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What Keeps You Up?

Recently we invited our readers to tell us "What keeps you up at night?"—with acknowledgment to the late Wayne Cornils for coining the phrase—and how SMRN can help. We got a wide range of responses, as you might imagine, but some common themes emerged.

Here are all the responses we received:

Gee, things that keep me up at night? Oh, you mean work things. . .

Compensation plans that work, for sales people and sales management—what kind of base, how long to keep someone on that base, what you do if he or she misses budget, and conversely and more pleasantly, what they do if they hit or exceed budget each month? I’ve heard of several compensation plans, but none really trip my trigger yet.

What stations are doing about the proposed increase in CARP fees? We stopped streaming when the bookkeeping and cash got too much for us. . .there has got to be a way we small broadcasters can stream our limited signals that would give us parity with our higher-power FM and AM counterparts. My signal goes a maximum of 30 miles in the daytime and less then 6 at night, but I have to pay full boat to the CARP people just to reach further than my limited signal goes, especially at night. Is there a little secret that I am not reading or seeing? Meanwhile, the 100 kw FM or even a low-dial-position 5 kw AM-er covers a wide area at no (extra) charge to those folks.

—Rick Sellers, KMRY, Cedar Rapids, IA

One of the things is how to constantly keep the members of the sales force motivated. Any new or very successful ideas, in addition to and including compensation ideas?

—Moose Rosana, WOWQ/WQYX/WCPA, Dubois, PA

If there was one aspect of radio advertising sales that occasionally drives me crazy, it would be teaching sales people (vets and new hires alike) how to prospect new business. We read the newspaper(s), we watch for billboards, we watch for new construction, we listen to other radio in the market and nearby markets. . . Has anyone found a different, more effective, more innovative way to locate and identify potential new accounts?

I’ve been in radio for over 33 years, and while practically everything else in this industry has dramatically changed, the "step one" in advertising sales—prospecting—really hasn’t.

—Jim Bowman, WAVT, Pottsville, PA

Some things I think we could all use some help with:

How about SMRN setting up a production pool so that smaller markets can do spot/promo production for each other on a swap basis? All this would have to be is a website with message board and file storage. What a great reason for a station to subscribe to SMRN! All the great news and knowledge… and an exclusive way to have many talented voices on our radio stations instead of the same three or four people over and over!

I love the "ideas" columns that come from the meetings at NAB, RAB, etc. We are living on new or refurbished ideas these days. Anything you can do to share more success stories (sales, PR, local community, etc) would be great.

—Joe Pedicino, WEKS, Newnan, GA

I don’t know if it is the fast-paced world—pressure from above to hit numbers, etc.—but we seem to be having more problems working as a team. Production and sales are always hammering at each other—both thinking they are on the side of "truth, justice and the American Way." We have implemented a more orderly process, almost a checklist with dates by each step, to see where the accountability lies, but we still have to do last-minute production because (take your pick): (a) Production waited until the last minute, and then found there was a problem; or (b) Sales didn’t get all the info needed to us in time.

—Name Withheld by Request

I think it’s important to talk about two things to improve the playing field for AM stations:

The NAB and all the state associations need to push these issues. I’m pretty well played out with the NAB’s position on small market broadcasters. We need to get proactive to push these two items.

—Al Wynn, KODL, The Dalles, OR

My issues are probably the same as many:

—Alan Bishop, F. L. Radio Group, Geneva, NY

Coming from Australia, many of the issues we have here will be of little interest to the rest of your membership, however some of the issues you are dealing with allow us to be prepared when/if they raise their heads here.

The information you provide (especially sales/copy/promotions) is exceptional, and I believe I probably pay for my annual SMRN subscription with one idea from each newsletter.

Your FCC rules are very different from ours—then again, we only have 220 commercial radio stations to deal with—and I wouldn’t like to have to deal with some of the rules and regulations involved there.

