D Peter Maus wrote:

Eric F. Richards wrote:
[...]

Actually, what I've gotten from this discussion is that even if the
tracking methods -- 800 numbers, "Mention you heard it here on...,"
etc. have all shown that there are listeners all beyond the target
areas. What happens is that the sales department doesn't like data
that doesn't fit their assumptions, and dismisses it out of hand.


Actually, it's a lot less sinister than that. It's that there are not
sufficient numbers of them to be saleable to advertisers. The fact is
that few people actually listen to any given station out of the local
coverage area. Skywave listening is still going on, but not in saleable
numbers. There is no mechanism for selling a widely scattered irregular,
unmeasured audience. For an audience to be saleable, it needs to be
measured, and fall in to the correct demographic, psychographic, and
geographic areas. A zip code with less than 100 listeners, is
statistically zero. A zip code with an unreliable signal is of no value.
Believe me, if the numbers supported it, WLS would have a sales
office in Shreveport, Louisiana. But the only one regularly listening
to WLS in Shreveport, was me, in 1984. There were a half dozen of my
friend in St Louis, who listened to WLS. Most of them were in Radio.
Most would prefer to listen to KXOK. The signal was stronger, clearer,
and more reliable. Even in the 60's there only pockets of listeners to
skywave activity. Widely scattered, occasional listeners are of no
statistical presence. And not saleable.


But that still misses the point. The idea is not to target
Shreveport, but to sell to a company that can target Shreveport,
Montgomery, Pensacola, Ft. Walton Beach, Huntsville, Birmingham, and,
yes, those of us like me in East Overshoe that just *might* be looking
for a reliable mail-order company in a large city that has the SLR I'm
looking for, because there are no local places to go.

Again, the idea isn't to sell pizza from Chicago to Huntsville. Or,
to sell Huntsville pizza on a Chicago radio station. The idea is that
there are advertisers who appeal to any location in a large geographic
area, such as J&R -- or any other business that sells mail-order --
and put their ads on the air.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 100 here and the 50 there over ALL of
the skywave coverage area added up to between 5 and 10% of your
listener area. Would *you* want to tell the PD that the latest
Arbitrons showed a 5% drop in listenership in the evening?

But that is what you are doing -- assuming that the 5% is
statistically insignificant because you are looking at it in terms of
listener density per geographical unit.

....and its not like those listeners are costing you extra, in terms of
station expenses -- you aren't increasing power for the benefit of
those 5% -- you would, however, be selling to them an ad that is not
targeted to a geographic area.

The bottom line is that there's a bottom line. And anything that
can't materially affect it is not considered.

But your model is flawed. It assumes that a low geographic listener
density cannot be sold to, but that's only true for
greographic-sensitive products, like pizza and the local bar or Olive
Garden.

If that model was used on network television, there'd be no network TV
ads, but there are. And somehow, network TV muddles on.


That's the nature of Radio in the US. It's always about the money.


In this case, there's money to be made, even money being made, and it
is ignored. You said yourself, earlier, that if I call in from East
Overshoe and buy, say, that $1500 SLR, and say, "I heard it on WABC,"
they'll throw the data out rather than count it, because, *by itself*,
it's statistically insignificant.

....except that there are 100 sales thrown out that way, and they are
as an aggregate, statistically significant. All the East Overshoes
don't get their own pie slice, but put into the "Other -- Skywave"
slice, they are pretty big.



People are willing to do business cross country. And advertisers buy
national radio. But radio is SOLD according to local numbers.

And that is where the model is flawed.

Skywave
numbers are not statistically present, nor practically operable.
Literally, to few, to far between to be useful.

....and I'm saying they are, but you'll never know selling pizza. But
if you sell to a company that can take advantage of those distant
areas, they will.

How many Hallicrafters radios would have been sold if they only
advertised in Chicago newspapers?


Now, say you have listeners 400 miles away, well out of the
groundwave, and well into skywave. How many do you expect there to be in
any give zip code?

