Archive for the ‘Syndication’ Category

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Betting on the future

Friday, October 9th, 2009

This is a followup to the “Why Talk is Moving to FM” post about a week ago.

I’m actually going to encourage you right wing nuts (and you know who you are!) to read the Huffington Post, specifically HERE.  Tamara Conniff is a former editor of Billboard Magazine, which means she really knows the music business and is not a light weight.

This article lays out the details behind the Performance Rights Act currently making its way through the U.S. Senate.  She supports the act, but lays out a factual description of what it is and what it could do.

While she supports the idea of the radio stations paying performers to play their music, she also raises the red flag of FM radio turning into a wasteland of right wing talk radio, sports talk and Spanish language programming.

(I tend to think some radio stations and companies would fail, but others would adapt and thrive even paying the “tax”)

Anyhow, put yourself in the shoes of a scared radio company owner.   You’re looking at the possibility that this thing still might pass.  If you wait for the 9th inning, and then decide to switch your music FM station to Talk, by that point the best syndicated shows and sports networks will already be pinned down in your market and you won’t have anything to put on the air (unless you produce it locally)

KKAT-AM in Utah and WNUW-FM in New Jersey (Philly area) have joined the list of recent switches from Music to Talk.

Look at the rate of this “format flips” as a barometer of if the NAB’s members think they are going to lose the fight with the music industry.    If they “flip” now, they can pin down the better shows to secure their future as a talk station.   If the performance rights act doesn’t pass, they can always flip back to computers playing random music in six months or a year (unless of course, they have a surge in ratings when they put on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh :)).

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Posted in Radio Business, Radio Ownership, Radio and Race, Syndication | No Comments »

The End of “Radio as we know it”

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

There is a news item today in Tom Taylor’s daily radio newsletter that is very important and will sooner or later determine if this web site becomes really important or have no purpose.

Since the first days, I’ve had the vision that “Internet Radios” are the future of radio.   They are a device you can buy today (C. Crane offers several versions) that lets you listen to streaming radio without needing a computer and in ways that are more familiar – like being integrated into a bedside unit that behaves like a conventional clock radio.   The radio connects to the internet using your existing wireless WiFi (802.11) router, but I would expect that to evolve into working with 3G and 4G wireless used now for cell phone internet access.  Down the road, your car “radio” will probably work based on this technology too, so you can listen to any radio station in the world on your way to work (including internet-only radio)

The big flaw to Internet Radios is that there is no standard way to tell them how to connect in order to stream (the basic focus of this directory).    The manufacturer of the radio maintains their own proprietary list of “supported” radio stations, usually limited by the technical capability of the radio (is it mp3 only?  WMP?).   Since you are not using a computer, any player that requires you to have Flash or javascript or a web browser won’t work.  And radio stations constantly change the URLS…. and what is the business model for a radio station to stream to a non-computer that can’t show ads?

So today’s news is that a group over in Europe is starting to work on developing a standard for internet radio, so that your radio would not be dependent on a list from the manufacturer and radio stations could publish their connection information so that changes are picked up automatically.

This has definitely got my attention :)

Posted in Opinions, Radio Business, Streaming Radio Guide, Syndication | 2 Comments »

Podcasting John Batchelor

Monday, August 24th, 2009

If there ever was a radio show that screams out “Podcast me”, it is John Batchelor.   John’s show(s) are currently 4 hrs of intensely dense information on each Saturday and Sunday night.    No matter how intensely you listen, you will miss something important. 

It isn’t a normal “call in” show – it is John talking to experts in various subjects about world events, the economy and history.  John’s background is history (He works for the , so his strength is putting current events in the context of thousands of years of history – like explaining how Alexander the Great got bogged down in Afghanistan and what that should mean for our plans today.   John works for (with?) the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, which is how he is able to attract so many high quality guests.

Some terminology – a “podcast” is a subscription to a multimedia service.   To use the analogy of newspapers, you subscribe to a podcast by  signing up for an “RSS Feed”.     The RSS feed is when you call the newspaper to subscribe, the Podcast is what the newspaper carrier puts something on your doorstep each morning.

There are several ways to subscribe - Internet Explorer 8.0 has the ability to subscribe (under Tools / Feed Discovery), you can download the free iTunes program from the Apple store, or several other methods.   Firefox and Mozilla browsers also incorporate RSS feeds. 

