On Oct 14, 4:14 pm, dement
...@neither.com wrote:
> Thank you for all of the years of posting the stations. For more than
> 10 years, it was a weekly ritual for us: my wife and I would sit in my
> home office, follow one of your links, listen to the Doctor Demento
> Show, sing along, comment on the music. We had a great time. As the
> kids got old enough to get the jokes, we invited them in to listen. We
You're welcome. In the house where I grew up, it was a family ritual
as well, but with a real radio and not online :)
> were devastated as the stations on your site gradually started going
> "Clear Channel" -- that is, playing dull, formatted, repetitive music
> -- on their streams during the times when the show was on the air in
Clear Channel isn't completely bad, as some of their stations (KLFX,
among others) did carry the show online for many of the 10 years.
> their locations. We tried to get a local business to sponsor the show,
> but they WOULDN'T DO IT because it wouldn't be streamed and so many of
> the listeners they wanted to reach -- we're rural -- logged into the
> stream to overcome reception problems.
That's interesting news. A lot of people listening online are more
local than you'd think, for reasons like that. Either they're just
beyond the radius of the radio station, or they're at work and inside
a large building, with no radio reception possible inside but handy
access to a fast computer :)
> It's very sad that Mr. Hansen (AKA Dr. Demento) has sought to depart
> from the traditional business model in which advertisers were willing
> to pay for you to hear a show in return for a few moments of your
I think the advertisers are the ones that pulled out. Near the last
few years of national ads, they were really reaching the bottom of the
barrel (condoms, military recruiting, and so forth). I'm guessing
advertisers want to reach an audience that's more strictly targetted,
and the broad appeal of the Dr. D show is both a blessing and a curse:
it doesn't fit neatly into any format or advertising demographic, so
the deep-pocketed advertisers stay away.
> local firms. (Not that the ads of small companies like the Homestyle
> Cafe were lost on us either. While we do not live in that area, we
> stopped there several times on trips to the West Coast to thank them
> for sponsoring the show back when KOZT streamed it. I think that the
That's cool, and good to know. I find out about things from listening
far away, also, and then seek them out when I'm close. When visiting
New Jersey I found and listened to WDHA on the radio, just because
they used to be one of the old Dr. Demento stations from early on.
> Unfortunately, if Mr. Hansen is unable to make enough money to
> continue, and I fear that this will be the case, it will be because he
> picked an unsustainable business model which included pricing that was
> above what the market would bear. $2 per stream is too much for this
Yes, while $2 seems cheap on the surface, remember that it's a weekly
show, and so that's an outlay of $104/year. There's a ton of sites
online these days that are trying to charge fees in the neighborhood
of $10/month, and it really does add up quick. I'm really having to
pick and choose.
I'd subscribe to the $2, but am really disgusted with what Talonian
did, so don't want to reward them by giving them any money.
And, there's other problems people have pointed out with it (no way to
save or rewind, poor sound quality with a bitrate that is too low,
forfeiture of the $2 after a disconnection even if the show wasn't
finished, and so on).
> decrease the price to 50 cents a pop, I suspect that he'd move WAY out
> on the price/quantity curve and would actually make a lot more than he
> ever could at his current rates. And if he allowed advertisers to
> sponsor streaming of the show at, say, 20 cents times the maximum
> number of streams at 22K (relatively low quality, but good enough for
> students and other folks on a budget), they'd get good value as well.
> And there would be ten times the listeners, so the revenue would be
> the same.
I think the way to go would be for him to take the show into his own
hands as a podcast, and put it out there, free, and try to get
advertisers. I'd much rather hear a show with advertisements for
free, than have to pay for the show. But, returning to the real
world, it's very hard to get advertisers. There's got to be some
connections to a production company with other radio shows, so they
can share a pool of advertisers, maybe. And, there's rights problems
with making a podcast, but so many of the songs are from small artists
that wouldn't mind signing waivers in exchange for the exposure of
being played on the Dr. D show.
> But not allowing streaming is not a winning strategy. It alienates
> both listeners and sponsors. It limits recruitment of new listeners
> and new members of his "fan club." And, sadly, it may lead to the
> demise of the show which our family enjoyed so much over the years.
That is true. So few people can hear the show on normal radio these
days, but constantly I get email from people who are happy to
rediscover the show streaming online. Cut off free streaming and
there goes your new audience. As attrition takes care of the rest,
and you're done.
> There's still time to save the show, but if Mr. Hansen/Dr. Demento/
> Talonian continues on the current course, I fear that we'll lose it
> for good. He is a very talented an knowledgeable musicologist and disk
> jockey. I only hope that he can develop his talents in the area of
> business models, strategy, and marketing -- or hire someone with real
> talent in these areas -- before the show we all knew and loved is no
> more.
I definitely agree with you there! Well put.
> -- Still wanting to be a loyal dementite (Is it the "dementites" that
> cling to the ceiling, or are those the ones that stick up from the
> floor?
> I forget.)
I never could figure that out myself....
Josh
