Opportunity #4 - Sales Make Over

While there are a lot of opportunities for product rebirth in the past 3 pieces of this series I sense that seeking out new opportunities in sales may have the most potential. Having said that I'm not a sales department expert. Yes, I've worked with some talented sales people and managers and seen both success and disappointment. I've also been in on many a budget session as the sales leadership laid out their plans and reviewed that past year.

From my 'outside the box' perspective I see a lot of potential for the sales teams to really ramp it up and improve.

1. Radio HAS reach: Just this past week Arbitron released their Radar report showing that Radio reaches 234 Million people 12+ and older in the average week. That's up from 232 last year. In the younger cells - teens radio reaches 90% and with 18-34s it's 92%. Can you find a web site (outside of Google - maybe) that reaches that many people? If you want to get your message or product in front of 92% of the population at a reasonable cost you just can't beat radio. More and more big products are figuring it out - Walmart has finally recognized it, Geico, a bunch more. Hershey recently admitted that it's strong 3rd quarter came from using radio more in their marketing. You see people jumping over web sites that have 100,000 people hitting them in a week - so what, when you compare that to radio its peashooter territory.
2. Radio IS Local: For the retailers and services in your area Radio reaches them better than any other media.
3. Radio is a bargain: When you look at the prices we have for the reach it can't be beat.
4. Radio is proven: If we look at all the success radio has brought in the post WWII marketing period there's no doubt the media works.

These are just the top 4 reasons, but do the sales teams of today really understand these clear and simple advantages? Or are they caught up in endless data crunching for CPMs, rankings, and market shares? Are they watching other weaker and less reaching media walk in and steal away business with products and web gimmicks that are clearly not proven?

I often wonder if the sales teams of today know who the competition is? Do they understand Google Ad Words and how they are used? Do they see opportunities in spreading clients media to both the web site and the station? Do they know what the web metrics are and what are the most popular sites selling space in your area? I can remember the sales teams of the past having 3 day sessions on selling against the Yellow Pages or Newspapers in the 80s? Do we have anyone helping build the case for radio over the web today?

Radio could hold the KEY for many business' to getting out of this recession. Face it much of the problem we have with the economy is that the consumer is spooked. The crash of housing, credit/banking/investment, and the market damage from all that has everyone frozen. Discretionary income has just about dried up all over the country - if we don't need it we aren't going to buy it till we see some signs that the storm is over. It's going to take marketing for most of the business' to get the motor going again and we have great advantages with our huge reach, lower costs, quickness in creativity, and local market coverage.

Now is the time to train and build the sales troops for the opportunity ahead. The storm we are in will pass and it's a golden time for radio to come out roaring again. Hopefully we'll have enough creativity left on the product team, but we're also counting on having a sales team that's ready to play in the new world of media and marketing. If you're a manager or sales leader it can be your time to hit the weight room and train for the new season ahead - this could be your year. Great teams are made in the offseason and shine in the real season - this is clearly the off season.

It would help if our industry would ban together and really make the story for radio. Yes we have the Radio - It's On campaign. Forget the slogans - how about getting out the FACTS. Maybe a campaign in Advertising Age, maybe using the web ourselves to market ourselves. How about dropping all those HD radio spots (for the wasteland it is) and just spend the time and effort talking about radio and the power of it's audience? The RAB and the NAB need to step it up NOW. There's a lot more to do than hang around Washington and lobby.

Next week I'll conclude the Opportunities Ahead segment - looking forward to the holidays and hope your's are happy ones.

Opportunity #3 Web and Content Distribution

Of course there's tons of opportunity in getting our content into distribution channels beyond our towers and by building a strong presence for our brands in the new web driven culture. But, these opportunities have been growing for 10 or more years and really what have we accomplished?

Most of our web sites are just afterthoughts, a small billboard on the web of the station. There's some news feeds, content usually available on any 'home' page like Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, or now even IGoogle. In Rock there's usually a babe of the day - as if you couldn't just hit 'hot girls' on a search and get way more than we'd ever own up to. The local weather is often there - as if weather.com didn't work? Sometimes there is even a few pics of the Halloween promotion even though we're into December. A few have started podcasts and download of bits from shows. Most have some loyalty database program that mostly just sends emails or awards some prizes for visiting the site. But, for the most part hardly any of the radio sites are real destinations for the listener. Once in a while they are checked out.

