If AM radio is in its twilight, then why have three
broadcasting companies been in such a whirl of activity lately over what they
put on their Seattle stations?
The answer: That’s where listeners—especially men—still are,
especially when it comes to a type of programming that is as old as radio
itself: sports.
Says industry observer Tom Taylor, “There are [advertising]
clients who need to reach the core 25- to 54-[year-old], out-of-home male
audience that’s so elusive nowadays. Build loyalty there, and you’ve got a
business.”
That’s why, in April, Bonneville International flipped the
format of its venerable KIRO-AM/710 from news-talk to all sports. The
centerpiece of that move was reclaiming Mariners game broadcasts, a proven
ratings driver, which the station under previous ownership lost to
KOMO-AM/1000, owned by Seattle-based Fisher Communications, in 2002.
The six-year deal was reportedly one of the richest radio
contracts in all of baseball. Fisher used the occasion to switch KOMO to a
format heavy on news, traffic, weather and sports reports.
In the end, Fisher executives were publicly noting how much
better their financial performance would be without the drag of the Mariners
contract.
Bonneville didn’t toss the news-talk format, with such
well-known hosts as Dave Ross. Instead, it moved it from KIRO-AM to an FM
station where audiences are thought to be younger and larger.
In moving to all sports on the AM side, Bonneville will go
head-to-head with Clear Channel Communications’ KJR-AM/950, the home of
University of Washington football and men’s basketball.
KJR also added several of its local hosts to its sister
station in Tacoma. Morning host Mitch Levy’s program is also heard on a station
in Spokane.
For Bonneville and Clear Channel, the challenge is finding
sufficient room among listeners for multiple sports talk stations in one
market. For Fisher, the challenge is holding on to whatever audience KOMO built
when it had the Mariners.
AM radio has been reinventing itself ever since music
formats began migrating to the FM band, which allows broadcasting in stereo.
“AM is still very vibrant,” says KIRO Program Director Rod Arquette, but
increasingly it is becoming home to niche formats, including sports talk.
Taylor, news editor of Radio-Info.com, sees more evolution
for radio. “There will be more stratification, with [stations] that are truly
lesser signals doing very niche and/or very local formats,” including ethnic
and religious formats.
It’s not helping that radio is trying to
reinvent itself in the midst of a horrific advertising climate; at least 15
percent of radio’s revenue comes from the car industry, which has taken major
hits during the recession. “Things will come back somewhat, advertising-wise,”
Taylor says, but likely not to levels enjoyed earlier in the decade. “There’s
now far more fragmentation and there are many more competing media outlets and
ways for consumers to spend their time and advertisers to spend their
money.”