Imagine if the Big 3 Worked Together

Ford and Toyota just announced a joint project to build Hybrid Truck technology where the 2 auto forces will come together to help develop the technology, lower the costs for consumers and bring it to market faster.  You can read about it here.

It all happened when the 2 CEOs ran into each other in an airport and started chatting.  For those of us in the cut throat and highly competitive radio world this seems sort of weird.  The auto world is very competitive and with something like 700 different car models out there it's a pretty cut throat world.  But somehow 2 of the biggest are getting set to build a pretty big project together.

Can you imagine CBS and Clear Channel or Cumulus or Cox or Townsquare all sitting down to work on potential answers to all the challenges we face in Radio?   It might be hard to imagine, but what if they did?  What could they work on?

• Our National Image - How about a full cooperative program to work on the image of our media.  Too often Radio is viewed as 'yesterday's technology' and even though we see strong Cume and national listening averages we still get stuck with - 'isn't everyone listening to Satellite Radio"  or hasn't the I Pod killed you yet?
• Spreading our Distribution - While many are streaming and there are pure play streaming systems built into the Clear Channel and CBS national streaming products are there more opportunities here?  Could we develop apps that zero in on Broadcast Streamers?  How about making up our own territory here and making it easy to navigate and use.  The new world of streaming with so many options will be tough to navigate at 70mph on the 405 or the Dan Ryan or Mass Turnpike - if we can get our world organized and localized as you drive around it could be a big help to us and the drivers.  
• Working with Social Networks and New Media - Are there money making opportunities if we all banded together here?  Instead of letting Google or someone else develop a system of working with local business' on developing Social Network strategies why can't we use the collective reach of radio to develop a real sell-able opportunity for us and a program to help merchants and service providers get closer to their audience's through ours?  
• New Car Radio Ideas:  Wouldn't it be great if we had an easy way to reprogram your car radio push buttons as you drove from market to market?  Instead of searching for the Rock or CHR or Country stations in Syracuse you could press a button and your car radio would lock them in.  This is one advantage of satellite radio and it will be a web/streaming wifi advantage that we should work on.  

I'm sure these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg - (if you have any more hit the comments and chime in). 

The opportunities to set radio up to be a much stronger media down the road are there.  Yes, we have the NAB and state broadcasting organizations and even the FCC to unite us - but are these organizations really getting to the 'big issues' and challenges that we need to face?   Maybe it would help if the CEOs would end up meeting in the Delta Lounge somewhere someday and decided to build a real actionable plan.  

At Work Listening

It's still a BIG key to building P1s, long TSL and big shares in valuable demos, but there are new rules. In the 90s At Work listening really took center stage, first with AC stations and then to Classic Rock for the most part. We ran special at work contests, dropped by with pizza for lunch, called the offices with 'secret contests' to build listening, tried building at work databases, and ran endless 'at work network' imaging to try and build this audience.

Most of these programs had some success in the 90s and we could see big At Work listening shares for the stations that followed the programs. Over the last 10 years it's still important, but a lot has changed:

1. A lot more Media to Choose from at work. You all know the list of new media suspects here.
2. More listening done on Computers. According to the latest Nielsen Internet Media studies around 7% of all listening is done on computers and around 1/2 of that is done at work. As we see more smart phones, Wifi spots, and even more people realizing they can use their computer with decent quality to listen this number will grow. You don't need to lug the radio to work any more to listen.
3. At Work is not just In Office. We've known this for years, but a lot of our strategy seemed to have that rare vision of a radio playing for a bunch of people in cubical office set ups. That's only the case in a very few spots - it's a lot more individual now and it can happen in delivery vehicles, in the shop, with people who travel locally to sell, and even at home as they work.

Here are some new and familiar workplace listening ideas that might help:

• An At Work website - We have special pages for the Morning Show, how about for listening at work. Maybe with some obvious links, workplace jokes/cartoons, job listings, and maybe some at work news stories. You could also link up with some workplace tools like - google calendars etc.
• Wallpaper/Screen Savers - People still theme and decorate their computers, how about some of these old tricks to get your message on the computer screen everyday.
• Creative Imaging - Have some fun between the songs with work humor, workplace of the day, and some testimonials from the audience.
• Make sure your air talent visualizes their audience at their workplaces during the day.

It will be harder to track at work listening as PPM becomes currency. You can't tell if a meter is at work, in the car or just roaming around the market. You can only measure if the meter is at home or away from home. In the diaries the listener had the option to note if the listening was at work but not in the PPM world.

There are also issues with PPM tracking on-line listening with getting the encoded signal in the stream and also having the levels up enough to register with the meter. And there are also issues with the stream being different programming with Arbitron since we often replace the national voices in the spot breaks on the stream.

Still, at work listening is very important and if you don't focus on it with a well thought out plan you will see more and more new media invade this great source of TSL and P1 audience.

Pumping Up RADIO

As we watch another exciting plunge in the stock market and more reports on radio's economic picture for 08 and the first months of 09 - the news looks worse every day.   Here are a couple of thoughts that might help:  

A Message for ALL:

Here's a thought - think of all the commercials we ran for HD radio. In the Nielsen most played commercials 'charts' the HD campaign was in the top 3 for much of 08.   How about launching a new campaign across all formats and stations that goes like this:   

Hi this is your radio.  Yes I've been around a long time with music, news, sports, weather, traffic and witty comments here and there.  But if you look deeper you'll learn that radio can really help this economy and our community get out of these tough times.  Radio gets advertising messages out to 94% of our community and the whole nation every week.  The retailers of our area can get the word out on their products and get this economy moving again for very reasonable costs.   Radio is also easy to use - a few creative words and your good to go.  The message efficiently reaches our market area.   Radio - a part of your community, living here, working here, playing here and striving to make our area a better place.  

Of course a professional copy creator could probably do a better job, but our industry could turn this tough economy into a turning point for Terrestrial Radio with a well crafted message like this.  I know we didn't do a great job of selling HD radio, but this is a basic message we could sell to our audience and clients.  And the good news - it's true.   

Bright Spots in the Economy Dust Storm: 

There are some business and retail segments that are growing in this downtrend.  I gathered these from a bunch of stories from USA Today, CNN, CNBC, Yahoo and MSNBC:  

Movies:  The box office for 08 was off around 5% but for the first 2 months of 09 it's up 15%.  Just like in the depression when the  movie industry became a big industry.  Escaping the reality is worth a price.  

Fast Food:  Just about everyone is improving - especially McDonalds and Subway.  

