One pattern that shows up in radio ratings is the wide variation in how much people listen to the radio for news and talk. News/talk is huge in Chicago and New York.
But don’t try it in Columbus Ohio. A year ago, the owners of WMNI AM/FM went to all news on both stations that had been music stations. Probably they were hoping to grab political advertising dollars in a battleground state in the 2012 election – but they didn’t build a large local news operation – they just ran TRN’s national newscast all day, then Jim Bohannon and Redeye Radio overnight. The result? A 0.2% rating for the simulcast. Compare that to the 5.9% of WGN-AM in Chicago and 4.5% for WBBM-AM.
The AM station is going back to playing nostalgia music – but that format is a dead end as its fans are dying off or getting to the age where they don’t buy anything. Nostalgia is the step before you give away your AM station to a religious broadcaster for the tax write off.
For those of you who paid attention in school, you know that Columbus is the capital city of Ohio – you might think cities that depend on government and politics would have a thirst for news – not so.
There is growing evidence that the plunge in news/talk ratings around the country indicate that high information voters are leaving Rush Limbaugh and winding up on Public Radio stations. Public Radio stations tend not to subscribe to Arbitron which is expensive – and public radio measures its success by contributions, not ad revenue. Arbitron gathers ratings for public radio – but you only see those numbers if you pay Arbitron.
I listen to NPR news when driving the backcountry roads. Nothing too controversial is spoken or aired. A wide range of stories with actual reporters doing the interviews. There are hints of bias present and sometimes it is blantant. Still, better reporting than anything the BlameStream media has been shoveling into the minds of low-infor’s.
No need to leave Rush to get other perspectives, i.e., NPR, but you will get a different mix of news and stories. At least with Rush you know his biases from the get-go. I would imagine the downward trend in news/talk ratings is due to people who have started to accept the inevitable future and are not going to vote for either the D’s or R’s. If Rush would simply accept the fact that nothing less than a total evisceration of the Republican Party leadership and Apparatchik’s is needed NOW, and turn his attention to achieving that goal, his numbers would start growing again.
Much of it is traffic, Art. People turn on one of the three AM news stations in NYC to see if the backup times on the river crossings. If the Holland is 45 minutes and the Lincoln only 15, it helps them make the decision.
Always puzzled me that the Congress had voted to spend billions to build a bridge to a small island in Alaska that was home to a few hundred people that wanted to live alone on an island, rather than build the same bridge where people would actually use it, it would improve the economy, the air quality, and reduce the need to import oil from the Middle East.
This—> “I would imagine the downward trend in news/talk ratings is due to people who have started to accept the inevitable future and are not going to vote for either the D’s or R’s. If Rush would simply accept the fact that nothing less than a total evisceration of the Republican Party leadership and Apparatchik’s is needed NOW, and turn his attention to achieving that goal, his numbers would start growing again.”
Yes, Nidster is spot on. There are so many of us disenfranchised voters out here. I have to vote Republican in Virginia’s governor’s race to keep ‘clinton crony’ Terry McAuliff out of the Governors seat. It was bad enough with Tim kaine there, Virginia can’t weather another big spend liberal Dem. McAuliff is already running attack ads on TV.
I don’t want to vote republican cause they had their chance for real change, but blew it and it was more of the same. Just send good contracts to their friends. Dems get in and send contracts to their friends.
I don’t listen to Bill Bennett much anymore or mark levin, and certainly not Hannity.
I find myself showing up more for Alex Jones, some Michael Savage, Doug & Joe Haggman and Hawk.
I listen to Mark Stein when he subs, I will start Rush’s show to see if Stein will be there.
yeah when the talk radio goes away, I don’t know if there will be anyone like Rush Limbaugh to reinvigorate the AM band next time like he did in the late 80’s. It will probably be sold off to Jimenez broadcasting for ‘taco radio sports’ or something like that.
sad
Parrott
You’d better keep your mouth shut in Virginia, Parrott. lol
http://sexandthestate.com/why-ken-cuccinellis-oral-sex-law-means-no-libertarian-should-ever-vote-for-him/
That sums up pretty much where I’m at – I think US military spending is way out of control – it isn’t our job to protect EU shipping off the coast of Somalia. Why do we need 10 active carrier battle groups when submarine or ship launched cruise missiles have proven they can do most of the job. If our “friends” in a part of the world won’t give us use of their airports to bomb their neighbors, then maybe they should start their own wars and bear the costs. We’re broke.
