Phil Boyce

Salem VP/Spoken Word Formats Phil Boyce took issue with Talk Frontier’s recent post about a possible “Obama Ratings Recession” for talk radio:

I distrust your “highly regarded” and “respected” talk radio veteran.  Conservative leaning talk radio… is the backbone of talk radio going back to the Rush rise of 1992,  which oddly enough coincided with Bill Clinton’s first election as President.

I find this a little amusing to tie the demise of the American Spectator during [Clinton's] second term to that of talk radio post Obama, when in fact the second Clinton term was highly successful for talk radio.  Many predicted the demise of Rush when Clinton won re-election.  They were all wrong.  Rush went on to even greater numbers and so did talk radio as a format.  

I will never forget 1996  because not only did Clinton win a second term,  but I was the PD of WABC in New York that year,  and was forced to fire Bob Grant,  my highest rated host.  I lost half my audience overnight.  I knew it would take five years to get them back and I did not know if I had that much time.  Happy to say I lasted 14 years programming WABC,  and it took me 5 years to the book to get back to WABC’s rightful position as most listened to talk station in the nation.  

So I guess you could say,  during Clinton’s second term,  WABC doubled it’s audience and was again the most listened to newstalk station in the nation.  If there was Clinton fatigue,  which seemed to hurt the Spectator,  Clinton was “berry berry good” to WABC.  During that 5 years I hired  Sean Hannity,  Mark Levin,  Matt Drudge,  John Gambling  and created a morning show called Curtis and Kuby. The re-election of Clinton propelled that growth.  I have no idea what will happen to talk radio, or to the nation, if Obama wins another term.  I do know that the talk radio audience is extremely loyal  and hard to run off…even if we screw up the station as I did in 1996.  They came back,  once I got the right line-up which was probably even more conservative than the pre-1996 WABC.  

Enough of the history lesson.  This is a great format.  Talk radio will be fine,  win or lose in November.  Enough of the silly hand-wringing.  

That joyful noise comes from a highly-regarded talk radio veteran.  His math: Traditional post-election drop in talk listenership + Arrival of all-Christmas formats x Weariness with heated rhetoric =  Lower ratings.

And what if  President Obama is re-elected?  Will the ratings bounce back in 2013 on the strength of more conservative ranting and hand-wringing?  Maybe.  But as I first noted almost three years ago in this space, the story of The American Spectator offers a cautionary tale.  That conservative magazine rose to prominence during President Clinton‘s first term when it established itself as the loudest and most outrageous critic of Bill and Hill.  But then Clinton got re-elected.  Slowly but steadily from that point  American Spectator slid into irrelevance and impotence.

As Reason.com put it back in 2009:

The first sign of a peak in cable news appeared in March 2011, when the Pew Research Center released a study that proclaimed, “Though many will remember 2010 as a hard year for CNN, in reality, most cable news channels suffered audience losses.” The able chartists at Pew drew a sad graph of cable news. Combined median viewership for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC during prime time had receded 16 percent, to 3.2 million, that year. Mean viewership had also dropped 13 percent, to 3.3 million, making it the largest year-to-year drop for cable news since Pew started analyzing the numbers in 1997. It also marked the first drop in the median audience since 2006.

The bad news continued through 2011, as cable news viewership remained nearly flat. This was fairly astonishing considering all the breaking news from that year – the Arab Spring, Japan’s tsunami, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Libyan civil war and the European economic crisis – not to mention the bustle of the presidential campaign.

Shafer cites possible explanations for the decline in cable news viewership, including the continued rise of the web as a source of breaking news.  But, he adds:

There’s so little news in cable news – especially during prime time – that it’s a bit of a misnomer to keep calling it “cable news.” As currently programmed, the networks best resemble political talk radio, in which people chat about the news instead of report it. 

If Americans are losing their interest in political talk TV, what does that portend for the future of political talk radio?  Shafer notes that while the cable news audience has peaked, viewers still move between the various networks, which continue to generate a ton of revenue.  Political talk radio is in the same place — maxed out.  Radio has filled the 10 lb politics sack with 10.3 lbs. of content.  The best of those shows will continue to sell, but there really isn’t room to grow.  That isn’t going to change.  It’s time to get serious about extending the spoken-word product line.

