Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Radio ad declines leading to more cuts in news

Radio news, in decline for 20 years, is in for major blows as most ownership groups report declined in advertising revenue in the third quarter compared to last year. Two of the three news employees at WVLK Radio in Lexington, Ky., were let go by Cumulus Broadcasting, which cut seven of the local Cumulus staff's 42 employees, reports Jim Jordan of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Kendra Steele, one of those dismissed, "said Cumulus had reduced staffing at its stations in other cities."

WVLK is the company's flagship AM station in Lexington and bills itself as "News Talk 590." Steele told Jordan, "WVLK has always been news-oriented, and we have always kind of prided ourselves in having people live in the studio and live on the street." Now its newscasts are more likely to have sound bites provided by local TV anchors and reporters, in a cooperative deal that also gets weather forecasts on the local Cumulus stations. Hal Hofman, the company's local manager, told Jordan it has two student interns and other staffers with news experience who can help out in case of a major news event.

While most attention to media business problems has focused on newspapers, magazines and radio are also in trouble. Radio advertising growth has run behind the Gross Domestic Product since 2002. Cumulus had forecast a drop of 3 to 4 percent in third-quarter revenue, but it was down 5 percent, following a 4.2 decline in the second quarter. Most other radio companies have reported similar declines. "It's grim ... absolutely the worst I've seen," Farid Suleman, chief executive of Citadel Broadcasting Corp., which posted an 11 percent drop, told Sarah McBride of The Wall Street Journal. And the companies that grew big after deregulation in the 1990s are now paying the piper: "The credit squeeze is limiting broadcasters' flexibility just as many of them seem likely to bump up against covenants that limit how much debt they can carry," McBride writes.

Things are better at small-town stations whose markets are too small to have been invaded by publicly traded corporations, and at public radio stations, many of which serve large rural audiences. "The area's non-profit National Public Radio affiliates appear to have the largest radio news staffs," Jordan reports. A group of Kentucky stations share a reporter in the state capital of Frankfort, and WEKU-FM at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond "has a news director, two reporters, seven student interns and several announcers who can cover breaking news." Station Manager Roger Duvall told Jordan, "News is not going to be able to pay for itself. It's the kind of thing you do as a public service." He may not have meant that as an admonition for commercial stations, but it is. (Read more)

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