blog.deanland.com

Old and New



Maybe the headline ought to be Old
and Young, or Recent and Further Back.  The issues or matters
evoking the comparisons are of various sorts, of late many of these
items are top of mind.



The last two posts hereabouts have been about radio.  I spent a
bunch of decades in radio, starting as a teenager working in the
Summer, then in college (note: as a Radio Major, not just dillying around with a college station),
later in the commercial realm working  as a professional, then
running a research and  consulting firm, and finally owning and  operating a
station while continuing to run the research and consulting businesses.



My firm worked with stations and broadcasting chains large and small,
with networks, also with record companies, publishing houses, and a few
other ancillary businesses and forms of media.  It was a great
run, being a generalist firm yet offering certain specialties,
traveling all over the country and some foreign ports as well,
learning and growing while doing my job.



After writing about the WCBS-FM and WJMK changes from the Oldies format
to Jack my e-mail bag has been plentiful with response.  There's
also a entertaining back'n'forth on the subject between DeanLand occasional guest
blogger Len Scaffidi and me in the comments area, which you can read here or here. 
It is interesting to note how many search engine queries the referrer
logs have shown with mentioned of CBS-FM, WJKM, Jack, The Oldies
format, and the very line used as a title in the original post, "Death To The Oldies Stations."


Radio Roots & Rants



Today I spoke with an old friend, client, colleague, confidant and all
around great guy.  The main reason for the call was to get his
current  mailing address, so we could send him a Washington
Nationals baseball cap we picked up for him while attending a game in D.C. last
week.  But he's a lifelong radio man, and he and I are unable to talk
for any length of time without the discussion meandering over to
radio. 



Baseball, too, but not each and every time we speak.


There's a Jack station in his market, and we discussed the
viability of
the Jack alternative concept in other format types.  Could a
Country or Urban Jack exist, and what would be the likely result? 
My comment was that an Urban Jack would not make it if a locally
programmed Black A/C station was already flanking the standard Urban
Contemporary station.  Then we spoke about a market where we both
have had extensive experience, and how there is a standard Urban, a
syndie-programmed Urban A/C, and a Hip-Hop station, all there vying for
audience share.  Add to the mix an excellent Gospel FMer in the
market,
and the audience is split among quite the choice of
possibilities.  So it is good for the listeners, but troubles come
for the stations who battle it out for listenership and ad dollars.



Would or could a Black Jack (hmm, will that prompt more gambling spam and comments .. we shall see)
have an impact on this already crowded race? What about in other
markets where there are fewer entrants in the race?  My response
to this is no, success is not likely.   Better to combat (what I actually mean is complement and vie for share of audience and ad revenues)
an Urban Contemporary station with a Black A/C than by attempting to
create a Black Jack.    And in markets where there are
both an UC and a Black A/C, either go Gospel with a strong marketing
plan, or find some other format.



Adult Contemporary and Country format radio stations have had their
fair share of Jack-like competitors, but lacking the canned staging and
attitude -- these used to be new-fangled oldies stations, stressing a
decade (or a few of them!) as opposed to positioning themselves as
"oldies" stations, so as not to be perceived as elderly-attracting "old music" stations.



Whatever you do, don't point out that:

...are all songs from 20 or 30 years ago, or even, dare I use the word, older!





EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW, as in NEW MEDIA



Remember: in broadcasting, especially in radio, listeners older than 54
are merely waste, unsellable, and not anything to brag about to time
buyers.  Forget the arguments about aging boomers, the graying of
America, and so forth.  Radio and advertisers are happy to live in
this old paradigm box.



This means all sorts of opportunities for those thinking anywhere
outside that proverbial box.  Print and cable have long seen the
value in targetted media entries geared at [various segments of ] the
50+ consumer group.  Twenty years ago I consulted (and co-ran,
with broadcast pioneer and legend Maurie Webster)
a broadcasters' initiative known as The 35-64 Committee.  We did
massive amounts of research on the 35-64 market: what they bought, what
they listened to, where they shopped, what they drove, how they lived,
and on and on.  We had a knockout presentation, with all sorts of
interesting and even some surprising fact;.  Who was the early
adopter group for Microwave Ovens?  Adults 55-64.  Who was
more likely to buy new model sedans?  55-64 year olds.  Who
spent the most dollars per year on home audio/stereo equipment? 
Men aged 45-64.  Our list went on and on.  Financial
services?  It was a 45+ world.  Travel?  the older the
person, the more likely they were to travel and the money they were
likely to spend.



We offered those presentation and marketing materials to all sorts of
stations: Beautiful Music, News, Talk, Classical, even some of the
older-skewing Adult Contemporary stations.  Then there were the
stations like WCCO, WGN, WOR, WBZ, KGO, KIRO, longtime standard-bearers, the
bastions of their radio markets.  We worked with them.  It
was an uphill battle.



Now one can hear much of the programming that appeals to the 50+
audience on the satellite services, see it on the cable networks, and
read a wide array of print magazines and websites devoted to various
nooks, niches, crannies and segments of this wide consumer market.



Looking Back (a term, it seems, for the exclusive use of those of a certain age)



I was younger than 35 when I began that research and marketing project,
a fact that  always amused me.  I was well into the lower end
of the demo group when the project came to an end.  Now I am
pushing the upper end, and will be in the next demographic (55+ --- egad!) before too long.  A few more birthdays, but of course the older one gets the faster the passage of time.



The joke in our workgroups was how it took a younger person to assemble
all the data and put in all the  research hours required to gather
the information.  This was before the day of the PC and easy
network and information access.  The sardonic humor to top
it all was that Maurie, older than everyone in the room, had more
energy, vim, vigor and determination than the rest of us.  And he
was well past his 64th birthday by that time.



There's More --- But it will have to be Less.



This turned into a much longer essay than planned, and there are still
items in the original outline for this blog post that are topics yet
untouched.  Perhaps in a subsequent entry we will visit
them. 



Long blog entries lose some readers, and might contribute to fewer
repeat hits.  So be it, this is what it is.  Popular blogger
and expert communications theorist  Mary Hodder writes about this in a recent post.  I commented there, but kept it short.  Well, shorter than this blog entry, anyway.



If you made it this far, you have my deep thanks for the time and the interest.  Tell your friends!