Read Shafer’s entire piece here, including a quote from me.  While you are there, sign up for his RSS feed.

The 24th edition of Anthony’s 24th annual get-together for music radio personalities was jam-packed with opportunities to learn new strategies and tactics for surviving and thriving in the tumultuous radio biz.  Nearly all that advice applies to talk radio personalities.  The mood among the roughly 150 attendees was generally upbeat.  Everybody knows the industry has changed for good.  But they still love radio and want to be a part of it.

The group’s attitude was best summed up by the host who told me, “We’ve had four owners since I got to the station.  I just keep doing my job.  If [the bosses] tell me to do something I think is a bad idea, I share my opinion, but I do it.  As long as they keep letting me go on the radio everyday and say out loud what most people can only think, I’m good.”

Here are a few tidbits I gleaned at MSBC:

– “Your personality should be a prism that you hold up to the white light of life.  The unique colors that emerge from that prism is your show.  Show prep is downloading the information that everyone has access to.  Show planning is deciding what you are going to do with that material” — Cumulus SVP/Progarmming Jan Jeffries

– Keep it tight, really tight.  Several panelists urged hosts to impose more discipline on their bits and monologues.  ”Once you’ve edited your show, edit it again,” said Jeffries. “Build your monologues from the back.  Make sure there is a pay-off and work forward from that pay-off.”

Personalities should think of their breaks as YouTube videos, according to Clear Channel SVP Jon Zellner.  ”If someone forwards you a video and it doesn’t hook you right away or you see that it’s too long, you are going to delete it.”

– Promos deserve more respect and effort.  Several panelists decried the slap-dash nature of show promos. Zellner said it’s gotten so bad he’s told some stations to stop running show promos unless/until they make them better.  Saga’s Steve Goldstein pointed out that promos are far more important than social media in terms of building audience.  Facebook, he noted, reaches just a tiny slice of the potential audience compared to an on-air promo.  Some tips from the panel:

1. Alway promote content over contests, unless the contest is truly remarkable.

2. Watch local TV news promos to learn how to create a compelling message in 10-seconds.

3. The content of a promo is far more important than the production “container” that delivers it.

– The informative session on PPM strategy and tactics is nicely summarized here by Angela Perelli of Randy Lane’s consulting group.

But that edge is shrinking.  Stitcher, the podcast aggregator app, recently launched Smart Station, a feature that helps users find new podcasts based on their listening patterns. Wall Street Journal tech writer Katherine Boehret was almost gushy about Smart Station in her June 27th review.

“The Smart Station feature is a delight to use,” she wrote. “I listened to podcasts it suggested while I was commuting, exercising and cooking in my kitchen. As promised, the content in my Smart Station seemed to get more personalized the more I used it.”

Read the entire article here.

Advances like Smart Station have the potential to turbo-charge podcast listening.  Stations and shows that are  not podcasting their material need to start today.  Check out these tips from social media maven Stephanie Winans on how to make the most of those efforts.

Another thought:  This is a great time  for a host to launch a podcast focused on a subject not typically covered on his radio show.  The host of a program dominated by politics who is deeply passionate about, say, the Civil War, Ska, vintage cars or the British Royal family, should consider harnessing his knowledge, passion and broadcast skills to create something of his own, something potentially profitable.  Smart Station makes it easy for potential fans to find your content.  Of course, it’s still up to the talent to create material so unique and entertaining that it earns a “thumbs up” and a permanent spot on the user’s podcast dial.

Grateful Nation host Dave Ross (r) with Leroy Petry

Fisher House Foundation has produced two programs to help stations mark the July 4th holiday.

“A Grateful Nation” is a one-hour Independence Day edition of the group’s acclaimed Memorial Day program. The show features compelling interviews with, among others, Medal of Honor recipient Leroy Petry.  A Grateful Nation is available for five minutes of in-show barter.  For more information and to sign-up, contact Randall Bloomquist at randall@bloomquistmedia.com

Fisher House has also produced a July 4th version of its 30-minute weekend public affairs show.  This commercial-free program was created fit the sound of both music and spoken-word stations.  Download the public affairs show at FH_PUBLIC_AFFAIRS_SHOW_2…TH-1.mp3

Fisher House provides no-cost housing and other support to the families of wounded warriors who are being treated at military and VA hospitals.

