Levine started a conversation in Friday’s TRI Newsletter as part of the quarterly series titled “TRI Radio 2011-2012.” After sharing the information that his Syracuse-based radio group found last year’s fourth quarter to be “like 2011 overall – wildly inconsistent,” Levine went on to make a larger point -

“In 2011, the radio industry ramped up ‘the Big Lie’, led by ‘We’re going to be more local by firing our local staffs.’ I have to give those guys credit for sheer chutzpah, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Baghdad Bob talked about repelling the infidels while bombs exploded in the background. As a locally owned company competing against the new ‘local’ CC and Cumulus, Galaxy had a good year, beating the marketplace by 7-1/2 points according to Miller Kaplan. Our five-year EBITDA Compound Annual Growth Rate is 20%, which isn’t bad considering it’s been a tough market.

“Identifying a second revenue stream with local events has made all the difference for us and could for the entire industry. The Galaxy NTR line in Miller Kaplan is more than three times the entire market’s digital dollars. I heart that. 2012 looks to be more of the same: inconsistent and bumpy. My advice is to get a bigger helmet.”

Ed Levine’s point about the success of Galaxy’s strategy of owning and/or managing live community events in upstate New York, such as “Blues, Brews and BBQ”, and comparing it to his market’s “digital” line inspired this response from 3D Media Venture consultant Jon Erdahl -

"First off, I respect Ed Levine and the hundreds like him for what he is doing in broadcasting to stay creative, provide fresh and compelling content, and develop marketing solutions for businesses in his markets. This commentary is not an attack on Ed at all but the narrow-sightedness of our industry and the real digital opportunities that are being missed. That’s because we continue to look at Miller Kaplan as the whole advertising picture (judging our performance against radio only), while continually chasing after our shrinking share of the advertising pie. We're beating each other up daily to get whatever we can and at any rate possible. I will use Ed's notion about his Event line being '3 times the market’s entire digital budget' to show you how these sorts of comments and notions, taken literally, continue to become 'fact' within our industry. If not challenged, they will continue to draw us into a false sense of security while the rest of the world eats up ad dollars we refuse to recognize.

“Miller Kaplan, with its focus on radio, is like looking at a family photo and only seeing you, leaving the rest of the family out of the photo. Having not seen those Miller Kaplans personally and taking Ed's observations against those radio numbers only, I can only conclude that the radio share of the total digital dollars is not very efficient. Simply what Ed and others are doing (and I run into this daily in my world of digital sales consulting with managers around the world) is judging his performance on the Event line against that radio-only snapshot. While other digital dollars (from the likes of Google, Bing, Yahoo, Pandora, iHeart, Twitter, Facebook, Digital agencies both in the market and out of the market, etc. etc.) quietly leave his market each day. In short, this represents the real pool of dollars, while radio sees only the Red Ocean where radio continues to feed - missing the greater opportunity to lead advertising partners to a Blue Ocean of opportunity and fresh new ideas. How do you tap into the total pool? By utilizing a highly trained local sales force (like Ed's) that has the relationships already in place to lead the way and help advertisers focus and win in their market.

“Let me give you a fresh example from my travels as a consultant. A CEO said to me 'Why should we chase after a million dollars in Digital since our take of that is around $200K?' (There were five major competitors in this top 50 market and all were taking equal chunks of that pie.) On the surface, that seems logical and most would answer "Don't know why. Let's do more events." However, after finding out where he got his numbers (you guessed it, Miller Kaplan) I quickly did a run of total Digital ad spend and we found $70 million in the total Digital pool. And the biggest eye opener was that his number one key client, an auto dealer that he has 'a great relationship with', was spending up to $3,000 per day during some months in Search, and he had no clue. Now, where would you like to fish?”