News And Comment

News: John Gehron, in the Chicago Tribune, saying Rock "is not the dominant sound that it was in the '60s and '70s, when rock really was the sound of a generation." Today, in RBR, Lee Abrams asks "Is the Rock format dead? Well, maybe. But who cares?

Comment: Shhh. I have a secret for you. Guitar based rock of the 70's, 80's and 90's is very much alive and well, growing a huge audience. We call it today's new country music.

News: Skip Mahaffey back on the air in Tampa. He has to purchase his airtime now

Comment: You GO, Skip. Hopefully, this age-old entrepreneurial model still works, up there at 1340 AM. Many personalities around the country are watching closely and will follow suit if it does.

News: Radio revenue should increase from $14.6 billion this year to $17.2 billion by 2015. BIA/Kelsey also breaks out the “online” part of that revenue stream, and finds it growing from about $494 million this year to $783 million in 2015.

Comment: I have clients who feel that BIA's estimates understate their actual revenues, but even if that is true, the percentage of total radio revenues coming from new media (3.8% growing to 4.6% in four years) is disappointing. Surely, we can do better than that.

News: New York Post's Claire Atkinson asks CBS' Les Moonves about buying Pandora.

Comment: Please don't do it, Les. Instead of calculating what percentage of total revenues comes from digital, lets all start trending what percentage of PROFITS come from it.

News: WTOP's Jim Farley in RBR: "My boss and I knew right away we should have a website, but the company that owned us back then (pre-Bonneville) would not let us spend a dime. But we did have something of value: our own content. We did a deal with AOL. They built us a website and we provided local news content to them. By the time that deal ended, Bonneville boss Bruce Reese was an early and eager proponent of investing in online. Initially we had one full-timer working on wtop.com. But Joel Oxley, who runs the Hubbard stations in Washington, decreed early on that the Sales Department could NOT give away space on wtop.com. No value-added. Clients had to pay for space online. As he started to see revenue coming in for online (mainly banner ads at the time) Joel reinvested it."

Comment: That's how enduring business is built, on a solid foundation, one brick at a time!