I am very happy with the topics you have covered in the past and continue to cover, and cannot think of issues that would be relevant to the rest of your subscription base, but if and when I do I will certainly shoot you a line.

—Andrew Metcalf, WAFM, Broome, Australia

It would be nice to see a talent pool again. I think this is an industry-wide problem. When we do our broad outreach and promoting of radio for job recruitment, we still only get a few somewhat talented applicants. We do get a lot of resumes though. We used to have people almost waiting in line to get an on-air position or sales and these people were talented; we just didn’t always have a slot to fill.

Other than healthcare costs, my other industry beef would be with ASCAP, BMI and RMLC. The RMLC was supposed to negotiate on behalf of broadcasters. I feel that we have been sold down the river. Maybe the big guys can negotiate their own payments, but many of us are stuck. We used to pay 1.65% (I think) of gross sales to BMI and ASCAP each—not the best deal going, but at least it was tied to sales, whether good or bad. Our sales since 2002 have been pretty much flat, but we are now paying about 2.1% of gross sales to each. I haven’t seen any of the details about the new agreement, but I’m sure it will be even more inequitable for us.

RMLC’s current agreement provided for an ever-increasing income to BMI and ASCAP paid by radio stations. Wouldn’t we all like to have that guarantee?

—Argie Tidmore, WPPA/WAVT, Pottsville, PA

Doing exciting promotions to keep our listeners and staff interested! . . . Writing interesting and effective radio copy . . . Having the right schedule and frequency to get the client success with the right ad copy.

—Beth A. Luebbering, KOKO, Warrensburg, MO

Slow national business, bottom feeders in the market that bring down the CPP, no leadership from the big groups, and the idiots that run the groups.

—Boyd Arnold, WCCC, Hartford, CT

One thing that keeps me up at night is how to make budgets. The other thing that keeps me up at night is finding good salespeople.

—Connie Pfeifer, KHOM, West Plains, MO

Here are three subjects I think about often:

—Dale Thornhill, Commonwealth Broadcasting, Glasgow, KY

The newsletter serves me well now. I go over the sales ideas with our GM, and we use items we read to stuff the tickler file for next month, next season, and next year. I say, stay the course.

—David Stewart, Moving Target Consulting Works LLC, Dallas, TX

Two things that keep me up at night: attracting good small market sales people and FCC-mandated EEO compliance.

—David Van Drew, WRHL, Rochelle, IL

You have covered this topic well, but there still seems to be a challenge for some smaller market broadcasters in attracting automobile dealer advertising.

—Ed Henson, Henson Media, Louisville, KY

The things that keep me up may not be suitable for addressing, but they are

—Francis Nash, WGOH-WUGO, Grayson, KY

You do such a great job it’s hard to think of things you have not covered. I would say, in a selfish way, any time you can provide insight into new laws passed by our liberal state [California] that could have a direct impact on small market broadcasters, that would be much appreciated. As you know, this state is not business-friendly. I know this would not apply to broadcasters in other states, but I’m sure I’m not the only subscriber in California.

—Gene Brister, KXOR, El Centro, CA

You asked for a list of things that keep me up at night:

—Hal Widsten, KWED, Seguin, TX

Obviously, given my "side job" here at ABC developing disaster recovery and business continuity plans [DR/BCP] for our owned TV stations, the issue that keeps me—and should keep every station manager, chief engineer and news director—up at night: staying on the air in the face of cascading catastrophe.

While many stations in this post 9/11 era have developed at least some cursory plan for emergency operations, many are woefully incomplete and even more are completely untested.

DR/BCP is expensive—especially when things like preparedness kits, emergency power supplies and backup sites are added to the mix—and the process is often too rigorous for rank amateurs to execute without some training in threat and risk assessment, incident command systems and other specialized DR/BCP methodologies.

But in times of crisis, live local radio may be a community’s only link to critical information in real time—a role the Internet may never be able to fulfill. It is a role we must embrace, prepare for—and promote.