You don't. But if the local survivalist is the one with the program,
you sell the emergency preparedness web sites, Honda generators, and
enough colloidal silver to turn 'em all blue. Survivalists don't like
the city much, anyway.

Substitute "local survivalist" with "Art Bell" if you need a more
believable scenereo.

10? 100? If the conversion ratio of sales to
impressions is 1 in 10, that means to buy that station, one could expect
between 1 and 10 sales to result from a given period's advertising. 1 in
10 is very optimistic. So,the cost/benefit ratio is too high for that
buy. Now in the case of a mail order business such as, taking your
example, J&R, yes a clear channel station could produce a few sales here
and there though skywave listening, but consider, that the numbers,
again, are small compared to the local audience. And it's the size and
listening frequency of the local audience that sets the rate for the J&R
buy. Again, there is no statistical benefit to including the skywave
listener. Making any measurement of the skywave audience prohibitively
expensive.

Either way, they don't matter in the real world of Radio. Because
they produce no revenue enhancement.


....that your model will measure. If it doesn't fit the model it's
thrown out, because the model doesn't reflect it.

You aren't spending extra dollars to get the signal to East Overshoe,
it's just there. Now that it is there, put something out there that
will be available and useful to any and all the East Overshoes out
there, no matter where they happen to be. Leave the zipcodes out of
it, unless you start binning all the zipcodes from your skywave
listeners according to the demographics they represent. You have one,
here, two there, five here, one over thar, all of which happen to be
middle class males 18-45 and add up to 100 sales. Not saleable?


--
Eric F. Richards

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

1. A curious interpretation. Even the CKLW web page says,"the Role of
the Canadian Radio and Television Comission (CRTC) in killing the
station."
.....1968 RKO/General sells the station to comply with CRTC ownership
regulations
.....1971 CRTC 30% Canadian content regulations hurt programming
The CKLW affair was a cause celebre at the time and has generated
many websites. The quote was taken from www.thebig8.net/. CKLW
coverage included Toledo and Cleveland as well as Windsor/Detroit.

2. Do the CFRB engineers pay the electric bill or rent? I am sure that
this comes from the company and shows that total profit maximization is
moderated by some sense of public service.

3. I notice that WHO, Des Moines Iowa, (50kw) (1040) is proud of its
new webcasting service and likes to read reports from far-away places.
Des Moines is not a noisy place and the few listeners in the city who
might be helped would not justify the expense. There are hundreds of
stations webcasting now. Are they all trying to fill in noisy spots in
their primary area?

All three examples are of stations that are extending their coverage
beyond their trading area. Why do they do this? Is the business
changing?

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

I wouldn't be surprised if the 100 here and the 50 there over ALL of
the skywave coverage area added up to between 5 and 10% of your
listener area. Would *you* want to tell the PD that the latest
Arbitrons showed a 5% drop in listenership in the evening?

Arbitron does not measure the skywave coverage area of the few AMs that get
any extended skywave coverage. It measures market by market the Metropolitan
Statistical Area or a similar definition adapted to the radio market. Any
station from outside the market area that gets listening could show up in a
distant market's Arbitron... but they don't. Out of home market Am listening
in the US is almost always in a contiguous market... like Riverside
listening to LA staitons or Flint listening to Detroit stations.

Radio listening at night is very low. Less than a third of the daytime
listening levels, and more like a quarter for AM. So 5% of nothing is
nothing. Advertisers seldom ask for spots after 7 PM, so most of what you
hear is bonus or freebe spots.

But that is what you are doing -- assuming that the 5% is
statistically insignificant because you are looking at it in terms of
listener density per geographical unit.

We are looking for listening in our home market. I am with a station that is
#1 in LA, and is top 5 in Riverside. Riverside is a separate market, and we
do not make a cent off it. So we do not care, do not promote in Riverside,
do remotes in Riverside or pay attention to Riverside, even though we are a
top 5 station out there. And this is with an FM... AMs care even less.

