US radio, especially public radio, is like a bad restaurant ...

[TheBigA]

A more accurate observation is that advertising is intended to convey the message about the product that best increases the advertiser's profits. Mass market products and services use mass market advertising, but niche market products use different strategies.

But the topic here is mass media, because that's what BBC 4 is.  They get their funding from taxes, we get our funding from advertisers.  Who has the better programming?

[MattParker]

Radio stations stopped being mass media almost 40 years ago.  Now they are targeted media.  They have distinct formats intended to reach specific audiences.

Forty years ago BBC4 was called the Home Service.  Now the BBC (and commercial broadcasters in the UK) also offer a range for specific formats, targeting specific audiences. 

The issue is who produces the better on-air product.  Radio people in the US need to stop making excuses for how poor their product is.  The radio industry in the US is effective only at driving away listeners and advertisers, and at making excuses for their departures. 

The Harvard Business School has a collection of case studies for companies that aren't around any more.  Radio people might do well to study them.  Many of those case studies report a cycle of cutting costs and quality, and raising prices to increase revenue.  Predictably, they lose customers.  So they cut costs and quality and raise prices again to make up for the lost revenue.  They lose more customers, so ...   They also make statements about how it's not their fault, it's changing market, changing tastes, bad economy .... any number of things.    And about how customers should understand their internal problems. 

[TheBigA]

The issue is who produces the better on-air product.  Radio people in the US need to stop making excuses for how poor their product is.  The radio industry in the US is effective only at driving away listeners and advertisers, and at making excuses for their departures. 

Absolute BS.  Radio producers create exactly what advertisers want.  No one is making excuses.  Every other content producer, from satellite to Pandora, is trying to copy the radio model. 

You keep dodging the real issue:  It all comes down to money and where it comes from.  In subscription models, the listeners pay for what they want.  In ad-supported models, the goal is to maximize audience.  In government-funded media, like BBC4, it's very different.  That's why the rest of the world prefers government funding to the US system.

The Harvard Business School has a collection of case studies for companies that aren't around any more.  Radio people might do well to study them. 

Which once again supports the government funded option, and demonstrates why other countries have gone with government funding of broadcasting.  A lot of the businesses in the study are now owned and operated by the government, like mass transit.

Competition leads to price wars.  When prices go down, costs have to follow.  When you cut costs, people get fired.  That's why most products we buy today aren't made in the US anymore.  It's cheaper to make them elsewhere.  In the government funded option, you have no competition, prices stay the same, and when costs rise, you increase taxes.  Simply put, broadcasting should not be a business, because there's no profit in public service.

[MattParker]

@A:

You keep dodging the real issue:  It all comes down to money and where it comes from.

This is where we don't agree.  I say, to the listener, it doesn't matter where the money comes.  The point is, where ever the money comes from, if you give an audience what it wants, they will listen.  Where the money comes from is the broadcasters' concern, not the listeners'.

Simply put, broadcasting should not be a business, because there's no profit in public service.

I have to admit, that is something to think about.  Maybe so.

BUT, if you go that route: No pledge drives.  No corporate underwriting. 

[TheBigA]

This is where we don't agree.  I say, to the listener, it doesn't matter where the money comes.  The point is, where ever the money comes from, if you give an audience what it wants, they will listen. 

The only way the audience gets exactly what they want is in the subscription model.  Otherwise, they get what attracts the biggest number.  Giving the audience what it wants under this model requires compromise. The problem today is every individual in the audience wants their own personal radio station.

In the way advertising is done, unless you have an exclusive sponsor, one who pays for the whole show, you will always run into differences in goals of advertisers.  So when Hallmark is an exclusive title sponsor, as they are usually in their TV specials, they get to control the content.  When it's a bulk advertiser who buys a spot within a cluster of ten other advertisers, they have less say, and all they care about is CPM and TRPs.  Believe me...I fight this battle every day.

In either case, you have to follow the money.  The source of the funding determines everything.  That is just the practicality of the situation.  Usually the biggest discontent from the listener comes from the compromise required in order to satisfy the requirements of the advertisers.  The ONLY solution is subscribe to Pandora.  Then you get what you want.  Lots of broadcasters are creating web-based competitors for Pandora, because there's money there.  But it's nowhere near what they make with broadcast.

BUT, if you go that route: No pledge drives.  No corporate underwriting. 

That's fine, but the government funding MUST be 100%, as it is in England.

[MattParker]

BUT, if you go that route: No pledge drives.  No corporate underwriting. 

That's fine, but the government funding MUST be 100%, as it is in England.

Agreed.  With an absolute firewall to keep out political interference (like we have with the CPB).

[Talk_Dude]

BUT, if you go that route: No pledge drives.  No corporate underwriting. 

That's fine, but the government funding MUST be 100%, as it is in England.

Agreed.  With an absolute firewall to keep out political interference (like we have with the CPB).

You mean a firewall made of cardboard? What good would that do?

[bturner]

Interesting discussion.

With a tax on radio and television at the consumer level, there is a certain accountibility not even found in public radio in the USA, yet narrowcasting is not possible in the BBC model, at least as a fulltime format.

Even with US Public Radio there is a certain emphasis on programming for funding.  It is the same concept of US commercial radio.  The only difference might be the sales side tends to manipulate programming in commercial radio but Public Radio sales seems to be driven by product versus sales dictating formatics to programming to maximize sales.

The thing I'd like to know is what the average listener thinks of BBC and paying an annual license fee.  Is this a painless tax for a radio service that the public desires and of the standard the public wants or is the tax considered a required tax to be squandered by a government entity that serves only a portion of the general public.  Would the British primarily commercial radio listener resent paying a tax each year?

Imagine at 5.5 (cannot recall exactly) radios per person in the USA and how much money that would be....1.5 billion radios multiplied by an annual tax, of say, just $5.  The numbers really soar.

I'm assuming the tax is a minimal annual tax.

[PTBoardOp94]

Let's say I run an NPR station that happens to be in the commercial band, and I happen to get approval from NPR to run commercials during Morning Edition.  I change my format to look like this:
:01-:04 NPR News headlines
:04-:09 Spots
:09-:30 Morning Edition
:30-:35 Spots
:35-:00 Morning Edition

Now, Morning Edition is still produced by NPR in the very same way that it is produced for other stations, with long news and feature stories. Just for argument, my station is either running Morning Edition off the NPR feed, or running spots, there are no other local insertions.

Will fewer people listen than if the station was running Morning Edition as we know it today?  Would revenues be higher or lower?

My thought is that fewer people would listen, but revenues would go up.

[TheBigA]

Gee...two breaks an hour.  Very PPM-friendly.

Anyway...the complication of combining a non-profit with commercial (coupled with the Reagan budget cuts) is what drove NPR to the brink in 1983.