Now that we see what striped down radio stations look like, here’s what I’d add back if money was no issue. And it shouldn’t be.
Secretaries. The falsest economy is voice mail and email. Congratulations - you’ve turned the six figure executive into a clerk. A bad clerk. What happens when a six figure executive type mails, sorts, answers the phone, drops off the fed-ex and puts on their own stamps? They start thinking that stuff is important.
Is it really a prudent, cost conscious use of management time to miss a call, leave a voice mail, miss the callback and then use email to schedule a phone call? How about re-hiring someone to just answer the phone that knows if a call is important?
Read More...
Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen raised eyebrows recently by saying that traditional media must “burn their boats.” He was referring to the legend of Cortes, who removed any temptation of returning home to safer lands by burning his boats when he and his army landed in Mexico. Andreesen’s focus was on print media—he recommended that they completely eliminate their paper editions and totally embrace the web, burning their boats and removing any temptation to bolster a dying business. This thinking is relevant to the broadcast industry as well.
Read More...
The setting: Board room of the New York headquarters of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
The Players are: Nancy Hill, CEO/ 4As, Marc Goldstein, CEO/Group M-North America, Samford Moore, Activist, Adonis Hoffman, SVP/AAAA, Alexis Cameron, SVP/Emmis, Frank Flores, SVP/Spanish Broadcasting, and Sherman Kizart, Managing Director/Kizart Media Partners.
Background: Discuss the inequities that African American and Hispanic owned and targeted radio stations continue to encounter among the leading multibillion dollar media planning and buying agencies on Madison Avenue and across the country.
Read More...
To celebrate the Canadian Music Week conference, Radio-Info.com decided to take a virtual road trip through Canadian radio, listening to as many of the country’s major Top 40s and Adult Top 40s as possible. Part I of the trip begins in Newfoundland.
Read More...
In my earlier post, I described how broadcasters tend to misunderstand (at best) and abuse (at worst) the term "local," thinking that the mailing address of the local radio station somehow entitles it to unique privileges versus its competitors, even in today's digital era.
Today I draw your attention to a fantastic new book called No Size Fits All: From Mass Marketing to Mass Handselling, which discusses the implications of a digital world on our business, our economy, and our culture.
Read More...
In this final installment of "The RAB: Where are we today?" Lindsay Wood Davis has his say about the future of the Radio Advertising Bureau. He pulls no punches: "RAB has real issues, some an extension of the problems in Radio, others unique to this important institution."
Read More...
In our ongoing series, Roger Utnehmer, Wisconsin radio station owner, trainer and local internet visionary, gives Lindsay Wood Davis his views on what makes the RAB an important resource for small market broadcasters.
Read More...
For many Radio folks, this is RAB season. Lindsay Wood Davis continues his look at the future of the RAB with respected South Dakota-based broadcaster Dean Sorenson, who has been on the Board of Directors of RAB since the late '70s.
Read More...
This year, as a result of our difficult economic climate, the Radio Advertising Bureau Managing Sales Conference has been merged with the NAB Fall Radio Show and will be held in late September in Washington, DC. Yet for many Radio folks, this is RAB season. Lindsay Wood Davis has asked several of the industry's best "thinkers" to mull over the future of the RAB. In this first installment, we hear from long-time RAB President and CEO, Gary Fries.
Read More...
Every year, the radio business gets a gift at Christmas time. Stations air Christmas music and they get giant ratings increases. Then, every year, they take that gift and throw it away.
Right now there is much angst about the state of our business. The fear about the declining radio audience is pure fiction. (FEAR: Fictional Events Appearing Real.) You know that radio has what other media dreams about: Ubiquity. It’s in every car. There are six in every house. Those two facts are oddly never mentioned in our sales pitches.
Read More...
The only way to grow your organization in 2010 is to inspire everyone on your team to see themselves as a leader. The empowerment and "people skills" of your team will make or break you. Whether you are managing yourself or a group of people, consider these questions and take some time to evaluate how you are doing.
Read More...
Radio-Info.com received an open letter from Mark Steinmetz, President/Chief Executive Officer for
Gross Communications Corporation. The letter was in response to comments made by Gary Stevens in our daily newsletter Taylor On Radio-Info.com.
Read the entire open letter from Mark here:
Read More...
By now, you've likely read an appreciation somewhere of Cecil Heftel, the Hawaiian congressman and broadcaster associated with the big splash, promotionally active debuts of WKTQ (13Q) Pittsburgh, WHYI (Y100) Miami, and WLUP Chicago in the ‘70s. We wanted to give a few of the prominent programmers (and one industry observer) who remember Heftel a chance to share their memories with Radio-Info.com readers.