...and its not like those listeners are costing you extra, in terms of
station expenses -- you aren't increasing power for the benefit of
those 5% -- you would, however, be selling to them an ad that is not
targeted to a geographic area.

Nobody cares. If an advertiser wants listeners in Shreeveport, there are 25
stations to pick from that actually have ratings there. Why pay Chicago
rates to reach Shreeveport when the city has its own successful media?

If that model was used on network television, there'd be no network TV
ads, but there are. And somehow, network TV muddles on.

It is the same as cable. They are sold natinally based on reach and cost per
national point. Radio is sold by the market, not by the country.

People are willing to do business cross country. And advertisers buy
national radio. But radio is SOLD according to local numbers.

And that is where the model is flawed.

There is no model as AM stations do not get any significant listening
outside their gvroundwave coverage area, and night radio is low listening
level at best and not bought by most advertisers. Mainly, distant stations
do not have listeners outside thier groundwave areas in significant
quantities for an advertiser to justify paying to reach them.

How many Hallicrafters radios would have been sold if they only
advertised in Chicago newspapers?

Hallicrafters went broke. this is because long distance reception is not of
interest any more, especially on AM medium wave.

"ve3..." wrote in message
oups.com...
1. A curious interpretation. Even the CKLW web page says,"the Role of
the Canadian Radio and Television Comission (CRTC) in killing the
station."
....1968 RKO/General sells the station to comply with CRTC ownership
regulations
....1971 CRTC 30% Canadian content regulations hurt programming
The CKLW affair was a cause celebre at the time and has generated
many websites. The quote was taken from www.thebig8.net/. CKLW
coverage included Toledo and Cleveland as well as Windsor/Detroit.

CKLW was not specifically called on to uniquely change programming. CanCon
affected all stations alike, and ownership rule chages did as well. It was
just that CKLW was in a position to have benefitted extremely from the
pre-rule change situation.

Moswtly, CKLW dies as The Big 8 due to the death of AM as a music band.

2. Do the CFRB engineers pay the electric bill or rent? I am sure that
this comes from the company and shows that total profit maximization is
moderated by some sense of public service.

They have a site where the Am is located, no cost, the transmitter uses less
energy than the light in the parking lot, and it just goes on and on. At
some point, the people interested in keeping it running will tire and it
will be turned off.

3. I notice that WHO, Des Moines Iowa, (50kw) (1040) is proud of its
new webcasting service and likes to read reports from far-away places.
Des Moines is not a noisy place and the few listeners in the city who
might be helped would not justify the expense. There are hundreds of
stations webcasting now. Are they all trying to fill in noisy spots in
their primary area?

Yes. There is no revenue model for stations to get any revenue from anything
except locally reported listening. In fact, one of the reasons some stations
give is to also serve local residents who may be in a radio survey whyle
they are on a short trip or travelling out of the area. It is 100% about
local.

All three examples are of stations that are extending their coverage
beyond their trading area. Why do they do this? Is the business
changing?

No. webcasting is about giving a different local source for listening to
fill in for bad big building and shadow area reception.

"David Eduardo" wrote:

We are looking for listening in our home market. I am with a station that is
#1 in LA, and is top 5 in Riverside. Riverside is a separate market, and we
do not make a cent off it.

I'm sure that if you cared to track it, you would find that you made
quite a bit of money there. But you don't because your model tells
you that the world ends at the edge of LA. It doesn't, though, and a
smart advertiser would take advantage of that even if you are
stubbornly unwilling to accept that radio waves go beyond LA and that
people beyond LA -- in your own words,

even though we are a
top 5 station out there

they just might spend money on products you advertise.

How many Hallicrafters radios would have been sold if they only
advertised in Chicago newspapers?

Hallicrafters went broke. this is because long distance reception is not of
interest any more, especially on AM medium wave.

Hallicrafters went broke because Japan out-thought and outsold the
U.S. in the 70s when it came to shortwave markets. Perhaps you'll
tell me that ICOM, Sony, Kenwood, Yaesu, Degen, et. al. all don't
exist now?

