*** updated to reflect correction of Tom Taylor’s original story ***
This is a wakeup call to Radio, and perhaps a wakeup call to or from the FCC.
How do you explain a new all comedy radio station coming out of nowhere to have a 4% market share in a major city after a couple months?
First what makes it different – the station is on the KMOX-FM/HD2 subcarrier – almost nobody has the equipement to hear HD2 channels after about 6 years and millions and millions of dollars put into promoting HD radio.
So how could it be that 300,000 people a month (the “cum”) have listened to a station that nobody can hear – in a city with a radio audience of about 1.6 mllion? The answer is that Cumulus has a low power FM translator K273BZ mounted on the same tower as Entercom’s KRBZ on 102.5 mHz. The Translator only has ERP of 250 watts, compared to KRBZ’s 100,000 watts.
K273BZ’s signal covers the entire city of Kansas City, contrasted with KRBZ’s signal which goes out as far as FM signals are possible (about 60 mile radius) – mostly rural areas with a number of smaller communities who probably have little interest in listening to rock music from “The City” – but can’t get their own FM stations because the frequencies are all filled up already.
The FCC has made a lot of noise about “localism” and is working on the rules for Low Power FM (100 watts) stations designed to serve small towns or niche audiences within a big city. Perhaps this is evidence that the public is tired of 100,000 watt mega stations blasting recorded music 21 hours a day with no human contact.
Historically, the FCC has been reluctant to play a role in choosing winners and losers – in large part because the FCC was created in 1934 and designed by the NAB (primarily NBC/RCA) to “lock out” non-commercial radio from the airwaves and give the NAB members exclusive monopolies, insulated from competitive pressures – radio still remains a cash cow, with operating margins around 30%… the main reason radio has been in trouble is the debt the big guys took on trying to eat up each other in bidding wars.
People in the radio business ignore this data point at their peril. Elvis Pressley and the Beatles are dead. So will be most of the people who grew up listening to them in 10 years. It’s time to rethink what you’re doing.
If I was king of the FCC, the first thing I would do is remove the restriction on Low Power FM stations that they have to be non-commerical. That would open up a whole new world of radio station owners (probably all those people who “used to work in radio”) that could justify the expense of building a transmitter and a studio, knowing that the station only reaches out 5 miles or so. LPFM currently is dominated by stations playing satellite religious programs and left-wing community activist groups. I would like to see a country full of “Tea Party” LPFM stations. That would likely take a big dent out of the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity franchise, which is why Clear Channel would fight commerical LPFM competition to the death.
If someday in the near future civilization starts to fall apart, having Rush Limbaugh on my local radio station talking about his fight with Palm Beach over having the lights on at night is of no value to my community.