LMAO !! why are they wasting time on this crap? There is so many more important issues out there that need to be resolved, like civil rights for Black Bears and whitetail deer. We’ll be bankrupt like Detroit before too long !
Geesh !
Don’t know how you find this stuff CC, pretty Good : )
Have a good one
Parrott
Parrott – Once the law is on the books, they need to put a monitor in every home and hotel room…. more jobs for government civil servants to enforce it, and our GDP will skyrocket as a result! lol
It’s not that AM talk is dying, lot of people are using iheart, tunein or streamingradioguide.com to listen to their favorite hosts. AM stations where I live have some good shows and some not so, it seems like every 6 months or so they change or drop shows and I lose interest for taking off my show. Another issue is that when you buy radios now days some come without AM bands wtf.
People under 40ish have no memories or nostalgia about listening to AM DX – hearing stations in New York, Boston, Saint Louis, Charlotte, Atlanta, Cincinatti, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Denver, Chicago after the sun set, listening to the static and signal fade.
Long distance listening was the attraction of AM (and Short Wave if you were even more of a radio geek). During the Reagan era, the monopoly of the 50 kw of the players from the 1920s and 30s (NBC, CBS, Westinghouse, ABC [NBC Blue]) were given the option to give up the 50 kw nighttime omnidirectional signals – the most obvious example was WOWO which was bought specifically to downgrade it so WLIB – a station on the same frequency could stay on after dark. The owners of the NY City urban station have since gone bankrupt.
With fully 2/3 of all US radio stations now giving digital clear signals over the Internet anywhere in the world, DXing has no novelty. The only real niche AM has is its availability in car radios – but Sirius XM now is over 25 million paying subscribers. People are voting with their dollars that they no longer will tolerate ad supported “free” radio chewing up 24 minutes an hour with erectile dysfunction ads and PSAs promoting the autism industry.
Rush breathed 20 years of life into a fading technology. Many in the industry still have shivs at the ready the moment Rush fails and will declare “See I told you so!” – and that will be the end. Some English language stations that kept their local community involved and didn’t jump on the syndicated bandwagon will survive if they are frugal until the old timers die, but the AM band will continue its slide to non-English immigrants, religious broadcasters (mostly Catholic) and 24 hr/day sports with no local content and advertisers.
AM radio as a technology would have a chance of the FCC depopulated the band and required the remaining broadcasters to switch to digital with a redundant signal lagged enough to cover most of the fading periods. One big problem is co-channel interference, especially at night.
A more high tech option would be for the FCC to license a networks – groups of frequencies – rather than single frequencies. By broadcasting the same digital signal on multiple frequencies, the listener would receive technical quality audio.
Problem is when you’re talking car radios, it’s going to be 10 years before you really have critical mass, but only if the technology is in every new car. A very large portion of the Sirius/XM monthly fee goes to the car company to grease the skids of getting high penetration – to get people to swap out an already installed car radio requires something pretty compelling, and radio seems out of ideas.
I’m not a radio engineer but have read that a lot of the problem with AM was caused but the digital HD signal on the adjacent channel bleeding through. I think most of the stations licensed for AM/HD turned it off
I think maybe for the first time in the year in Chicago, I turned on WLS on my car radio. My radio now is just turned off – I don’t commute and it is nothing but a distraction. It’s about a 20 minute drive to Walmart. I can’t tell you a thing I heard other than the CTA Blue Line is having delays. It’s a local show – they didn’t come back from the bottom of the hour until like :37… Commercials, “features”, the same traffic news every 10 minutes from some guy in North Dakota who has never been to Chicago.
On the way back, I found the FM button and heard a blurb on Public Radio about some TV show whose main character is a young man running a meth lab, something all young men should aspire to. It wasn’t interesting, but it wasn’t annoying.