However, that's beside the point. The point is that if Halli only
sold locally in Chicago, neither you nor I would have ever heard of
them.

....for that matter, had Japan's electronics companies not targeted the
U.S., we would never have heard of them, nor would they have become
the giants they are today. THEY certainly saw that the world didn't
end beyond their shores. (And Japanese culture is almost synonymous
with insular.)

Your view of your listening community will do more to destroy american
radio than anything else. You and Peter can insist that "that's the
way it is," but the truth is "that's the way your model sees it."
Fine. Ignore your real customers. Insult them even and tell them
they don't exist. It's *your* career path, not mine. Enjoy the ride
all the way into the ground.

--
Eric F. Richards

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

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

We are looking for listening in our home market. I am with a station that
is
#1 in LA, and is top 5 in Riverside. Riverside is a separate market, and
we
do not make a cent off it.

I'm sure that if you cared to track it, you would find that you made
quite a bit of money there. But you don't because your model tells
you that the world ends at the edge of LA.

We make no money and never have. The Inland Empire is bought as a separate
market. As such, advertisers buy in-market stations at a tiny fraction
(about 10% to 15%) of LA rates to target the IE specifically. They do not
buy LA stations to cover the IE as nearly all have imperfect coverage of the
area, and do not offer support, like remotes, promotions and other in-market
marketing.

The ad world does end at the edges of the LA MSA, whch consists of LA and
Orange Counties. You get a nice, "yes, sure2 when you point out that they
are getting the IE for "free" with the buy, but advertisers till want
promotions and presence int he LA market and will not pay extra for IE
coverage.

By the way, we have had at least 2 staitons in the top 3 25-54 (the sales
demo) in LA for the last 11 years, and currently have three of the top 5.
We get no money from fringe markets, never have, never will.

It doesn't, though, and a
smart advertiser would take advantage of that even if you are
stubbornly unwilling to accept that radio waves go beyond LA and that
people beyond LA -- in your own words,

Advertisers buy "by the market" and the IE is a separate market from LA.
There are no "smart advertisers" as the customers know that out of market
stations, even with ratings, are seldom as effective as in market stations
that offer value added in the market. And an LA station is not going to go
into the Inland Empire to sell at $120 a spot when they sell at $2,000 in
LA.

even though we are a
top 5 station out there

they just might spend money on products you advertise.

I don't advertise any products. We run ads for other people with products.
None of whom care an iota abut out of metro coverage as it comes with no
promotional and in-market support.

Hallicrafters went broke. this is because long distance reception is not
of
interest any more, especially on AM medium wave.

Hallicrafters went broke because Japan out-thought and outsold the
U.S. in the 70s when it came to shortwave markets. Perhaps you'll
tell me that ICOM, Sony, Kenwood, Yaesu, Degen, et. al. all don't
exist now?

Drake abandoned general coverage receivers, and there has been an on-again,
off agian chatter about ICOM leaving the GC sector.

In any case, we are discussing distant MW reception, and the main reason the
Hallicrafters and Hammarlunds and Drakes and Galaxys of the US left the
market is that there is low demand... partly because there is limited
interest in distant MW reception compared with the 50's and 60's.

Your view of your listening community will do more to destroy american
radio than anything else. You and Peter can insist that "that's the
way it is," but the truth is "that's the way your model sees it."

The biggest fact you are ignoring, among many, is that radio listening in
daytime is on average about 22% of all people at any given time. In
evenings, after 7 PM, it drops by 11 PM to about 2%. Advertisers
specifically exclude nights and overnights from ad buys. So out of market
coverage is irrelevant. Most Ams do not have any our of market coverage, as
they are daytimers or directional or lower powered and on congested
channels.

