Station spinoff airs many questions
Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers Magazine, joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program yesterday to discuss the possible shakeup of the Boston radio market now that radio giants CBS and Entercom are merging.
Q: Give us a sense of how big this is and what it means going forward for talk radio?
A: It’s a big deal. And what makes it really big is that we don’t know what the deal is. We only know that it’s a big deal. And no one has a clue as to what the results of the deal will be other than it seems that stations like WRKO, WZLX, a couple of others that are currently in the hands of Entercom and CBS will be in the hands of neither after their merger. And considering how few major owners there are out there, speculation abounds:
Will it be one of the other big mega companies or will it be an outside party?
Q: What do you think this means for talk radio and especially political talk radio?
A: Political talk radio will move forward no matter what because there’s a market for it. WBZ is quasi-political, it’s mostly a news-talk news oriented station, with some talk shows that are not really controversial talk shows.
WRKO serves the conservative niche, that’s a very powerful and potentially lucrative niche. So I don’t think there’s any necessary reason to believe that the current formats that those two stations have are going to be thrown away.
Q: With WBZ, are there constraints to selling a clear channel station with 50,000 watts that covers practically the entire country?
A: In today’s marketplace, every station covers the country, because I personally think more people listen to radio online — whether it’s AM, FM or pure online operations — than listen to it just on AM and FM. I think that the ratings are distorted in terms of just how many people are getting their radio online, and that’s a trend that’s going to continue.
Q: What do you think about the advertising element of it?
A: I think we will see a movement toward more direct marketing, where the radio stations and TV stations will be in partnership with the advertisers, the advertisers themselves creating products and services that they will sell directly to the consumer. I think that they will continue to see targeted audiences, and targeted audiences with targeted interests are easier to sell targeted products to.