One thing that’s a mystery to me (having never seen the show) is why so many “conservative” hosts became big fans of The Sopranos…
Since the sale of WBT they have been changing their schedule around. They carry Rush and I don’t know the overnight schedule. One of the hosts they dumped went in to a public whining session about the new owners – don’t know if he thought ‘his’ public rise up or some nonsense. They brought in two yuk-yuk feel good jabber jabber hosts who play off each other…… kinda Major Bowse for me. I’m turning the radio off more. Rush really was born to do this, can’t take the Beck hype and sell show anymore. There are 100’s (it seems like 100’s) of BBC documentaries available for free on You Tube. There are readings, lectures and classes on line. The other thing is my new business is experiencing double digit growth for the 4th year that is at a personal cost and I just don’t have the time or patience to put up with Savage schtick, the Hannity shout down, or NPRs can’t well all get along, don’t taze me bro, DickCheneyisanevilbastard view of the world.
For those who don’t care ;), WBT is one of the oldest AM radio stations. It (and the TV station) had been acquired at some point as an investment by Jefferson Pilot Insurance company. They were very fine old school “heritage” stations back in the 1970s/80s when I lived in the area.
Then another company named Lincoln Financial bought Jefferson Pilot for their insurance portfolio – they had no desire to be in the radio/TV business. They were hoping to sell off those stations in a year or two, but the value of stations had imploded, so they have been waiting for a recovery and just treading water.
In 2008, greater media (based in Boston) bought the radio station. They are the folks who run WTKK-FM and just recently gave up on Conservative talk in Boston. As far as zi know, there is no recent or pending ownership change – probably what happened is Greater Media replaced the program director who is pursuing the idea that people want to just hear “happy talk” about the TV show last night or sports, etc
Killer, I still listen to WBT here in Virginia, when the locals go off the air. Hope they don’t change it to much, they have some guy on there at 6pm that was good last fall and winter, but I havn’t listened in a while. Summer months more motorcycle and less car radio.
Yeah Art There was NO conservative talk at all in Boston area when I drove through there on the way to Canada. It was all sports talk or some financial & decorating advice show with Barney Frank.
I turned the car radio off. Stopped at the truck stop and bought a CB radio and antenna. Hell that was worse. They just argued on there about the New England Patriots not allowing Hernandez jerseys in Foxborough at patriot home games ! One other bunch was arguring that Whitey Bulger was set up by the FBI !
Canadian Radio was much better, if you could find english. LOL
They had the Local news at the bottom of the hour and country music (american) in Saint John NB.
I heard several good country stations in Canada.
Parrott
Parrott – There are some good Canadian stations and I think they have fewer commercials. There are some good talk radio shows, mostly from Toronto and commercial music stations, and the several Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC stations that are government funded and much like NPR down here. Art doesn’t include Canadian stations, but they are worth listening to on occasion. Here is one of the web sites I recommend to get started with Canadian streams: http://www.canadianwebradio.com/
Cool Thanks !
Absent a brain injury or the like, I can’t imagine a Limbaugh listener who believed Rush spoke the truth turning into a public radio devotee (at least not for news/talk programming).
Ow, my head!
President Johnson used to say that Rep Gerald R Ford, from Detroit had played football too long without a helmut.
See! There you go again, having to run down a fine city like Detroit just to make your point.
Looks like the resident’s money was used to keep them in poverty:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1ito29/detroits_operation_compliance_has_gone_after_more
One comment is way off base – having the city seize property for unpaid taxes does nothing except increase the costs and liability to the city. The value of the seized properties is less than zero. There are 78,000 abandoned buildings. They only have money to tear down 10,000 a year at around $8k each
You are right, Art. The high taxes makes it a one way migration outward. Just across the city line, the tax rates are lower, the schools better, the crime lower.
Seizing homes by the city just takes them off the tax rolls and causes the city to raise the rates on everyone else.
You don’t need an MBA to realize that walking away from a $5000 property is smarter than keeping it and trying to repair it or even paint it and get a bigger assessment.
