Radio DJs How much do Radio DJ's make.

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It really all depends on the market and more importantly the company you work for. There are still companies out there that value employees. I've been gainfully (knock on wood) employed in radio for the past 10 years and it's been awesome. I have never not once dreaded a Monday. I look forward to "work" everyday. I work for a great company in a non rated market but make enough money to be able to pay the mortgage. With another little one on the way (that'll make three) I'm dj'ing on the side to bring in a little extra but truthfully I love doing that as well. In a nutshell radio is great if you are lucky enough to be in it...but then again what do i know I'm just a deejaaaaaaaaaaay!
 
Okay I started out in radio LIVE as it once was. Tell me something I dont quite understand. Why is it that with some of these oldies stations they have one Creedance song they play constant and lets say the one Pointer sistes song when there are so many choices over a long spanning career? Why does the stations providing our hits only play certain songs. I understand the scan concept but sont get the minimal song availability especially with a oldies station. there are too many hits that die for no reason.
 
mikemerlin said:
It really all depends on the market and more importantly the company you work for. There are still companies out there that value employees. I've been gainfully (knock on wood) employed in radio for the past 10 years and it's been awesome. I have never not once dreaded a Monday. I look forward to "work" everyday. I work for a great company in a non rated market but make enough money to be able to pay the mortgage. With another little one on the way (that'll make three) I'm dj'ing on the side to bring in a little extra but truthfully I love doing that as well. In a nutshell radio is great if you are lucky enough to be in it...but then again what do i know I'm just a deejaaaaaaaaaaay!
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holy cow, Mike
except for the years, and the company
your story is the same as mine!
- look forward to work
- just enough money to survive
- three kids
- mobile DJ to help PAY for the kids
- I feel lucky to be where I am!

- and your name is Mike!
 
Jon Tuck said:
Why is it that with some of these oldies stations they have one Creedance song they play constant and lets say the one Pointer sistes song when there are so many choices over a long spanning career? Why does the stations providing our hits only play certain songs.
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Radio is a business, not an entertainment service. The business comes from ad rates and higher ratings = better rates. A Music Director must be sure that EVERY song he plays is a hit with his audience to maximize his ratings. In today's competitive marketplace there is no room to experiment. It's better to play 350 songs that are killer, than have the variety of 3500 songs, many of which will cause tuneout. Today's MD's must go for the cream off the top.

Music radio today is highly researched & formatted. Every song you hear was chosen for a reason. In the top 100 markets there is even a company called mediamonitors that tracks EVERY song played on terrestrial radio and merges that data with info from the Arbitron people meters. The PD/MD then gets feedback about exactly what happened when he played a particular song. And not just from random strangers, but THE people responsible for his ratings...the Arbitron panelists. Today, it's not about what the masses want to hear...it's about what THOSE panelists want to hear and if there is a lot of switching when a particular song gets played, guess what happens to that song! Boom!

Combine this with the fact that it's human nature to prefer the familiar, and you get the same songs being played in rotation. Remember there are a lot of great TV shows that get canceled too. It's all about the ratings, and hence...the money.
 
Satellite radio has for the most part failed. Yes for the music eccentrist (if that's even a word) it's great and yes it does have cool things like comedy and a lot of different things to choose from but the bottom line is that people have not been willing to pay for something they can get for free and even more importantly it lacks the one thing that keeps radio alive today. Localism. Listeners cannot win tickets to their favorite shows, town fairs, amusement parks from their ipods nor can they get information that route (insert local road here) is closed due to an accident. Stations that pound the street and are local win by providing a service that ipods and satellite radio can't and that's a tie to the community

PS: If we're thinking of the same service that monitors stations it's mediabase.com :)
 
mikemerlin said:
PS: If we're thinking of the same service that monitors stations it's mediabase.com :)
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Nope. Media Monitors. They have exclusive rights to the Arbitron people meter data. They did just purchase Mediabase however. :)

www.MediaMonitors.com
www.Mscore.com <-A new service combining data from both companies.


As for radio-death, I agree with Mike. Localism is a part of it, but in my opinion the even BIGGER part is the lack of personality. Jocks are just liner card readers now. They are not allowed (or don't have the ability) to do bits, phoners, anything. Just announce the song, give the calls, read the liner, then shut up and push the button. I cant remember the last time I heard a REAL phone bit on the radio other than the incredibly stale "Hi you are caller #9. You win. Whats your name. Congratulations you won "<prize>". Tell me who plays the best music?! "<Caller gives call letters>"".

