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.<\/p>\n
Before you can discuss this, you have to make sure which aspect you are actually talking about:<\/p>\n
– The former ABC radio AM megastations? (wABC, WLS, KGO, KSFO, WJR, KABC, WMAL, WBAP)
\n– the other smaller Citadel and Cumulus stations (KLIF, KCMO,KMJ, WPRO, etc)
\n– The Cumulus syndicated talk business \u2013 Don Imus, Chris Plante, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, John Bachelor, Red Eye Radio
\n– The Westwood One \/ NBC radio talk – Jim Bohannon and Dirk Vann
\n– The Progresive talk lineup from Jones radio \u2013 Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Sam Seder<\/p>\n
It’s a fairly safe bet that there won’t be radical change until after the November election \u2013 there’s just too much potential for political campaign advertising for the next few months.<\/p>\n
My guess is after the election, they will end their syndication business entirely \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
If my guess is right, then there is no product for the news talk format of stations to continue using \u2013 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. <\/p>\n
CBS sports or country music would be logical \u2013 but not “surprising”. Disney still retains a partial ownership interest in the ABC stations \u2013 Disney also owns ESPN Cable TV channel and a shrinking number of Disney children’s music stations. Neither of those seem likely.<\/p>\n
So here is my guess \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading