Who's Turning Off Whom?

By Frank Absher

Sometimes it’s hard to explain the basics behind the decisions of radio management.

A few nights ago we hosted a small dinner party, and, being a typical guy, I decided to put on some background music through the whole-house sound system I installed (which was quite a challenge since the house is 115 years old).

My choice of formats was infinite since I’ve wired our Internet radio into the system. I chose something basic that I thought might appeal to the group: AOL’s Classic Soul channel. It was interesting to see the reactions.

One of the women commented how great the music selection was. Pretty soon one of the men echoed her comments. Then another woman, who was also impressed, asked what station we were listening to.

I explained that it wasn’t a radio station, per se, but rather an Internet music stream. That’s what started the questioning.

Why, they wanted to know, couldn’t we have a local station that played this great selection of music?

I began listing all the reasons: niche format, too specialized, not on any radar as a hot format, etc.

They weren’t buying it.

That’s when I told them no one in commercial music radio is interested in them as listeners. That prompted silence.

But it’s true! Here was a group of couples, each with a net worth well into 7 figures. If they want something, they buy it. They all grew up as part of an active music audience, seeking out what they liked. They are the ones who, if Springsteen or Billy and Elton come to town, buy the concert tickets without a second thought, in spite of the price. They buy stuff they want, even when it’s not on sale. And, they’re all over 50.
In the eyes of radio programmers, life has passed these people by.

So be it. The old farts around our dinner table enjoyed the automated, computer-selected play list, and one of the couples decided to buy an Internet radio the next day.

It should be noted that this purchase wasn’t driven by an advertisement heard on terrestrial radio. The decision was made because the couple concluded they no longer have any interest in terrestrial radio, just as terrestrial radio has decided it no longer has any interest in having them as listeners.\

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Mrs. A off to Richmond VA tomorrow ...

... to spend Easter Weekend with her Mom.  It's been a while since she's been back and this is a good thing.

Except for me and Tasha, who will miss her terribly until her return on Tuesday.  This will give us plenty of Roku movie time and time to work on LONG overdue projects for Mr. Absher.

Of course, we'll have to subsist on kibble, safe (maybe) leftovers and Taco Bell...

But we'll be okay (whine!).

Remember this guy from the 1990's KXOK All News try?

Congrats to Mike Majchrowitz, a reporter-anchor from KXOK's ill fated try at all-news in the early '90s, just named White House correspondent by Fox News Radio.

Effective Monday, April 5, Mike Majchrowitz becomes Fox News Radio White House correspondent. Majchrowitz joined FNR in 2005 as congressional correspondent, as Fox was gearing up to launch the radio network news service.

UPDATE:  This may or may not be a photo of Mike Majchrowitz.  More later.

For a company that has never made a profit ...

... how in the world can this be?

Tom Taylor reports:

Six top executives at Sirius XM got a combined compensation of $75 million last year.

-- The just-filed proxy for the annual meeting shows that CEO Mel Karmazin was rewarded far beyond his base salary of $1,250,000. His total compensation, including $7 million in bonus and $35 million in option awards, was $43,466,790. Last year, he made just $1,256,000 total.

-- President and Chief Content Officer Scott Greenstein improved upon his base salary of $850,000 with a $4 million bonus and about $8 million in option awards, for a total of $10,713,285.

-- President, Operations and Sales James Meyer started with a base salary of $950,00 and ended with total compensation of $14,876,932. His 2007 and 2008 packages were worth around $3 million each.

-- EVP and CFO David Frear made about $3.3 million total, which was less than the $5.8 million he hauled down in 2008.

-- EVP/General Counsel Patrick Donnelly did $2.9 million last year.

-- And onetime XM executive Dara Altman, now EVP and Chief Administrative Officer at the combined Sirius XM, made $2,315,506 last year.

Suspecting that the corporate guns are cashing out ...

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Most Americans Envision Newspapers' Demise

From MediaDailyNews:

As if the newspaper business didn't have enough bad news to deal with, roughly half of Americans over the age of 12 believe that the medium of print newspapers will cease to exist altogether at some point.

