Contemporary Mass
Communication
CM 704 Boston
University College of Communication Guest
Speaker on Radio
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Radio as a Mass Communication Medium Guest speaker: David Pearlman Son of a pharmacist, who grew up in Brooklline, David wanted to be a journalist and writer. At Boston College, he turned this interest to college radio. He broadcast BC sports events over national networks while stuill a student in college. He went to work at WBZ radio in Boston, beginning at $3.75 an hour, in the promotions department. He worked as a character in a radio sports comedy show, which became syndicated nationally. He did news reports for CBS radio while still in college.He went on to get an MBA at Boston University. David went into the management side of radio. He was interested in continuing on as talent for radio, but saw tmanagement as where the actions was. He traveled around the country working for the Westinghouse group of radio stations. In those days, a company could own only one station in a market. David was the "fixit man" for Group W. Group W was purchased by Infinity which was purchased by CBS which is now part of Viacom. His goal was to becoma a General Manager by 30, and by 40 the owner of a radio station. His first station was in Hartford, which he turned into the #1 station in Connecticut. This merged into American Radio, which grew to 96 stations over five years. He learned about financing, how to take a company public, and how consolidation works. Today his company, Infinity Broadcasting, owns 180 radio stations with a cash flow of over $1 billion per year. Today David meets regularly with the "heads of state" of Viacom, where he sits in the radio chair. He now sits across the table from people who were his former bitter compeititors. Today in the U.S. two big companies dominate radio, Clear Channel Communications and Infinity. You could write a book, published by Simon & Schuster; go on Oprah to promote it; make a music video with MTV; buy time an numerous TV cable channels, and on a natioanl TV network, put up billboards all over the country; and later distribute this all on videotape at Blockbuster. Viacom owns all of these companies.Bigger is clearly better for the shareholder and the advertiser; our task is to make it better for the customers and listerners. How has the conglomeration of the media helped or hindered? Before the consolidation, all the competitors in a single radio market went after the widest demographic -- all the radio stations targeted the same general group of 25-54 year olds. And so in a given market, they all sounded the same. When a single company owns several stations in the same market, they can target the programming to a specific demographic. So in Boston, WBZ appeals to the older news crowd. WZLX appeals to classic rock folks. WODS is an older oldies station. WBCN offers traditional rock for the 20-35 year old. WMIX is females 25-40. All of these are owned by Infinity, which does not want them competing with each other, and wants to better define the listeners.This targeting appeals to advertisers. This allows the station owner to work closely with advertisers to tailor a campaign to the audience. In this way, radio has become more powerful, and the listener has more choices. Is there more of a diversity of political voice because of talk radio consolidation? Let's take Howard Stern as an example. He is one of the few personalities in radio that creates his own audience. His concept of forward motion is the key -- he is always setting you up for what's coming up. He tells you just enough to whet your appetite, and keep you listening. So his shows get the highest listerner yield. Serious political talk gets very few listeners, and so doesn't last long on the air. Rush Limbaugh was once popular, but his listenership is on the wane. Talk tradio today must be more entertaning, full of gossip and voyeurism. Whatever draws listeners will continue on the air. What stations do you own in Manhattan? All the ones that count: FAN, KROK, WCBS, and we syndicate Don Imus. What about talk radio personalities that violate the rules? Opie and Anthony, for instance, push the envelope. Anthony, a former refrigerator repair man, is paired with Opie, a former radio intern at a rock show. They make Howard Stern seem normal. They created an off-color campaign in Boston -- the more controversey they created, the more listeners they drew. (They were fired when they faked news reports of the death of the Mayor.) They are now at WNEW in New York. I worry about this, because we should have a sense of taste. Though it's no worse than television, which appeals equally to society's prurient interests. What you hear on radio simply mirrors what people in the society are thinking about. Until we are told not to, we will push the envelope, as long as it draws listeners. Is everything you hear on talk radio true? Not all of the things that Opie and Anthony describe are true -- this is the theater of the mind, not the news. So far, they have not violated any FCC rules. Though I am concerned with how these shows treat women and other groups. How are radio stations rated? With diaries that selected listeners keep, collected by the Arbitron company, in which they write down periodically what they are listening to. How do you descide what demogrtaphic to attract, when you open a radio station? As an example, we bought a small station in Cincinnatti, of 6000 watts, low power, and then tried to figure out what markets are unserved in the city. We hired an outside company to conduct interviews with a sample of people in the city. We ask edthem what they listen to, and what else they'd like to hear. We play edsong amples and asked if they woould listen to such a station. We found that no one was playing alternative music, so we created a station that played this kind of music. It went in three months from a 0% share to an 18% share, and is now #2 in Cincinnatti. This is the most exciting part of my business, to start up a new station. But I use the scan button, and wait for something good to appear from the radio. I have no station loyalty. Yes, young male listeners tend to switch a lot, and have not settled on their tastes. As they get older, they tend to settle to a station. The mass of the audience develops a loyalty to a station, especially as they get older. Do you use satellites to distribute content? Yes, we use whatever means available to send radio content across the country. For instance, John Landers is #1 in the market of women in Boston. He has a character, Mr Leonard, who sounds like he is in the station, but is really sitting at home in Tuscon ,Arizona. He is piped in through ISDN to Boston and to stations all over the country. How much does it cost to set up a radio stations? That depends on the size of the market. In Boston, perhaps a million dollars. In a smaller market, perhaps $100,000. Most of the money goes for promotion and marketing -- billboards and bumper stickers. For instance, a new station in Boston spent $700,000 advertising itself on television alone. Do you ever worry about owning to many stations in a sngle market? When we merged companies, we had to divest ourselves of certain stations in the Boston market.The federal rules say a single company cannot buy into more than 40% of advertising revenues in a single market. You can own only five FM and three AM stations in a single market. These rules are based on a fear of that a certain politcal point of view will garner a monopoly in a single market. What are the prospects for internet broadcasting? The power of radio is in its mobility -- you can listen anywhere. Radio has survived TV and the internet, because it is local and portable. Radio is one of the few truly local media. What percentage of new radio stations succeed? Only those woith a perceived difference, and a valuable prodcut, will survive. Not every one of our stations is succssful, but none are losing money. How much do the advertisers affect the content of the radio station? Generally not much. Buying time on a station does not grant ownership rights to an advertisers. Advertisers may suggest we change our telent, but we do not. But at times, advertisers boycott certain shows, refusing to buy time on those shows. This can certainly affect the programming. Are radio comapnies buying educational radio stations? 88 to 92 on the FM band is for educational and non-profit radio, on which commercials cannot be run. Right now a hot topic is low-power FM radio stations. |