Sorry for starting a thread title off with “So” but … well, there we are, right?
I’m laid off effective November 30 from a job that really isn’t me. I mean it’s paid the bills but I’m getting a pretty good severance check so maybe this is what everything has been leading to. Anyway, I’ll be doing my own research for particulars, but I do have some questions I think some Dopers might be able to answer for me.
I have a good idea what I’m looking for as far as format (small bands who may or may not have current label contacts, with extraordinary talent whom I think most listeners would enjoy hearing as a relief from the other (clearly talented) big names), but I’m mainly interested in what sorts of questions/mistakes I need to be thinking about.
Stuff like: I need sponsors & advertisers–how much do they tend to pay for a radio Ad? Who owns rights to music produced during a studio session? Like, If I have a band perform live for recorded broadcast, do I have to honor their contract with someone who thinks they are the current label, or does the band have the right to assign proceeds and ownership of the recording to me? How much of that has to be my problem? How much does radio broadcast gear cost (Let’s say I want to start at 100,000 watts)? Are their, like, unions for DJs? Are they more or less compulsory or can I hire temp/permanent jocks from the local bands?
Essentially, my goal is to promote local acts at various smaller venues, better known old-timer acts which fit in with my station’s format, as well as any other act as I see fit. I’m not interested in getting rich off of this, I just want to pay my bills and keep the enterprise afloat. My predisposition is to pass along all/most of the profits to the acts I feature but also to not lose my ass.
Podcast has been offered as an alternative. And I think it’s a not bad place to start–see if I can get some other podcast to promote mine in addition to my own efforts, and essentially go interweb-based as opposed to FM business thing.
Similar question: Can I just do my own thing featuring, say Girl in a Coma? What would I owe the band if I did so? Is there an etiquette (like, try and contact the band beforehand to get their input?) to that, or do I just go ahead an do something like: Here’s this band I really dig, give them some eartime, have fun? Given the band wouldn’t mind free exposure, I wonder where the bears are in this wilderness.
A small town next to mine started a radio station WACF 98.1 I think it has a 10 if that mile radius. They started with donated music and there are no ads or even a DJ Because of the donated records etc there are some pretty funky music playing … I love it… once they played a whole record of theme music songs… cracked me up then would play some old trucker music etc.
Do it it could be fun.
Note that this doesn’t include digital broadcasting costs, but does include the cost of digital-upgradeable equipment.
Also worth noting, depending on where you are, all the frequencies for high power broadcast are either taken or unusable due to stations in neighboring areas occupying those frequencies.
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In any case, it’s almost certainly cheaper to buy and existing operation than to build. According to the figures in the link (a little old, remember?), you’re at 1.2 million just for a 30kw transmitter, tower and related equipment.
If you’re doing this as a podcast (read: downloadable content), you’ll have to negotiate with each label for the rights and the mechanical licenses song-by-song. Radio stations and streaming internet stations don’t have to do that as you aren’t making copies while streaming in the eyes of the law. In that case, you’d just have to buy blanket performance licenses from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Those three orgs cover nearly all of the music you could find to play.
This is his operating budget. He didn’t include anything for equipment (He notes that a transmitter/antenna can cost $12K by itself.)
He’s using donated space, which means he’s effectively paying nothing for rent. Nor does he have any payroll - no engineer, no office assistant.
He’s talking about a low-power FM station license, which the FCC hasn’t issued since 2013.
On the other hand, AM radio is in such bad shape, you might be able to take over a small station just by paying the owner’s bills. You’ll have to convince people to listen to AM radio, though.
Is there a college or other free-form radio station in your area? If so, might want to talk to them and go from there.
I have a feeling that this thread is going to turn into a variation of the one from the guy who was interested in refurbishing a run-down house, and realized pretty quickly that he had absolutely no idea what is involved in this, and most likely gave up on the idea.
I would be queasy if the model for the radio station was just obscure bands that just one person likes and wants you to hear. That’s not a radio station. It’s a podcast. In that space you are competing with the college radio stations, and a lot of syndicated stuff I hear, but I’m not versed in that.
It will be hard to compete with WFMU, for just one instance. or the college stations in Boston.