Everyone sounds the same, nobody varies from the liners, and as a result it's very, very boring. Sure you have a few morning shows here and there innovating, as well as the syndicated shows, but that's it. At the stroke of 9am, we go back to "generic radio" with the same crap that has been done for decades. Oh look, the mid-day girl has a "mid-day diner" show with cafeteria sound effects. Wow, how original. The afternoon jock does a music trivia question at 5pm. Boy that's so entertaining. The night & overnight jocks are voice tracked and therefor even MORE boring & stale. They took the FUN out of radio. That's why it is dying.
 
Dave Winsor said:
I'm comfortable.

Dave

ps. Abbey. Send me an mp3 of you reading something. I can give a critique of you'd like...anyone else can also.
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Aren't most promo's done in little sound bites and then the best takes are then assembled into the full promo vs just reading it straight?
 
mikemerlin said:
Satellite radio has for the most part failed. Yes for the music eccentrist (if that's even a word) it's great and yes it does have cool things like comedy and a lot of different things to choose from but the bottom line is that people have not been willing to pay for something they can get for free and even more importantly it lacks the one thing that keeps radio alive today. Localism. Listeners cannot win tickets to their favorite shows, town fairs, amusement parks from their ipods nor can they get information that route (insert local road here) is closed due to an accident. Stations that pound the street and are local win by providing a service that ipods and satellite radio can't and that's a tie to the community

PS: If we're thinking of the same service that monitors stations it's mediabase.com :)
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I don't know about that. Having worked in radio and seeing what radio has become, is there that much "localism" now. Most radio stations have no News/Sports guys anymore. Evening and weekend shifts are voice-tracked...I like the variety on Satellite and with them having a "morning" crew, it rivals anything local we have here.

The sound quality is noticeably better as well...
 
You certainly make valid points Steve and that has a lot to do with why radio is struggling. With consolidation and clustering companies have forgotten that localism and talent wins. Instead of improving the product they cut the positions of the highest paid employees. I really could go on a rant about this but I wont. All I'll say is that there are plenty of stations out there still serving their communities and winning by being local. And there are plenty who don't and are not. Any company who is willing to put money into the product and talent will have a huge advantage against their competitors
Here's a link that shows the difference between a company doing it right and their competitors who got caught with their pants down. Take a listen and then check out the differences between the jocks and website. Great example of radio being done right versus radio being done wrong. The pendulam is swinging...

http://www.rbr.com/features/interviews/20740.html
 
btw here are the websites
1033kissfm.com-Typical cookie cutter clear channel website. Where are the jock pages?

kzmg.com-They have a jock page but take a look at the on-air personalities. Syndicated shows and a few live jocks.

wild101fm.com-On point mirrors the demo and the jocks are local are look like stars. On-air personalities should be PERSONALITIES.

PS: If you click on the link I provided forward to about 4:11 into the interview that's when he starts talking about programming
 
Locally here less than 15 years ago radio was 24 hours a day but being this wasn't a competitive market (at the time 3 commercial stations 2 AM 1 FM and 2 public broadcasters) they backed off to 16 hour days and VT overnight.

The three stations merged and were bought out by a broadcasting company that really doesn't know much about radio aside from it's profitable when you fire everyone. On air personalities went first, then news and sports staff, then creative and traffic were mostly moved to head office. They then cut back to 12 hr days and even part of that were VT. One of the two AM stations did a flip to FM with a rebrand and even more cuts were made. Programming suffered greatly

Jumping ahead there were 2 community stations opened and 2 commercial as well. All were protested at the CRTC hearings by the local monopoly but were granted licences anyway.

The new stations made a great impact. The community stations are local content and the commercial stations came in to the market with local content and big contests. I'd be willing to bet they have spent well over $100,000/ year on marketing and contests the last 2 years. The contests are wildly popular...These guys know radio

What has happened is they have made radio better all around. The former monopoly has had to run behind and get better to survive. They are both back to 16 hour live days and real morning shows

The one thing i've always found shortsighted is they VT overnight shows. It was always a great training ground and it shouldn't be hard even in a small market to sell enough spots to pay the overnight guy
 
But the question is Jeff...are the local community stations making real money?

Are the sales guys at those small stations making money

Society has changed. The Internet has changed. We don't buy our gear from Mom and Pop shops, so why would we care where our music comes from.

Honestly for me, it's about being entertained and hearing a wide variety of music with good/great quality....

