FM TALK: NOWWWWWWWWWWW IT BEGINS...

[Holland Cooke]

Many thought that the specter of music royalties might, finally, move Talk to FM.
Instead, it appears, financial desperation will.
And, in-the-process, incumbent AM talkers can end-up better-off.

This morning's headlines bring news that -- after a 20-year affiliation -- Rush Limbaugh will be leaving Curtis Media's WPTF/Raleigh and WSJS/Winston-Salem.  Ditto other Premiere programs.

'Hard to believe that this is just "a North Carolina thing," eh?
ANY Rush-affiliated competitor in a Clear Channel market is now a time bomb. 

Choking on debt -- and smelling-the-coffee that "music radio" is becoming an oxymoron -- Clear Channel will likely replicate this template elsewhere, putting their-own programming on their-own stations, in markets where, until now, they've been competing with it.  'Makes sense to Gordon Gekko guys who hold the debt, who call this "vertical integration."

Implications:

1.  Ironically, Clear Channel -- the company many blame for "breaking" radio -- may unwittingly help "fix it" by doing this.  Way-back-when, Rush was a cost-saver, on the underdog station in most markets.  Stations could cover 3 weekday hours without the expense of a local host.  Then, as The Big Guy got bigger...and bigger...so did his clearance fee, and he ended up on alpha-dog stations in each market, trophy call letters.  Now, in many markets, The Rush Limbaugh Show costs more than a solid local host would.  So, as Clear Channel replicates this template elsewhere, one of the unintended consequences may be the restoration of live/local programming to those hours, on Talk Radio's biggest stations.

2.  Weekends will suck less.  Premiere is cramming-down weekend Rush and Sean Hannity re-runs.  Can Glenn Beck replays be far-behind?  An Arbitron diary comment I read, referring to a Limbaugh affiliate, said "on the weekend, it sounds like they think nobody's listening."  These six weekend hours -- nine if re-Beck is crammed-down -- are hours when affiliates could otherwise be doing more-weekend-appropriate, more-Sales-friendly programming, the how-to buff-stuff that's more in-synch-with listeners' lifestyles than yet-more blah blah blah from Thursday.

Sometimes, things have a way of working out.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

PS: Back in North Carolina, Clear Channel is tipping-its-hand in Greensboro: http://rushradio945.com
'Eager to hear that TBA guy.

PPS: Even under-the-circumstances, the Curtis/Raleigh gang sure hasn't lost their sense-of-humor:
http://www.rushradio1061.com/

[Signal_Faded]

In the cases of Greensboro and Austin (where regional Mexican KHHL-FM flipped today) you have to wonder if some of these are preemptive strikes, in future PPM markets, where they feel that spoken word will work better than the Hispanic programming?

[Holland Cooke]

Talk BELONGS on FM, "for the right reasons:"
1.  80% of TSL is on FM.
2.  FM covers a Metro better than many AMs, whose footprints change month-to-month.
3.  News/Talk/Sports programming is more-Sales-friendly than music radio.
4.  Increasingly, people are getting their music elsewhere.

When I programmed WTOP/Washington, we were a 50KW AM @ 1500, north/south.
I've heard that station, at night, in Canada and in Florida.
If only we could've gotten-into West Falls Church VA and Germantown MD.

Now, on FM, the station is #1, and its median age instantly dropped 10 years.

Those are "the right reasons" to move News/Talk/Sports to FM.

In this case, "the right thing" could happen "for the wrong reason," because Clear Channel is crippled by debt.

Ironically, Homer & Marge Listener will end up with better radio, if they can get News/Talk/Sports on FM...AND if stations-Premiere-is-jilting go-local.

[Signal_Faded]

Don't get me wrong...I am a HUGE proponent of Talk on the FM dial. I just think we are walking into a perfect storm. I have been to the same conventions as you have for the past 5-7 years and heard the talk industry talk about the coming wave of FM...and it never seems to amount to anything. As you put it perfectly in your title...'NOW it begins.'

For me the perfect storm is thus:

1. Talk, on the whole, is very PPM friendly getting stations nice big Cume numbers (and for those who have seen the Arbitron/Coleman study on high performance stations you know that is a big indicator of success. See the presentation at http://colemaninsights.com/press/Coleman%20Insights%20Finds%20That%20Cume%20Levels%20Differentiate%20High%20Performance%20Radio%20Stations.pdf.

2. Formats, such as Hispanic are not, for some reason, finding traction in a PPM world as they did in the diary world.

3. The thought of a performance tax has many group owners looking at talk as a viable, less expensive, option.

I agree Holland...it just makes sense to go where the listeners are.