Wal-Mart - Discount Stores: We're looking for bargains. 

Cell Phones - There's still growth left and lots of 'turf wars' over subscribers.  Give up your land line?  Why Not.   Turn in your Cell Phone?  Are you crazy? 

Used Cars - January was a strong showing for Used Car sales.  Maybe we can't go for the new cars, but that 05 Mustang looks pretty good.  Car dealers often make as much or more on their used inventory.  

Financial Services - From Tax prep firms, to credit assistance, to bankruptcy assistance.   It's a time for these services to grow.  

College and Trade Schools:  Plenty of people who could use new skills and now with college tax credits, more loans and some layoff packages offering re-training the local colleges are running at full throttle.  

Home Style Cookin:  Restaurants that are off the beaten path and offer 'comfort food' are gaining more customers.   Good news these are often local advertisers.   

Bars, Beer and liquor stores:  Biz is up here - we can guess why.  

Video Games:  Activision and EA games had record profits in 08 and were some of the best gaining stocks in January.  Game Stop is opening 300 or more stores this year!!!

Little Luxuries:  Flowers.com did a huge number this Valentines day.  So did Pajama Gram and Vermont Teddy Bears, with a lot of it from their radio campaigns.  Many higher end restaurants also did well.  We'll spend the money for love. 

Banks: They need to restore their trust in the community and get funds flowing into them.  They need to market.    

You can bet there are more business segments that will gain in this down time.  If you have any stories pass them on.   

Rebuilding Radio's Advertising Potential

After signing up for a daily Ad Age newsletter I started getting the weekly Ad Age magazine for some promotional reason.  Was roaming through it over breakfast this morning for their Super Bowl wrap up coverage, which was very interesting.   

One thing stood out - Full Page ads for both Val Pak and Newspapers posted above (sorry they didn't all scan in, but you get the picture here).   

We have 2 older type advertising media here.  The Cox owned Val Pak direct mail service, which Cox is trying to sell along with a few newspapers.  And one from the Newspaper Project, an industry alliance to help their cause.   

2 media that are way behind radio in reaching the masses.   While Val Pak is in many markets they don't have full coverage and still rely on the mail box - a tough delivery system.  Newspapers are falling in their reach and while they claim 100 million readers here - radio reaches over 230 million people 12 plus in a week according to the latest Arbitron estimates (mostly done with diaries - imagine what it will be with PPM in the top 30 markets). 

Looking at a number of Ad Age issues I only caught 3 radio ads or campaigns in the last 6 months.   1 came from SBS - Spanish Broadcasting - with a small ad in a special Hispanic section Ad Age did.   Another came from Entercom who ran a very nice full page ad that explained their properties and reach.  The only RAB ad was for their 'radio coverage' of the Ad Week convention last September.  It didn't talk about radio or any of our advantages, just that they had some kind of radio system set up to deliver podcasts and to broadcast live updates at the convention.  Gee - that really helps sell the media, we can talk about the latest Google marketing system or maybe cover the conference on the latest way to reach people on the web. 

While Ad Age may not be the best vehicle to promote our potential to market stuff to our huge audience what kind of effort are we really making here?   It's one thing to offer lots of sales training and come up with a few buttons that say Radio Heard Here.   It's another to rebuild the image of Radio as a media that reaches nearly the whole country on a local level with very affordable programs.  

We need to 'fly the flag' a lot more for our industry.  If you look through Ad Age's articles only one showed up on some form of radio - Did Mel Pay Too Much For Howard.   Even Ad Age seems to have forgotten all about our Cinderella story.   Maybe it's time to hitch up the pumpkin coach, get all dressed up and hit the ball.   I bet if we spent just 1/2 of the money spent in Washington trying to push for more consolidation on some public relations and selling our advantages we could have weathered this storm a lot better.    Radio could have the image as an efficient, huge reach, and economical way to market products.   Just the tool to un-freeze the customer without killing your budget.   

Opportunities Ahead #1

Be Local: No doubt the biggest opportunity for radio is that it's LOCAL. While most of the new media, cable networks, broadcast networks and nearly all the web is national or even world wide most of the audience's world lies in their local area. We all know this, but in the end we do little to capitalize on it.

We used to at least cover the local news, but now that is even in the backseat or not on the air at all for many stations. Much of our programming has become networked through syndication and our music playlists are tailored to national trends. It's resulted in one of the biggest complaints we get about terrestrial radio - it's the same everywhere.

Even if you have syndicated personalities like Bob and Tom you can work to make them at least seem local. Working them into your local segments through production, making them part of your promotions and imaging with a hometown spin can help. But, you have to back up that morning show with strong local personalities in the other dayparts.

You also have to give your local talent the room and coaching to build a local presence. If all they do is read the positioning, backsell a song, ramble through a liner and billboard you might as well voice track it from another market.

The key to making it happen is in designing the station to have room for the talent shine. Then you have to back it up with careful coaching and making sure they are well prepared for every opportunity. They also have to build themselves into the community both on and off air.

The stations I work with that do the best job in building their personalities into local fixtures put a lot of effort into working with the talent. Most of the PDs meet nearly daily with every jock and take 15 minutes to see what they are building into their shows. The staff knows what is the most important thing in the audience's world and also what is the most important thing going on at the station that day. These are the basic building blocks to making their show pop.

Spending 45 minutes with the other dayparts (outside of mornings) most days is a simple task and one that clearly pays off.

You also have lots of avenues to be local in your imaging and promotions. How many times do we jump on an AC/DC concert in another market and forget to look for ways to make it local? While the prize may be in Chicago why can't there be a local angle to doing it in Madison?

We also have to make sure we are present at as many local events as possible. Entertaining the local audience in our backyard has to be a top priority.

Being local is really central to all the next 3 or 4 opportunities we'll cover in this series, that's why it's FIRST ON THE LIST. Make it your top priority and you will have the foundation for a new world for radio as the biggest and perhaps the last local media in your community.

Exposing Your Content

What are you really doing with your content?


Are you just putting it through the transmitter?

While most of our audience uses the transmitter we all know and see all the expansion of distribution channels.

For example look at a cable TV show like Mad Men from AMC. The whole first season can be watched on DVD, On Demand/Comcast Cable, and on the web site. You can also watch the shows on Mondays (it airs on Sunday night) on line or through On Demand.

