Posted on 04/16/2004 5:03:51 AM PDT by E Rocc
<< That's pretty expensive airtime. Again, I thought stations paid the programs for the content. Maybe Paul can enlighten us? >>
Like everything else in life, it all depends on who's buying, who's selling, and who wants what worse. This is the simple law of supply and demand with an interesting twist...if the demand is low enough, the roles change and the seller is now the buyer.
With Air America, you have a group of people, political affiliation aside, who want to be on the air. (Please do not flame me on the next part) Liberal talk radio fails almost every time it is tried, and has for years. Ad revenue revolves around ratings and liberal talk radio almost ALWAYS fails. This group, however well intentioned, has absolutely no proven ratings results, so the owners of radio stations have no real reason to put them on the air. Even if the station owner is a tried and true liberal, it's still simply a business decision. The FCC collects yearly fees, there's power, insurance, taxes, salaries and other costs that MUST be covered.
The only shows that can get away with charging to be carried are the ones that are proven ratings winners. Stern gets massive money for his show. Bob and Tom out of WFBQ in Indianapolis are very expensive. Rush charges. But none of them used to. When I was in another market, the station that I was on carried Rush, and had for years. It was one of the first 50 affiliates. It was pure barter, they ran ads and we ran the show. No money changed hands between the station and the syndicator, nor the other way around. While I was working there, EFM Media Management, Rush's syndicator, decided that they would be charging fro the program. You could either pay the money (and still have to run the ads) or they would make the show available to someone else in the market. Since Rush had a 12.2 share (meaning that 12.2 percent of all radios in the market actually on during his show were tuned to his show, a stunning number) and was the only show on the station with better ratings than mine (I had an 8.3 share in morning drive) the station made a very simple business decision: Because they were able to charge top rate for ads in Rush's show, they would pay for the program.
When Limbaugh first started out, his syndicator offered the show for BARTER. In other words, you carry the show and the syndicator plays commercials during the show. The station gets about half of the advertising positions, called "avails" per hour. The syndicator sells the rest. The Syndicator then goes to large national advertisers and says "For $XXX a commercial, you will be carried on XXX stations and heard by XXXXXXX people," the local station tried their hand at local advertisers.
With Air America, they HAD to have outlets in local markets. They needed it worse than Multicultural Broadcasting needed to carry it, because they don't HAVE to pay for programming, there's more than enough barter shows out there to keep the lights on. So they entered into what we call "Brokered Radio."
Brokered radio stations are the slimy used-car salesmen of the industry. They are the bottom feeders. They typically cater to ethnic broadcasters. The company that I worked for five years bought out and started running live programming on almost exclusively brokered stations. When we took one over, we displaced 6 hours of Chinese a day, 2 hours of Greek, 1 hour of Lithuanian, 3 hours of Korean, a specialty show on Motorcycles called "Open Road Radio", a nightly 4 hours heavy metal show, and other people who just wanted to be on the radio. The stations, before we bought them, typically charged $200 to $600 an hour to let you have a show for that period of time. It;s what you do when you barely keep the station on the air, because you don't have sales people trying to sell ads, the station just prostitutes itself out hour by hour.
Air America brokered all of the air time on Liu's stations. They entered into a contract to buy 100% of the airtime (and the right to sell ads on that air) for a fixed period of time. The fact that this is in fact brokered radio was a shock to me, I don't mind telling you. I was floored, because being in the industry, brokered radio is exclusively people who cannot get a radio job and want to hear themselves on the air.
One station that my company bought played freeform rock and roll...groups that just barely had record contracts, a lot of garage bands and college bands, outside of brokered airtime. If there was someone willing to pay for an hour, the music came off and the broker had the air time to say whatever he wanted to, within the limits of the Communications Act of 1937. That station had not showed up in the ratings AT ALL in four years. I mean, audience too low to measure. The guy who owned the stations would give air time to anyone who could pay for it. It is the lowest form of radio, below even college radio. My favorite was the daily brokered show called, I'm not kidding, "S***-Upon, the Anti-Clown". Just some guy telling everyone how bad he thought this and that were. No ratings. But he paid his bill, so he was on every day for three hours. I'd be surprised if I ever found out that he was paying more than $50 an hour.
