Jerry Del Colliano continues to shake the bushes with the rumor that Cumulus will soon pull the plug on its talk programming – and claims to have insight into the “surprising” format that will replace it. (I am not a subscriber, so I don’t know what he is actually predicting) Lending credibility to this rumor is that a new person has just been put in charge of programming at KGO And KSFO in San Francisco – he was the guy who messed up WGN in Chicago after Tribune was taken over and let Randy Michaels have his way with WGN.
Before you can discuss this, you have to make sure which aspect you are actually talking about:
– The former ABC radio AM megastations? (wABC, WLS, KGO, KSFO, WJR, KABC, WMAL, WBAP)
– the other smaller Citadel and Cumulus stations (KLIF, KCMO,KMJ, WPRO, etc)
– The Cumulus syndicated talk business – Don Imus, Chris Plante, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, John Bachelor, Red Eye Radio
– The Westwood One / NBC radio talk – Jim Bohannon and Dirk Vann
– The Progresive talk lineup from Jones radio – Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Sam Seder
It’s a fairly safe bet that there won’t be radical change until after the November election – there’s just too much potential for political campaign advertising for the next few months.
My guess is after the election, they will end their syndication business entirely – Rush Limbaugh (Premiere) is still on some stations, but both parties would probably be willing to walk away. I expect Michael Savage and Mark Levin will be cut loose. Don Imus is not on many Cumulus news/talk stations.
If my guess is right, then there is no product for the news talk format of stations to continue using – so what would be a surprising format change for them? What do we know about the Dickey brothers? They’re based in Atlanta, they are frugal beyond rationality, and they’re willing to think “out of the box” and not fond of the Arbitron ratings based advertising business model.
CBS sports or country music would be logical – but not “surprising”. Disney still retains a partial ownership interest in the ABC stations – Disney also owns ESPN Cable TV channel and a shrinking number of Disney children’s music stations. Neither of those seem likely.
So here is my guess – contemporary Christian music – a.k.a. K-Love or a similar competing service. Playing “Jesus Loves Me” music could be a very successful for profit business model (Salem is for profit, Klove is not). Royalties are inexpensive, hosts to play the music will work cheap, and success is based on people sending you money, not on advertiser revenue based on how many rating points you have. Christian music would not be a difficult transition for conservative talk listeners.
Cumulus has avoided formats targeted at nonwhite people. They just converted a station in New York City to play urban music, but I can’t see that Working out of large a.m. radio stations. It’s also possible they could sell the stations to somebody like Univision who would turn them into Mexican sombrero music stations.
Wow, terrestrial radio is just over. Sad, but they did it to themselves.
I don’t know that Radio is over yet. There are many death throes to come. We lost a personality on a local station and he swears it is budget driven. This is a Clear Channel station and I suspect they are leaning less conservative these days and the budget is an excuse to remove a controversial personality. I see the entire politically correct spectrum running roughshod over every station long before the last radio wave is transmitted.
It’s an attack on conservative talk radio. The libs own tv and hollywood- they’ve been eyeing a way to get rid of the conservatives on the radio, so here’s the answer! Buy the syndicators and pull the plug on the shows. Soon conservative talk shows will only be heard on independent stations and the internet- effectively eliminating the genre. The next step is to regulate the internet, so the conservative message can’t be heard there either!
The responses so far appear to have nailed a key mission objective of Cumulus to pull the plug on its talk programming in order to do what? Cumulus claims to have insight into the “surprising” format that will replace it, which will be “Surprise, surprise, surprise, as I predicted several months ago they will air sources that feed us inaccurate information, news, analysis, and quotes from our lameasssssssss politicos in exchange for being kept on the air by an endless parade of mindless PSA’s.
So the sort of demo that has supported Rush, Hannity and so on… in many cases may be stuck with a) local, b) infotainment or c) NPR.
They could always run the ‘Religious Catalog’ show from EWTN.
Here is my list of where Rush’s audience will dissipate to instead of live radio:
1) Fox News TV
2) SiriusXM
2) cable TV Sports
3) NPR
4) the cemetery
5) Facebook
6) podcasts
The problem with Podcasts is – while it is more convenient from a time standpoint – you quickly realize how little content three hours of Rush Limbaugh actually contains. Without the hour and 12 minutes of commercials and the local news to distract you, Rush’s repetition becomes painful. He has said it many times that his strategy is the same same thing over and over again in slightly different ways – because that’s how people will accept it as the truth, and ultimately even think that they came up with the idea.
Rush Limbaugh fanatics get torn to shreds the moment they leave their fortress – other than repeating “what Rush said”, most don’t know why they believe what they believe. It’s a lot like the Bible – I believe the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible.
Why would anyone listen to radio when they can watch something on television? The answer used to the – people listen to radio in the morning on the clock radio, and listened while they were driving their car and couldn’t be distracted by a video screen. Another reason – and a significant constituency – is blind people. When you do not get overwhelmed by the video input to your brain, all TV is painfully idiotic. If you don’t believe that to be true, turn on your TV while sitting in a chair facing the opposite direction for an hour without turning around to look at the screen. TV is hypnotism with a superhighway straight into your brain.