With all that distribution you may wonder - isn't this killing their ratings. Why would anyone tune in on Sunday nights for the regular broadcast? Well the reality is that it doubled the numbers for the show as the new season began a couple of weeks ago. They went from around a million viewers to 2 million and now the award winning show is starting to catch on. Watch as AMC pulls off a hit. Much of the work was done by spreading the distribution. Now that the audience has started to discover the show from all the distribution channels they are developing P1s. Otherwise AMC would have had another award winning show that got missed in the maze of 300 cable channels and so much other media.

Could Rock Radio benefit from a similar strategy. You bet.

1. Pod casts - Some stations use them but I bet 90% of you have only 1 or no podcasts on your site.

2. You Tube clips - How much as your station or team posted from station events, guest shots on the morning show, or even just a tour of the station with some pranks from the staff.

3. Collections of morning show bits.

4. Replay the phone calls from your afternoon show.

5. How about a new rock pod cast every week that doesn't air on the transmitter but only on the web with comments on new artists and songs.

6. Maybe a place for local bands to showcase their videos and music complete with reviews and chats.

Most sites I visit don't have much that really pertains to the station or it's content. In Rock we seem to have lots of girl pages (as if there isn't any more revealing content in this genre on the web), RSS music news feeds (wow Billy Joel is on tour), some corporate stuff (the Clear Channel web feeds), the link to streaming, maybe a list of the last songs played, a chart so you can buy songs, hype for the database, bios of the jocks, and hype for the contests.

Where's the audio - this is supposed to be RADIO. And is it local? In the content arena this is supposed to be our biggest card to play.

Are we worried that if we leave the content on the web that the audience won't dial us in to hear it? We are way past being exclusive - now is the time to be INCLUSIVE.


We all know the problem here. Most stations have no resources to get their content to the web. It takes human effort to get it there and with so many stations running so bare boned on staff we can't get ahead. As we come out of these tough times hopefully we can put asside some of the resources to start building a purposeful world here. AND SOON.

The Election and The Summer

Hopefully you are all set for the Spring promotion season with a great campaign to build your brand, TSL or market awareness. Now is the time to be looking ahead to the Summer and this Summer presents a lot of different opportunities. The biggest one is the election in November.

We have already seen huge voter turnout in the primaries, high ratings for news outlets, lots of web hits on election related sites, and big turnout at campaign rallies. The younger audience looks to be more active in this election than EVER before.

In many ways this echos a period in the late 60s when we also had a questionable war, lots of voter interest on the younger side, and a ton of issues that the audience was interested in. This time it may even be more critical as there are more people in the country, more issues on more fronts, and a lot more voices in the coverage. Elections are also a local event. While some of the issues are national in scope the voters mostly vote with their local heart in their hand. Ask any candidate and they will tell you that as they travel from state to state the issues change - you can see it in their messages and commercials. Radio has such a unique advantage because our coverage area is the local scene.

The general feeling in the country is that this is the most important election in decades and right now it looks like the audience is ready to vote and participate in record numbers. Are your promotions plans for the summer ready to take advantage?

Have you looked into setting up 'register to vote' systems at your remotes, community events (the State Fair, Taste of, Summer Celebrations), and at concerts?

Is your web site ready with a map of the area so people know where to go to vote?

Do you have links to the candidates web sites and also sites that cover local issues?

Are you ready to go to any big campaign rallies that may happen in your market?

Is your morning show thinking of bits, stunts and unique ways to cover the campaign and election that will entertain and inform your audience?

Have you brainstormed other ways to use your web site for election chats, polls, and other options to cover the election in a way that's relevant to your target audience?

The election is not just for News/Talk stations. Yes, Rush will have a good audience this Summer and Fall, but what about the 90% of the audience that isn't in the Ditto Head club? You have a great opportunity to bond with your target audience as they make a big decision in their eyes. This is more than just playing their favorite song or giving them some concert tickets. If you make the most of it you could end up with more P1s and a wider reach.

Rarely do we get this kind of opportunity where we know that such a large share of our audience is focused on a specific topic.

To make the most of it you have to have a plan and now is the time to get the plan in motion.

Radio's Real Advantages Go Ignored

Sometimes in our effort to 'keep up' with all the new technology and the 'cool of new' we forget a lot of the real advantages our media has.

Radio is simple to operate. For the most part you turn it on, simply adjust the volume and select the station from your favorites already punched in. No need to download anything, remember complicated web addresses, or try typing words on the numeric keyboard.

It's portable. You can take it anywhere and get solid reception for the most part. The radios are as small as I Pods or big as a wall - take your pick.

Quality. Compared to the small speakers in a laptop or always using earbuds the quality is really much better than most streams and reception is really more reliable.

We know the technology. A 5 year old can work the average car radio with little instruction. Even the 60 year old computer novice can easily get the radio to work.

There's a long ways to go to get WiFi everywhere and reliable. Look at cell phones where they have been trying to get a reliable network up for over 20 years. They still struggle, as we've all experienced, and still have one of their big advertising points around reception. What do you think it will take to WiFi the world? It could go even slower. We don't have the frequency bandwidth to auction off that we used to.

In the end perhaps radio's problem with the image we have now with the younger audience and with clients of not being 'cutting edge', or 'hip' lies in our presentation both on the air and on the streets.

On the air we haven't really evolved much - the same tactics, formats, and imaging styles have been around for decades. The look of the new radios isn't much to marvel at either - this is one of the big keys in the failure of HD radio to catch on. You don't see much new in radios, like more display screens for the RDS data. How about a system to send pictures and more data on the RDS system - just having a few text lines is very limited. While we can't push the set makers much we can work with the on-air sound and start exploring new imaging, formatics, music rotations, personalities, and promotion tactics.

On the client side radio seems to be trying to do some Internet integration into the packages and maybe a few new power point tricks in the presentations, but is that our real advantage? No doubt we need to integrate the power of our brand into the Internet, but it might be more important to sell our real advantage. That is the large reach we still have. Radio reaches over 90% of the market and it covers a specific territory. A local business or location can rely on radio to deliver an audience that is within the reach of the store or stores. Not in Russia. Is there a great website that reaches that much of the market where you can advertise on? Maybe the Google start page, but the only thing on it is their logo and the blank box to search with.

It's also a big audience. PPM has pretty much proven that you can take your CUME audience and double it for a conservative estimate of the real reach of your station. For most that's a big number. Perhaps we need a new number here - instead of the CPP or CPM how about CPC (Cost Per Cume). Take a market like Madison WI where the top cuming station is around 90,000 in Arbitron without PPM - the number in PPM is probably closer to 200,000. That's nearly half of the 1/2 million that live in the metro. Even at $200 a spot the cost per Cumer is $.00125. Now that's pretty cheap - probably less than any Google Adword that hits that many people in your market.