While the survey didn't ask for a predicted date of demise for print newspapers, leaving the time frame somewhat open-ended, 49% of respondents agreed with this statement: "In the future, there will be no more newspapers because everyone will be getting their news over the Internet."

Regardless of when this is supposed to occur, the belief reflects the widespread perception (among at least half the population) of a medium in decline.

What's more, the 49% figure is a big increase over just three years ago, when 27% agreed with the same statement. Arbitron Senior Vice President of marketing Bill Rose summed up the findings: "The average consumer's expectation that newspapers will 'always be there' has eroded dramatically since we began tracking this question in 2007."

According to the most recent figures from the Newspaper Association of America, total print newspaper revenues have declined a vertiginous 47%, from $46.6 billion in 2006 to just $24.8 billion in 2009.

The last couple of years also brought the closing of a number of large regional dailies, including the New York Sun, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Rocky Mountain News, Tucson Citizen and Cincinnati Post, as well as its sibling, The Kentucky Post.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Watching TV away from home ...

This story in MediaDailyNews tickled me:

Watching TV Away From Home Popular With Younger Demos.  Read it here.

Doesn't seem that long ago, but it was actually back in the dawn of TV-time (early 1950's) that watching television shows was not always done at home.  Back then, one or maybe two families on each block owned a television (they were really expensive) and friends and neighbors would congregate in one home to watch the black and white moom pitchers on the little box.

It was not at all unusual for "young viewers" to get together for milk and cookies and Howdy Doody at the rich kid's house.

Or folks'd watch a special news report on televisions set up in the window of the Firestone, Monkey Ward or Sears store, that always had speakers playing the programming to the outside.  Yup, just like in the movies (see above).

Now, of course watching TV away from home could mean anything from video in other people's homes to restaurants and bars and from WiFi-equipped netbook computers to satellite-equipped cars and G4 handheld mobile devices.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Live, from the Maryland Heights Post Office!

So late Thursday night I had to drop off a NetFlix envelope and decided to run it up to the local Post Office, where, much to my wondering eyes did appear a mysteriously unmarked white truck with an elevated mast (sounds dirty huh?),  filled with video gear, two tech-types and KTVI's reporter Sean Conroy typing away on a keyboard.

Gear was set up for a shoot to the talent standing by the drive-by postal boxes.

Like the good soldier I am, I pulled out and back around and asked what the story was.  This was the story.  I thought on the way home about coming back with the digital video gear to do a quick interview.

Nah.  Figured they could do it better than me and my Flip.  They did.  Nice, tight little package, but it never occurred to me that 12M Census Day was anything like 12M Tax Day. 

It wasn't.

JC's Daily Dose ...

Don't know if you're following Beck's (former) Bad Boy JC Corcoran online, but I suggest that you take a peek at his videos, posted daily or so, at JCOnTheLine.com. 

His politics haven't shifted an iota, he's still got an attitude and there are archives for any videos you might have missed.  Now he needs to develop an RSS feed so you can download this to your (whatever) media device.

How long will it be before one of his former sponsors gets the idea and plugs into this?

Best April Fool radio stunt ever ... done twice!

The first time we did this was on April 1, 1988.  We were on KIX104, playing country music with a great signal into St. Charles County, and it occurred to me that most transport that listened to us moved along I-70, across the Blanchette Bridge into STL County and so on to their final local destination.

I suggested early in the morning that we mention that there was a new toll for crossing the Blanchette Bridge, from West to East, but that truckers could avoid the toll by exiting South on Highway 94 and then crossing the Missouri River on Highway40/I-64.

We began talking about the toll and the detour and within an hour we were visited by Missouri State Police Officers who were clearly not amused.  We had jammed up the South-bound lanes of Highway 94 and made the Missouri River crossing of Highway 40 a real mess.  Traffic into STL was badly slowed because of our stunt.  Oops.

The stunt worked/not-guilty until we tried it again a couple years later ....

April 1st, 1990.

And we, at KIX104, did it all over again, in 1990.

Placed an imaginary East-bound-toll booth on 94 just before the Daniel Boone Bridge.  Made the East-bound traffic turn North at Highway 94.

Yes, cops responded.

Won't do it again.

Me and some other guy, KIX104 Christmas Party 1989 ...