I’m not an expert in the field, but what I do know is that getting a license is expensive and difficult (esp. now that the low-power licenses aren’t being issued), and the equipment is really expensive, as well.
Your concept for the station’s format sounds cool, but also sounds very much like a vanity format (i.e., one that would only work if the station owner had money to burn, and didn’t care about ratings or income).
I’ll second the other posters who suggest this would be better as a podcast. I’ll also suggest seeing if you can find an owner of an independent radio station, who can give you a reality check on what’s involved.
A radio station (according to modern expectations) is 8700 hours a year. I get the sense that you have a couple of hundred hours of stuff planned. Companies with big budgets and stations already built, are having a lot of trouble filling their 8700 hours this year. Next year is a whole new 8700 hours.
Radio stations live on advert dollars which are generated by professional sales people with elaborate sales packages and schemes, that they endlessly flog just to break even. If you don’t have that gift, (hard selling and deal closing is a very specific skill set!), or time to be both owner operator and sales guy you’re gonna have a very big problem in my opinion. Unless this is a vanity project and profit isn’t a necessity, of course.
Here’s one cite that says your sponsors should expect to pay $12-$16 per thousand listeners for each commercial. That assumes your station is delivering multiples of 1,000 listeners on average for each commercial. If you’re only getting, say, 500 listeners on average, you’d charge $6-$8 per ad.
Goin back to the $15K per year operating budget, that means you need to sell $289 worth of advertising each week just to keep the station on the air. Doesn’t sound like that much, but think about every other thing in town (other radio stations, newspapers, those coupon things that show up in your mailbox, etc.) that’s trying to get the same advertisers.
And remember, in indie music, there’s nothing more stale than last month’s band, so you have to keep finding new sources of talent/material or your listeners will wander away in a few months.
That sounds like a mighty big leap of faith; going from no experience in broadcasting to running a one-man station. You might want to start small, like volunteering at a local station. You might be able to find a non-profit low-power station that accepts volunteers or part-timers. One I know of near me is CRIS radio in Chicago. They broadcast things like readings of local newspaper articles for blind subscribers, and they thrive on volunteers.
To me, your radio idea DOES sound like a radio idea - but I think what you actually could use is from a half-hour to two hours per week to present your program on an already established station.
You don’t need a radio station, you need a blog. You can write daily or weekly about particular bands, shows, genres, whatever you want. You can put ads on your blog using tools that are waaaaay easier for Just Anyone to use and actually generate some money. You can directly sell ads too, no need to just put Google Ads up there or whatever.
You can then link to streaming versions of songs. Like on Spotify, or SoundCloud, or CDBaby or Amazon or even all of them at once. That way the bands will get money from the streams or sales.
You can advertise your blog the same way you might have advertised your station, with business cards, flyers, ads of your own, whatever you want.
This format can give you everything you need & want, with minimal cost, and more paths to success.
Folks, thanks for the patient input. This all makes a bunch of sense. Too much, really. Now I’m inclined to wonder why anyone would bother with anything as limited as radio. But with things like Pandora & Sirius the question has clearly crossed other, better-heeled minds as well. I especially like the options that pay the bands for whatever traffic I can send their way, as opposed to me making something or nothing more or less entirely at their expense. So…off to research software & formats!
But uh…given some of the above drawbacks to radio, why does anyone bother? I mean, right up through say the mid-1990s it would be a perfect, easy medium for promoting music & news & such, but now that practically everyone carries an internet-capable receiver literally in their pocket, what is Radio’s market? Or is it drying up?
To some extent, it IS drying up. AM radio is a shell of its former self, there are literally stations for which there are no buyers, and some car manufacturers (BMW and Tesla) don’t even offer AM on their audio systems.
FM radio is in a little better shape, but online streaming services have taken much of the music audience away – music was always the selling point for RM radio, anyway. Several national broadcast groups like iHeartMedia, Cumulus, and NextMedia have filed for bankruptcy.
Everyone who’s ever been so much as a part-time deejay on a college radio station thinks they have a solution for this. So far, they’ve all been wrong. My personal guess is radio will reinvent itself in a smaller, sleeker form, like it did in the 1950s when television blew up what was then traditional radio.