I know selling with CUME is probably harder than doing our pitches in Latin, but CUME will be evolving to the be the new advantage of radio and perhaps the new currency of selling tactics. It's going to take re-trainng the buyers, clients, and most importantly the sales teams. Cume is going to be our new friend and we need to learn how to use it in sales.

We have a lot going for us in this new era, but we need to get our confidence back and make the most of our positive points as we also explore ways to work with the new media opportunities. Right now our industry looks like we are surrendering and whining towards depression. Let's get our head out of the sand and realize that we're still above ground. Let's vow to make radio about the future not the past.

All Christmas - It Took GUTS

We've all seen the success of going All Christmas Music for AC/Oldies and even Country radio. The numbers show impressive gains year after year. It's become a rather obvious strategy that has spread to nearly every market in the land. The AC format across the land shows up with significantly bigger shares in the Fall and it's due to the tactic. The most recent format analysis from the Fall 07 book shows around a 10% increase for ALL/AC shares over the Summer shares, but if you just pull out the Mainstream AC stations (leaving out urban, hot AC, and Modern AC - who mostly avoid the Christmas tactic) you have a 17% share increase.

I can remember when it was first conceived, working in the Clear Channel VP Programming world we had a gathering of the 20 or so 'minds' and the strategy idea came up to work with the AC stations to go all Christmas. It wasn't the company mandate at the time, in 2001, and we had to go out and try to introduce the idea to the fleet of AC Programmers and Market Managers.

The problem with AC at the time was a lot of pretty successful stations that required a lot of marketing. The format itself was also fairly slow moving in adapting anything. Great care, debate and thought went into any innovation from rotations to music breath to the style of the air staff. The environment of the station was the 'key to success' and any changes in it were often viewed as dangerous at best.

At that meeting there were only a few examples of stations that went all Christmas in November. St Louis had a classical station, Grand Rapids had the #3 AC station go all Christmas and maybe a few others scattered around the markets. While there were solid success stories many of the programmers and managers we presented the idea to thought 'this won't work here.'

The feeling from many was it will ruin the station and push off all the listeners who like the variety, tempo, era flow and music blend. We also didn't know what Christmas songs worked and in the end there are only 50-75 big hits here so the repetition could be grueling.

Even New York was not eager to use the strategy. The feeling was that New York had too many Jewish listeners and they don't celebrate the holiday in the same way most of the Christmas songs do. NYC also had tons of revenue and no one wanted to upset that apple cart.

We all know the story now. AC has made Christmas music a staple and it draws tons of cume to the stations without tons of marketing.

The lesson for all of us from this, regardless of your format, is to keep your mind open to new ideas. Jumping on any new idea, song, imaging style, marketing tactic, or jock could be the 'killer card' it could also be the 'big flop' and ruin the 'secret sauce' that's central to the station's success.

You have to evaluate the idea carefully, but don't be too careful and watch it beat you down the road. Yes, you have to 'know when to hold them and when to fold them' but don't make your first reaction always to 'fold.' Many of our formats need to invest in new ideas, strategies, and tactics. With all the new media competition standing on the past treasure chest won't cut it and we all know it. It's time to innovate and look at new ideas.

Imaging - We Need New Tricks

Looking over the PPM data we get a real picture of how the audience uses our programming. We can see exactly when they tune out and in and with a little reconstruction we can see what was on the air when they left.

What the early data analysis is showing is that the 'trigger finger' is quicker than we may have imagined. They mostly come for the music and when we spend too much time away from it they leave. After you've spent hours and hours pouring over the data the most obvious reaction is DUH!!!

The first reaction by some programmers has been to cut it all down. Limit the jock breaks at all costs and cut the imaging down to the smallest level possible.

No doubt we needed a big hair cut in imaging. Look at the long winded morning show recyclying promos with a 40 second bit (or longer) and plenty of set up around it. Or take the contest where you listen for the secret song, which will be announced by Jimmy and Debbie at 7:35 every weekday morning and then listen all day for the song with special clues at 9-2 and 5 only on WXXX the best of the 70s 80s and 90s. Did we really think anyone with a life was going to play the contest? Or how about the music promos with long music clips in them and spiced up with clips from movies only a Blockbuster employee knows.

Also look at our imaging plan for most hours. EVERYTHING has imaging around it. It's between every song, sometimes in the middle of the spots and of course on both sides of the spot break. There are more imaging sweepers/promos in an hour than there are songs played on nearly every station. Much of this has come from the diary recall system. When you look at the task of getting into a listener's head with enough impact to get them to remember you station that evening or even a week later and enter it into a diary many of us programmers took the sledge hammer of frequency to it recklessly.

In the end we have bit off way more than we have time for with the audience. We often want to accomplish way too much with every sweeper and promo.

It's time to get organized. It's time to get creative.

How well organized is your imaging clock? Take a look at the MOST VALUABLE images you need and want to convey. Then take a look at how much 'inventory' you have to invest in building the image. You need both a long term plan for the campaign and also a short term clock to execute it. Gone are the days when we used to put all the Morning Show sweepers in a cart/folder and just let them rotate. You need a lot more detailed and strategic plan to execute your imaging on this kind of budget.

Creativity counts big time. Every second counts and at the same time you can't overcook it. You also can't just let the same imaging piece ride for weeks on end. It needs to be freshened.

Another fact seques are back and should be used. Many may shutter at the 'dead air' as 2 songs just blend together. How will they know who they are listening to? Guess what - they have some brains and if you've done your job in building the brand and your stationality they will know. Most radio's have a little indicator of which frequency they are tuned to - let's let the audience use that resource to also record their listening.

Even if PPM isn't on the way to you we have to fact the reality that this reflects the real behavior of the audience. Take a close look and listen to what you do between the songs - remember the audience does and from the PPM data it looks like we have some work to do.

Every Market Is Unique!!!

As consultants we often get tagged as a big part of the cause in the sameness of radio programming, along with the consolidated larger radio groups. Many see us as the pioneers with cookie cutter formats that ended up sounding the same in many markets. The same tricks, imaging, promotions, and music lists standardized.

While I can see the reason for the accusation with some I'm not a believer in the sameness of markets. Every market IS unique. I've worked in over 100 markets as a programmer, VP of Programming or consultant and there are obvious and clear differences in each one of them. Some of the differences come from the economic base of the market, the levels of education, housing situation, terrain, climate, heritage of the population, and their growth situation. Others come from the competition and the heritage of the station we are working with. And some just come from the style of the people in the area.