That would be me on the right. Photo from then thanks to Deb in Sales. 

YAY! For the old baseball announcer guys ...

Whether or not they make an incorrect call sometimes, the old guys are still in place and continuing sports legends across America ... click the link for stats and photos and more.

From USAToday, by David Halberstam

If sportscasting was a young man's game years ago, it is no longer.

The number of announcers age 65 or older is growing. Even Dick Enberg, 75, who will call his final NCAA tournament game Saturday on CBS, will continue broadcasting as voice of the San Diego Padres.

Their longevity is a tribute to their talent, but with longevity sometimes come questions.

Dick Stockton, 67, was last season criticized for giving the wrong score on Fox at a critical moment late in a New York Jets game. Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News made the point that like athletes, announcers' skills erode with age.

New York Yankees' radio announcer, John Sterling, 71, has been misjudging fly balls for home runs for years. While national talk show host Dan Patrick said he thinks it's because Sterling is eager for a big call, it could also be his advanced age.

Even the illustrious Vin Scully, 82, was chided last season by Ted Green in the Los Angeles Times for misidentifying pitches. "Because he's 81 — and bless his Irish heart, who has perfect eyesight at that age? — Vinny is having a heckuva time correctly ID'ing the pitches," Green wrote.

There's no denying vision, hearing, reflexes and sharpness weaken over time. It was painful watching Chick Hearn use a walker to get to his broadcast position in the final year calling Los Angeles Lakers games.

Does that means it's time for some of them to hang up their mikes? Is the tyranny of the clock overpowering?

"The faculties at 70 are not what they were at 40," says Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports. "But talent has trouble conceding it."

"The whole Stockton thing was blown out of proportion," Pilson adds. "I blame the truck. No one listened to the announcers. The producer should have corrected Stockton immediately. I would have had the producer in my office first thing Monday morning."\

Scully was hospitalized March 18 when he got up from bed too quickly, fell and bumped his head. He was released the following day and resumed his duties broadcasting the Dodgers. As for his longevity and retirement plans, he says: "God made me who I am and enabled my career. My health is good; I take it year-to-year and I leave the rest in God's will."

His story is old school. He broke in with the Dodgers under Red Barber in 1950 and became the team's lead announcer by the mid 1950s. When the club headed to California in 1958, stations in Los Angeles suggested all sorts of play-by-play men. Walter O'Malley, the club owner, said defiantly: "I'm bringing Scully."

"When we arrived in Los Angeles, most of the fans really knew of only star players like Musial, Mays and Banks," Scully said. "I made it a point to collect anecdotes and off the field stories about the rank and file players so that fans would become more familiar with them."

Today, building a reservoir of anecdotes is so much easier, he says: "I've been carrying a laptop on the road for some 10 years because the internet offers a goldmine of information, anecdotal or otherwise. But there's so much available today that there's the constant temptation to provide too much information on the broadcast."

Scully takes note of other technological advances. "In the late 1950s, it was the advent of the transistor radio that fans brought to the Coliseum because the sightlines there were unfavorable," he says. "Now, in June, I see fans in the stands at Dodger Stadium watching the Lakers on portable televisions or wireless handhelds!"

Adds ESPN/ABC's Brent Musburger, "Because of the immediacy of the internet and because so many viewers are also online while watching, the scroll of out of town scores on the screen is less critical. The internet is changing the way telecasts are produced."

Septuagenarians and octogenarians are asked to keep up with the play of teenagers and young men, keep an eye on officials' calls, game clocks and more, all while directors are barking commands in their ears and asking them to synchronize on-air promotional reads.

To stay sharp and avoid dreaded mistakes, TNT's Marv Albert, 68, exercises regularly and spot-checks his work frequently.

"I look for certain things when reviewing my play-by-play on both television and radio," says Albert, who has called NBA games of both Dolph Schayes of the Syracuse Nationals and Danny Schayes of the Denver Nuggets. "Doing radio also keeps me sharp because it demands immediate description."

Musburger, 70, says he works harder than ever at preparation and uses only last names when doing play-by-play. "It's easy to interchange the first name of an athlete of yesteryear with the same last name of an athlete today. I play it safe."

