Eric F. Richards wrote:
"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?



There are stations going dark every year, because even with multiple
ownership, they still can't produce numbers to justify their expense.
Personally, I think that if the bean counters got out of the way, there
would be a somewhat different landscape, but that's not where Radio is
today.

Decisions are made based on a stock price and profitability. Long
gone are the days when a station that scored a 15% percent margin was
considered a super performer. When I left CBS, Chicago, one station in
the group was recording a 72% profit margin. That was unheard of when I
started. 20% was off the charts then. Common ownership, and some union
decertification has made higher numbers possible. Salaries aren't what
they were, except for the anchor names, expenses are squeezed until the
staff runs blue. With profits like these, common ownership, and the
ability to get banks involved (where they wouldn't touch Radio before)
mom and pop shops are being swallowed up by investor groups, media
companies, and corporations looking to diversify. The Florians owned
WNIB/WNIZ in Zion. They were a pair of successful commercial classical
music stations in Chicago metro. And they routinely waxed WFMT in the
book. They were determined to stick it out. No debt, the stations were
low stress, very profitable, and had strong followings. Bonneville
offered them 12 figures for the pair. They said 'no.' Bonneville came
back at them. And kept coming back each time they declined the offer.
Eventually, they relented. And took not much less than a half a billion
dollars for the pair of stations.

With that kind of lucre, you're not going to find many single
station owners willing to hold out for long. Especially since
many stand alone stations are nowhere near as profitable as the Florian's.

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.






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, their coverage, their staff and the total investment in
the property. Most stations are small stations. You don't find $50
million stations in Watseka, Illinois. And even here in Chicago, there
are only a few "large" stations. Many of them coming in from the collar
counties. Even WROK/ZOK in Rockford are considered 'smaller' stations.

Most of them are small.

And with a handful of groups accounting for more than half the
stations on the air, what's left are smaller groups of stations by
smaller companies.

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.

Now, you're right, that things are dramatically different than they
were 15 years ago. And that diversity of ownership, and the fierce
competition for ratings in a single format are largely over. Formats are
structured more strategically, to protect producing properties, or
garner saleable numbers collectively, instead of going head to head and
pouring hundreds of kilobucks into bludgeoning a single competitor into
a stupor. Today, it's done much more scientifically. And I think the
results are less exciting, often less interesting. That's why I don't
listen near as much as I once did. But then, I'm not being served by the
media, either. I don't fall into any of the desireable demo- and
psychographic grid spaces. So, what I think is largely of no interest to
Radio.

It's cold. But unless I can show Radio how to make more money than
they're making by doing something different than they're making now
doing what they're doing...it is what it is.





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.

Wall Street getting involved in Media took the focus OFF of the
things that are important to you and me (such that they are,
anyway...those things had been in decline for two decades anyway), and
put them squarely on the minutiae of maximizing profits. Which reduced
Radio and Radio content to a commodity. Wonder Bread with a ground
plane. Content retooled and revised until it's devoid of surprises, but
that sells. And that's what investors want: Products that sell, and sell
with INEXPENSIVE production. So, profits can skyrocket. And the numbers
create a demand for other investors. It can, and has been, argued that
investors insure the future of radio stations. And as businesses, this
is true. But it doesn't do anything for content. And content can be
contrived to sell, at low cost, virtually in perpetuity. Unless there is
a public revolt, it will continue to be so. Because, beleive me, if
there were a demand for something done differently, CCU and the other
media companies would be lining up to get it done.

But there is no such demand. Only bitching from guys like you and
me...and those of us here dissatisfied by the current state of Radio. If
you want to change things, then create a movement. Make some noise. But
you have to show them how to make more money by doing something
differently than they're making by doing what they're doing.

Complaining in a USENET newsgroup is not likely to make a big
difference. Because there's no easy money in it.




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. What's difficult to
get through to people who haven't gotten to spend time behind the
curtain is that the assumptions are not made by Radio, but by the people
paying the freight: Advertisers, mostly, and, at least today, the
investors. Radio is the facilitator, not the driver. Advertisers are the
drivers. And most advertisters of any size, are driven by advertising
agencies who created the models you find so offensive. Agencies, seeking
to insure that they got the most bang for their buck, how to get the
most qualified impressions for each dollar spent with zero waste. Not
how to get the most impressions....or how to spend the least dollars,
but now NOT to spend a single dollar on a wasted impression.

For that you look at what's under the bell curve. The mean plus one
standard deviation, if that. And you do that for each of the parameters
under consideration, including geographic coverage by signal strength.
Then you take the intersection of all these subsets and that's the
target. The EASIEST, most cost efficient way of producing numbers.
Strictly commodity thinking.