—Howard Price, Quixotic Communications, New City, NY

My biggest concern, being involved in starting a community radio station that will serve the coast via Part 15 and Internet, is the fight over royalties. We will never be able to play any music unless this issue is resolved. I know we are not alone, but this affects stations both big and small!

—Jim Henderson, Sounds Good Radio, Half Moon Bay, CA

Things that keep us up at night:

—Jim Cronin, KNIM, Maryville, MO

I keep worrying about whether or how I can afford to go digital, or down the road, HD I also am not completely sure what I need to pay to stream 24/7. We just stream news and high school sports right now. (The technical end of the business has never been my forte.)

I also may have to discontinue providing health care for my employees. It is the only major expense that I feel I can cut. I currently pay half of the premium. What are other people doing? I have a $1,000 deductible, co-pay on office visits, $100 deductible on prescriptions, then co-pay. No dental or vision. At small market salaries, I feel it would be a real hardship to have it any higher.

—John Hoscheidt, WRMJ, Aledo, IL

Being a 1000-watt small market station, I am concerned about things like AM-on-FM translators and good-sounding digital for AM. Our business is tremendous because we do local radio; business is not our problem, but covering the same area at night as we do during the day would allow us to serve our community even better.

—John Wishon,WWWC, Wilkesboro, NC

Two things that keep me up at night:

—Joyce McCullough, WCPO/WAJK/WKOT, LaSalle, IL

How do we improve local direct sales performance?

How to find contract engineers when yours becomes unresponsive or retires?

Where to find good sales people in small-medium markets when large markets are right up the highway?

—Kevin Leslie, WFOY/WAOC, St. Augustine, FL

I really am a small market town—3500 people—so the thing I worry most about is making it work. Rural areas and the farmers are hurting, so all of us are, too.

—Bette Bailly, KNAB, Burlington, CO

I go back to the old Bob Doll years of the SMRN. I have loose-leaf books of those editions that I still use.

I think your publication duplicates too much of what we have already received from other publications each week. By the time Thursday arrives I already have read most of what you have on your first and second pages. I don’t save your SMRN papers in loose-leaf books.

I’d like a publication that did what Bob’s did—talking with small market stations, learning what they were doing, spreading ideas.

—Tom Anderson, KOAL/KARB/KRPX, Price, UT (pop. 8,000)

You asked me recently what keeps me awake at night about this wonderful industry of ours:

—Larry Patrick, Patrick Communications/
Legend Communications, Ellicott City, MD

My local concern is affected by my industry concern, really not industry but the FCC. I feel that the FCC has no understanding/concern for the small market stations, even though the small market stations out number the major markets. (Walmart started out serving smaller communities.)

Their fine schedules are ludicrous. They treat all stations as if they were equal—e.g., the major markets can absorb $325,000 fines for obscenities, but it would cripple most small market operators.

They continue to auction off available spectrum where the is no need, just for greed:

Each new frequency can and does muddy the waters and erodes the listenership and the advertising pie. I have 18 full-time employees, and we truly serve our trade area—two full-time news people, a full-time sports director, five full-time announcers, an engineer, four sales people plus support staff.

Most of the competing stations are satellite with "dollar a holler" rates.

—Lee Schroeder, KVOE

Internet and radio presentation ideas, and a couple of ideas about what small market clients really want when they buy your station.

Package size matters; we’re spending way too much time selling small silly packages. Any conversation around these topics will help reinforce what I’m preaching locally.

—Lonnie Gronek, WEOL & WNWV, Elyria, OH

NTR ideas are always nice. Public File requirements; we always worry about being up to standard. Public Service Programming Requirements. Anything sales related. Sales Staff Incentives.

—Mark A. Bertig, Renda Broadcasting, Indiana, PA

Half my day has nothing to do with radio; sometimes most of my day has nothing to do with radio. It has to do with taxes and people and insurance and postage and water leaks—and, and, and. . . If it was just about radio, I wouldn’t have a job—I’d be on vacation every day!

