In flush times, television stations are accustomed to 30 to 40 percent profit margins. But the recession is goring even these cash cows with a 14 percent drop in advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year compared to last at Bay Area TV stations, analysts say.
Ad revenue took an even bigger tumble at Bay Area radio stations, with a 27 percent decline during the same period.
The main culprit is the imploding auto industry, which provides from 20 percent to one-third of the advertising revenue for broadcasters. With General Motors and Chrysler announcing plans last week to close 1,900 dealerships during the next year, it will take years for advertising levels to recover at TV and radio outlets. “And when it does return, it will be different,” said Robin Flynn, senior analyst at SNL Kagan, who recently conducted a nationwide study of advertising on radio and TV stations and projected the 14 percent TV decline.
“All advertising-driven media have been hit hard by the recession, not just newspapers,” Flynn said. “So companies are really trying to get creative to make up for that revenue.”
Spot TV ads drop
Broadcasters in top-10 markets like San Francisco are generally still profitable, Flynn said. Outlets in large markets are more dependent on national advertisers, so they’ve taken a bigger hit than broadcasters in smaller markets. In the first quarter of 2009, spot TV advertising by the top 200 Bay Area retailers dropped to an estimated $58 million from $62 million the year before, according to regional TV estimates by TNS Media Intelligence. And Bay Area radio stations – which collectively reach 5.5 million listeners a week – saw advertising revenue decline 27 percent in the first part of the year, according to a regional study by Miller Kaplan Arase Co.
“Never seen it this bad. Never,” said Mickey Luckoff, president and general manager of KGO-AM, who has been at the station more than three decades, much of that time with the news-talk broadcaster on top of the ratings chart. “It’s as close to a depression that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
The downturn is even hitting new-media sites, with advertising down at some political blogs nearly 50 percent in this post-election year, and 10 to 20 percent at entertainment blogs, analysts said.
The biggest TV on the Radio song of 2008 is, like many of the band’s songs, about romantic disappointment. The vocals are high-pitched and anguished, yet certain. Keyboards are played with slight imperfections that sound as if they were born of frustration. At the hook, the piece bursts alive with martial percussion, giving it an appealing bulk.
Whether Mr. West, the cool-hunting hip-hop superstar, had those Brooklyn art-rockers in mind when he recorded that song, the first single from his forthcoming fourth album, “808s & Heartbreaks,” isn’t known. And it’s possible that something from TV on the Radio’s third album, the recently released “Dear Science” (DGC/Interscope), might slither its way to pop acclaim.
But for now this band, which began a sold-out three-night stand at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on Tuesday night, might be gaining more clout as an influence, a group revered by others, than as a success of its own. (The new album sold 34,000 copies in its first week, a small number, though still the band’s best showing to date.)
Maybe that’s because TV on the Radio often feels as if it’s looking, and playing, inward, demanding others to engage the group on its own terms. On Tuesday the band put on a serious-minded and intense show that was at times exuberant and at times overly studious.
But it never lacked for technical fluency. Tunde Adebimpe, the lead vocalist, was a dynamo. While the rest of the band largely remained still, he practically vibrated around the stage, his shuffling somehow rhythmic and awkward all at once. Visually and sonically, he was the band’s tension and its ecstasy — whistling and cooing at the outset of “Young Liars,” making his singing almost raplike on “Dancing Choose,” and crawling slowly and cleanly out of the band’s distortion on “Halfway Home.”
Kyp Malone handles most of the rest of the band’s vocals, his flat rasp a balance to Mr. Adebimpe’s spacey croon. On “Crying” he barked and howled, and on “Dreams” he sang glorious, punchy countermelodies while Mr. Adebimpe soared above him.
Given that it has two distinctive singers, it’s noteworthy that TV on the Radio prefers to envelop them in walls of noise: density is the calling card of this band, which also includes Dave Sitek, who produces the band’s music (as usual, he played the guitar generally with his back to the audience); Gerard Smith, who plays bass and keyboards; and the drummer Jaleel Bunton. (In places, the band was joined by a horn section: tenor and alto sax, trombone, trumpet.)
Few if any working rock bands have the rhythmic intelligence of TV on the Radio, and the interplay between Mr. Smith and Mr. Bunton was firm and vivid, especially on “Wolf Like Me,” on which they applied the brakes and brought the frenetic song to a slow melt. On “Satellite” Mr. Bunton played rapid-fire, brute-force patterns that shaped the rest of the song, forcing everyone else in line.
“Dear Science,” from which much of the show’s material was drawn, contains this band’s peppiest songs to date, including a handful of psychedelic disco-soul numbers (“Shout Me Out,” “Golden Age”) that didn’t quite translate here. And the moody “Love Dog” felt hollow and lagged a bit.
But the band shone on older songs. “The Wrong Way” marched with industrial skronk, and “A Method” was solemn, underpinned by Mr. Smith, whose melodies recalled a church organ, and Mr. Sitek, who furiously beat on timpani. The band closed with “Staring at the Sun,” the highlight of its first album and still among its best songs. Mr. Adebimpe’s falsetto vocals were improbably smooth. Mr. Smith’s bass gave the song thickness. And when Mr. Bunton burst through the thicket with his formidable drumming, it suggested a band in complete ownership of its sound, wherever it may roam.