A lot of you have streams up now, but have you really listened to them? With all the spot substitutions and really very little content those of us who do bother with the stream have lots of cheesy instrumentals to deal with while at least the tuned in audience gets commercials. The quality on many streams is also pretty bad. The processing is often taken before it hits the real processing gear for the transmitter and levels jump all over the place.

There are lots of services that do offer decent streaming and do help you substitute commercials with some content or promos. Some stations also do little features and some even sell the streams to a few clients and bother to run extra spots for them with special copy on the streams. But, for the most part we tend to just get the feed from the board to a computer and away we go. I did drop in on a few Liquid Compass streams and was surprised at the quality and the content around spots. There are services out there, but we don't seem to care on many sites.

We have to start investing TIME, MANPOWER, CREATIVITY, and ENERGY into the sites if we expect to have anything meaningful happen here. As noted in earlier posts in this series our biggest opportunity is LOCAL. We already have a big brand on the streets of our hometowns and if we can get the eyes and ears in our area code plugged in we have plenty of audience and a sales/creative team to help the local clients diversify on both the web and radio with our big brand.

Start by looking at what you can offer:

• Local Entertainment Guides


• Local Restaurant Reviews - from the audience


• Complete local bar and club listings - with maps and places for the clubs to update their info.


• Full coverage of local events with photos, and videos.


• Let the audience in - send your pics of your Halloween party or costumes for all to see.


• Links - Not just text links, but how about links to the local school site, local golf courses, attractions, museums, sports teams, etc.


• Cover Your Format - If it's rock invite the audience to comment on Guns N' Roses new cd, let them post videos of them doing Rock and Roll Train on Rock Band.


• Video - Tape everything. The cameras are easy to use and cheap - you can get a hard drive HD video one for $300 and edit the videos right on you computer. If a band stops by tape it all for the audience to see. If you do a bar night tape the highlights and also save the still pics.

I often wonder why we don't create a real Facebook and MySpace style page for our promotions with video, music, pics and also places where the audience can chime in. There's tons of ideas that are all local and all about your station that could be on the site. We don't need another RSS feed with news that we probably saw somewhere else. You need to either build you LOCAL ADVANTAGE or BUILD YOUR STATION on the site. The other stuff is probably a waste of effort or space.

There are also new opportunities to add streams. So Metallica is coming to town - how about an all Metallica Stream for a month before the show? When Gun/Roses released how about a stream with all G/R on it all day?

Promote your station and web site all over the web. When Obama was running he had banners on tons of sites to turn out the early vote. They read your IP address and directed you to the info for your area. You could do the same for your station - you pull up a site in your market and your station's message (maybe a morning show board, music flash, web link) hits the screen. It may cost something, but I bet it's not as much as you spend in outdoor in many markets. Also look at using some Google tricks with Adwords in your market. Again we haven't used this for our marketing but it could be very effective and may cost less than we think.

We do see the big radio groups signing on with some web radio systems, others linking with streaming systems, others producing content like Stripped and the Previews on Clear Channel, but instead of building national brands we could have a lot more impact by focusing on OUR LOCAL WORLD here. In many markets the door is pretty open and we have links to talk to the whole market over our air to build the sites. We also have a local focused sales team that can pull some revenue here. We really don't need more nationally controlled sites with the same content on 100 rock stations. Developing unique local content on 100 rock stations would give our audience reasons to make a home for us on their computer.

The other opportunity is getting to cell phones. A few have started invading the I Phone apps with 'tuners to get streams' on the phones. Soon we'll see this for many cell phones beyond I Phone and we need to be there. Also working on using texting and phone messaging to integrate them to news feeds, contests, podcasts and other features to try and get to their phones. Also consider ring tones - making up morning show bits, songs, and other possibilities for ring tones could be great.

While we don't need to jump on every web idea, we do need to pick out the ones that we can exploit on a platform of building a unique spot on the web that is LOCAL , BUILT ON OUR BRAND/PRODUCT and

Investing in all of this is another issue. Everyone is tightening, but the opportunity is ripe and urgent. We have to expand our distribution or watch our world shrink every day. Yes it takes time and hard work, but the opportunity will never be better - in fact we've wasted many years already.

The key is to get organized first and see what you can accomplish with a little effort now. Many of the content issues on the list above could be just assignments that only take 15 or 20 minutes a day to accomplish when spread out over the staff. Others will take more effort - getting the stream cleaned up could be a challenge with all the production needed.