Once you have signed up for the RSS Subscription, you are notified when a new episode becomes available (or you can check, depending on the software).   You generally can either tell the software to always fetch the media, or only download it when you ask for it.    Depending on the software, if you download a file, you probably have to wait for the entire download before it will start to play (which can take several minutes)

If you use iTunes, it becomes trivial to transfer the podcast material into your MP3 player so you can listen to a prior show at your convenience, like while running or plugging it into the MP3 jack on most modern car radios.    You can stop, rewind, and the dreaded “fast forward” through the material.

http://www.johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts/

This page has an RSS link (in the upper right hand corner), but it’s a feed of John’s  blog (also worth subscribing to).  His audio is available from several of the stations (WABC is probably the best choice) that carry the show on a more timely basis than his own web site (the most recent show is from August 9th)….   posting the podcast on a timely basis is important if you want to develop a following.

For the entity doing the podcasting, the advantage is that it is much cheaper and simpler to do than live streaming.    Since podcast download is done in the background, or done on-demand when the listener wants it, the download traffic can be much better managed and doesn’t require the high quality bandwidth of real-time streaming.   Depending on the quality of the audio and the # of listeners, the cost to the streamer is about $.01 per hour

The advantage to you should be obvious (plus generally most commercials and local news are stripped from the podcast)

Podcasting still isn’t as obvious as it should be, but once you figure out how to do it, it will save you a lot of time and put you in control of listening – which makes me wonder why a radio station has any interest in doing it :)  Look for some indications here in the future of trying to make it easier to find podcasts.

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Posted in Radio Business, Streaming Radio Guide, Syndication | 1 Comment »

The Rush to FM Talk

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

Several influential Democrats for a variety of reasons are pushing to remove the exemption that allows radio stations to play music without paying the artists royalties for their work.  Internet streamers and Sirius / XM have to pay, and the NAB was influential in making sure they would have to pay to keep them from competing with “real” radio.

It’s pretty widely expected that if the “Performance Tax” passes, that many FM Music stations will switch to FM Talk, a process that was well underway already, as radio owners nudge their older listeners to the FM band and try to attract younger FM listeners to talk.

(When you go to a music concert and buy a ticket, do you consider that a “music tax”?)

If this does happen, the radio stations that switched early will have the best choices of which syndicated talk programs they carry on FM.   I just got through adding 3 FM stations that are switching to FM talk or adding new FM simulcasts.   Other AM talk stations are adding FM translators, which the FCC recently encouraged AM stations to start doing.

If AM Talk mostly moves to FM, what will be left on AM?  One of the big purchasers of AM radio stations in the past few months have been local Catholic groups, with encouragement from Rome.  The times, they are a changin’

Posted in Localism, Radio Business, Syndication | 1 Comment »

Quinn & Rose vs Bob & Tom

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

I noticed today that in the 8-9 AM hour (Eastern), Bob & Tom is now the number one show – pushing ahead of Bill Bennett’s Morning in America and leaving Quinn & Rose in the dust.  I’m not 100% sure why.

What is odder is the during the 6 and 7 o’clock hours Quinn and Rose are doing much better.   I wonder if this is a case of old people get up earlier…. or do people switch to Bob & Tom when they go into work?

Quinn and Rose have failed in their attempt to become syndicated – they have lostt most of their affiliates.    As much as I generally like Q&R, it has some very basic problems – the main one is that Quinn is still doing a local show.

While he is talking about national issues, he does things like make reference to local time (“around 8:30 we’ll talk about….”)  that’s a huge no-no in syndication - it confuses listeners in another time zone. They also talk a lot about their experiences living in the Pittsburgh area.   Having grown up there (my family left in 1970), I get many of the references (like the Bridge to Nowhere to the North Side), but 99% of the potential audience won’t.

Why do you think Q&R should do to have a better shot at being nationally important?

Posted in Syndication | 6 Comments »

Commercial “load”

Friday, July 24th, 2009

An hour has 60 minutes (most of the time).    If you are thinking there are way too many commercial on News/Talk stations, here are the facts.

The “news break” at the top of the hour frequently is loaded with mostly commercials, not news.   Since each station is different, I’ll just list the total.

Also, once you know what the “show clock” is, you’ll find many stations try to “cheat” on commercials, doing things like rejoining late, playing a local commercial over top of the network ad they are supposed to run, failing to return to the show for the final segment, etc…   or using digital processing to “speed up” a taped show to stuff in a few extra local commercials.

And people in the radio business don’t understand why advertisers don’t trust them… and why radio is going broke…

Show Local Ads/News Network Ads
Rush Limbaugh 17:00 5:00
Glenn Beck 17:00 5:00
Dr. Laura 16:00 5:00
Hannity 19:20 6:00
Bennett Morning in America 18:00 5:00
Salem Talk 17:00 5:00
Allen Hunt 15:00 6:00
Neal Boortz 18:30 5:00
Clark Howard 18:30 5:00
Thom Hartmann 15:00 5:00
Bill Press 16:00 5:00
Andrew Wilkow (XM) 3:00 9:00
Bob & Tom 18:00 1:00

So the range is from  20:00 to 25:20

of which News  might be 3-5 minutes  per hour – if the local station follows the rules.