The interesting news was rather than encourage businesses among the poor, the city tried to run them out of business.
Not much media attention to the fact that this city was run by the Democrats for decades. The media continues to embrace their policies and wants to see them expanded to include the rest of the country.
BTW – Michelin has a nice tire factory in SC and there are cars made in SC. Anyone heard of BMW, Daimler, Honda? http://www.scautoindustry.com/
According to available data it is clear the Dems, Unions and their ‘lackeys’ destroyed certain sectors of the American economy. But, hope springs’ anew my friends.
“According to Zillow’s 2nd Quarter Real Estate Market Reports, set to release next week, the Detroit metro began its turnaround in November 2011, after falling 52% from its peak. In June, the median home value was up 14.3% year-over-year and 72% of the homes sold during the month were sold for a gain. In the second quarter, values were up a whopping 3.3%. ”
Hells Bells, in the 2nd Quarter values were up a whopping 3.3%!!!!!!!! after suffering only a mere 52% decline. Where can I sign-up for more of these returns using the meager funds left over in my ‘withered’ IRA?
Actually Ford was from Grand Rapids, the Rich Republican enclave in Michigan . If you doubt that, there is an $11 million dollar museum to keep alive the memory of his years as President. He played football for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but I don’t think many people would consider that part of Detroit
If Wikipedia is accurate, World Net Daily should be asking to see the birth certificate of Gerald Forf
You are right, Art. I was sloppy there.
I did hear on CNBC this morning that Detroit – the city, not Ann Arbor – has the highest property tax and income tax rates in the entire state of Michigan.
The strategy seemed to be to keep raising them higher and higher hoping it would attract productive people from the suburbs. lol Amazing to me that the people running it are not in prison… instead of being happy for the decades of inflated salaries that no one is asking them to pay back, they want and expect the gravy train to continue into their retirement.
Beck did a blurb – I’ve been thinking of writing a blurb. When you can buy a house for $5k (no kidding – visit zillow), you have to have a pretty high mil rate to raise $3000 in school taxes.
Both Detroit and Flint started their spiral when they thought they could milk the car companies – like they’re going to move to South Carolina? – so they created a city income tax to loot the workers and property taxes to loot the corporations.
Detroit has a population now of about 800,000 – 13,000 city workers and 10,000 school employees with around 50,000 students. 5 of the top 10 employers are government entities. Blue Cross/Shield and 2 hospital systems fill out most of the rest.
447 listings for $1 to $5,000
Would you take a listing as a real estate agent to maybe earn half of a 6% commission on a $5k house?
Dream House
3 BR, 660 square feet (!)
$18 a month mortgage
$1,773 a year property taxes
Asking price $4,500
BATVAI = Buyer’s Agent to verify all information
Buyer to pay $895 transaction fee (19.8% of the listing price)
If you look on this map, it’s a few blocks South of the legendary 8 mile road. Your neighbors are probably city employees who are required to live in the city, but want to be as close to the city limits as possible.
There is a noticeable boundary at outer drive a few blocks to the south – north of outer drive the yards are green, south of outer drive, the yards are brown
Look what the city’s leadership is going when on the clock and working for the city. Headline from Matt Drudge, then the link
Matt: “BANKRUPT: Detroit City Council calls for federal investigation into George Zimmerman…”
Link: http://www.freep.com/article/20130723/NEWS01/307230095/
I was astounded that they keep raising taxes to harass non violent residents. I read that it costs $50,000 to get a wiretap on a phone, $50,000 per year to keep a pot smoker in prison, and more than $50,000 in police, prosecutor, judge and public defender costs to send him there. Of course, that criminal record keeps him from getting a job once he is release. Detroit focusing on jobs for their government employees instead of replacing streetlights or repairing broken ambulances.
$5,000 for a house in Detroit? That is wasteful, Art. I can get you 15 for your $5,000, and you will still have money left to go see the Detroit Lions outside the city limits where the finances are not managed by these Democrats:
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-houses-you-can-buy-in-detroit-for-500-or-less-2013-7