Our other advantage here is the ability to build our web world from our big reach on air. Some stations do a good job of promoting their web site and others just take an occasional punch at it. You have to make it worth going to and also make sure everyone knows. Remember that you have the audience to make sure they know - but you have to promote it.

We have all the tools to make a lot more impact on the web. It's time to start using them.

Opportunities Ahead #2

Be Special: In our overcooked quest to be consistent and drill ourselves into the audience's brains, because ratings were mostly about un-aided recall, we've fallen into a very repetitive format drill.


--The breaks happen at the same calculated time every hour.


--We do 9 or 10 or 30 minutes of music every hour.


--The jock format is backsell, liner, billboard all the time - of course we open with the calls and positioning and the game is how many time can we drill it down without sounding way too obvious. Why listen - you know what they are going to say and we also nearly always know that a long SPOT set is next so let's just move on and ignore the jocks.


--Every hour is the same - you can almost smell the current tracks coming or the power 70s song in the mix.


--And it's the same day after day - week after week.


It's no wonder we can just 'hard drive' it and no one even notices.


Why does every hour and every day have to be the same?


If the new Guns and Roses is out today can't we break it up and throw in a few phones or play it a bit more than we would normally?


If it's Halloween can't we fire up some theme music around it, maybe drop in a 'haunted house' backdrop over the breaks, have the audience talk about their costumes and parties?


If AC/DC or even Seether is in town why not celebrate with some special music sets, maybe catch the band after the sound check or if you can't get that set just invite the audience to get fired up for the show on the air.


Nothing special today? Make it up - rewind back to the 90s for a 3 pack every hour and a little history of the era and maybe a few bands that we all remember but don't test in power anymore.


Yes, we all know the dangers of trying to spend a whole day with a one-hit wonder band or digging too deep into the music, but do we have to take that all the way to being so predictable and boring?


I bet if you could do a 'vulcan mind meld' with the audience you'd find that many of their complaints of being too repetitious and the same music 'over and over' are more directed at our formatics than they are at our playlist.


When we do research in Rock radio one of the highest testing features is nearly always Two For Tuesday. It's a day when the whole stations sounds different with 2 songs from every artist and one that we've done since the late 70s. We really don't know if it has killer numbers in the ratings with the diary system and so many filling it out 2 days later, but I bet when we start breaking out PPM numbers in markets where the feature runs you will see Tuesday is worth something.


The key is not to get too cute here or get too far from playing big artists and making sure the big hits are always close at hand.


It also doesn't always have to be music driven or filled with talk. You could use your imaging to have fun and entertain also. How about a 'quick movie clip' day dropping a few quick 10 sec movie audio - you could also have the audience guess and win a DVD or movie pass (movie Monday?).


Just remember that if you promote it for a few days and make it memorable on the air you don't need to do it for 5 years in the same repetitive manner to make it work.


Surprise them and you will entertain them. Be consistent to a fault and you will just be predictable and boring.


The problem we face in programming is that we've built this overly consistent and predictable system and now it's the norm and the rule. Our desire not to 'screw' it up and turn everything into a formula has closed more doors that it's opened. It's also produced an operation that is so easy for a computer to duplicate. Yes it keeps the meters humming on the transmitter, but does it make a warm spot in the audience's head? On top of that you don't need the annoying staff with their expenses, health care, and needs for a little extra every year on your back.

I the new world anyone with a stream can do the more music format and now you can also sort of do it on your Ipod, and let's not forget personalized streams like Slacker. Why does the audience really us? If you are just hitting F10 on Selector and firing the log off to the log interface why should we listen?


For many stations it may be too late as the budgets have already hit the wall and digging out the resources to find the time and effort to make a station that really entertains could be too big a mountain to climb. But, the opportunity to build a truly special station in your market has never been more open than it is today. The good news is that we still have a strong reach and considerable cumes to work with. Let's use them before they dry up.


Mix it up, make it special and make sure they know about it.

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.

Opportunity Lies Ahead

As the buzz of the election winds down it's time to act. Obviously Obama has a very long list, but so does our world. Some may look at all that's ahead and just get depressed. Others will see the opportunity to march boldly into a whole new world that's filled with fresh potential. Right now the environment reminds me of an old lyric from CSNY's Deja Vu - 'the darkest hour is just before the dawn.'