The few AMs that do have fairly borad night signals do not get listening in
enough quantity out of market to make anything of. Advertisers do not buy at
night, and stations generally have no ratings outside of the groundwave
area. Add to that the fact that most of the former 1 A stations are very
localized, with lots of city-specific traffic reports and local news and
local events that they are of no interest 500 miles away. They win big in
the metro by being local and relevant. There is no money for out of metro
advertising and such big stations are not going to sacrifice local for a
couple of C.C. Crane PI spots.

Fine. Ignore your real customers. Insult them even and tell them
they don't exist. It's *your* career path, not mine. Enjoy the ride
all the way into the ground.

My ride is just fine, based on localism. Having 3 of the top 5 in the
largest ad market in America is hardly riding into the ground. And we are
doing fine in our other 16 markets, too, with the same model. And we have a
number of 50 kw AMs. They serve the local community, well, and only.

"David Eduardo" wrote:


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

We are looking for listening in our home market. I am with a station that
is
#1 in LA, and is top 5 in Riverside. Riverside is a separate market, and
we
do not make a cent off it.

I'm sure that if you cared to track it, you would find that you made
quite a bit of money there. But you don't because your model tells
you that the world ends at the edge of LA.

We make no money and never have. The Inland Empire is bought as a separate
market.

I'm sure that your advertisers, if they measure where their customers
come from, would find that the world doesn't end at LA.

By the way, we have had at least 2 staitons in the top 3 25-54 (the sales
demo) in LA for the last 11 years, and currently have three of the top 5.
We get no money from fringe markets, never have, never will.

Sure, if you don't sell to advertisers who ignore their customer base
outside of LA. All those ignorant yokels out in the boonies, though,
they might want to buy things too, and if those ignorant yokels happen
to have quite a bit of money, they might want the finer things that LA
can offer but the local stores don't.

I guarantee you that within a 10 mile radius of where I live, the
median and mean incomes are far, FAR above the Denver metro area,
where advertisers following your model will target.

For that matter, I guarantee you that if you swept a ring 10 miles
wide with its inner edge 50 miles outside of Denver around denver,
that median and mean income collection would also be higher than the
Metro area.

In any case, we are discussing distant MW reception, and the main reason the
Hallicrafters and Hammarlunds and Drakes and Galaxys of the US left the
market is that there is low demand... partly because there is limited
interest in distant MW reception compared with the 50's and 60's.

Disagree. I think in fact your view is utterly inaccurate. The
market for inexpensive MW reception will go on until you kill it, and
you appear to be working very hard at it.


Your view of your listening community will do more to destroy american
radio than anything else. You and Peter can insist that "that's the
way it is," but the truth is "that's the way your model sees it."

The biggest fact you are ignoring, among many, is that radio listening in
daytime is on average about 22% of all people at any given time. In
evenings, after 7 PM, it drops by 11 PM to about 2%. Advertisers
specifically exclude nights and overnights from ad buys. So out of market
coverage is irrelevant. Most Ams do not have any our of market coverage, as
they are daytimers or directional or lower powered and on congested
channels.

After 11 PM, yes, to 2%. What's your 7-9 PM numbers?

Yet you still manage to sell ads at night. I've never heard a station
that went consistently commercial-free from 11 PM to 6 AM.


The few AMs that do have fairly borad night signals do not get listening in
enough quantity out of market to make anything of.

Again, if you don't sell to advertisers who can 1) utilize that market
and 2) measure it, I think you'd find differently.

But, you'll never know if Arbitron throws away any numbers that don't
fit the market. Hell, even the local NPR outlet knows better, based
in Greeley, CO and pitching themselves from Wyoming to Denver. I
wonder what their pledge numbers look like -- they certainly don't
throw away pledges from outside of their coverage area. (As an
aside, I wonder what Arbitron does with their numbers?)

Advertisers do not buy at
night,

None? Never? I'll just ignore the ads I hear at night, then.

and stations generally have no ratings outside of the groundwave
area.

Hmmm. I'll have to go read up on the Minn. Twins debacle to see about
that. It was covered in this thread... someone went by the numbers
(and the dollars they believed they had) and killed off their market.