Musburger told Sports Illustrated he believes he's actually getting better when asked if he had intentions to retire soon.

"They're going to have to carry Brent out in a pine box," says Brent's brother, Todd, who doubles as his agent.

With so many games on the radio and TV today, and an endless number of channels, there are enough announcers to make up an army. Most of the play-by-play voices are solid. There's little to criticize. They're young and they're paid a fraction of the personalities of the past.

But they lack the presence of Albert, Enberg, Musburger, Scully, Curt Gowdy and Keith Jackson. Today's play-by-play folks make the gig sound somewhat robotic. They are indistinguishable. It's hard to decipher one voice from the next.z

"Generally, storytellers like Vin Scully, distinctive voices like Verne Lundquist and stylized guys like Marv Albert survive," Pilson says. "Face it though, some just age better than others. But a mandatory cut off age would be silly."

This seriously distresses me ...

... but that whole First Amendment thing is rightfully in the way.  It's for occasions like this that I have on previous occasions advocated the re-implementation of the Fairness Doctrine.  Here's from The STL GlobeDemocrat:

Candidate's racist radio ads must be aired

KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 30 (UPI) -- A radio station in Kansas City, Mo., says it has no choice but to air racist and anti-Semitic ads from a write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate from Missouri.

KMBZ Program Director Neil Larrimore said Federal Communications Commission regulations and federal law require his station to run the commercials "without any edit," The Kansas City Star reported Tuesday.

"Our hands are tied," Larrimore said.

The ads are from Glenn Miller, a Springfield, Mo., man who once led the White Patriot Party and was described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white supremacist and former paramilitary organizer.

Under FCC regulations and federal laws, a "legally qualified candidate" must be given reasonable, uncensored access to broadcast airtime if he or she can pay the cost.

One of Miller's ads, aired during the an evening talk show, urges whites to "take their country back" and denigrates Jews and non-whites. Other ads include pejorative language about minorities, KMBC-TV, Kansas City, reported.

The radio station is running a disclaimer, which is allowed under FCC rules, before the Miller ads. The disclaimer cannot criticize or support the commercials, the Star said.

Miller filed the necessary paperwork with the Missouri secretary of state but hasn't filed with the Federal Election Commission and won't have to unless he raises or spends $5,000 or more, the Star said.

An FEC spokesman said Miller must file a statement of candidacy and campaign finance disclosures. If he doesn't, he could face sanctions and penalties, the spokesman said, adding that the federal agency can't force his ads off the air.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Listening:hearing=Watching:looking

Much has been written, by me and others, of the fact that there was a major paradigm (how I hate that word!) shift in radio ratings when the Personal People Meter showed up in the marketplace, replacing the old hand-written listening diaries.

Of all the issues surrounding the PPM, the greatest has been that the meters report everything they hear.  And that's not necessarily a good thing.  When a listener filled out a radio diary by hand, they had to rely on their memory to make their listing as accurate as it could be.  A listener was more inclined to write down their favorite station and not all of the stations they might have heard in the course of their daily business.

If they preferred Station A because of the music and.or personalities, that was likely the one they listed most often, with other, usually format-competitive stations, also included.  The didn't, typically, include stations with which they had only incidental contact.  Stations that they heard momentarily, while, say, in a store just did not get included, and for good reason.  These stations had no personal impact on them and had no place in their lifestyle or habits.

Now, though, with the PPM, while you wear that little listening thingie on your belt, every single encoded noise you hear gets recorded into the Arbitron database.  So what you listen to no longer matters as much as what you hear.  And, of course, that's just crap. There's a huge difference between listening and hearing and sooner or later this will all blow up and some sort of new way to measure, something like "intent of hearing," will fall inbetween the two.

Now it looks like move critics are beginning to see the same effect happening in theaters.  John Nolte wrote this at BigHollywood:

Have We Gone From Watching Movies to Just Looking At Them?

After a few weeks in theatres and a couple of reviews that have already posted here on Big Hollywood, you don’t need to read yet another write up of Tim Burton’s “Alice In Wonderland.” If there’s anything worth adding, it would be only that from my point of view Tim Burton’s Tim Burtonny-ness has officially worn itself out: The pale protagonist, the dark, askew production design, the Danny Elfman score, the way the camera speeds forward into or away from close ups. The director is aping himself. He’s not the first, won’t be the last, and that’s not the real problem with “Alice.”