Obama's team summed it up with a great 1 word positioning statement - CHANGE. Hillary and later McCain wandered through the positioning statement of the week - Maverick, Country First, Experience and on and on. Obviously the election became a huge win and now we await action on all the dream, hopes and promises.

In our Radio world there has also been lots of talk about change, but is there any action? Are we seeking new opportunities or just cutting back in every direction trying to save the the month or quarter?

The opportunities are really pretty obvious and Next Week I'll tackle the 4 big ones that lie ahead.

Lessons for Radio From Campaign 08

As we head towards the polls after the long election campaigns there are some lessons for radio programmers and managers from the efforts of McCain and Obama.





Polls: Most polls show Obama having a healthy lead and poised to win, but can we trust the polls?

The polls are handicapped by 2 events. 1st is the cell phone onlies that are difficult to reach and now make up around 20% of the population. In the under 35 age cells the cell phone crowd is bigger and reaching them is very hard for polling services. Also determining if the respondents will actually vote is another problem. Working with samples that voted last time ignores all the people that were newly registered and many of them came from an all out effort from Obama.

When you consider that we measure our success in 'poll like fashion' with Arbitron or BBM in Canada we also face the same problems with the cell phone onlies. It's a big issue with Arbitron right now and we also struggle measuring the younger cells.

The Web and New Media: This whole area will likely turn out to be the KEY if Obama wins. Look at some of the ways Obama used the new world of the web and database management to build huge advantages:

Fund Raising: While the numbers are not official yet, in mid August Obama had 390 million raised and we know he did 150 million in September so it's pretty safe to say he had over 600 million in contributions. McCain had to work with the federal matching funds system and was limited to around 85 million. Obama worked much of this on the web and much of it from small donations. Yes there were some high priced celeb dinners, but it didn't make up most of the 600 million.

McCain didn't have anything close to this effort on the web and mostly relied on some big fund raising events. In the end Obama was able to keep up a huge TV effort, spend to help register tons of new voters, be the leading spender on Radio, advertise all over the web, and also put up offices in any state he wanted to with tons of volunteers and staff members. With 600 million he had the firepower.

The Database: Obama built the email database at every turn. Wanna go to any Obama event - your email address got you in. Visit the web site and you're email address was a huge goal. He even tapped off the convention with an event for over 100,000 in the stadium and much of the goal here was to get 10 of thousands of email addresses from the key toss up state of Colorado. McCain on the other hand claimed that he really didn't know how to do email. Yes, McCain's web site did try to build a database and his loyal followers did set up an email network - that often spread out emails that seemed to come from radical followers (Obama is Muslim, etc).

The Web: As we travel with our browsers in the final weeks nearly every site has Obama banners on it. Most are focused on 1 message - get out and vote early. The strategy is simple to get anyone who can vote out early so they don't walk away waiting in a long line. The effort is on CNN, Yahoo, MSNBC, and any other site that had decent traffic. You can click on the banner ad and be directed to how to vote in your state and community.

When McCain attacked Obama's tax plans Obama put up a site where you could enter your income and basic tax info and get an instant comparison of the McCain taxes and his plan. Using the web he took it right to your level, whatever it is.

New Media: Obama used streaming video on his site and all over You Tube to get messages across, show big speeches and make sure that any messages were available on your schedule. Many of Obama's supporters also put out their own videos and songs adding to the content. The 'Yes We Can' video has over 10 million views. McCain's most viewed video was one done by a McCain hater with 7 million views. While Obama was risking his message being distorted the 'all out access' had to have helped build the impact here.

Using Traditional Media: Obama way outspent McCain on TV and did much of it on a local level in the key states. And in the end his 1/2 hour TV show to finish off the last week of the election was also a big move that kept McCain in the background and on the defensive.

Lessons: A lot of the campaign tactics and strategies are similar to what we face in radio. In so many ways our product is a popularity contest and really running for President is also largely dependent on popularity. Obama was able to overcome big hurdles from his experience, his name and even his race to run a campaign that looks like it will win.

He did it by using all the new media tools skillfully. McCain seemed to run a campaign as if the web was a new fangled thing that looked confusing, complex and not worth the effort. No doubt the next campaign - win or lose next Tuesday - the Republicans will take a loooong hard look at how to use new media and the web.

Regardless of who you vote for here you have to see that skillful use of new media and the web is crucial if you want to win here in Radioland.