There are a lot of sources for those other issues and SMRN shouldn’t probably write about non-radio issues very often, but they are very real.

Getting and keeping the best people is tough. The average tenure of my full-time employees right now is about nine years with our company, but the long-term employee is getting harder and harder to find. We’d love to pay more, give more days off and have more benefits, but that’s tough to do.

Competition from the so-called "non-commercial broadcasters is another tough issue. Every few months there seems to be another not for profit full power, translater, satellite, college, religious, university, public etc. etc. etc. station getting on the air somewhere in our coverage area. A couple of have sold recently for multiple millions of dollars each. No matter what they say, they are after the same dollars out there, yet they don’t pay as many (or any) taxes; they get grants from governments and agencies; their "ads" are sometimes so similar to real ads they can’t possibly be legal; they don’t pay the same rates for news service and music license fees; and many times use government T-1 lines and broadband services in a totally commercial fashion; yet they don’t have to "participate" in as many regulatory aspects as we commercial broadcasters do.

In my company’s six home counties of license, only one doesn’t have a so-called non-commercial competitor, and in four of the five other counties the so-called non-commercial station(s) have higher power than my so-called commercial stations and much larger budgets. They could probably make my broadcast life even tougher if they wanted to.

Now that’s something to stay up at night about.

—Name withheld by request

Some of the things I am really interested in are the transition into HD Radio and the costs involved; how to make money with our web site and how other small stations and groups are handling health coverage for their employees.

I know at one time NAB was offering group health coverage but apparently they dropped it. The costs for our plan are unbelievable. Maybe there could be some way we could have a national group plan of health insurance for small market stations, which could probably bring the costs under control.

—Mark Layne, KVPI AM/FM, Ville Platte, LA

Staying current with technology—especially software. Many (if not most) suppliers release packages that have had only a moderate amount of QC, and then we find the bugs.

Real revenue growth for the industry—not just on-air commercials—every aspect of marketing that we can and should tap, but don’t.

The web—that’s a reverse black hole. We just haven’t been fast enough or forward-thinking enough to capture what’s the real potential and then tap it.

—Mark Vail, KFEQ/KKJO, Hays, KS

Probably the thing that keeps me awake at night would be the constant planning for the future. Knowing what’s going on in our market and in our industry at all times—with our client base, the economy and with our competitors.

Knowing what’s in my six sales reps’ heads—both professionally and personally—so that I can plan their and my future.

The station cannot grow without my always being on top of the game. That takes constant planning for the immediate issues now and for the station’s future—three, five, ten years out. And more than ever, radio is changing at such a rapid pace that we all need to be planning ahead for the changes coming at us and our staffs.

—Melanie Osborn, CRMC, WTUZ, New Philadelphia, OH

Getting more advertising dollars not only for radio, but for our web portals our stations have.

Getting the dollars out of car dealers that we used to get. I know one way is to get their print dollars diverted to our web sites, but you have to have an effective automobile portal on your web site to be profitable and get the hits you need.

Moving people off the "I haven’t decided" mode; seems like there’s more of that in the last couple of years. Could be the economy, but it’s more likely that clients have more choices so they’re more confused about the various advertising mediums.

—Randal J. Miller, Miller Media Group/Regional Radio, Taylorville, IL

Recruiting sales and programming people, and training a farm team of your own homegrown programming talent (not enough young people getting into programming).

—Robert Mahaffey, KTTR & KZNN, Springfield, MO

I think the question that is going through my mind right now is compensation for new sales people. Having such a large coverage area, our sales people cover a lot of miles. In the past had a tiered level of compensation, then straight commission after three months. Then we went to straight guarantee for three months then commission, lately a salary plus incentives.

I keep raising the bar, protecting the salesman from going broke paying for gas, and all I get is someone who wants a paycheck with no return. What are the other small markets doing? I’m wondering if there are any true radio sales people out there.

