anyone here have business experience especially in denver? any tips, ideas,
your thoughts?
I'm looking to make my hobby station into a business also looking to add a
stream to the station.
I was looking at live365 personal service at first then upgrade to pro
service for my stream since they take care of all the music licensing.
the part 15 of course would be local and cover my apartment complex. I'm on
a first floor in the new apartment so neutral load carrier current is now a
good possibly viable idea to get building penetration in the complex. I do
own a Nems Clark 120E and can do measurements of line radiation.
looking to make this geared to the local denver area.
I have heard of others who have made a part 15 / internet stream combo into
a successful business.
I want to get off of disability and start my own business.
I know what I'm doing with the fcc rules, engineering and electronics end of it. I have
a friend who is a CPA and is willing to help with the taxes end of things.
but the actual business end of things other than taking in more than you put
out, I'm at a loss.
but I don't really think it falls under "successful" - at least not financially.
Big D Country streams at http://www.live365.com/stations/alanmccall and is on the PRO level, which alliws for selling your own ads. I started on a personal package in 2001 and went to the PRO level in 2008. It is true that they handle the royalty/licensing for you. My expenses run just under $125 per month on average.
Simultaneously I have a Part 15 AM on 1610 that carries the same programming. I have a traditional country format for the most part, since that is a big local format hole. My AM signal is too weak to reach any areas with just a TH with the wire antenna. I am hoping to upgrade to the iAM with an ATU whenever I can get enough saved up. I am out of work and am also on disability and whatever I can earn with the station. I am legally blind with 20/400 vision. That means I don't drive, and am home most of the time. I think that may be how my love of radio began in the first place.
In 2011 the station made a little over $4k, but 2012 was not as good. I made about half that last year.
Internet radio alone is a hard sell locally. I did better when my Part 15 got out into the neighborhood. I was making a few hundred dollars a month with the combo.
Wish I could be of more help. I am on a farm, so the neighbors are not close. But I have lots of room for a good antenna and no HOA or landlord issues. I am also outside of the city limits of Tallahassee.
I had business cards made for about $15 at VistaPrint and give them out like crazy. Sometimes it leads to a sale.
If you listen to the stream, the ads are real. I have Buffalo Wild Wings, as they are opening here soon; Progressive insurance on and off; a local travel program; some per-inquiry spots, and a IRS financial help spot. The first :30 in a break is sometimes sold by Live365 and counts as a credit against that month's balance. They have had a lot of PSAs lately. I have more of my slots sold. The network ads are an option, though, and you do not have to run them.
Alan
By "wonderful" I am commenting on Alan's accomplishments with Part 15 and streaming.
For a self-run station out in the country $4,000 is absolutely amazing (2011).
I have not made $10 with my station, although I do not try to earn money with it.
I hope this thread becomes one of the long running topics here at part15.us, because interest in commercializing Part 15 is worth thinking about and experimenting with.
The combining with internet streaming increases the potential of building a really strong radio business.
Some internet ventures are financially succesful, including Free Talk Live, Alex Jones, and there must be others.
At the same time many excellent internet and Part 15 ventures have died off, because the lottery did not shine down on them.
The big problem, as I see it, is that the person with the talent and vision is also expected to be a genius salesman with enough energy to be more than one person at a time doing several jobs all at once.
But the tools exist, and it seems like there must be some brilliant way to make it pay off.
Let's keep talking about it.
Alright, I've been kind of "saving" this topic for a long typing session in the future but it seems this thread might be the exact right place for me to ramble a lot -- so bear with me.
First, I'm a bit curious about the concept and philosophy of Part 15 broadcasting. It strikes me that having a Part 15 operation AND streaming it are somewhat opposing endevours. Why do you start a Part 15 station? To do your own thing? To advance your political views? To play the music you like? Because you can? Because it's more fun than collecting stamps? Certainly not to make money. It seems once many have their Part 15 operation going they feel the need to stream to reach a big audience. Doesn't this sort of demean the spirit of Part 15 broadcasting? Just food for thought there.
On the same line I also wonder about programming our Part 15 stations. If you're into this to make your own format, your own sound, to advance your way of thinking, I'm behind you 100%. But (and I see this more and more the more I poke around) more and more are seeking outside sources of programming -- such as picking up someone elses music programming stream from the internet and broadcasting it on their Part 15 station. So, you're using someone elses idea of programming, on the station you started to "do your own thing". To me the whole idea of starting a Part 15 or a streaming station, is to be unique and do it the way you want, not to pick up someone elses idea of how to do it and simply patch it in. I'm not referring to picking up a program, like a Sunday gospel show, or a Saturday country countdown, etc, but picking up an entire FORMAT e.g. full time programming, and running it. What's the point in that? That's what most people are bitching about on commercial radio -- everyone is owned by corporations and so many stations are just satellite feeds. Just my point of view, but if you're not bringing somethng new to the table, giving the potential listener something new, or something old with a new presentation, what's the point? My Part 15 is presently running fully automated -- I'm not doing any live programming. But I've programmed my own mix of several thousand songs, I'm inserting local PSA's and information, world news a couple times a day, and a Saturday syndicated two hour show. I will at some point to a live lunchtime show -- following my live morning show on commercial radio. My town is small enough that my Part 15 station easily covers the entire town, and the town next door, with a solid listenable signal, so that works for me. I will at some point start streaming simply because I have a good following after 25 years on the air in the town down the highway 9 miles away and they'll listen.