Some cities are friendlier, others more guarded. Some are more active and hustling, others more quiet and low key. Some are growing quickly, while others are watching their population and growth fade.

All of these are factors in helping a station reach it's full potential. If you don't take a careful and long look at all the factors in the 'market environment' you are going to leave audience, images, and dollars on the table that if wasted will limit your growth. It's also important to look at the competition and see who has impacted the audience and for what reason. For the real successful stations in always goes beyond 'the music position or mix.'

It does take an extra effort going beyond looking at perceptual research and ratings history. You have to 'get a feel' for the market and look at as much data as you can. Pouring over the Prizim data which defines the population into 15 social groups based on income, living conditions, occupation, age, and overall lifestyle. We used to get Prizim data in the front of the 'printed' Arbitron reports. But, it's not there in the E-Books and we also don't see it in Maximizer. I wonder why Arbitron took this page out? Perhaps no one was reading it, but it's packed with useful data on the real 'core' of the market and gives you a measurable system to look for key elements that make each market unique.

If you don't look at the unique moments in each market you are leaving A LOT ON THE TABLE. The key is getting as much data and also a real 'feel' for what makes a market unique.

One of the things I started to do as a PD was to take the first 90 days I was in a market and keep a log of the unique and different things I saw. I still do this in my notes on the first 2 market visits. The first impressions are always very important as you're eyes and ears are wide open to see the unique and different ingredients which are often the most valuable to key on. After you've been there a year as the PD I bet you don't see as many differences and unique moments as you did in the first 3-6 months.

If we want to really 'be local' and really connect with a community it doesn't happen because 'the community is just like someplace else.' It happens because 'this market is unique.' Cue on those moments in your strategy and tactics and you will make a much bigger impression with the audience.

5 Realities From PPM That Apply to EVERYONE

We are learning more and more about PPM and the audience's actual behavior, rather than their recall of what they did, with the early data from Houston and Philly. While PPM may be a long ways from impacting your market, or it may never come, but there are some 'real world' lessons to learn. This week I'll take a look at 5 Realities From PPM - covering 1 each day.

#1 - You Reach A lot More Than You Thought: We've see nearly everyone's cume jump a lot in comparing the diary numbers to the PPM realities in both Houston and Philly. Cume numbers are twice as big in PPM and in some cases nearly 3 times the size. Your station reaches a lot more of the market's audience then we ever thought. Holding on to that listening and turning that cume into P1s is the ultimate challenge for programmers.

One thought for everyone - PPM market or stuck with Diaries forever: You're on air marketing, imaging, and promotions reaches a lot more of the market than you thought. How many times have we all felt that we didn't have enough outside marketing to grow the station? No billboards, TV or direct marketing for long stretches.

Do you really need to use other media to grow your audience? Looking at the high cume numbers we see in the PPM data suggest that you probably already reach a lot more than you thought. Look at the cume for The Buzz or Arrow (the Alternative and Classic Rock in Houston) - the Buzz is over 1 million and Arrow is close to 900,000 in most montly reports. This is in a market of just under 5 million. These stations already reach 20% of the whole market. When you consider that they are targeted stations that are not designed to reach everyone they already reach a lot more 'real potential target listeners' for their music mix and stationality than you could probably get from a billboard on the interstate. How many people will 'cume' the billboard that are very unlikely to become P1 or P2 listeners? Probably not a lot and when you consider how much the board costs!!!

The answer for programmers here is to MARKET TO YOUR CUME ON YOUR AIR. Use your imaging, personalities, and promotions to keep the excitement up. Stay top of mind more often with your cume and more may become P1s or P2s. Crank it up on the air and make it memorable or actionable with the audience. Don't just go for 'small ball' all the time - hit it out of the park and do it as much as possible. "If we only had some marketing dollars" - shouldn't be the issue. Did we capitalize on the potential between the music and with our personalities? You probably don't need to spend lots of money to reach an audience you are already talking to, unless you are a brand new product or have made improvements that are so dramatic that a whole new audience needs to tune in and hear them.

Yes exposing the product all over the place can help - but the first steps to gaining more audience is to charge up the audience you have. Entertain them and keep them excited and entertained every quarter hour.

Local Community - What is it?

Anytime you talk within most radio stations about being local and getting involved with the 'community' instantly you get back a long list of fund raisers and marathons to raise awareness for some cause. You might also get a lot of local organizations station personnel have been involved in off the air. In some cases you also might have a story to tell about helping the community through a disaster.

Aside from the disaster help most of these examples of being involved in the local community are not a big headline with the audience. We all know getting involved in some big fund raiser where we are begging the audience to contribute never builds much audience, in face it's almost always a BIG tune out. The marathons are only longer BIG tune outs. The long winded remotes we do from the local art fairs or music festivals are rarely entertaining enough on the air to help build audience. The off air meetings and organizations are probably better at getting us introduced to other local business people and community leaders than it is helping us build audience.

Yet, most of our market advantage in the new world of new media will probably come from how well we become ingrained into our communities. You can see it clearly in so many successful stations that seem to have audience all the time. Look at WCCO, WGN, WLW, and so many of the big AM talk stations. WGN eats, breathes, and sleeps Chicago. You also see it in music stations like WDVE, KQRS, WMMR and WFBQ in the rock world.

While it may be important to try and cure diseases and help the less fortunate in the community to really win the community involvement hill you have to really embrace the REAL community. That means relating to and including the listeners and community into the fiber of the programming and making it entertaining. Here are some tips and examples:

• Know the Area - We often think of show prep as hitting a bunch of news/gossip sites for the top pop stories of the day and hunting for a few angles or jokes on them. Perhaps we should be prepping by taking a close look at the local maps, newspapers, landmarks, hangouts, and special culture. Knowing that Topside is the hip area where all the cool young clubs are and that Northside is the blue collar/sports bar area may be more important than where Paris slept last night. You might want to have 'experts' in various areas on the staff. Have them report to everyone where the people who live on the east side hang out. Exchanging info here can help the whole team know the area.




• Be Visible - You don't need to do remotes from every local festival or high school event but you should try to be there somehow. How many nights did your van just stay at the station? I bet more nights than it went out and it could have been at the high school football game, the arts fair, the opening of the civic players show, or just parked at the mall in a obvious place. Could you have put up some banners or even just helped them with some need and get mentions in their programs or signage. It takes coordination, some staffers, and probably some gas and all that adds up but being visible in the community is key to being perceived as a big part of the area.