—Sabrina Preiss, Radio Hill Country, Marble Falls, TX

We do all of our website ourselves. It generates right now around $2000-2500 a month in additional income. And we’ve just begun to tap what I think could be closer to $5,000-7,000 a month.

We have checked with a few programmers that supply software to make editing our website easier—by easier, I mean it would be nice to be able to insert news stories, audio and photos with ease. I probably just haven’t found the right one yet ,but with the way our site is updated frequently it would be nice to make it easy for my employees.

—Scott Poese. KBRX, O’Neill, NE

We in radio could do a better job of promoting ourselves—the things we do, what we stand for, how we help people, communities and organizations.

It would be nice if NAB or some organization could provide broadcasters with advertising promos—something we could air that would help us sell our product and support our sales people out in the field.. Remember the old Dick Orkin promos about radio advertising? Now those were good.

—Stephen Lankford, WRAY AM FM, Princeton, IN

Ideas on how to generate revenue.

I would like to see us exchange any idea that we managers have discovered that help us do our jobs more effectively or more efficiently in any department. The auto business has this wonderful concept called "20 groups," where they not only share their composites but have to bring a new thought or idea that is working for them to each meeting. Some are very simple, some are major.

—Suzanne Meyers, Verstandig Broadcasting, Harrisonburg, VA

I like hearing about how other small market stations are operating, ideas for promoting against the larger players whose signals reach into our markets, news of companies like GoodRadio buying into small markets, etc.

—Ted Hutton, Hutton Broadcasting, Vero Beach, FL

I would like to see a little more on the ownership perspective—things like discussion of the latest in equipment, sales compensation packages, making money with the web site, best sales trainers and systems, dealing with engineers, voice tracking pros and cons. Are small market operators succeeding with NTR? What are the best small market NTR events? Bridal showers? Job fairs? Lawn and garden? Are people getting any benefit from RAB materials?

—Thomas Dobrez, KZYR, Homewood, IL

Better ways to increase localism

Luring classified type ads away from the papers

—Tom Rogers, Commonwealth Broadcasting, Glasgow, KY

I am so sick of the IBOC thing. The small market operators cannot justify the expense of making the installations. We barely make it now without any added expense.

I truly believe the IBOC is probably okay on FM; the AM is probably a disaster in the making. Yes, the FCC has approved it; the large operators have been lobbying alongside iBiquity.

If anyone has listened to DRE FMxtra, the sound is just as good. The cost is minimal and the receivers they report they are manufacturing will probably has a good sound as does IBOC. It just does not have the "HD-2/3."

There are, in most markets, too many radio stations. Why is there a need for more that people cannot listen to.

The car dealers in my town order XM and Sirius because it is free. If they had to pay for HD, I doubt they would order it if it cost extra.

Even at that, the small market is not wealthy. I doubt very many people will jump out and purchase an HD radio for home, nor will they purchase an add-on for HD.

Ibiquity has sold approximately 1,500 out of 16,000(?) radio stations nationwide. Once the top 100 markets are sold, where then? The small radio station owners I have talked with are not interested, with the present entry expense.

A good analog station can sound very good. If you use an HD adapter, it is no better than the radio reproducing it, so where is the advantage?

I went to the NAB 2005 show in Las Vegas. I asked one of the iBiquity sales people how small markets could afford the cost to install IBOC. His answer: "We are not looking at the small markets."

My final question: If it is available in only the top 100 markets why should anyone who travels buy the product?

—Tommie Dodd, KQIK AM/FM, Lakeview, OR

You guys do a fabulous job of covering the topics that I always look for each and every week, like sales. I am also interested in any programming and news topics if you happen to run across those. I love the fact that you put into your newsletter some promotional ideas as well.

—Tonya L. Siner, CRMC, WXEF/WKJT/WXET, Effingham, IL

RIAA internet rates and proposed radio rates.

—Hayward Talley, WSMI, Litchfield, IL