- Forum Clout
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Management discretely gave him a tip to consider for improving his show and his reaction is to essentially spit in their face, telling them he's not going to change a damn thing and calling them assholes for even daring to bring it up and ruining his day. Why would he want to feel sad?
His recent numbahs have filled him with hubris. He's acting like he's the Howard Stern of AM radio, but he's only been at the station for like a month. Behaving like a raging jackass right from the onset is not going to help his case when the numbers go down again (which they inevitably will as the novelty wears off). His reaction is a way bigger red flag than the original complaint was.
I'd be kinda astonished if they even knew what "the numbers" are:
1) XM and Sirius Radio never had a reliable way to measure the popularity of a show. Satellite broadcasting is a connectionless protocol; the satellite just blasts out the signal, it doesn't "know" how many people are listening. It's not like TCP/IP or something like that, where you can track every network connection.
2) You CAN track online streams, but online streaming wasn't a big part of XM's audience back when Cumia was fired 10+ years ago
3) Cumia could provide his own streaming metrics, if he'd bothered to keep them. Considering that I could still listen for years after I managed to cancel my subscription, I'm guessing Compound Media's analytics weren't "high quality."
4) Radio stations rely on Nielsen ratings, but Nielsen simply calls up old people and asks them what they listen to. I've listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, but I've never talked to Nielsen. I have relatives who are pushing 90 who've never listened to talk radio at all, and they HAVE filled out Nielsen questionaires, because they have a land line and I don't. Hell, I don't even answer my phone.
It's kinda insane how shitty that radio and streaming metrics are. I used to work on this shit for cel phones and we could basically provide all this data and more. We not only knew how people were using their phones, we also knew WHERE they were using them, when they were using them, etc. And I haven't worked in telco for over ten years. I have some friends who do, and the amount of data that they can hoover up, and what they can do with it, is bonkers. For instance:
If you listen to Faction Talk or some other lame program on XM, XM can't even tell if you're listening.
But if you drive by a billboard, the billboard owner can buy data that tells them how many people saw the billboard, how many people drove by, when they drove by, etc. Even 10+ years ago the telcos were working on technology that would take the pictures that you take with your phone, and then use the geolocation tags to sell you shit.
And that's just the LEGAL stuff, God only knows what kind of ILLEGAL spying the telcos are doing.