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.

It's cold. But this is how the agencies actually spend money. And
advertisers call the shots. Radio would rather say, "look we've got a
signal from Mackinaw to Bloomington, with a population of 9 million.
$5000 a spot." Advertisers aren't going to buy $5000 spots beaming out
over 100 miles of water, or in towns were the signal strength is lower
than the spark noise of the neighbor's lawn mower. Not because there are
NO listeners there. But because those listeners arent' under the bell
curve. There are too few of them to be measured and targeted
efficiently. Now, those listeners MAY be otherwise targetable. But for
them, there are other media. Like the local stations in Bloomington. But
when negotiating with Chicago stations, that topic doesn't come up. And
stations in Chicago aren't interested in hearing that they can't get
$5000 a spot. So the advertisers work up these models. The ratings
companies deliver the figures, the ratings interpretation companies
package the numbers and the sale profiles and the agencies work up a
cost per point, or a cost per thousand figure. That's the figure they
buy the stations for. With all the non questionable or statistically
insignificant listeners excluded from the buy. Those listeners are
picked up on other buys....local buys....but not from the single station
with the big fringe.


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. But they don't create them. They get them from resources serving
the people with the money. Radio works these models based on the
assumptions as defined by advertisers for their own sales pitch, but the
don't sell what the advertisers don't want to buy. And the cold truth is
that they orphan listeners every day, because those listeners are of no
interest to the advertisers. The advertisers who tell the radio stations
what they're interested in.


Put that directly: Reach is not defined by the Radio Stations. Reach
is defined by the Advertisers, by what they're interested in.
Advertisers TELL Radio what Advertisers want to buy, and how the Radio
station's reach works for them. It does NOT come from Radio stations.


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.
What assumptions are made come from Advertisers. Not radio stations.
And certainly not consultants.


What's highly misunderstood is that Radio stations somehow create
programming to serve the public. This is only showbiz. The purpose,
especially after Telecom 96, is to create programming that will hold an
audience between advertisements. It's the advertisers' needs that the
offending assumptions are made to meet. Not the listeners.

Radio has two audiences....one is the listeners, the other is the
advertisers. The purpose of the radio station is to sell the listeners
to the advertisers and present the advertisers to the listeners. To that
end, only the advertisers needs matter. And the advertisers call the
shots. It's not the Radio stations that determine who are the important
listeners. It's the Advertisers. So to serve the listeners the
Advertisers find important, Radio looks only at those listeners. Instead
of all listeners.

I"m not defending it. But it is what it is.

Anything else is showbiz. And King Kong is never really more than 3'6".

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

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.

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.

"D. Peter Maus" wrote:



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.


His interest is in maintaining the status quo as defined by...
whomever. Advertisers don't care about radio; they care about
selling. They have specialists they turn to for information about how
to sell to rado. They have different specialists for information
about selling to TV, or newspapers, or direct marketing, or whatever.

His interest is in supporting the model. But it's more than an
interest to him; it's a slavish devotion to the model: His words!
"The numbers are the facts." Numbers only represent something. If he
clung to that belief in MY field, he'd be unemployed.

But you're not paying attention to tha that point. And that, too, is
beneath you, Eric.

No, I am paying attention to that fact. But I don't accept the idea
that Eduardo is "just doing what the advertisers want." He is part of
the problem and is part of perpetuating the problem. He is NOT part
of the solution.

Oh, his stations will make money over the next 3-5 years, and for a
corporate holding company, that's all that matters. All they really
care about is the quarterly statement for THIS quarter, after all.

But in the long run, it will decline. The holding companies will
eventually sell off or close down the stations, and radio will change.

But that change will come about because of his NEGATIVE impact on
radio.

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

"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.

"David Eduardo" wrote:



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.


But Mr. Lawson doesn't speak your jargon, and I was interested in
communicating with him -- not perpetuating your jargon.

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.

I was using the 11% figure from Peter, who has far more credibility
with me than you do.


The most you can have "in one building" are 8 in the US.

So Clear Channel's complex doesn't exist? Hmm.


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.

Oh, yeah, the WSJ is well known for getting waaay ahead of the curve.

Get real. They saw what you refuse to.

Maybe you should read Peter's post where he refers to the IBOC hash
decreasing the number of listeners he has. Clearly he's suffering
from delusions, too, then?

Get real.


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

I bet "nobody you know voted for Nixon," either. Or Bush. But that
famous statement is just as wrong as yours. When you look only at a
scewed sample, you will see a scewed result.

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.


No listeners, no advertisers. The advertisers don't bring the
listeners; it's the other way around.

--
Eric F. Richards

"The weird part is that I can feel productive even when I'm doomed."
- Dilbert