Talkers swag bag contents

As with so much in talk radio these days, the conventions have been downsized.  The annual Talkers New Media Seminar, which once sprawled across parts of three days, was held in one 10-hour session on Thursday, June 7^th.

Here’s what I saw…

The Big Issue

The day was dominated by conversations about the impact on talk radio of advertiser boycotts, no-buy lists and special interest group campaigns.  The assembled talk pros worry that such pressure tactics amount to a firm of On stage there were bi-partisan calls for the industry to set aside politics and launch an industry-supported campaign to educate both advertisers and the public on the importance of robust public discourse, the benefits of advertising in “controversial” shows, and the power of choice – if listeners really disagree with a show, they can make a major statement by tuning elsewhere.

Righty Sean Hannity and lefty Ed Schultz both urged action.  Even straight all-news guy Jim Farley of WTOP/Washington decried the “seemingly constant effort to silence dissenting voices, controversy, even humor.”

In the hallways, there was much furtive whispering and head shaking among network folks about the on-going financial cost and general disruption triggered by the Rush Limbaugh “slut” episode.  There seems to be a general sense that the entire format has paid a pretty stiff price for an incident involving one host.

Hooray for Saga Communications Executive VP Steve Goldstein and CBS Radio talk honco Chris Olivero.  Near the end of a panel that devoted much time to how-to-be-controversial-without-going-too-far, Goldstein pointed out that not every talk show needs to be an in-your-face rant fest.  “Fun and laughter work, too,” said Goldstein.  “It doesn’t all have to be controversial.”   Olivero, during the same panel, gently chastised his colleagues for emphasizing the negative over such positives as “the new commitment to local programming” that he perceives in spoken-word radio.

Attendance

 Talkers boss Michael Harrison said the event was a sell-out at 350 registrations.  I think every one of those folks showed up across the day.  At one point there were over 200 people in the lecture hall, many panels were SRO and the stand-up lunch was shoulder-to-shoulder.

A huge percentage of the attendees were from New York, with nearly all the rest drawn from the Northeast.  Harrison agreed with my estimate that 85% of crowd came from the Washington-Boston corridor.

The syndicator-to-station-exec ratio was typically lopsided – easily 10 to 1.  Among the local PDs and programming execs spotted at the event: Bill Hess of WMAL/Washington, Laurie Cantillo of WTOP/Washington, Paul Ihander of WGY/Albany, NY, and Peter Thiele of 970 The Answer/New York.

There was a smattering of national talent on hand, including Internet radio sensation Tom Leykis, Todd Schnitt, Andy Dean and convention stalwart Jim Bohannan.  A handful of young aspiring talk hosts and current podcasters were in the mix, too.

And it wouldn’t be a Talkers event without the presence of an odd assortment of talk radio hangers-on, including some very, very old people and a guy dressed like a cross between Walter Winchell and a waiter at a Farrell’s ice cream parlor – fedora, red bow tie and a red and white stripped shirt.  He was promoting something or other.

See You Next Time?

Harrison plans to hold another New Media Seminar in Los Angeles during October.  If you are in the region, I think it’s worth attending.  The event offer the opportunity to make potentially useful personal connections, and maybe learn a few things.

And, as one panelist pointed out, it’s important for members of the talk profession to spend time rallying together at a time when the challenges are daunting and the future is murky.

This is your profession.  Invest a little time and money in supporting it.

Peggy Noonan

Sometimes I think Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is the best talk radio consultant for these times.  She offers insightful, thought-provoking advice — for free.

Her latest pearl appeared in a recent column eulogizing Andrew Breitbart.  Noonan recounted how she and Breitbart hashed-out a disagreement about their respective styles by agreeing that while passion is essential in the political arena, an obsession with the fight is dangerous.

“In a way the argument between conservatives and progressives is that for the left, everything is about politics. Because they seek to harness government and the law in pursuit of what they see as just and desirable ends, everything becomes a political fight. Conservatives fought that narrow, constricted, soulless view of life: ‘We are not only political, we have other spheres, we are human beings.’

“But in their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time. Friendships were based on it, friendships were lost over it. “You agree with me? You’re in. You don’t? You’re out.” They became as good at ousting, excluding and anathematizing as Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, as Jacobins. As self-righteous, too, and as adept at dehumanizing the enemy.