All this means that Air America could not find one station in Chicago that wanted to carry them. They had to pay for the privilege. And the station that they are on, WNTD-AM, is a 1,000 watt daytime, 5,000 watt nighttime station with an awful signal that is inaudible during the day where I live in the Northern 'burbs, and just barely audible at night. I was under the impression that WNTD's ownership saw this as an opportunity to get ratings and be able to sell ads. I found the fact that Air America is just a bunch of "Brokers" is double-over-with-laughter hilarious.
Now, as for Ms. Garofalo's assertion that a judge should ORDER the station owner back on the air, this is absurd! There is a contract and if Air America, as Mr. Liu claims, has not paid according to the terms of the contract, that licensee has NO reason to carry the show. And the courts cannot order anyone to carry anything. Only the FCC regulates radio. That's not to say that others haven't tried...
Air America must prove that they have paid the owner of those stations as provided for in the contract or they're out of luck. The fact that they made such a big deal about having a $30,000,000 bankroll and an additional $30,000,000 credit line and they are (if we are to believe Mr. Liu) asking him not to cash their checks and have been promising to "get them their money" for two months, any court that tries to order them to carry the show will be overruled on appeal. And I'd REALLY like to see a New York State judge try to order an Illinois radio station to do ANYTHING!
At the end of the day, Air America should just pay the bill. If they don't, they have lost two out of their five "affiliates". The fact that their dirty little secret that they are nothing but brokers just lost them almost all of their credibility.
-Eric
Sounds about right for Air America.
LOL! Thanks for the info.
Many of these small Air America stations are 1000 watt shrimps competing against 50,000 blowtorches and even half million watt clear channel (exclusive frequency, not the company) world-spanning powerhouses... and lots of those "big boys" carry, Rush, Sean, Bortz, Savage, Michael Reagan, etc.The funny part here is that Err America - Chicago is at 950, relatively low on the dial but with only 1,000 watts day/5,000 night. Rush is on WLS, at 890, 50,000 watts clear channel. In Cleveland he's on WTAM 1100, also 50,000 watts clear channel.Note that many of the Air America stations are up in these higher frequencies, with low power, small coverage areas and few listeners. It is very expensive to "drive" listeners to your station (newspaper advertising, etc.) So even with all the media hype, AA being on these stations that "get farther downhill than they do uphill" is another nail in the coffin.
-Eric
Not if you are a communist. Air time is a currency, and we all know how well Socialists/Communists like Ms. Garofalo like to spend other people's money.
I'm wondering if Air America had a big-donor check bounce on them? And that is the reason why they can't pay their basic expenses? Al Gore? Babs? Who's passing the bad paper?
How weak can some of these stations be?Let's just say that there are probably stations of similar power that shall-we-say fly the "skull and bones" over their transmitters. >:)While in the Army, worked nights at a Lawton, OK station (KSWO: "K S W O, The Mighty Kizwoh, thirteen eighy oh, super hit radio for Southwestern Oklahoma!) where the warning lights on the tower were more powerful than the transitter!
-Eric
NPR being the notable exception.
ML/NJ
Whaddaya mean, "other people's money"?
It's all SOCIETY'S money and property.
Private property is theft.
"S***-Upon, the Anti-Clown". Just some guy telling everyone how bad he thought this and that were. No ratings. But he paid his bill, so he was on every day for three hours. I'd be surprised if I ever found out that he was paying more than $50 an hour.My first thought was that this could have been Franken using a pseudonym. He sure sounds like ErrAmerica material.LOL! Thanks for the info.
-Eric
How is this different in principle than selling commercials? Think of "Air America" as one long commercial for liberalism.
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