• Remotes - While they can be a tune out source you can also make them good for exposure, entertaining on site, and if you are careful they won't be any more of an intrusion than most commercial breaks. The key is planning ahead and making sure you have something entertaining going on at the event.




• Phones - Getting the audience on the phone and taking the few seconds to introduce them in a friendly and quick way is a great way to tap into the community. The key is using the phones the RIGHT way. If all you're getting is the quick answer to some trivia question there's little local or community involved but if you take a few seconds to pre answer the calls in spots and get everyone's name and community then fire through the calls the whole bit changes.




• News - Sports: What's more important - A Rod hits homer 502 or your Little League team goes to the LL World Series? Unless you are in NYC I'd go with the Little League team. What's more important - Florida's drought or local county board bans fireworks? Unless you live in Florida the fireworks is more important. Keeping the news tuned in to what is really effecting the local world is crucial.




• On Air: Take the time to talk about the local events, community, places and people. Sometimes you can't do it in 10 seconds. But, if you plan it out and work to make it entertaining you can get the audience to hang with your for 20 or even 40 seconds. But, you will need to prep and the whole stations needs to jump into the community.

This is not about begging or fundraising - it's about realizing from top to bottom that THE STATION is a cornerstone of the community and needs to constantly integrate that foundation into the on-air product and the off air image. When it works it's a NEVER ENDING commitment and after years and years it becomes a huge deal breaker for audience loyalty.

When I was at WDVE (over 20 years ago) we keyed in on the community in every way we could think of. Actually the effort was going on for 4-5 years already when I arrived and the PDs that followed kept it going. Now it's unstoppable - almost like a good habit you can't give up. At the time KDKA was the station DVE was chasing and they were the community in Pittsburgh, much like WGN is in Chicago. Little by little, event by event, DVE clawed away at the community image with a rock angle to it. Now the station on top for most of the last 4-5 years is usually DVE. Is their music any better than other rock stations? Probably not, but in the community they are legend and it's an advantage NO ONE ELSE can take away built on decades of effort. The same could be said for many stations - FBQ, KQRS, WMMR, and WRIF.

15 Months of Fame Lifecycles on the Web

Doesn't it seem like in the WWW world big things only last around 15 months or so? It seems to take 15 months to watch a new application or web thing develop, then it spends 15 months as the big thing, and another 15 months winding down. Myspace is a great example starting in late 2003 and building till the sale to Murdoch in mid 2005. As 2007 began we started to see a migration of the innovators and early adaptors to Facebook. By the middle of 2008 Facebook will probably blow by Myspace.



Look at YouTube which started in 2005 and was sold in 4th quarter 2006 to Google. By the early months of 2008 we'll probably see YouTube start winding down on the 'cool meter'. Something else will replace YouTube as the next cool thing.



While not everything seems to follow the 15 Month stages brought out in these examples there is clearly a very fast moving and volatile life cycle on the web. Look at it from an advertisers side. First you went with simple banner ads on big web sites only to find that your consumer wasn't there, then to pop-ups which we all blocked completely, into email boxes where you became spam, now to Google Adwords in a complex mess of bidding and placement. Advertisers seem to be constantly running to the next big thing on the web only to find a confusing mess when they spend the dollars. Things are changing fast and will probably even change much faster.



Recently Mark Cuban was discussing the slowness of the INTERNET and suggesting that we will probably see more INTRANETS that are more limited so we can actually navigate at the speeds our computers are capable of, instead of the slow, messy, way overcrowded, constantly crashing, WWW world - read it here I bet Mark is right that we will soon out grow the old Internet and find it just too slow to handle all the video, high end audio, animation, gaming, and interactivity we will likely demand from interacting with our computers. What happens when we try to download movies in high def formats? How far can we compress audio and when do we realize how much better things can sound? Mark's speculation on the answer to the ever increasing demand on throughput to get more and more complex aplications and content on to your screens and speakers is to close down the scope of the network. Go from an INTERNET to a more smaller and more controlled INTRANET - perhaps one that is all interactive through your cable provider with it's own You Tube like sharing site and a smaller personal network that can be monitored and controlled. Take off some of the 'freedom' and open to anyone side of the web and suddenly the experience might be the next logical evolution.


How does this relate to radio? Are advertisers, marketers and clients accomplishing anything towards building their brands and business growth in an environment where things are moving so fast your message disappears in front of you. Is this like the elusive task of trying to catch a chipmunk as it darts around your garage or yard with just your hands? It's so fast and so small and has so many holes to dive into.


It seems like everywhere we go radio gets the 'old fashioned' tag on it. While it may be tempting to be betting your marketing dollars on the latest web craze and find yourself chasing that chipmunk all over the garage. Meanwhile Radio still reaches 90% of the population or more, can be bought for lifestyle and specific demographics, and still delivers a very healthy TSL compared to other media. While it may be old fashioned it's also reliable, fairly easy to craft a quality message on (you don't need hours of HTML code or complex bidding systems), local to your community and still pretty affordable.

Influentials and the Diffusion of Innovation

Dave Van Dyke and his Bridge Ratings service have just released a new study that digs in on a group of listeners Dave has branded as New Influentials. You can read the whole study report here. Dave's study found that 10.2% of radio's audience fit into this group of Influentials that are heavy users and very likely to 'spread the word' and lead others towards various formats, stations or personalities. The level of New Influentials is a little higher for Satellite Radio and Internet Radio.

Looking over the data brought back some marketing memories studying The Normal Curve and a study from the 50's called The Diffusion of Innovation.

The Normal Curve (or bell curve) is a theory based on the occurrence of any trait or behavior and is the basis for all research. The probability of something occurring within our behavior and our reliability in predicting or detecting that trait are all demonstrated and calculated in the model of the curve. All 'things' happen under the curve and the middle of the curve is where you see the highest occurrence of a trait or behavior which trails off in either direction. The middle also represents a place where we are most likely to find the trait or behavior. There are tons of formulas that are the basis of Statistics and Probability theories and figure the reliability of any study, sample variance and a host of other measurement facets.

Back in the 50s and early 60s a professor at Iowa State Evertt Rogers was trying to see how we could spread all the science and innovations going on in the 50s for farming to other countries where they were struggling to feed their populations. His books on the Diffusion of Innovation are based on the Normal Curve, breaking the populations into 5 distinct groups based on how they adapt new innovations, technology or products:

• Innovators - 2.5% - the first to pick up on an innovation or product.



• Early Adaptors - 13.5% - this group spreads the news on the product.



• Early Majority- 34% - With this group you are at 50% of the population.



