If your very life depended on keeping a listener: Would you still put that on the radio that way?
Think about it. How do you keep that person glued to the radio, listening to you?
With People Meter measurement just around the corner, and the technological shift making offering many choices available, it becomes more important than ever not to lose a listener. If they're bored, you've lost the listener. So you can't be boring, not even for a minute! If we know that listeners leave when they are bored, either mentally, or tuning out physically and their attention goes elsewhere, what can you do?
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Here is a station in a major market. It features a morning show from Chicago; a drive-time show from Nashville. There are no local shows. This, in the very short term, is a compelling option for some broadcasters today. With such low overhead (i.e., no "talent.") it may even be throwing off some cash with a modest amount of local advertising.
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Nothing happens when you do nothing.
If someone has set the autopilot on your airplane this might not be the read for you.
On the other hand if you can still do a little open cockpit flying now is the time.
Radio missed a lot of opportunities to try new things, take chances and make mistakes when times were better. It was easier to recover from a stumble. Now with everyone’s laser focus on the bottom line it seems like there are no opportunities to try something new, but the opportunities are out there and it’s time to TRY SOMETHING.
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At the recent PRPD Conference (where I participated by webcam), one of the speakers was from INTEL. And this speaker focused on the key drivers for mobile applications in the years to come.
Based on my notes, the key elements of mobile apps are and will be these:
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Anybody remember the Bush/Clinton election?
It shouldn’t have been close. George Bush Sr. was coming off a massive victory in the Gulf War. But the economy was in recession. The Bush strategy was to ignore it – sort of pretend it didn’t exist.
But voters vote with their wallets, and Democratic strategist James Carville observed, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
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I stood in my apartment, and listened to silence. I wanted to scream, but I had no voice. I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. This can't be real. This couldn't happen to me. I have never even considered this. The earth had shaken underneath me, and I had no ability to cope. The bile was boiling in my throat. My hands were shaking, my heart was thundering in my chest. I could not sit down and I couldn't stand up. I could not calm down. My life had changed forever, only a couple of hours ago. I was drowning in the bloody reality of that moment. Please someone, somewhere make this not true.
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So. Let’s have a little chat about voices. And, for the first time in a while I’m not referring to the ones in my head.
Now, before we get started on today’s lesson, I have to say that some of my favorite people in the world are voiceover artists. Please keep them employed. But, let’s have a heart to heart about how you are using them.
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When I was Group Director, Integrated Marketing for Susquehanna Radio Corp., I oversaw the websites and relationship marketing for the Susquehanna radio stations for seven years. I learned quite a bit about multiplatform listener engagement strategies from the best in the business. Susquehanna was widely regarded as the leader in digital content, relationship marketing and revenue generation. In fact, we created our own radio version of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) called LRM (Listener Relationship Management). When Susquehanna departed the industry in 2006, the group’s digital revenue percentage far exceeded the 3-5% of digital revenue delivered by most radio groups today.
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Every once in a while I write a post that's entirely too long but also too important to ignore. This is one of those once's in a while.
This morning I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows via the magic of time-shifting. I was enjoying it thoroughly.
What that show was doesn't matter, because we all have our favorite radio shows (and I really do mean all), and yours are different from mine.
What does matter, however, is whether or not such shows represent a dying breed, the last unicorn in an ever more fantastical media universe.
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Terry Teachout wrote an excellent article recently in The Wall Street Journal about lessons the media industry can learn from the last big technological and sociological revolution when television replaced radio.
In The New-Media Crisis of 1949 the author accurately framed the debate over what to do with the Internet, mobile space and social networking. Just as important, by inference he was giving us a view of what not to do.
My purpose in bringing this up is to add some additional content to the issue specifically targeting radio, music and new media.
Ironically, networks played a role in the previous technological revolution.
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Programming consultant Alan Burns has gotten a lot of ink recently for his study of what we used to call “the stuff in between the records.” (What Does Music Radio Communicate When It’s Not Playing Music?) And the conversation is justified.
Back before I became a general manager and sales manager I was a program director and programming consultant in markets like New York, Nashville, Cleveland and Atlantic City. And in the late adolescent years of FM Radio (the 80s), we spent a lot of time in programming meetings and aircheck sessions (remember them?) talking about making jock breaks “Timely, Topical and Relatable.” The goal was to make sure we struck an emotional chord with the audience when we opened the mic and to give more than the call letters, slogan and frequency. Alan is right. Somewhere in time relating to the audience and their community fell out of fashion.
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To add value or to cut cost, that is the question.
If you're a Hollywood movie studio, you have grown accustomed to a big theatrical release and multi-millions in opening weekend box office, then super-profitable DVD releases, licensing, and the balance sheet joys of turning a hit movie into a multi-hit franchise.
Your deepest fear is being undone by channels of distribution or consumer behaviors which disable the way this world works.
Your response can be one of two things:
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If you’ve been at production for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably noticed the most time consuming task in the studio (or at your desk with Adobe Audition) isn’t putting the pieces together for a great promo — it’s taking the time to find the pieces to produce that great promo.
A few years ago, I remember my PD coming into my studio asking me to cook up a promo that featured some caller audio. I had the voice tracks from the voice guy, picked out some music and effects for the promo, but I was at a loss for having just the right mix of callers to pull it off. What’s next? The daunting task of blindly listening to old talk shows for the just the right byte from a caller. There has to be a better way, right? Yes, there is and here are two suggestions.
