READER COMMENTS

TOPIC ONE: BIG MARKET CLASSICAL STATIONS ARE SHUNNING NATIONAL PROGRAMS

Last Monday [link] we featured a new study we conducted about carriage of nationally syndicated programs on Classical music stations. In study we found that the largest Classical stations in the system (based on their number of estimated weekly listeners) are carrying an average of 2.2 national programs per week. However, stations in smaller markets are carrying an average of 6.5 national programs per week.

We asked the question – Why is this happening? – and we received quite a few responses:

Robert Conrad

• Comment One came from Robert Conrad of WCLV – The Dean of Classical Music Radio:

Conrad:  

Very interesting, Ken. We, as a minor syndicator, have noticed the downward trend in interest in syndicated programming. However, how come you didn’t include orchestra broadcasts? Or didn’t any show up?

KEN SAYS: Actually, we should have included the orchestras but we didn’t because many are seasonal broadcasts.  Then we added the Met Opera, which, of course, is seasonal. Soon, we will do a study of the orchestras.

Carriage of the orchestras followed the same pattern as the national shows: Declining carriage in the biggest markets but lot’s of carriage by smaller market stations,

Joe Goetz

• Comment Two came from Joe Goetz from K-Bach in Phoenix, via the AMPPR list:

Goetz:  [The reason] is really quite simple: larger market, larger budget (in general). 

Stations that are resource-rich have the ability to worry about things like maintaining a brand across dayparts.

 Smaller stations in smaller markets might have only a few full-time people at the most, and national programs are the only way they can fill air time.

• Comment Three came from the former Executive Producer of one of Classical music’s most successful national programs. Confidentiality was requested and given:

Confidential: In your discussion of syndicated music programs, you left out classical music. Naturally, given my history with redacted, I’m curious about how the show’s carriage stacks up these days.

KEN SAYS:  Your former program is doing quite well but it has very little carriage in the biggest markets. The program does have excellent carriage in medium and small size markets. So, your “baby” is doing pretty well.

FYI – Confidential is referring to our post of March 29^th [link] that was about syndicated national programs on noncom AAA stations. We should have been more clear that it wasn’t about Classical shows. This comment from Confidential gave us the idea to do the Classical national programs carriage study.

TOPIC TWO: NBC’S EXPERIMENT WITH 24/7 ALL-NEWS RADIO – NIS – THE “NEWS AND INFORMATION SERVICE”

Pre sign-on hype for NIS

We received a comment on one of our most popular posts: The Incredible True Story of NBC’s 24/7 Radio News & Information Channel. It was first published on June 3, 2016 and updated on June 21, 2017 [link].

The comment came William Burpree, a freelance writer and radio historian now based in Illinois. Burpree started his radio career at WERS, Boston, while he was a student at Emerson College. Burpee wrote:

“I was living in Tampa, Fla. when the first plans for NIS were announced. I wrote to them asking if the Tampa Bay area would have an NIS station. The reply I got from NBC said For competitive reasons (which I’ve long since come to understand), NBC could neither confirm or deny that NIS was coming to Tampa.”

“My family and I had moved up north to New England, which had several NIS stations, including WPOP, WEAN and WCSH. In fact, I heard NIS during its first week of operations on WNWS-FM, New York in June 1975. I liked it a lot.”

“I think if NBC had stuck with NIS, it could have made it. The shutdown of NIS left a void in radio that has never been replaced.”

KEN SAYS: This is a story about what could have been.

Back in the 1970’s NBC was a major player in radio news. In 1974 NBC decided to create a 24/7 all-news channel. The target was FM station’s nationwide. Many FM stations were not doing well at the time, so there appeared to be a need.

NBC’s News and Information Service (NIS) began on a couple dozen stations on June 18, 1975. It seemed to have so much promise.

The NIS Program Clock

NIS was way ahead of its time. When NBC pulled the plug on November 4, 1976, NIS had lost millions of dollars. At the time, NIS was considered to be one of the biggest failures in American media history.

There were lots of good reasons why NIS failed. Big commercial station owners didn’t get the concept. FM stations were becoming much more popular powered by Album Rock and Beautiful Music. By the time NIS ended, it was carried on fewer than 100 stations, many were AM stations.

Now, observers say that NBC should have stuck with NIS because the media environment was changing.  Satellite delivery of programming was just three years away. NPR was bringing news listeners to the FM dial. In the early 1980s the FCC made available hundreds of new FM station licenses via Docket 8090.

But, NIS failed for another reason that Mr. Burpee probably won’t agree with: It sounded like shit.

What proof? Give a listen to this YouTube video we produced featuring an air-check of NIS’s flagship station, WNWS-FM, New York, during afternoon drive in August, 1976: