. There are no slaves in
US
radio.


Of course. Because everyone knows how easy it is to start a new
career in mid-life.

Changing station is not changing career.

Idiiot.


Of course. You could go from your old position at an Infinity station
to leave as it's purchased by Clear Channel, or take a job at an...
Infinity station.

At Wal-Mart wages.

Or you could live in Clear Channel's dungeon in Texas, juggling 12
cities you've never been to.



You jus know nothing about how radio works and has always worked.


I know that the business of radio is broken, and you are part of the
problem. You are also making it worse.

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

"David Eduardo" wrote:


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


In this case, I defer to the M Street data. M Street's Directory has the
credibility today that the Boradcasting Yearbook had from 938 to the
early
90's.


Frankly, no matter what reference you quoted, if you said the sky was
blue I'd go outside to double-check.

Please double check all my facts. You will find that they are totally
verifiable, except those I label sepcifically as coming from proprietary
research.

"Facts" like IBOC is great and doesn't cause interference, or no one
ever ever listens outside of your arbitrary lines on a map?

Do you know -- oh, never mind, of *course* you don't. Anyway, most
innovations are made by kids in their twenties who simply haven't
learned that what they are attempting is impossible? Innovations and
discoveries ranging from General Relativity to FedEx.

Again, it's because they haven't learned that what they are trying is
impossible. They haven't listened to "experts" like you. "Experts"
deluded by their so-called "facts" that have no connection to reality.


They were so far ahead of the curve that there were no consumer targeted
radios on the market when they did hte article.

On March 1 of this year?

Correct.

And 31 days later the whole world is different? And IBOC is now
exciting and available and everyone loves it? All in 31 days? Wow.


Learn some history and something beyond your calculator. That phrase
was a famous one among the Hollywood Left as they contemplated
McGovern's landslide defeat.

Never heard it.

That's because you are a soulless mercenary who can't see anything but
his calculator.

There's a whole world out there. You ought to investigate it some
time. It is an amazing place, and none of your beliefs, rules and
"facts" apply there.


No, you bring numbers, not listeners. They aren't the same thing.

Advertisers require metrics.

Yes, they do. But the metrics they get are based on a flawed model
that doesn't fit the world. It only allows you to maximize the number
produced by the model.

But, the emperor is wearing no clothes. Anyone willing to see it CAN
see it, but in your little world, no one is willing to speak up.

Eventually the emperor will catch cold and die.

But it'll be no surprise to us non-experts, the naive little children,
who aren't blessed with the wisdom of the insider -- we just saw a
naked emperor.


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

D Peter Maus wrote:

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.

No surprise there. That's as plain to see as the sunrise. And as
predictable.

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.

That, sadly, is no surprise either.

What is surprising is that, even after you got out of radio as a
business, that you *endorse* this way of thinking.

Not actively, of course, you deplore it in your statements. But you
say that it is the way it is, and that it'll never change.

But it will. Like the degraded HD signals, there will always be
another source of material. Podcasts with better fidelity than
digital radio. DVDs with full HDTV capability. Renegades like Marc
Cuban -- did you see his HDTV channel? Stunning! What passes for
HDTV from the major networks is, even now, substandard even compared
to analog NTSC! Europeans must laugh at that!

No, people will go elsewhere. The monopoly on care-free audio
entertainment held by radio is over -- it's now podcasts, satellite,
MP3/OggVorbis and the unkillable Hydra of file sharing.

Radio will go the way of the movie theatre -- a slowly dying
anachronism.

And we, the consumers -- the *customers* -- are poorer for it.

--
Eric F. Richards

"This book reads like a headache on paper."
http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/readi...one/index.html

Eric F. Richards wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:

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

Maybe they _wanted_ to continue to work for the company. If they didn't,
they could have resigned and been hired elsewhere. There are no slaves in US
radio.

Of course. Because everyone knows how easy it is to start a new
career in mid-life.

Idiot.


Actually, I highly recommend it.

I did it. So have most of my colleagues.



...because life as a DJ/"on air talent" had become miserable, right?



Actually, no.




Your new career is very very closely related to the old one.
Voice-over talent for ads, club remotes, etc., all involve the same
skills you used in your old career: audio mixing, proper mic
technique, "The Voice," and so on. You simply aren't doing it
directly for broadcasting -- you tape a spot, or do your show to a
live audience instead.


It's not like you became an actuary and had to acquire an entirely new
set of skills.



Oh...Then I must have picked up the aerial photography by osmosis.
Thanks. I was wondering about that.

David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
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.

What is being missed is tha tthe model, at launch, of XM was to have 6
minutes of commercials on all channels. After about 28 months, they changed
this and the music channels were made commercial free.


I remember when they made the change. I can't believe that when the
subscriber base is significant enough, and the measurements have been
refined, that there won't be a reversal of the policy, though.