The Radio Week That Was 10/28

Wall Mart 400% more Radio Usage: Over the last year the big box of all big boxes has really pumped up it's radio spending and now reports big returns. Big Box stores have ignored radio for the most part and usually spend on TV and Newspaper inserts. For years we've seen the local Stereo Shop close up as Best Buy hits and radio loses. Could the tide be turning? Let's hope so, but why did these national chain stores and restaurants blow off radio in the first place? I bet the lack of a simple way to buy radio on a national scale was more the reason than the reach or effectiveness of the media. We still need to find a way that's better the national rep and while there have been ideas nothing seems to be advancing in our economic and creative freeze. Still, this is a story your sales team should be armed with. If the most frugal - penny pinching - store around is advancing in a tough economy with radio so can many others.

Layoffs: Every day the list gets longer as everyone tightens the budget for 09. We've seen it nearly every year for the last 5 or 6 and the drought in our products is not getting any better with fewer people to create the programming and sell it. How can we expect to make progress with all the competition from new media and how can we make an impact in the new media world with no hands on deck to sail the ship? Sooner or later we need to make an investment here.

Rock Music Making Big Waves: With AC/DC's new CD topping the charts and the audience buzzing about the return of Guns N' Roses after 13 years Rock music remains in the fore front. Metallica is still burning up the charts and there are still lots of other rockers with strong showings no matter how you measure it. Managing the A and B current categories has never been more important than is is right now. Have you been to a Wal Mart in the last week? The whole store seems like AC/DC has taken over. There are posters all over the place, lots of AC/DC clothing and even non-stop videos on the TV screens. The only thing they left out was having the Greeters decked out in AC/DC gear - how about one of them in a 'Hells Bells T Shirt."

The Radio Week That Was 10/21

The story that stood out was all the changes in the creative teams in satellite radio as XM and Sirius began the meat of the merger. When you stand back and look at the 2 services XM really put up a lot more into the music channels than Sirius. Sirius really ramped up the expenses when they lured Howard away and paid tons for sports rights. The bidding wars for content were mostly to impress Wall Street at any cost and we all know the costs are rather high.

The music channels were really a bargain. Most just had a programmer and maybe a jock here and there. XM was more focused on trying to bring in some unique formats and building on Lee Abrams theory (a well founded one) on 4 types of programming that addressed listeners who were casual to rabid. XM spent a lot on imaging the stations, running special programs and profiles, having artists stop buy, covering live tours, and keeping the music channels pretty active. Sirius pretty much pressed play and ran with 1000 in a row on a group of stations that really just covered the basic format food groups we have in most major markets.

XM felt that the music channels brought in around 70% of the subscribers and a wide range of people. Sirius was a lot more focused on the talk side and 'Howard's World.' The one problems there is where is the growth? How many more Howard Heads do they expect to find willing to pay out for the service? Yes, lots signed up when he moved over, but the fans are either there or not by now. You don't see a bunch of 22 year olds with their first job and car jumping all over signing up for Howard.

The sports channels probably still have growth in them - they have all the major sports covered and there are plenty of fans. The talk channels are OK, but there aren't any big hosts here and in most markets the talk fans have a wide range of choices in many cases on regular radio.

The new programming order with the merged services is mostly living on Sirius' energy. And in the music side it's pretty much just the basics. The huge Washington HQ for XM is probably pretty much a ghost town as the world now revolves around just delivering the hits.

For the terrestrial radio side it's good news. There will still be 2 services to choose from for a long time splitting the effect and now we don't have much on the 'music side' to compete with. No doubt with the slump in car sales and the new opportunities for 'add on gadgets' from sync systems with I Pods to WiFi to navigation aids and more video options. It also looks like the next big deal in cars will be more centered on MPG than so much focus on the dashboard.

You also have the debt issues with the merger and Sirius/XM needing to raise a ton of money in 1st quarter. They really can't really move to just 1 audio service and then use the band width to venture more into video for a new revenue stream - you still have over 1/2 of XM people to service and the receivers are not compatible.

It all adds up to a very tough business model. While Mel may dream of being the leading content provider in audio as he claimed in one of the addresses around the merger - it's not going to happen without some creative people and unique programming.

While satellite radio's impact on terrestrial radio has gotten past the peak it's now going downhill. It's likely that these moves could steepen the slope. For 'regular' radio we still face lots of challenges, but it looks like satellite radio is in the rear view mirror. If you're looking for some really talented people there's even more to choose from.