Franken Paycheck Update
Possibly the best inside look I've seen of Air America just came out in the LA Times.
On burning and rebuilding bridges:
[A switch in business models] has put the [Air America] management team in the awkward position of courting the [radio] industry, the same people who think that Air America shunned them at the beginning.
[...]
They claimed they had the remedy to everything wrong with the radio business, said [Michael] Harrison, the Talkers magazine publisher. "They would buy stations, buy time. But they subsequently learned that the broadcast industry is self-contained and idiosyncratic. The new management has come to realize that in order to be broadcasters they have to work within the industry."
[...]
One program syndicator said Air America's absence from [a] major industry convention, held by the trade publication Radio & Records in February, was widely seen as arrogant.
[...]
But during a recent speech to a convention of skeptical radio hosts and executives, the liberal Franken struck a different tone. He was not only self-deprecating, but even gave grudging respect to archrival Rush Limbaugh.
[...]
Harrison, who organized the New Media Seminar in late May, said Franken's more humble keynote speech was a smart move. "He could have had a disastrous encounter face to face with the powers that be in the business. Instead, he very cleverly and skillfully won a lot of friends," Harrison said. Franken forged common ground by talking about such dear-to-radio issues as the 1st Amendment and the Federal Communications Commission, and insisted that liberal radio hosts aren't anti-American. "This is the first time he conducted himself like a member of the broadcasting community rather than a politician," Harrison said.
Franken, in an interview, joked that the speech was "probably the most I've acted like a politician instead of the least. And that's why it worked, because it was a very carefully crafted speech."
On Air America's new business model:
Rather than lease airtime on stations and keep ad money for themselves, Air America Radio is adopting the traditional approach to the business: soliciting deals with station groups to carry shows in exchange for shared advertising revenue.
[...]
Many in the radio industry said Air America's [old] business model was simply wrong, noting that the plan to buy stations or lease airtime wasn't practical because there aren't enough outlets available. [Also, it's essentially impossible to make money by leasing an entire station's air time. -MD]
[...]
[Air America president Jon] Sinton, a longtime radio executive, defended the original approach to lease stations that Air America would control. "We thought that until we proved the concept, we would never get on other people's radio stations. Air America didn't have time or capital to do the traditional thing, he said, which was start small and work its way into big markets like New York -- where the advertising money is.
On how strong ratings have affected Air America's formula and future:
"We've now grown from an idea to an operating identity, and that operating identity has a surprisingly large audience interest," Sinton said. "Major broadcast companies are now interested in affiliating with us, obviating the need to lease radio stations. We are able to work with a more traditional operating model, which gives us staying power."
[...]
Sinton said the network is negotiating with a station group that would bring Air America to several more markets, and "a number of major broadcasters have expressed interest."
[...]
"We've got a great business plan," he said. "It helps that the trend numbers serve as proof of concept and we certainly have attracted a lot of investor interest since they came out."
[...]
"People understand that this is a viable business," Sinton said. "It satisfies a gaping hole in the talk radio market. It's good for the radio business because it expands the potential audience and revenue pie. And it's good for our country, because it expands and balances the political dialogue."
And in the Portland Tribune, a Clear Channel executive vouches for the format's viability:
"The way we're feeling is that even if Air America folds, it's demonstrating that it's a viable talk format," says Tony Coles, a programming vice president with Clear Channel, which owns KPOJ. "With so many syndicators out there looking for programming, one of them will pick up the Air America brand."
Speaking of KPOJ, the new Portland numbers are out. I've seen them, and I can say that they're very good, and that it appears Randi Rhodes is the highest rated host. Unfortunately, I can't tell you how good the ratings actually are until someone crunches the internal numbers beneath the three-month "Arbitrends." For instance, I have no information on KPOJ's ratings prior to Air America, except that in the Winter the old format scored a 0.4 in the symbolic but useless "12+" overall ratings. Compare that with the latest, unofficial "Arbitrend" ratings, which show that a combined two months of the old format and just one month of Randi Rhodes scored an average of 2.0 in the important ratings: the 25-54 "money demo."
What does this jump mean? It could mean something really big.
April's ratings can't be calculated without knowing the internal data, and even then, it's all a bunch of unofficial sampling. Here's a totally invalid calculation, just to give you an idea of what the April numbers could be:
( FEB + MAR + APR ) / 3 = 2.0
( 0.4 + 0.4 + APR ) / 3 = 2.0
0.4 + 0.4 + APR = 6.0
APR = 5.2
This calculation is totally simplified, and the 0.4's are just guesses based on Winter's 12+ data, but if Randi scored anything above a 4.9, she'd be the top talk show host in her time slot.
Oh, and about Franken's paycheck, from the LA Times:
As for Franken, he gleefully announced Wednesday that he had received a paycheck, after forgoing pay for a few weeks while finances got sorted out.