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From Tom Taylor:
“How do we avoid being dinosaured out?” That was a question for the RAB’s Jeff Haley from the Conclave audience, and he was ready for it. One of his answers is that radio needs to be available on all kinds of new mobile/digital and cell phone platforms, like the Microsoft Zune (which also enables song-tagging and purchase). And yes, there have been conversations with all kinds of device manufacturers, like Apple. The other hard question from the audience came from Phil Wilson, who said “there’s less and desire by radio companies to invest in their product.” Haley is practical. He says “2009 is a year about making your payroll, keeping your franchise alive.” But he notes that 7,000 U.S. terrestrial stations are now streaming, so they’re at least making that much of an investment in a digital future.
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Webcasters and the Record Industry recently struck a deal on performance royalty rates. Webcasters are breathing a sigh of relief; everyone involved is heralding the survival of the nearly dead streaming audio industry and all sides are patting themselves on the back.
This is pure delusion - the only party who should be pleased is the record industry – because they wanted to kill webcasting and they did it. It could prove to be a pyrrhic victory though, because killing webcasting eventually could kill the record industry, but more on that later.
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PPM is a game-changer in many respects. One of the least discussed aspects of this is radio’s loss of history. We have 40 years of diary based listenership data that we are essentially throwing away in this transition.
It might seem a minor point, given the industry’s limited attention span and our tendency to look no more than a book or two back. After all, you’re no better than your last book, but the fact remains that we are losing perspective and our history.
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"Just call it radio."
So, I was told, said Pandora's Tim Westergren recently while in the midst of a conference call discussing strategies for Internet radio or online radio or streaming radio or IP radio or whatever it is that comes to your devices via the internet and sounds pretty doing it.
Radio, Internet radio, it's all the same thing, argued Tim. And he's not wrong, but he's also not quite right.
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Supporters like to point out that PPM is better because it uses a passive method of measurement. Using the word passive conveys the impression that participants are somehow uninvolved in the process, but participants are far from passive when it comes to PPM.
First, a participant has to remember to carry their meter. Leave the meter at home and there is no measurement, and the participant earns no credits. Do that too many times and the participant could be de-installed (fired).
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Well, there's no radio in the new iPhone.
And some folks argue that's because listeners don't want one there.
Interestingly, pretty much all the research indicates this is wrong. People DO want radios in their iPhones and iPods.
So why doesn't Apple drop an FM chip in? And why do phones or mp3 players which do contain radios generally sell no better because of them?
One answer is that FM attachments exist in the marketplace already. It's a problem with an available solution, in other words.
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It should come as no surprise to anyone today that we live in crazy economic times! Who knows what will happen next? The day GM files for bankruptcy, the Dow goes up over 221 points! As of this writing, it is still over 8,500, but you can’t help but cringe wondering what will cause it to drastically dive again. It’s great to read from Dan Mason and others that radio inventories are beginning to tighten up. Maybe we’ve seen the bottom of radio’s recession, but then again, who knows? Who thought that after 36 years, R&R would close up shop?
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Just because satellite radio's business model is having a hard time finding profitability doesn't mean that paid terrestrial radio content can't be viable.
This space is all about ideas and one that I'd like you to consider is the possibility of offering radio content -- or streaming/podcasting content -- for a price.
There is precedent for this micro payment approach.
It is called Apple apps.
And there is a company called Peepcode that sells $9 screen casts and even more expensive subscriptions to people who want to learn website development.
You can also get a paid subscription to the site that earns discounts but the important note is that there is a change taking place -- a change that the radio and record industry is not tracking.
That change: paid content.
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For an industry that has trumpeted the amount of cash it throws off; what happens when that cash flow evaporates? We are witnessing what happens--it's happening in the radio business right now. Forget about debt service...forget about stockholders...forget about EBITDA...simply look at the most basic of measures--a station's/cluster's the top line revenue minus the expense line and what we are beginning to see is red ink. As I talk with people around the country and hear stories of business, in some cases, declining 30 or 40 percent over last years weak performance something has to give.
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There's iPod, iPhone, social networking, YouTube, Hulu, texting, smart phones, filesharing.
Now -- there is something on the horizon that may be coming along within months -- certainly within the year -- that will pose a new threat to traditional media -- radio, television and the music industry.
It's a product that Apple is said to be working on right now.
Of course, Apple is tight lipped about anything in its pipeline, but the huge Apple underground says this product is most certainly on the way.
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On April 1st, hundreds of industry professionals attended a free webinar hosted by Coleman Insights. A video was created that contains the full presentation offered during that webinar, as well as the audio of a Q&A session held between the webinar attendees and the Coleman Insights executive management team.
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Like cats and dogs living together, check out the contradiction inherent in these recent radio headlines:
“Thank you for helping KUHF raise $939,482 during our Spring 2009 fund drive!!” ...
“Clear Channel Media down 23% in 1st quarter 2009” ...
“RadioMilwaukee doubles its one day fundraising goal to $50,000” ...
“Scranton’s WARM-AM transmitter dies; no return date planned” ...
“Will Air America start asking for donations?” ...
“Blogger predicts summer death for satellite radio” ...
“Public radio stations break fundraising goals” ...
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