[gr8oldies]

Cox has Limbaugh pretty much locked in here in Dayton since they are already on both AM and FM. I doubt at this point Clear Channel would take 980 AM News/talk (even with rating sbelow a 1 share with sports), and even if they did, WHIO AM/FM would keep on sailing with Boortz, Clark Howard and Hannity. You do have some markets where there isn't an FM that's going to be able to duplicate an AM format or do their own talk format. Cinncinati Clear Channel only has 2 FMs left; I don't see WEBN or WKFS becoming WLW-FM or WKRC-FM (though if WBCN could be blown up I supose anything is possible). Between all of CC's AMs there, they have almost all the syndicated political and sports talk.

[JimPastrick]

Rush on FM would be formidable, no doubt.  The studies cited in this thread are revealing.  There is a  concern about PPM measurement.  Joint Communications' John Parikhal has presented questions about the sample, accuracy and reliability derived from PPM measurement. 

[Oldbones]

Talk BELONGS on FM, "for the right reasons:"
1.  80% of TSL is on FM.
2.  FM covers a Metro better than many AMs, whose footprints change month-to-month.
3.  News/Talk/Sports programming is more-Sales-friendly than music radio.
4.  Increasingly, people are getting their music elsewhere.

Not sure I agree with all these points (especially 3 & 4), nor the conclusion you draw.

Keep in mind that while a full-power metro FM will have more coverage than a low powered (or one with a less than full-market directional signal), these are also the most successful with music formats.  The Class A rimshots that are included as metro signals but are nowhere near full coverage and thusly less profitable are the ones that have less to lose by going talk.  Certainly not likely to be much competition for a WBZ, WABC, WLS, etc.

While sports is definitely a sales-friendly format, I'm not so sure about (non-sports) talk.  A lot of talk programming is controversial...something a lot of advertisers avoid like the plague.  Look at the list of programs that agencies specify their spots not run in....pretty much every major talk show is on that list (as well as some not-so-major ones).  Look at who the sponsors are of even the top-rated syndicated shows...Rush, Beck, Hannity...lots of sleazy PI type spots (Goldline, that on-line data backup service whose name escapes me, etc.).  Even the reputable companies like Geico are buying such bulk airtime that they're getting time at giveaway prices.  These shows aren't an easy sell on the local level either.  Most businesses don't want to offend potential customers by being seen as sponsoring controversial programming.

While there are more sources for music today than ever before...certainly radio isn't the only game in town anymore, there is still a huge audience for music stations...one that isn't going away anytime soon.  If anything drives talk to FM it's more likely to be the performance tax than any great desire to hear talk on FM (public radio excluded).  Maybe WTOP did better on FM than on AM, but 1500 was pretty signal-challenged where it counted.  FM talk success stories, like successful lib-talkers are few and far between.

I'm not sure how much younger an audience talk radio will attract by being on FM....geezers have FM radios too.  With the exception of sports & shock jocks, talk just doesn't have that much under-40 appeal.

[smedge2006]

2.  Weekends will suck less.  Premiere is cramming-down weekend Rush and Sean Hannity re-runs.  Can Glenn Beck replays be far-behind?  An Arbitron diary comment I read, referring to a Limbaugh affiliate, said "on the weekend, it sounds like they think nobody's listening."  These six weekend hours -- nine if re-Beck is crammed-down -- are hours when affiliates could otherwise be doing more-weekend-appropriate, more-Sales-friendly programming, the how-to buff-stuff that's more in-synch-with listeners' lifestyles than yet-more blah blah blah from Thursday.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in another thread, some weekend shows (especially syndicated ones) are undermining their sales-friendliness by sounding more like the attack-dog radio heard during the week. Since many stations have not only canned (or never had) local staffers to do talk or teach it to specialty-show newcomers, those unfilled weekend hours will in many cases end up filled with those half-hour programs that talk about the hundreds of pounds of waste found in John Wayne's colon.

There's also the question of how listener-friendly the sales-friendly programming is. Just because I'm working on my patio deck Saturday afternoon doesn't mean I want to hear somebody talking about patio decks.

[Holland Cooke]

Just because I'm working on my patio deck Saturday afternoon doesn't mean I want to hear somebody talking about patio decks.

Most weekend listeners would prefer hearing what-was-OBVIOUSLY Limbaugh's Thursday show, complete with references to real-time events on a muted studio Fox News monitor at the time?

[Element9]

The News-Talk move to FM is getting a lot of hype and press now, but this may come to a grinding halt if the business doesn't have properly trained and effective sales men and women who know how to sell the talk format. Sadly, over the last two years, the seasoned, street savvy sales men and women have been shown the door in favor of fresh faces who can be trained and indoctrinated to the corporate sales game plan.

It takes a dedicated sales professional to overcome objections and sell the advantages of local talk radio. It's not like selling a schedule on the cluster's ten-in-a-row AC, Country of Classic Rock format. Smart clients who have the fortitude to stay with it know the advantages of buying time on a successful news-talk format. But selling the format may become the real issue as to how successful the format becomes on FM.