Fine. Ignore your real customers. Insult them even and tell them
they don't exist. It's *your* career path, not mine. Enjoy the ride
all the way into the ground.

My ride is just fine, based on localism. Having 3 of the top 5 in the
largest ad market in America is hardly riding into the ground. And we are
doing fine in our other 16 markets, too, with the same model. And we have a
number of 50 kw AMs. They serve the local community, well, and only.

There are really only a couple reasons to listen to AM radio today.
1) low cost of receivers. 2) long-range reception for whatever
reason that listener may have. 3) talk radio -- AM is never going to
challenge FM on fidelity, IBOC or not. I wonder how many classical
and jazz AMs there are out there? That's an answer I'd trust you to
have.

But I think your ride is going into the ground. In fact, this thread
has depressed me into thinking that XM and/or Sirius may just succeed,
because they aren't foolish enough to accept an arbitrary boundary on
their footprint. (okay, national boundaries, but things get really
complicated on that one.) Their coverage area is the continental U.S.
and they'll go ahead and sell their ads to anyone willing to put them
on the air. (Commercial free? ha. I doubt one channel of the
satellite services will be commercial free in 10 years.)

It would be very, very interesting to see the raw, unmassaged data
that Arbitron (and the other one) collect and see what happens when
they start putting together demographics and quantity (but NOT
geography) of all the out-of-market listeners. Obviously that's
closely held, but probably someone like you or Peter could have seen
it in some job somewhere along the line.

--
Eric F. Richards

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

[Snipped all]

Don't get me wrong -- I *get* that you and Peter say, "that's the way
things are done." I just think it's a hell of a way to run a
railroad.

--
Eric F. Richards

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

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


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

We are looking for listening in our home market. I am with a station
that
is
#1 in LA, and is top 5 in Riverside. Riverside is a separate market,
and
we
do not make a cent off it.

I'm sure that if you cared to track it, you would find that you made
quite a bit of money there. But you don't because your model tells
you that the world ends at the edge of LA.

We make no money and never have. The Inland Empire is bought as a
separate
market.

I'm sure that your advertisers, if they measure where their customers
come from, would find that the world doesn't end at LA.

Most advertisers we have advertise on a plethora of media, so they can not
tell which specific entity in which specific medium does what. Further, they
don't care as they have metrics for evaluating the reach of a campaign.

By the way, we have had at least 2 staitons in the top 3 25-54 (the sales
demo) in LA for the last 11 years, and currently have three of the top
5.
We get no money from fringe markets, never have, never will.

Sure, if you don't sell to advertisers who ignore their customer base
outside of LA.

The fact that you are being obstinate shows you are unfamiliar with how
media sales are conducted. If you knew, you would know that the medium
(radi) and the station have no influence on buying patterns at all but the
smallest advertisers. And those small advertisers can not afford a top LA
station.

Again, if a regional or naitonal account wants to buy a market outside LA,
they buy the stations that are home to the local market, as the "from affar"
stations can not not do the merchandising, promotion, remotes and things
that are part of many if not most radio buys.

All those ignorant yokels out in the boonies, though,
they might want to buy things too, and if those ignorant yokels happen
to have quite a bit of money, they might want the finer things that LA
can offer but the local stores don't.

But ad buyers reach them through local media. Since it takes hours to drive
from central Riverside county to central LA County, and anyting available in
one is available in the other, it is unlikely anyone drives 120 miles to
shop in LA... or in Riverside.

I guarantee you that within a 10 mile radius of where I live, the
median and mean incomes are far, FAR above the Denver metro area,
where advertisers following your model will target.

The Denver radio market is made up of 7 counties. I am pretty sure your area
is inside it. The only other separately bought markets nearby are Puebo,
Colorado Springs and Ft. Collins - Greeley. Each is a separate marekt area.

For that matter, I guarantee you that if you swept a ring 10 miles
wide with its inner edge 50 miles outside of Denver around denver,
that median and mean income collection would also be higher than the
Metro area.