Read More...
Last week I took part in a webinar on Social Media 101. We covered a lot of ground, but a glossary of basic terms would have been helpful for a lot of participants. Here is a glossary for newcomers to social media, which will also actually teach you quite a bit about social media beyond just the terms.
Read More...
Content is king. How content is distributed is less important than the quality of content. Radio people intuitively understand that. New-media people didn’t, but recent events suggest they will quickly find out.
Amazon, the current king of e-readers got into a tiff with Macmillian Books over pricing. Amazon sells its books for $9.99, a price it dictated to publishers. Macmillian Books decided that it wanted to set the price of its books. At first, Amazon balked and pulled all of the publisher’s books, but ultimately backed down and accepted Macmillian demands.
Read More...
Future success can be accomplished with a new way of thinking and an adjustment to radio’s business model. The most arduous obstacle between our current status and future success is our thinking. Changing philosophies is difficult, and our industry is still clearly mired in legacy systems.
Read More...
Anybody who has ever worked with an Oldies/Greatest Hits or Classic Rock station will tell you that having the “right” versions of songs is an ongoing challenge. The version of a song on the CD reissue is sometimes neither the single nor the album version that was heard in the vinyl era. Singles edits often disappear from circulation. Even the version on the library disc you order from a syndicator might not be the hit single version.
Read More...
Part Four – Online Surveys Must Cast a Wider Net and Pay Incentives
When we look outside the radio industry for other businesses using online consumer surveys to guide strategy, there is no shortage of confidence in the online survey approach. Wherever we looked - Food, Cosmetics, Travel, Clothing, Pharmaceuticals, Political – it seems everyone else is doing online research and is supremely confident in the results. So what are they doing that Radio is not? Two answers stand out. Broader panel recruitment and paid incentives.
Read More...
Now comes the inevitable time to ponder the implications of Apple’s new iPad – and the category of devices it will soon include – for the world of radio in all its shapes and sizes.
First off, it doesn’t matter whether this device is a boom or a bust. It is part of a techno-trend whose directionality is clear, regardless of who trips or stumbles on the path.
Read More...
If you ever visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, you must visit the third floor audio technology exhibit. You will see the history of audio technology: from recordings on wax cylinders to DATs and MP3s. The exhibit starts with a big picture of Thomas Edison and ends with a big picture of Steve Jobs.
Every decade in the audio exhibit is marked with its own challenges, competition, and innovation. In each decade, media reinvented itself to match new demands and new ways of consuming music. Some companies survived each new era, and some companies did not.
Read More...
We wrote last Thursday that we were looking forward to hearing what KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles programmer Jhani Kaye did with his additional responsibilities at Smooth Jazz sister and format pioneer, [KTWV (the Wave).](http://www.947wave.com/) It didn’t take long. Within days, listeners on the Radio-Info.com discussion boards were chronicling the changes: the term “smooth jazz” came off the air, there were fewer instrumentals, and vocals now included songs like Timbaland f/OneRepublic’s “Apologize” and Malo’s ‘Suavecito.”
Read More...
The Prize Pig Factor:
As we study the factors that lead to different music research results generated by random Callout samples and online station web database samples, we are taking a closer look at the listeners who make up both types of panels. So far, we have seen that Callout sample panels attract participation by more Passive listeners or Normal Fans. Station website databases are more likely to be populated by the vocal minority Actives or Extreme Fans. In our “research of the research” we found another group that is capable of corrupting research drawn from surveys using radio station databases – “Prize Pigs.” It is quite likely that Prize Pigs are in your station’s database more than once. A Prize Pig is probably not even a listener of your station except for the contests. And it is likely that the Prize Pigs in your database are also in the database of every other station in the market. Radio stations using contests as a point of entry and motivation to build the station’s e-mail database should beware. Stations relying on that same database for market research should reconsider. And particularly risky is mixing both – offering the chance to win a very cool prize for participating in a survey.
Read More...
This should not have been an easy article to write. We began 2009 with format change activity slowed to a crawl by the economic gales of Sept. 15. Every now and then, broadcasters stirred just long enough to install another national format or syndicated personality, or further tighten their existing stations’ presentation in response to the perceived demands of PPM. There should not have been any intriguing new radio stations to write about.
Read More...
Radio is partying like its 1999. No, not with cases of Cristal in the studio, but in its own way, it’s happening. 15% revenue increases, Y2K fears and talk of “the new economy” are distant memories, but some over-hyped, underwhelming hallmarks of those days just won’t go away.
Read More...
Less than One in Five C-Level Radio Executives are “Social Networking”
Read More...