If you're focused on streaming bothering to do it on Part 15 too seems hardly necessary, unless you're actually in a tiny town like me, where most of your population is over 60 and don't even own computers.
But now, let me let the big cat out of the bag. I know of a STREAMING ONLY radio station that is run by a handful of old time 1960's radio DJ's in a major city that's VERY successful. They've had as many as 17,000 listeners a month. They've won over advertising agencies. They run tons of paid for ads. They all earn living salaries, the station has a staff of sales people, they have a real studio in the city's arts district. The studio has an art gallery inside, AND a snack shop. Listeners are invited to stop in. They play oldies. the studio looks right out onto the street out the big store front window. Seriously, as far as I'm concerned these guys are the ultimate LIVE oldies radio -- and I've been on the air since 1973, and working live on a commercial oldies station for 25 years. I know what a good oldies station should be, and these guys are IT. They program for their city, as if they were broadcasting just to their town, but they draw a huge world wide audience. they stream only. They have a couple computers, they use SAM broadcast software, they have an inexpensive mic and a 4 channel what appears to be an old Radio Shack mixer. Their "on air" sound is So amazing it's hard to believe that they do it with what they use. All their processing is done in the SAM software. They have a very nice production studio set up. These are old time radio guys who know how to broadcast. I'm telling you, I'm SO impressed and jealous of what these guys are doing. And they don't even own a TRANSMITTER. They've even made the Arbitron ratings in their city. They are the ONLY locally owned and programmed station in this city. EVERY other station in town is owned by Clear Channel or Cumulus. The "real" stations are quite pissed that these guys are successful. Imagine. Top quality live programming, with NO transmitter. No FCC, no Rf engineers, no huge power bills -- they can afford to sell advertising very inexpensively.
If you want to run a streaming radio station, these guys are the model to follow. I visited them about 6 months ago. My Son lives in their city. I found out about them when he was a guest on one of their programs (he's a musician). I listen to them using the Shoutcast app on my iPhone. While I'm driving. With my phone plugged into the stereo in my car. It's just like I'm listening to traditional radio.
I'm serious. Listen to these guys for a while. "The begining of the future of radio". I sincerely believe that streaming radio is going to be the radio of the future, until the NAB, RAB and music industry find a way to stop it.
They originally wanted to ressurect an old AM station. Wanted to rebuild the original studios, and get it back on the air. Then they found out the engineering costs alone would top a million dollars. They started it online just over a year ago with a free computer. WREN Radio, Topeka, Kansas.
New topic: Everyone seems to be talking about using various services for streaming (live 365, etc) at work (the real station) we use a program called Broadwave, we feed our live studio audio from the mixer into a PC running this program and link to the stream. It's free. We do pay for the music licensing, etc but as a regular licensed broadcast station we get a break on the streaming music rights, Soundscan costs, etc. But we pay nothing for the streaming service as we have an old PC that handles it for us, and we are our own server. Checkout http://www.kozyradio.com and hit the stream button. Unless we have pro sports on the air -- in which case we have our FM station on, or silence, as we're not allowed to license and stream live pro sports.
And if THAT wasn't enough -- if you want to stream quickly and easily (and I feel like I'm really giving something away here) use Spreaker. This is a streaming service website. You feed to them, like on your web site, etc and listeners pick it up off spreaker. I use this for the Roller Derby Radio Network I started -- we broadcast live roller derby play by play. We broadcast the bouts live, and Spreaker automatically archives them for us, too. We pay $19.95 a month. The length of your live program determinds the cost. For the $19.95 we get three hours, but you can do them back to back to back and be on for as long as you like. However, you can do 30 minute shows for free, and after 30 minutes just start another show. There's no limit to the amount of time you can be on, just the length of any available show. There are thousands of shows there, some horrible, some pretty good. Visit http://www.rollerderbyradionetwork.com and you can click over to our spreaker page and listen to some of the bouts in the archive. Note that I do NONE of the announcing -- I just own the company. I'm the network big whig over a staff of 4 LOL. But it's another way to get on the web easily without spending a lot of money -- or any.
OK so that's way too much rambling but a lot of food for thought, eh?