I ran this in Mapquest and the more rural you get, the more incomes goe
down.

In any case, that data is irrelevant. Radio advertising, whether local,
regional or national, is bought by market and the people who design
campaigns know all this stuff. what they also realize is that the best way
to reach listeners is on local stations as they have the ability to provide
added value locally.

In any case, we are discussing distant MW reception, and the main reason
the
Hallicrafters and Hammarlunds and Drakes and Galaxys of the US left the
market is that there is low demand... partly because there is limited
interest in distant MW reception compared with the 50's and 60's.

Disagree. I think in fact your view is utterly inaccurate. The
market for inexpensive MW reception will go on until you kill it, and
you appear to be working very hard at it.

The market in discussion is DX skywave reception of MW, which is so small as
to be unmeasurable by Arbitron. Since skywave only occurs at night, and
raido listening is very light at night and seldom bought by advertisers,
there is a decline in interest in programming to this daypart by staitons
and near zero interest by clients. If big numbers of listeners (relatively
speaking) int he metros are not bought at night, tiny numbers in Numb Pluck,
AR, are of no interest except to PI accounts... and many stations do not
take PI.

In any case, the stations with decent night coverage do so well in thier
local metros they do not care about distant listeners.

Local AM is very alive on staitons that have the few good-enough signals
that cover the entire metro. In fact, one of ours, a 50 kw station in Miami,
is typically in the top 5 in that market and has been for over a decade.
This is because it gives local service to the Miami community it targets and
does not worry about Key West or Palm Beach or Naples or Yeehaw Junction,
all of which it covers (but gets no listeners in).

The biggest fact you are ignoring, among many, is that radio listening in
daytime is on average about 22% of all people at any given time. In
evenings, after 7 PM, it drops by 11 PM to about 2%. Advertisers
specifically exclude nights and overnights from ad buys. So out of market
coverage is irrelevant. Most Ams do not have any our of market coverage,
as
they are daytimers or directional or lower powered and on congested
channels.

After 11 PM, yes, to 2%. What's your 7-9 PM numbers?

Radio listening declines from about 11% in 7 PM to 8 to 2% from 11 to
Midnight. And since these are the hours advertisers mostly buy on TV, they
do NOT buy radio in the same daypart.

Yet you still manage to sell ads at night. I've never heard a station
that went consistently commercial-free from 11 PM to 6 AM.

Most of what you hear are bonus spots, rotators and ROS buys. There are
sledom any night-specific buys. Sometimes a station that is enormously
strong in mornings can force advertisers to buy 1 AM to Midnight to be
"allowed" to get on 6 to 10 AM, but nights are pretty much a wash.


The few AMs that do have fairly borad night signals do not get listening
in
enough quantity out of market to make anything of.

Again, if you don't sell to advertisers who can 1) utilize that market
and 2) measure it, I think you'd find differently.

There are no such advertisers. Any advertiser that buys multiple markets has
an agency, and they buy by market and do not have the time to worry about 11
skywave listeners 500 miles away.

The LA staiton I referred to has over 1.2 million weekly listeners in the LA
market. Nothing it could get in fringe markets would enghance significantly
the reach, and advertisers buying LA would not stand for rates based on out
of market coverage, not to mention that this would blow the equal-geography
standard for metrics they use.

But, you'll never know if Arbitron throws away any numbers that don't
fit the market.

Arbitron does not throw away anything. If an out of market station gets the
minimum amount of reporting to make the book, they are in it. Same as a
local station. No different standards. What happens is that, except for
peripheral markets, staitons do not make the book based on a) night
listening alone and b) skywave.

Hell, even the local NPR outlet knows better, based
in Greeley, CO and pitching themselves from Wyoming to Denver. I
wonder what their pledge numbers look like -- they certainly don't
throw away pledges from outside of their coverage area. (As an
aside, I wonder what Arbitron does with their numbers?)