David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Eric F. Richards wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:

Advertisers do not sell to Radio, TV, newspapers, etc, they BUY from
them. Advertisers buy media. And they do it based on their data, their
numbers and their own wants or needs.

Sorry, poor choice of words on my part caused by typing faster than I
think. You are, of course, correct.

But their wants or needs aren't necessarily what is good for radio in
the long term.

Nor have the ever been.

It's funny, but true. I collect old Broadcasting Magazines, going back to
the late 30's and have over 1000 of them up to the early 70's. I often grab
a stack and just read them. It is amazing that the issues of 1946 are those
of today.

Example: concerned parents and teachers in 1946 complaining about the bad
influence of Tom Mix and the Lone ranger on youth, and how such shows foment
laziness and lack of attention to school and teach bad habits. Fast forward.
Protests against stations in the mid 50's for playing rock 'n' roll. Fast
forward. Protests in the last few years about hip hop.

The back and forth on ratings is a constant. The protests against "too many
stations on the dial for clear reception" are a constant In fact, the first
in my collection is from a 1929 RaDex magazine, complaining that now that
there were several hundred active stations, the dial was too crowded and
something should be done to get it in order.

I particularly prize an article, also from Radex, about how radio is going
to be ruined and become a relic of the past due to those awful long (one
minute) commercials which will surely doom radio.

There is always some one like Eric who knows everything is wrong, but who
can not come up with anything better, either. Of course, the world is full
of bitchers.



Without them, there'd be nothing for manglement to do.

D Peter Maus wrote:



Oh...Then I must have picked up the aerial photography by osmosis.
Thanks. I was wondering about that.


That's one I didn't know about.

Beats the living hell out of taking the actuarial exam... I speak from
experience -- my undergrad final was a subset of that exam and even
straight out of school it was utter murder.

--
Eric F. Richards

"Nature abhors a vacuum tube." -- Myron Glass,
often attributed to J. R. Pierce, Bell Labs, c. 1940

D Peter Maus wrote:


There is always some one like Eric who knows everything is wrong, but who
can not come up with anything better, either. Of course, the world is full
of bitchers.



Without them, there'd be nothing for manglement to do.


I think manglement will have plenty to do without worrying about my
complaints. Whether I point them out to you or not, events will
unfold to the detriment of radio.

And, of course, I've posted what I think you should do better: Throw
away the model. Start over. Step one is, what is the density
relationship between listeners and radius/*accurate* coverage maps?
Then, what is the relationship between close-in listeners, further out
listeners, and fringe listeners? What are the percentages of each?
Not per unit area -- that's a different question, stated above -- but
overall.
Final question would be how do I sell to each geographic area? Your
so-called "fringe" listener may commute 30 miles one way across
multiple current marketing ranges, but never changes the dail. How do
you sell to him?

....but you keep ignoring that, with going on with, "butbutbut the
*model* sez..." The model is obsolete. Actually it is worse than
obsolete -- it never had an applicable time.

YOU, Eduardo, are the one who insists the model is right.
Advertisers may "call the shots," but they depend on your model for
their metrics, and you are too myopic to see that it doesn't fit. You
optimize your marketing to the model, and, if your lucky, you'll hit
what we mathemeticians call a "local maximum." But it isn't the
maximum, it's a minor peak.

The rest of the people out there are left wanting. And they'll move
on.

And they'll move on whether I squawk about it or not -- I'm just
telling you what's gonna happen.

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

Eric F. Richards wrote:
s" apply there.


No, you bring numbers, not listeners. They aren't the same thing.
Advertisers require metrics.

Yes, they do. But the metrics they get are based on a flawed model
that doesn't fit the world. It only allows you to maximize the number
produced by the model.



Eric...you seem to be missing the essential point. The advertisers
don't GET the metrics based on a model, the advertisers CREATE the
model, they create the metrics. They create the tool. Not the stations.
Not the consultants. The stations do what they do to make money with
the advertiser's tool.

So to speak.

The advertisers call the shots. Not the stations.

Any appearance to the contrary is show biz. It's why I say that King
Kong is only 3' 6" (with apologies to Eli Cross). What you hear on the
radio is the magic. The bigger than life sound that conveys the
indomitable spirit, the sense that the station is in control, and that
service is personal and directly aimed at the listener. And to a
degree, that's true. But only to a degree. Reality is that programming
is a means to hold an audience between commercials. And that bigger than
life sound...is an illusion. King Kong is only 3' 6".

The only thing the station has real control over is the creation of
the illusion, and even that must meet advertisers' wants.

The advertisers create the metrics. They create the model. They call
the shots.

Reality is very different on each side of the grille cloth. But the
truth is that it's the advertisers who call the shots. Program
directors, Sales Manglers, General Manglers, Disk Jockeys...even and
especially production folk are there to facilitate the needs of the
advertisers. And the advertisers are ONLY interested in numbers that
fit their own model.