Zach Sang
Category: Features
Can the Radio Station Overcome Smothering Debt and Become a
Viable Business Again?
Mike Kinosian, Managing Editor
RadioInfo and Talkers
LOS ANGELES — Chalk it up to misreading the economic tealeaves or perhaps to good old-fashioned avarice, but several radio groups have fallen victim to the, “(S)he who has the most toys, wins” hypothesis.
“Winners” managing to run the board in today’s all too real game of Radio Monopoly are rewarded by becoming further ensconced in deeper, darker, debt.
Administer sodium pentothal to a cross-section of radio managers and the overwhelming majority will vociferously state that, owing to its cookie-cutter nature and mounting pressure to deliver grossly unrealistic percentages to the bottom line, the business is no longer fun. Read More
A Serious Loss for Howard Stern
By Steven J.J. Weisman
RadioInfo
Legal Editor
BOSTON — Sometimes it is, as Mel Brooks commented in his movie “The History of the World, Part One,” good to be the king. But other times it is not. Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed (and not too far off) “King of All Media” took a hit last week when the dismissal of his lawsuit against Sirius XM Radio, Inc. in which he sought more than $300 million in stock awards was upheld by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court.
Selecting Music – Some Stations Still Do It the Old-Fashioned Way
By Jeff McKay
RadioInfo
Special Features Correspondent
NEW YORK — In the era of corporate music directors, it seems that not all decisions about what songs to play and when to play them are made in company board rooms hundreds of miles away from the radio stations. For some, it comes down to good old-fashioned intuition, trust of their disc jockeys, ideas from the record labels, and the age-old rule of listening to the very people who listen to you – your target audience.
“We all sit down and talk music.”
2013 NAB Show: “Metamorphosis:
The Changing Face of Media & Entertainment”
By Holland Cooke
Radio Consultant
LAS VEGAS – Even before 90,000 attendees step into the sprawling Convention Center, they expect change. The Las Vegas Monorail robo-voice invites them to visit The Cloud Computing Pavilion.
Atop the escalator, more evidence of the “Metamorphosis” that is this year’s NAB Show theme: Publication bins stacked with hard copies are being replaced by a wall-o-magazine covers. Scan the QR code, and you get the digital version.
Riding AC’s Ratings Rollercoaster
Conclusion of a Five-Part Special Feature
By Mike Kinosian
RadioInfo
Managing Editor & West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES — All this week, managers, programmers, on-air talents, and consultants have sung the praises – and in some cases – noted potential pitfalls/shortcomings of today’s adult contemporary radio.
In the fifth and final chapter of this exclusive AC special, we recap the format’s recent overall ratings performance.
To say the past several months has been a rollercoaster ride for a typical AC in a PPM-measured market would be putting it mildly.
Sharp upticks followed by equally pronounced losses, however, were predictable, as the vast majority of stations whose call letters appear here halted regular music programming and substituted it with their annual all-Christmas music tactic.
Typical results were a ratings bonanza.
For the sake of clear perspective, we have listed each AC outlet’s 6+ stats over the last five PPM monthlies.
In order for a station to qualify in this recap, it needed to appear within the top 20 (6+) in any of Arbitron’s 48 PPM-measured markets (January 2013).
Stations shown are Arbitron subscribers. Even if satisfying the aforementioned ratings criteria, non-subscribers cannot be listed.
Always Competitive – Always Creative
Fourth of a Five-Part Special
By Mike Kinosian
RadioInfo
Managing Editor/West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES — History is the nuanced dual-purpose theme of the fourth chapter of our AC special.
For the first phase, the coordinates of your time machine need to be set back 20 years to the pre-consolidation year of 1993, where you will discover (or perhaps re-discover) that the radio industry had a copious amount of group owners, many of which held the licenses of literally just a handful of stations.
Back then, for example, Viacom was considered an exceptionally strong player with 13 sticks in eight major markets.
There were 10 Malrite outlets in a half-dozen large markets. Seven cities had Booth-owned stations, and Atlantic Radio Corporation was all of a four-station empire.