Posted in Radio Business, Streaming Radio Guide, Syndication | 2 Comments »

Melanie Morgan Debut Today

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Washington Times has hired Melanie Morgan to co-host their morning news show.  The Washington Times is a significantly Conservative publication (they also publish Insight Magazine).

Melanie Morgan used to co-host the morning show in KSFO with Lee Morgan, but was let go for budget reasons.

KSFO is carrying the show this morning.  WTNT-AM, which is supposed to be the “flagship” station is streaming Mancow.   That might just be a technical problem – anyone within listening range of D.C. that can confirm if its on “over the air”?

Melanie is going to have a hard time keeping this a “straight news” program.  Her Conservative politics took about 3 minutes to show up :)  But that’s a good thing – we need a louder Conservative voice in the morning.  Bill Bennett is a nice guy, but other than getting people to read books, but he isn’t going to get anyone under 50 years old excited.

Several stations converted to News/Talk just to be able to carry this show, but I’m going to admit I was unprepared for today.   If you hear the show on any other stations, please let me know.

Sounds like they are trying to mimic Fox TV News…. lots of “Swooshing” sounds and “breaking news”

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Posted in Programming Updates, Radio Business, Syndication | No Comments »

Exploring Sirius and XM Online

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

CAUTION:  I’ve only been using Sirius/XM online for 3 days.  Don’t make any purchase decision  based on my experience.   When I did a “dry run” of subscribing to XM Online, it directed me to sign up for Sirius online, which has a much smaller list of channels.  Even then, when I tried the link to sign up for Sirius Online, the server was down.   If they give you a free trial on a service you can’t buy, that’s a problem.

Sirius/XM offers a subscription based service to stream their programming, even if you don’t have a Sirius/XM radio.  Both Sirius Online and XM Online services offer a 7 day free online trial, so I’m poking around in it and writing down my observations.

First thing that I’ve learned is some of the XM channels are not available for streaming – specifically channel 158 that carries Quinn and Rose and 165 that carries Glenn Beck.    Clear Channel is part owner of XM, and doesn’t allow XM to stream their channels onto the internet.  

I may start adding in programming schedules for the XM channels.  If you have read my blogs for the past few months, you should have a pretty good idea why.   If you are mostly interested in News/Talk, XM is your choice.  XM is carrying all of the important Sirius talk channels, but Sirius only carries the XM channels on the internet, and only a few of them.  Several of the Sirius radio news/talk channels also available on XM are not included in the internet streaming package.

So what can you hear on Sirius/XM if you threw your regular radios away?

  • Mark Levin
  • Sean Hannity
  • CNN / CNN Headline
  • Fox News Radio
  • Bloomberg
  • Dr Laura
  • Dave Ramsey
  • Rusty Humphries
  • Laura Ingraham
  • Thom Hartmann
  • Bill Press
  • Lynn Samuels (formerly on WABC)
  • Andew Wilkow (formerly on WABC)
  • Howard Stern
  • Opie & Anthony
  • BBC
  • C-SPAN audio
  • Fox TV audio
  • Bill Bennett
  • Ed Schultz
  • Radio One (Joe Madison, Al Sharpton)
  • ESPN, ESPN Desportes

What can’t you hear on Sirius / XM?

  • Rush Limbaugh (Internet, Subscription)
  • Glenn Beck (Ch 165 Radio only, Internet, Subscription)
  • Michael Savage (Internet, Subscription)
  • Randi Rhodes
  • Quinn & Rose (Ch 158 Radio only, no internet)
  • Jason Lewis
  • Your local mornng sports/weather/traffic wakeup show
  • Salem (Gallagher, Medved, Hewitt, Prager)
  • Coast to Coast AM
  • Dennis Miller
  • Neal Boortz
  • Bob & Tom
  • Jerry Doyle
  • Mancow
  • Steve Harvey
  • Jim Rome

So most all of those things you can’t get are Clear Channel / Premiere programs.  

In the early days of Sirius/XM, there was serious retribution against hosts that made their show available on satellite, with terrestrial stations dropping their program and overtly saying that was the reason (Glenn Haege comes to mind as an example).   That makes the NAB claim that a Siruis/XM merger would reduce choices for the listener sound pretty hollow.  It was never about what the listener wanted. 

A really obvious possibility now that I’m a little familiar with Sirius/XM is that XM would acquire Premiere from Clear Channel, either voluntarily or if the company is broken up… or at least rights to carry Premiere’s programming.   Howard Stern’s contract runs out in 2010 which could free up $50 milion/year.  Just from my little poll, it’s pretty clear Rush Limbaugh could easily fill that void and bring in a flood of new subscribers, albeit an entirely different demographic – old rich white men instead of young unemployed punks.   Wouldn’t be a hard decision for me.