• Late Majority - 34% - As you cross the center line of the Normal Curve note that curve goes down!!



• Laggards - 16% - The last to jump on

Dave's study really shows us the importance of the Innovators and crossing to a majority of the Early Adaptors. With that 10-12% you are poised to influence the Early Majority and get your station, personality or format (your brand) to that point where you can reach 1/2 of the market and beyond. This is what is also called - The Tipping Point in Malcolm Gladwell's works.

How many times have we seen strategies and tactics in programming that leave out the Innovators and the Early Adaptors? Taking out some of the features or key elements that made the station unique, tightening the music so much that we leave this influential group searching for a new innovation. Trying to smooth over a strong personality to be more adaptable to the Late Majority.

You also have to keep in mind that the audience under this Normal Curve is in a constant state of change as innovations and products in every sector and our own sector are launching. Each is gathering it's own series of innovators, early adaptors and spreading to the majorities. To stay ahead you have to identify who your Innovators and Early Adaptors are and keep them high on the station.

As you market the station and develop the content make sure you are balancing both the Innovators and Early Adaptors with the Early and Late Majorities. Perhaps one of the big reasons we see the new media building so much momentum is that Radio has left the Innovators and Early Adaptors behind and while we still enjoy the acceptance and usage of the large Majorities and the Laggards how much longer till the Majorities adapt the new technologies?

In the early 90s more studies and theories focused on crossing the line between the Early Adaptors and the Early Majority as we began to see many innovations struggle to reach beyond a small group of fanatic followers. Crossing the Chasm by Geffeory Moore is probably the best book.

The keys to using these theories and ideas in your marketing plan is making sure you are balancing your efforts. Remember that you are also marketing your product on your product - the imaging, on-air promotion, music mix, and personality all support the innovation of your product. Making sure that you have a balance in all areas for both the Innovators and Early Adaptors as well as the Majorities is the key to long term success for any station and really for our media as a whole.

Thanks to Dave and the Bridge Ratings folks for bringing these basics back into the spotlight.

Covering All The Bases

Taking EVERY opportunity you can is both a challenge and also a big key to building your stations into a giant machine that constantly builds it's brand and community image. In today's world of the Internet we also need to take an 'uber-presence' to all the opportunities in the on-line world. Here are some examples and thought starters:

Key into The Audience's World - What are they talking about right now? Consider these examples from current events:

• Friday the 13th - It's coming this Friday.




• Live Nation - Just this past weekend many stations took the Premiere Network coverage.




• 07-07-07 - A big event this past weekend did you jump in or didn't bother.




• Heat Wave - Really the whole country was pretty hot for the whole past weekend and we pretty much knew it was coming.




• Summer of Love - For Classic Rockers a natural it was 40 years ago when the genesis of the format was hatched in hippie heaven.

The Local Community - It's the middle of summer and lots of local events are probably going on in your area. How many of the state fairs, local ball games, softball leagues, blues/wine/balloon/air shows/state fairs and other festivals did you station show up at? This time of the year you should be out at nearly 1 a week and some weeks maybe 2 or more.

The Web - If you tune into NBC Nightly News you may have noticed their 'everywhere' promo campaign. NBC is going ALL OUT to embrace nearly every media with the Nightly News brand and make sure they are a lot more than just the evening network news cast. Just like radio evening news has been decaying over the last 20 years with 24 hour news networks, the Internet, and so many other viewing options in today's 100-400 channel world. Instead of just fading away - NBC plans on being a big news brand even after the evening news fades. Look at the on-line and new media options with the content from the nightly news:

• Net Cast - You can watch the whole 1/2 hour show anytime after 7p eastern online.




• Story Files - On the web site every story and the video is kept for review. Watch them anytime.




• Pod Casts - A wide range of podcasts of the big stories and some background that didn't make it to the nightly news cast can be downloaded to your I-Pod or MP3 player in both audio and video formats.




• Cell Phones - Get the headlines and alerts via text to your phone anytime.




• Cell Phone Web - Access the site in mobile formats with less graphics.




• Widgets - Download a display for your desktop or you can also post it on your web site or blog with all the headlines and links build in.




• Blogs - A full daily blog with 6-7 entries from the whole NBC reporting team. Also a world blog with international stories.




• Website - Obviously the launching pad for all this along with constant updates on the news 24/7

You can probably count on them to announce a social network system, a video posting for news you caught on your camera, and probably a special I-Phone site with features custom built for their browser.

NBC is leaving no base uncovered. It's an example we can all follow both in the streets and on the web. I know many of you are looking at this as a mountain of work requiring a huge time consuming effort and a small staff that's already multi-tasking all over the place just to stay on the air. Yet I bet if you organize your priorities, plan ahead, and communicate with the whole team you can make a lot of headway. Now is the time to start thinking about how you can make 2008 a big year for your station. Taking some time this summer to plan out 2008 and build a stronger web presence could be your start to covering all the bases next year.

So many times I see stations that are not reaching out on the air and in the community enough. They just seem content to play the music, run some commercials, take care of the client remotes, and generally phone it in. Even though some of your efforts will not be huge successes out of the box every hand you shake or interaction you have with the audience WILL pay off.

HD Radio - Hindsight is 20/20

We all know the saying Hindsight is 20/20 all too well. As I keep looking at HD Radio there are so many things that we, as an industry and Ibiquity as a producer, could have improved on. Here's some thoughts:

• The Name - HD Radio: HD is quickly becoming all about TV. With all the new flat screens and more and more programming being rolled out and all the marketing on TV that's going on for HDTV it's really confusing the consumer. Imagine if we'd decided to market FM Stereo as - Color Radio. We'd probably still be on AM and the FM band would have been set aside for something else. We could have called it Digital Radio or even better yet we could have built the model around surround sound (digital 360) and instead of just improving the quality in terms of frequency range we could have build a system that would have made the ultimate in car audio and maybe brought back more in-home listening.


• The Boxes - Does this look Hi-Tech in any way? While there are some other models most are not ground breaking. The satellite radios are a bit more interesting and different looking. After we all saw the 'glow' of the I-Pods it should have been a wake up call that the radio makers needed to at least try for some innovation in the design. We should have and could have focused a lot more on the visual display here. Having pics of the artists, logos, trivia, maybe even some artist history or gossip. But the display is not much more than time/channel and maybe song title if it was programmed in right.