Pledges do not come through ad agencies and client marketing departments.
NPR can beg wherever they want. Commercial radio has to adjust to the
reality of how advertisers want to buy us.

Advertisers do not buy at
night,

None? Never? I'll just ignore the ads I hear at night, then.

Freebies, PI, bonus spots, forced ROS buys, rotators. Nights and overnights
hardly contriute to station revenue.

and stations generally have no ratings outside of the groundwave
area.

Hmmm. I'll have to go read up on the Minn. Twins debacle to see about
that. It was covered in this thread... someone went by the numbers
(and the dollars they believed they had) and killed off their market.

That makes no sense. Again... AMs do not get ratings outside the groundwave
coverage area, so they do not sell outside that area. In fact, most metro
area AMs only get ratings inside the 10 mv/m contour (due to nooise levels
in modern cities) so all tha tcounts is the primar daytime groundwave
signal.

Fine. Ignore your real customers. Insult them even and tell them
they don't exist. It's *your* career path, not mine. Enjoy the ride
all the way into the ground.

My ride is just fine, based on localism. Having 3 of the top 5 in the
largest ad market in America is hardly riding into the ground. And we are
doing fine in our other 16 markets, too, with the same model. And we have
a
number of 50 kw AMs. They serve the local community, well, and only.

There are really only a couple reasons to listen to AM radio today.
1) low cost of receivers. 2) long-range reception for whatever
reason that listener may have. 3) talk radio -- AM is never going to
challenge FM on fidelity, IBOC or not. I wonder how many classical
and jazz AMs there are out there? That's an answer I'd trust you to
have.

And the successful staitons today on AM are local, do talk or news or sports
if they are in the first tier. The other group of enormously successful AMs
do religion, gospel, and much ethnic programming. The Farsi staiton in LA is
enormously profitable, as are several Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese
langauge staitons.

Since most markets only have a few full coverage AMs that blanket the
market, just a couple of talkers and a sports station usually fills up the
good facilities.

But I think your ride is going into the ground. In fact, this thread
has depressed me into thinking that XM and/or Sirius may just succeed,
because they aren't foolish enough to accept an arbitrary boundary on
their footprint. (okay, national boundaries, but things get really
complicated on that one.) Their coverage area is the continental U.S.
and they'll go ahead and sell their ads to anyone willing to put them
on the air. (Commercial free? ha. I doubt one channel of the
satellite services will be commercial free in 10 years.)

Most satellite channels have no ads, and ads wil be at best a couple of
percent of revenues. Satellite sells a service to the listener. radio sells
advertising to advertisers. We do what advertisers want, not what you think
is a good model in another business. Sorry, wrong argument.

It would be very, very interesting to see the raw, unmassaged data
that Arbitron (and the other one)

There is no "other" one.

collect and see what happens when
they start putting together demographics and quantity (but NOT
geography) of all the out-of-market listeners.

Any subscriber has this data on thier desktop. I looked at 17 markets, from
NY to Mc Allen and can not find any skywave listening being recorded. There
are a lot of below the minimum mentions, but to stations on the fringes of
the markets or to very poor performing locals. But no AM night skywave.

FYI, Arbitron is audited every year by a committe of experts called the MRC
which reporesents advertisers and agencies. The methodology treats all
staitons equally... if Radio Moscow appeared in a minimum number of diaries,
it would be ranked int he ratings along with all the other qualifying
stations.

Obviously that's
closely held, but probably someone like you or Peter could have seen
it in some job somewhere along the line.

Every subscriber can see every station that had atleast one diary mention in
every book. There is nothing closely held about this data. It just does not
contain anything that contributes to your argument... quite the contrary, it
blows it out of the water.

"Eric F. Richards" wrote in message
...
[Snipped all]

Don't get me wrong -- I *get* that you and Peter say, "that's the way
things are done." I just think it's a hell of a way to run a
railroad.

Buyers dictate how and what they buy. radio stations do not dictate how they
get bought. Simple as that.