The problem is that the story is wafer thin and not at all engaging. The other problems are that none of the relationships work, Alice has no character development (she enters and exits Wonderland an annoying feminist), and other than Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, not a single character is in the least interesting. About halfway the movie that old “Transformers 2″ feeling crept over me. The one that says, “This is like watching someone else play a video game.”

I never make box-office predictions. Sometimes, not even in my head. Over the years I’ve just been so wrong so often that it’s become a waste of brainpower. For instance, after suffering through the overwhelming punishment that was “Transformers 2,” I was sure it would tank in its second week. Who could recommend such an ordeal? Well, just about everyone. It went on to gross over $800 million worldwide.

Has something changed?

For a couple of decades now Hollywood’s tried to slip one past its customers and get ahead of word-of-mouth by spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising to gin up anticipation before dumping the film on a few thousand screens on opening weekend. This front-loading allows the studios to scoop up a ton of cash by packing in we suckers based on our excitement as opposed to what we’ve might have heard from friends and neighbors. You can’t blame the studios for that. But…

If the movie sucks, what’s supposed to occur is a dramatic second-week box office drop-off, and lately that’s not happening as often as it should.

Story-less junk like “Alice in Wonderland,” “Transformers 2,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks 2,”and “Avatar” just keep chugging right along as though they don’t suck. Which is troubling. Hollywood watches movie-going trends and if I’m spotting this, you can bet they are. And what are audiences saying?

They’re saying 3D spectacle is good enough and that there’s no need for filmmakers to put any serious time into producing a smart story, interesting characters, or sharp dialogue.

Dear Hollywood,
Just put a lot of cool, colorful shit on a huge screen for a couple hours and we will come.
Hugs & Kisses,
Your Audience

Hopefully, this is nothing more than a fad that will soon pass. Hopefully, before too many “great looking” but poorly scripted movies are past the point of no return in the production pipeline, audiences will tire of the fad, reject a few of these and wake the industry up.

At least that’s what we should be holding on to. The alternative — the idea that movies could now make money delivering only visual spectacle and nothing else is too depressing to seriously consider.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Over the past few years I've become a fan of David Mamet ...

... who, I have become thoroughly convinced, is probably the single best screenwriter and director in film today.  I have watched almost everything of his I can get my hands on and I don't remember a single project that I did not enjoy.

At this link is the text of a memo, in screaming caps and bad punctuation and everything, that Mamet sent to the writing staff of his TV show, The Unit.  There is sufficient weirdness in it to keep you captivated all the way through.  And if you're one of the two or three remaining radio people in the STL market, you might pay special attention to what Mamet has to say about keeping the audience's attention.

If you're into creative writing, it's a must-read.  And if you don't know who David Mamet is, check out his IMDB page.

Then let the viewing begin...and I should mention that the clip below contains some pretty rough language and might be considered inappropriate for the workplace (even though it sounds like a Clear Channel sales meeting) or around kids of a tender age.

Who Really Needs a Journalism Degree?

There are rumblings that journalism schools, as we have known them, are on the decline in America. It’s assumed that this is tied to the decline in job opportunities in newsrooms and magazines as those industries die an agonizingly slow and painful death.

Read it all here, at Big Journalism, to get all the linky goodness.  It might save you or your parents tens of thousands of dollars when you retrofit your ambitions for another, more useful, career entirely...

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Word is that somebody from STL ...

... is going to fill this position in Chicago:

from Chicago Radio ad Media:

Bill Gamble Fired From WCFS/WUSN

Written by Larz

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 10:26

Bill Gamble, the Program Director for WUSN-FM/US99.5 and WCFS-FM/Fresh 105.9 has been relieved of his duties and fired from CBS Radio as of this morning. Multiple sources with CBS Radio Chicago and Gamble himself have now confirmed the surprise exit.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)

Secret squirrel wants to hear from you ...

http://www.stlmedia.net/pages/sendrumors.htm