FM News/Talk: Why NOW?

Short answer? It’s tempting to say “music royalties.” For decades, the recording industry lined radio station walls with gold records, to thank us for promoting their product. All the while, they were campaigning for cash, and they weren’t going to quit. With radio now negotiating how-much, this new expense alone will prompt format changes. Acknowledging the inevitable, smart stations are already moving News/Talk programming to FM, because you do NOT want to be third-in in your market. But there’s more to this than royalties.

Recently announcing that stately WSB would be the next legacy News/Talker to add an FM simulcast, Cox Media Group’s market manager noted that “nearly half of Atlanta’s radio audience has never visited the AM dial.” Many in our business viewed the move as forward-thinking. If we’re still calling the tuner a “dial,” I say we’re late.

Conspicuous as WSB’s news was, it was merely the latest. Just a couple months earlier, mighty WBAP/Dallas-Fort Worth added an FM. Neither station had trouble covering its Metro. Both probably suffer a night pattern of 30+ states. With some 80% of Time Spent Listening now on FM, simulcasters are simply fishing where the fish swim.

If you’re not on FM, you’re invisible to most of 25-54.
Most of the money demo grew up without an AM radio habit. And we know how women resist AM’s snap-crackle-pop. In the Group Programmers Super Session at last year’s Radio Show, Saga Communications EVP/Programming Steve Goldstein offered that “if you put a Talk station on FM – just move it – you’ll drop your median age 10 years.” That’s sure what happened in Washington.

FM radio works better than AM radio.
WTOP/Washington – now a group of FMs – was a 1500AM stand-alone when I programmed it in the 1980s. Sure, it was a kick to crank a 50KW. At night, I’ve heard that station in Canada and Florida. If we only could’ve gotten into West Falls Church VA and Germantown MD. Sure, we were #1 in P12+ cume, but mid-pack in AQH Share. Not any more. Now a solid #1, WTOP is the second-biggest biller in the USA…in market #9.

On music radio, commercials interrupt programming.
Non-music radio is already the spoken word, foreground. Music radio listeners won’t tolerate the quantity of commercial inventory that News/Talk supports; and the quality of listener engagement in music radio pales in comparison to the conversation News/Talk is having with its advertiser’s prospects.

Music radio: by-no-means extinct, but arguably obsolete.
Sure, many music FMs still make big money. Others making just-OK money remain stalled in mid-pack music formats because, in banker-speak, “they’re cash-flowing.” Meanwhile, Pandora is in Ford’s Sync-equipped dashboard, and people of all ages are walking around with hundreds of songs on their phones. So even if radio could afford that new Music Royalty expense line item, it’ll be tough to ROI.

At a recent convention, one talk radio syndicator crowed that in 16 of the top 20 markets, lower-rated AM Talk stations make more money than higher-rated music FMs. Imagine if those Talk stations were talking to everyone. Cash-flow that.

What Happens When an FM Station Targets the format of a Successful AM Station?
That was the title of a presentation by Joe Lenski from Edison Research, at Arbitron’s Programmer’s Fly-In. He recalled that, “in the 70s and 80s, when an FM [music station] would launch against [an AM station in] the same format, the AM station was essentially defenseless. Now, we're seeing a similar FM vs. AM battle developing” for non-music formats, with slightly different results.

Joe’s session focused on new FM sports talkers’ impact. When Boston’s WBZ-FM recently signed-on, “immediately, within a week, cume for Sports Talk overall increased dramatically.” Interestingly, not-at-the-expense-of the pre-existing AM station. “Quarter Hours to incumbent WEEI have risen since WBZ-FM signed on!” And that’s WITH the New England Patriots on WBZ-FM (40% of its listening). “Almost exactly the same pattern in Philadelphia,” where WPEN-FM [simulcast] challenged WIP (AM).

Two-deep, not too deep.
My client KTBB/Tyler TX was – and still is – a 5KW AM600 with “The Holy Trinity” (Glenn Beck > Rush Limbaugh > Sean Hannity). Until last Spring, cluster-mate KDOK (FM) was oldies. Now, as KTBB-FM, it simulcasts the morning news block, then splits-off and features Dave Ramsey, Dr. Laura, Clark Howard, Dr. Joy Browne, and play-by-play and sports talk that previously suffered from the seasonality that haunts AM stations’ monthly power and/or pattern changes. AM600 remains special, because you have to go there for Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity. And because we encumbered the-best-of-the-rest, a competitor FM’s subsequent flip to Talk had to settle for syndicated leftovers. As I noted above, you do NOT want to be third-in.

Oh, and by the way, we flipped the FM one-month-into the Spring book. And with NO off-air promotion, AM + FM tied the #1 station P12+ in that first book.

Weekends alone are opportune, since smart talkers use specialty shows to accrue “appointment listening” and make money from local direct retailers who never heard the word Arbitron. Adding an accompanying FM to your existing AM talker lets you go two-deep into great how-to shows, and avoid play-by-play conflicts.

Think big…and think fast.
My client WZTK/Burlington NC is North Carolina’s most-listened-to Talk FM…without Limbaugh, Beck, or Hannity. And we’re flanking ourselves, because Burlington is halfway between Raleigh-Durham and Greensboro-Winston-Salem, where my client also owns the heritage AM talkers, and where WZTK’s new-and-improved 100KW signal is now city-grade.

My client New Jersey 101.5 – a station in Trenton, mind you -- is the most-listened-to Talk FM in the USA! They’ve been talking 20 years, so this FM Talk idea isn’t new.

Why now?
Why did a dozen years of “Hot Talk” hype fail to find traction on FM? Conventional wisdom…and bankers. If you asked them, they’d tell you that music = FM and Talk = AM. Now, they just want their money.

Now, market managers, coping with an iffy economy are squeezing already-squeezed stations, often allocating disproportionate time and resources to propping-up music FMs that sit mid-pack, or worse. When, instead, they could take the slacker FM’s expenses to zero, AND grow the more-salable News/Talk format’s share.

Haven’t got the market’s pre-existing News/Talk AM? Then challenge it. A well-programmed FM talker will give ‘em fits.

Five years from now, there might still be music on FM. One year from now there will certainly be more talk on
FM, even if radio is still arm-wrestling with record labels. Even just months from now, launching a Talk station will
be harder, as syndicated shows get snapped-up.

Got a problem child music FM? Think Musical Chairs.