Re: "Marketplace" Commentary in Favor of Media Concentration

["Aaron 'Bishop' Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 03:40 PM 1/26/2002 -0500, Laurence Glavin wrote:
>  Such a company, let's say owning 4 outlets will devote them
>to 4 niches so they can be sold as a portfolio appealing to several audiences.
>Under single owner limitations, multiple stations would seek to appeal
>to a maximum number of listeners with its one outlet, and the only way
>to do that is with a batch of stations all doing the same thing!
>Does this make sense to you?

I missed the commentary but I can tell why this is a fallacy.  Or at least 
why *I* think it's a fallacy :-)

Under single owner limitations, an owner cannot afford to copy their 
competitors' programming.  Why would they listen to that owner instead of 
Owner-X?   The only reasons are A: different and presumably better 
programming, B: a more receivable signal (something WFNX learned the hard 
way trying to go toe-to-toe with WBCN in the late 1990's) or C: listen 
enticements (i.e. contests, giveaways, etc).

As I understand it, C only works if you play VERY similar formats to your 
competitors, and even then it doesn't work well.  Kiss108 has $50,000 
giveaways...but you couldn't pay me to listen to that crap they air - and I 
even interned there.

We'll leave B on the wayside even thought it's an important point - we're 
discussing programming, not technical issues.  Plus it's more 
cut-n-dried.  If a listener can hear the same 20-song rotation on two 
stations, and one comes in clear and the other does not...guess which one 
gets listened to?  Pretty obvious.

So that leaves us with A - our hypothetical Owner must come up with 
programming that appeals to a more valuable audience base in order to get 
listeners away from his competition and onto his station, so he gets the 
ratings and gets the better advertising rates.  As some stations are now 
starting to see...just pandering to the lowest common denominator is not 
enough to get the more valuable audience bases in this sluggish 
economy.   Advertisers are savvy, they know that if their ad is heard by 
5000 loyal listeners, of whom 10% are likely to consider them in their next 
purchase....that's FAR more valuable than their ad being heard by 500,000 
indifferent listeners, of whom only 0.1% are likely to consider them in 
their next purchase.   Even though the numerical listener value is the same 
- an advertiser would rather only need to pay to reach 5000 vs. 500000 to 
get the same ROI.

Now I'll approach it from the opposite angle...if a conglomerate has four 
stations in a market, how is that really different from four separate 
owners, assuming my above point is correct?   It isn't.   Except that a 
conglomerate that owns four stations in one market almost certainly owns 
four more stations in another market.  And another market, etc etc 
etc.   Now, what reason do they have to increase diversity of programming 
*across the markets*?  None whatsoever...and that's why you hear the exact 
same 20-song rotation at every single major Top 40 or Rock-Alternative 
station across the country.

So perhaps you could argue that local diversity has been slightly 
increased...and I would argue that it has decreased, but for this point 
I'll say it's gone up a little.  Regardless, nationally it has gone WAY 
down.   Thus the potential room for new talent is drastically reduced, 
because it's too expensive to generate local content for a 
conglomerate.  You have a reduced talent pool for a reduced-capacity 
system.  Tell me again how that translates into greater diversity?

As my old roommate was fond of saying, "You can't polish a turd."   The 
argument that national ownership is increasing diversity in programming 
both looks and smells like bulls**t not matter how you pretty up the 
argument.   Take a look close to home here...in Boston you've got WFNX, 
WBCN and WAAF...and god damn if they don't all draw from the same 50 or 60 
song rotation.  WFNX leaning more towards new stuff, WAAF towards old, but 
there's still a lot of overlap there.


______________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read       aread@speakeasy.net
Fried Bagels Consulting   www.friedbagels.com
12 Walnut St. / Waltham, MA / 02453