Know Your Market

The DNHC Team is receiving unconfirmed reports that there may be a major state university located in the mountains of western North Carolina...and that this university (still unconfirmed) may be situated in Watauga County...

What do large universities do for local economies? Well, they employ lots of people. They tend to be fairly stable places to work. They are for the most part relatively immune to the ups and downs of the economic cycle...at least so far. Lots of people get to learn about the world they live in--and about other people they may not be familiar with. When students graduate, many of them want to hang around, especially in a beautiful place like Boone. And these are all good things.

We're lucky to have a relatively stable economy in Boone. In this sense, Boone is somewhat like Chapel Hill. Although Chapel Hill is bigger, it too has an economy dominated by a large, relatively stable state university. But guess what else? Boone and Chapel Hill also have similar politics, i.e. a substantial number of progressives live in each community (both students and non-students), and the progressive segment of the population in each community is not subject to any appreciable variation. Look around the state, and you will see that the blue counties usually have universities located within their borders.

The focus of this blog is on local media issues, so lets get to it. It's no secret that radio advertising revenues are in the tank, generally. But one community's local radio station is doing very well: WCHL-AM, Chapel Hill. Why?

1) A large, relatively stable state university--with lots of jobs.

2) Local/syndicated progressive programming (Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz) which matches local listener preferences; leading to

3) Advertising that works for the customer, and generates revenue for the station.

But don't believe us, listen to the station's owner:

The station has benefited during the downturn from being a "local medium in a prosperous town," Heavner said. "Local advertisers find that their ads on WCHL continue to work."

All of this must lead to the obvious question: why does High Country Radio not understand their own market demographics--especially when their market (Boone) is fortunate enough to have a large state university located there? And a large progressive population to boot?

Could it be that the current owners of High Country Radio--Curtis Media--also once owned WCHL, but couldn't seem to figure out how to make that station work?

Just sayin'.