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
I should add -- please don't call or email the WREN guys asking them a bunch of questions how to do it, etc. They're a real business and they're at work when they're there. They're not really in a position to talk about how to do it anymore than your local grocery store owner has time to stop and tell you how to start a grocery store. I took some time to talk shop with the guy who started the whole thing, but I was there in person, and we both have a long history in the industry to talk shop for a bit. My mission was not to learn how they did it.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
Well, I can only speak for Artisan Radio.
I started it up on Bowen Island (a small island just off the mainland from Vancouver, BC). For a number of reasons. I've always been interested in radio (preferring it over TV by a longshot). And it was too difficult and expensive to get a licensed station going (it had been tried for years on the island with little success). Yet Bowen Island is very artsy (over 50% of the residents claim that they make some income from the arts) and there was interest. So I went ahead and just did it the unlicensed way.
Canada has slightly more liberal unlicensed FM rules than in the U.S., so we broadcast on 88.7 at first, and then 99.7 when a station popped up on our first frequency. Range was 1/4 to 1km, depending on obstructions (to a car radio, of course). And we streamed because we couldn't cover the entire island, and there were people that wanted to listen. They told us.
Having listeners doesn't invalidate the premise that you're doing your own thing and being different. Artisan Radio's motto was, and still is, The Best Music You've Probably Never Heard. We go our own way, and people can either follow or not. While it was running on Bowen, I had people tell me that they drove to Artisan Square (where our studios were, hence the name of the station) and parked just to hear us. A lot didn't listen at all. But that's OK too.
And initially, we did attempt to raise money to help cover the costs of running the station. We used a sponsorship model, with local businesses able to sponsor an hour of programming for a set fee, and getting their name on the air. However, businesses paying money for advertising, even if it's a little bit of money, expect certain things, such as knowing how many people are listening, who was listening, etc. and the entire money making bit became too onerous for what was basically a one man operation. So now, no revenue. Which is kind of a good thing as well, since it simplifies the copyright licensing a great deal (in Canada, the fees are based on your revenue).
But, all in all, if no one listened, it wouldn't matter to me. I enjoy doing what I'm doing, I learn a lot putting together the programming and commentary and both of those are more important. I listen, and anything else is just a bonus.
The postings by TiminBovey and Artisan and others bring up a major point about small broadcasting, something that is very important to owning and managing a radio station.
I'm talking about the PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATION. In other words THE MEANING AND PURPOSE of the station. In yet other words THE MISSION STATEMENT of the station.
There are many reasons for operating a Part 15 radio station, from a simply technical interest to a community service interest, and many variations in between.
Part 15 as a community based influential business is not a silly day dream, it's being done right now by many stations!
Consider RadioBoy Alan in Tallahassee...
Check out Alan's Sponser and Advertiser page! Notice how good a communicator he is and a great station builder.
Ken Norris on Friday Harbor Island is tied with the community and businesses and thus is a part of the town's culture and his website is a tourist attraction!
Look at Rich Power's station...
Another tourist destination with total involvement with the people and the businesses at the end of Highway 80 in Georgia.
Harvey Kaplan is an absolute genius who has made KPAH a vital part of the Pahrump community. One of his secrets is that he has given town officials their own weekly discussion programs so they are on the air. Harvey never mentions the low power of his Part 15 signal, and the fact that KPAH is heard internationally by the internet helps with his high profile.
Not only can the combination of radio and internet streaming make for a stronger station, the website should be counted as a powerful medium in itself which ties everything together.
Even internet only radio stations like WREN, mentioned by Tim above, could benefit from adding Part 15 transmitters in their offices, so they could have the thrill of hearing their stream on radios.
I had the streaming station first, two years before the Part 15 AM.
When I began streaming in 2001, it was initially to give me something to listen to - while I was board operator for a station that went from Christian music and preachers to talk. There was one computer in the station that sat mostly unused. I finally figured out how to stream (there wasn't anyone local to ask how to do it) to relieve the boredom of sitting at the talk station control board pushing buttons a couple of times an hour. They couldn't sell their own format so there were very few spots to run.
When I switched my stream to country in 2003 I hated being tethered to my wife's computer to be able to listen. So I put a Part 15 on the air in July of 2003. It ran as a daytimer on 1160.
In 2007 I moved to fulltime on 1610, which is where my station is now. The signal with the Talking House with the wire antenna is too small to provide the service area I had with the Cunningham and Rangemaster transmitters. Hence the stream/Part 15 duplication. WJJD is playing on a radio in the living room now. It is mostly all I listen to these days.
I have an ad package that is $50 a month that I haven't yet put up on the website. It is targeted toward small locals with little money in their ad budget. I anticipate a local carpet cleaning company using this after New Years. They are paying $300 a month to a licensed station and have little response.
Tim in Bovey, your post is very interesting. And that WREN station appears to be very professional.