At that time, as in present-day, Clear Channel and CBS Radio were among the big boys; however, Clear Channel topped CBS Radio’s ownership by a stunningly modest (by today’s standards) 28 to 21.
Its largest AC facility in terms of market size in 1993 was KQXT in its home market of San Antonio.
To borrow an insurance institution’s slogan, it was an era with many, “Quiet Companies.”
Ferociously-Focused Format –
Always Consulted
Third of a Five-Part Special
By Mike Kinosian
RadioInfo
Managing Editor/West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES — Five front-line programmers and a superstar panel of on-air personalities shared their insights about today’s adult contemporary in the first two installments of this weeklong AC special feature.
Now, in part three, it is time for several of the industry’s leading consultants to assess adult contemporary’s temperature; review its past history; and predict what could be on AC’s horizon.
Today’s Format Talent –
Always Communicating
Second of a Five-Part Special – The State of Adult Contemporary Radio
By Mike Kinosian
RadioInfo
Managing Editor/West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES — It took a while, but the stereotype finally was erased: AC does not play elevator music.
Connection, of course, to that erroneous supposition was that many former beautiful music/easy-listening stations evolved to AC – but that was well over 20 years ago. Granted, some of those making the transition to a vocal-based rather than instrumental-intensive format were more tentative at first than others, but many in that original group wound up establishing themselves as exceptionally competitive adult contemporary players.
Another misconception has been that adult contemporary personalities are somehow all holdovers and devotees of the highly formalized “announcing” style of the Mantovani, Percy Faith, Henry Mancini, Peter Nero, and Living Strings beautiful music/easy-listening days.
Nothing stiff or robotic-sounding permeates today’s AC on-air personalities, who are just that – contemporary air talent who possess equally as much “personality” and enthusiasm as their counterparts in other formats.
In the second part of our adult contemporary special, insights regarding talent’s relevance in the format come from at least one representative of the major radio day-parts.
Each underscores that today’s AC air personalities are Always Communicating with their ample female listenership.
Female-Friendly – It is Always AC
First of a Five-Part Special – The State of Adult Contemporary Radio
By Mike Kinosian
RadioInfo
Managing Editor/West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES — Dyed-in-the-wool loyalists to stations falling under this particular format umbrella could care less what the initials stand for, but if pressed to deliver an answer, “Always Consistent” would most likely be a frequent, logical guess.
Various record label executives meanwhile might lament that the letters are code for stations that traditionally are “Always Cautious” when it comes to adding new music.
From a broad-strokes industry standpoint though, there can be little debate that “Always Changing” defines adult contemporary (“AC”) – the quintessential fragmentation genre, which has counted “hot,” “soft,” “mainstream,” “lite,” “smooth,” “rock,” “gold-based,” and even a far distant relative – “urban AC” – among its numerous offshoot flavors.
Playlist Size: Where Are You Among Competitors and Winners?
By Jim Jones
For Nielsen BDS, exclusive to RadioInfo
NEW YORK — Playlist size, the number of different songs in a playlist, is something we talk about every day. In this article, we’ll look at playlist size from a new perspective, and showcase a tool for uncovering and comparing playlist sizes on radio stations and other music providers.
Today we’ll cover:
- Two ways to measure playlist size (week and year)
- How stations’ playlist sizes vary in the same format
- Average playlist sizes of stations in Billboard formats
- Accessing a live database that continuously tracks playlist sizes
A week is the standard yardstick
Playlist size can be defined as the number of different songs actively rotating on a radio station, satellite channel, or a programmed streaming provider. It’s the number of different songs in active rotation that we’re talking about. But when the number of different songs is counted, it must be counted over a period of time: day, week, month, year, or some other time period. The default period in the radio industry for referencing music playlists is one week. PDs speak in terms of top-rotating currents, recurrents, or gold titles spinning X number of times a week.
We “freeze” our playlists for a week at the end of December, and report playlist changes weekly.