It looks like XM has issues with incorrect schedule information on programming on the Sirius channels they are carrying.  Sirius/XM integration still has a ways to go

At 11 pm (Eastern), XM Online brought down all of its streams for “server maintenance”

XM tracks that you’re logged in by pushing a browser cookie, and the cookie times out very quickly, forcing you to relogin.   The details of the Sirius Online service suggest is even more aggressive about pushing you offline “to protect the experience for others”.  That has nothing to do with it – advertisers won’t pay for ads when the listener may not actually be at the computer.

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Posted in Programming Updates, Radio Business, Streaming Radio Guide, Syndication | 3 Comments »

Quantcast ratings….

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Having just done a chat blurb, the thought hit me to go gather quantcast rankings for all of the major radio hosts, and see how they rank. 

Show SRGuide Count Quantcast Ranking
— Facebook n/a 5
— Myspace n/a 9
— Oprah n/a 48
— Drudge Report n/a 134
— Sirius/XM n/a 1,528
1) Rush Limbaugh 6,676 1,721
2) Glenn Beck 5,641 2,116
— Radiotime.com n/a 2,131
— Howard Stern n/a 5,234
3) Laura Ingraham 4,590 15,039
— Bill O’Reilly n/a 4,203
4) The Savage Nation
with Michael Savage		 3,716 6,297
— Bob & Tom n/a 9,674
5) Sean Hannity 1,813 5,832 
— Steve Harvey n/a 12,206
— Streaming Radio Guide n/a 19,440
6) Dr. Laura Schlessinger 1,739 34,920
— Ryan Seacrest n/a 42,184
7) Mark Levin 1,327 44,266
8) Dennis Miller 1,251 61,397
9) Neal Boortz 816 8,013
10) Quinn & Rose 781 139,265
11) Dave Ramsey 618 3,372
12) Coast to Coast AM with George Noory 606 2,937
13) Morning in America with Bill Bennett 578 93,598
14) Michael Medved 554 122,013
15) Jerry Doyle 461 86,031
16) Jim Rome 410 48,378
— Tom Joyner n/a 58,339
17) Rush Limbaugh’s Week in Review 348 n/a 
— Opie & Anthony n/a 95,725
18) Rusty Humphries 334 129.715
19) Mancow 328 unknown….
20) Dennis Prager 312 138,539
21) Monica Crowley Weekdays 312 177,789
22) John Gibson 285 no web site 
23) Coast to Coast Rewind
  with George Noory		 234 n/a 
24) Stephanie Miller 229 131,653
25) Mike Gallagher 222 62,153
29) Clark Howard 172 5,696
26) Kim Komando 212 2,212
31) Bob Brinker 222 62,164
33) Tammy Bruce 164 208,160

Glenn Beck has been #2 for quite some time now.  I think he insists on saying #3 to be a smaller target.

Here’s another juicy tidbit – Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have been directly measured by Quantcast, but only since March 2009. This just backs up my theory both of them are actively preparing for a future without terrestrial radio if it comes to that.

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Posted in Radio Business, Syndication | No Comments »

“Government Media”

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Rush gets it.

“MainStream Media” and “Drive By Media” has been replaced with his new descriptive term “Government Media”.   The “Fourth Estate” has now decided its job is to support the Obama Administration and distort or suppress any news which suggests the Administration is failing.

Bloomberg was the first I noticed that had stepped into that role.  Back in the first quarter, housing sales were off 40% year to year, but Bloomberg was announcing a “turnaround” when housing sales went up from January to February by a few percent… but that’s because people don’t buy houses in the middle of winter – that’s just a normal seasonal variation- sales were still down 40% from February 2008. 

Bloomberg runs the terminal system used to access the Fed’s “temporary” Commercial Paper Lending Facility.   Bloomberg is still a valuable source of information, but read anything from them with a skeptical eye. 

If you’re thinking Fox News is going to tell you the truth, think again.   The Fox News broadcast I just heard mentions that “the New GM” has a tentative deal to sell the Hummer – and glossed over the fact that the buyer is in China, which is a very relevant fact.   It had to be a conscious editorial decision to suppress that controversial detail.

Rush apparently has also realized he is at serious risk of falling under the thumb of Tim Geithner via Clear Channel’s toxic debt.

I think I’ll just start posting links to examples…

AP: Analysis: Geithner’s style less confrontational - what a wonderful job Geithner is doing in China, citing no actual facts, and overlooking that he was laughed at by a speech to a group of College Students.  All the article really says is “Geithner is not Hank Paulson”.

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Posted in Opinions, Radio Business, Syndication | No Comments »

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