In a small city like Sydney, community stations may work. I think it becomes more difficult in larger markets where the advertising markets is more stretched (more station going for the same client) plus the Internet has made other forms of marketing cheaper and more viable.

Radio has a tough road ahead...
 
True, radio is an entertainment medium. Also true, a radio station or cluster is a business. A business has to make money for its owners. I don't necessarily agree that axing local talent is for the best. To me, that's being penny-wise and pound foolish. But I don't make those choices. The decisions are made by corporate boards... and one has cause to wonder how many directors even listen to the radio stations they control.

From the point of view of many listeners radio hasn't changed much. It's something in the background; it keeps one company while driving, working and so forth. You still get local weather, news and traffic reports. Granted, the playlists or rotations have smalled down over the years. Aside from that and the absence of local talent, radio really doesn't sound much different than it did in the 1960s.
 
Steve LeBlanc said:
The sound quality is noticeably better as well...
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You must have terrible quality radio in your town then! Most Satellite channels are only 96bps, not even on par with conventional FM radio with many being even lower. Talk channels for example are 48kbps. They have opted to use their fixed bandwidth for more channels as opposed to better audio.

Don't confuse a good signal with good quality.
 
Steve LeBlanc said:
But the question is Jeff...are the local community stations making real money?

Are the sales guys at those small stations making money

Society has changed. The Internet has changed. We don't buy our gear from Mom and Pop shops, so why would we care where our music comes from.

Honestly for me, it's about being entertained and hearing a wide variety of music with good/great quality....

In a small city like Sydney, community stations may work. I think it becomes more difficult in larger markets where the advertising markets is more stretched (more station going for the same client) plus the Internet has made other forms of marketing cheaper and more viable.

Radio has a tough road ahead...
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One community station is making money the other I would guess is losing a fortune. The difference in the two is professional management. The one making money has a fairly large staff, they do local news hourly, 16 hr live broadcast days, mostly Cancon content.

The one losing money has a total on air staff of 1, Three hours a day. They started off on a good foot but it all went downhill.

I think smaller places might be a little more in to community and would be more willing to support the station but in bigger markets, although there are more stations looking for the client, there are more clients for the stations too.

If a small station could get a couple of good "anchor" clients and sell small ads to local small business they could do fairly well in any market. The also have some room to wheel and deal as compared to the big names in the market
 
Fred Wright said:
From the point of view of many listeners radio hasn't changed much. It's something in the background;....... Aside from that and the absence of local talent, radio really doesn't sound much different than it did in the 1960s.
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I was very active in large market radio (4th largest market in U.S.) for 12 years, and a medium market 'personality' for 6 more years before leaving the radio industry. Perhaps the reason you feel radio hasn't changed much is simply because of the truth you mentioned: Your viewpoint that "It's something in the background". Not much will catch your ear, if you relegate its importance to background attention from the start. Living in radio, I can assure you that "It ain't what it use to be". I was in when we had "Split" operations - personality on one side, engineer on the other side of the glass (as a union norm). In the mid 70's many ownerships gained major ground across the country in major markets by going 'combo' (easier to do with cart buttons instead of record cues). But combo left waaaaay less time for true personalities to focus - think - and be their best. While it's a talent to be multi-tasked capable. However creativity best flourishes when talent is allowed to focus on being a personality (with concentration on a caller's thoughts, sharp minded with well prepared material resources, etc.). Hence - radio personality entertainment took a beating in certain markets. Then, another huge shift in radio happened about 1985, when syndication talk just started out. That happened about the same time as AM radio diving under FM in popularity (remember the AM STEREO attempt for survival then?). Automation of the 90's caused yet another major shift in programming, and loss of personality (throughout the day). Another huge dynamic factor in the change of entertainment quality in U.S. radio was the FCC's actions of increasing the limits of ownership. Radio became more of a 'commodity' than a local personality entertainment medium... especially with accompanying decreases in overall wages. Of course, with advanced technology came the proliferation of tracking, multi-job requirements, and low pay jobs. These factors and more attribute to a radical shift from what radio was in the 1960-70's. Plus, listeners have entire new industries through which to obtain all sorts of entertainment and local news/weather. I doubt with all the above changes and new mediums (despite radio's use of them), that radio itself will ever hold the stature of entertainment king or have the abundance high class quality entertainment and production quality it use to have.
So... it's too bad you missed it. It was really a lot of fun - and for the listener, offered an abundance talent that is just not available across the dial today. For me... it was a GREAT memory!
 
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