• The Programming - The rush seemed to be all about variety and the number of channels being offered. Instead of focusing on building unique products hundreds of HD channels in a box were created and a coalition of owners 'issued' the formats out to the member stations so there wouldn't be any 'in-fighting.' Why didn't we focus on building unique products. What if all the efforts were put into some unique offerings like regional/local indie channels aimed at the new indie rock movement and 16-24 year olds that we'd pretty much written off on our main signals? Instead of just a few imaging pieces and a bunch of mp3 files spinning on a computer we could have made a full effort with real jocks, some feature programming, flashy web sites, and had a real radio station here. We've all heard Live365 home brew web stations that sounded better than many of the HD offerings. Getting 1 hit channel would have been worth a lot more than launching 300 channels no one cared about.


• Marketing - Radio's done a lot here with tons of promo spots all over the bigger markets. The flaws noted in the 'Name' section above are holding back the effort and causing confusion, but at least we have put a message out there. Think about how much stronger the message would be with a unique presentation, programming that catches attention, and some hip-sexy looking products.

Over the next few weeks are going to watch Apple launch the I-Phone. Much like the launch of the I-Pod this product will have a wave of Hyper P1s sign up and praise the product in a cult like progression. From that legion of early adopters (mostly people who were lucky enough to get in line early enough to reserve one and afford $600 for a phone/i-pod) it will likely grow to at least see millions using the product within the first 6 months or so. We've been working on HD Radio for 3 years now and we still don't have a million people able to hear the product.

I do think the I-Phone will not be the runaway hit that I-Pod is for Apple. The launch was well done but Wall Street and so much of the press expects this to be such a huge hit I don't think they will be able to live up to all the spotlight and hype. There are other phones out there with some cool features, ATT doesn't have the strongest network for coverage and data delivery, and the cost of the phones is pretty high. You can get a lot of the features in a phone that comes free with a lot of other services. Still, they have put enough marketing savvy and fuel in the tank to make sure I-Phone gets off the ground. If only HD Radio had done the same.

There's still time to make Digital Radio a success. While we've made some mistakes not enough of the audience knows about it to have formed a negative impression yet. We can't fix the name, but we could start to center the product around surround sound, do more unique programming, aim a lot more HD programming at the under 25 audience and really put an effort into it - not just 'hard drive' it. We could also get the radio mfg folks to put out something sexy - maybe WE should make a cell phone with HD Radio in it - why not?????

Are You Boring????

Another Monday as Summer Revs up and we're into the last Phase of the Spring Arbitron. Soooo what's going on on the radio? If all you have going on this week is a remote or 2 to sell cars, bars or cell phones and a few giveaway trinkets in the lunch show Bass Akwards contest how do you expect to shine? Is your 'blackboard' of things happening on the air blank like the pic here.

As we work with stations in today's multi station clusters on what happens on air after the morning show we often find a lot of effort to get Selector and the digital system all set up and running. The next 'big' effort usually goes into imaging and production between the records then the air staff, promotions, and special programing/features. But, with PDs often working with multiple stations and sales teams that sell multiple signals some of the stations fall between the cracks. These stations often have to make things happen with less resources. That shouldn't stop you from making the station exciting. You have a whole city, lots of other entertainment to link up with, and a big group of people to interact and party with (your audience).

Just having a good music mix and some creative sweepers isn't going to make any station a winner. The audience has tons of internet stations with unique hyper niche music mixes that we could never attempt with just music on them. There has to be something going on that's going to attract attention on a regular basis. It can be 'on air' or 'in the community' but if all you are working with is that music mix and a few sweepers you are in a sword fight with a tree branch.

Look at your blackboard - is it blank? Even if it's just a big party for the opening night for Pirates at the movie theatre, or a countdown for when Paris goes to Jail, a bar night to watch the last episode of 24 for the season, or a special preview night for the new Linkin Park album - get something going. Even if you have to 'make it up' get out and get going. All it takes is a calendar, a few brainstorm/idea sessions, an awareness of what the target audience is into, and the space to talk about it on the air.

Is Web Site More Important Than The SIGNAL????

A recent R&R article with Clear Channel EVP Tom Owens had a very interesting quote:

In an exclusive interview in the April 27 Group Programmers Special Issue of R&R, Clear Channel executive VP of content development Tom Owens explains how rapidly changing consumer preferences are leading to “abbreviated” on-air content, where terrestrial stations are the bait, the Web is the catch and all roads lead to cell phone content convergence.

You could interperet Tom's quote here that the Web is more important than the terrestrial signal. Actually I sense Tom is really seeing that the Web Site is a hugely important interactive opportunity for your station and brand. The opportunity to dig in and offer podcasts, videos, downloads, and extended content from and around our broadcasts is a golden opportunity we are all missing. Taking the interview you had with a big band and taping it, or taking the un-edited version, or creating 'extra' moments from it and loading it up to the site for everyone to catch at their convience is a great opportunity. This is just one idea - there are many more and we often don't take the time or ignore the web opportunities.

The new world in the audience is INTERACTIVITY. With all the toys and tools of the web and it's spread to every nook and cranny of our communicative world radio has an opportunity to GO BEYOND BROADCASTING and start INTERACT-CASTING. We are no longer 'broadcasting' our format, music, opinions, or personality to the masses - we can now invite them into the dialog and the product. While our options on-air may be a bit limited to a few phone calls and features our the options on the web are limitless.

Yet, we often see programmers and management viewing the web as some kind of competitor instead of a partner and very valuable tool to build your brand and station into a multi platform monster.

Tom also points out that 'all roads lead to cell phone content convergence.' Radio used to be everywhere with portable radios, in the car, in the office, and at home. But, most radios just recieved our broadcasts and the audience passively listened in. Now Cell Phones are the 'everywhere appliance.' As cell phones become even more 'connected' radio will need to attach ourselves to this appliance somehow.

One thing I can't believe we don't start promoting and building up is FM Radio's in Cell Phones. It's really just a cheap extra chip in the phone and your station is connected. No web surfing fees, no data packages needed, and it even comes in when the service is weak. There are plenty of phones that have them.

Check out this one:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Nokia_6030_cellular_phone_with_FM_radio_GSM/4505-6454_7-32175263.html?tag=pdtl-list

Beyond promoting these phones we need to start looking more and more at options to promote our entertaining content to any and all media within reason. Radio is no longer one of 2-3 options for enteratinment - it's one of thousands maybe millions. We can't overtake the rush of options only become a part of them.

Your Web Site or a Cell Phone interaction are not more important than the broadcast signal - but unless we start interacting with the audience on as may platforms as we can they will find plenty of entertainment in other places. We can either become a part of the new world or be buried in the old world.