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.   

Making a Syndicated Show Local

I think it's pretty obvious that the key to Radio's success and future lies in being Local and having strong ties to your local audience and community.   It's our BIG ADVANTAGE in the whole new media world that is very 'national and international' in its scope.  

We also see some big advantages in using Syndicated shows.  When you look at the debate in using a show like Bob and Tom in mornings the advantages usually outweigh everything.  Say it costs you 110K in market 120 to have the show.  If you tried to build a local show for 120K you would have to be very lucky to find 2 or 3 people who could even mount a very basic show for that price.  You wouldn't have the parade of comedians, stars, and the well timed humor of a veteran crew like Bob and Tom.  In many cases Bob and Tom outperform the rest of the station and add 20% or more to the overall shares and usually win (or come close) in 25-54s.  It takes a big local show to beat them.  

But, they can be beat with a local show.  A show that hits the streets, covers the local scene and preps with a vengeance can zip right past them.   Having worked on both sides of this street we've learned a few 'tricks':

• Working With A Syndicated Show:  No matter if it's B/T or Alice Cooper or any one of the other shows the key is making it a real part of the the station.  Don't just aim the satellite dish, program the digital studio and sit back.  Make the show as local as possible with tons of recycling, custom inserts in the show, special imaging (including lots cut by the show''s stars) in the breaks and make sure to use the show in as may promotions as you can.   Don't just give away a Harley - make it the Bob and Tom Harley and tie them in someway on the air.  Weave the show into the WHOLE day and on the flip side weave your station into their show as much as you possibly can.  
• Beating a Syndicated Show:  Make your show as local as possible and make it as great as possible.  Remember you are going up against great talent - average talent doesn't get syndicated.  Your team has to know the audience inside and out, know the community, and be super prepared every morning.  It takes lots of coaching, good talent in the room and a non stop effort in the streets.  You also need to package the show well, build a strong web interactive presence and make every show noteworthy/special.   

Yes they are simple steps, but so many times when look at the stations who don't win in either scenario they either thought that B/T would save the day all by themselves.   Or on the other side that just having a bit of local flavor would put their weak show on top.  

In the end it takes dedication and tons of hard work to make a show work today.  Especially in Mornings the field is often crowded.   And in today's tight belted world finding the resources to make a show into a winner is a challenge.   But, it can be done.  

Views on the New Year In Radio

Of course we face many challenges as 09 starts off with a deep freeze here in the North.  It seems as if the whole world is frozen with an economy that seems so confusing and desperate that everyone and everything has come to a stand still.  No doubt it will thaw out, but we are the only ones who can warm the climate here.  

On to some notes from the first few weeks of events and news in Radio: 

The mass layoffs at Clear Channel and other groups is tough to watch.  Having worked for CC they gave up some very talented people from the programming side and no doubt also left some productive sales people on the street.  But, did they do much trimming in their corporate accounting and legal teams?   I bet not.  

Even though these jobs don't really produce the product or make revenue from it I bet there are still people counting every penny 3 times and lawyers reviewing every contract and dragging things out.   I remember when CC took over the AM/FM world and most of the business managers were rather stunned at the corporate oversight.  Nothing happened without a long list of approvals and seemed out of control on the local level.  OK, so times are tough and cuts were needed.  Was it the best move to cut programming even further (it was already past the bone) and now to cut out sales people?  Could a few productive people have been spared by only counting the pennies 2 times? 

While we can question the cuts the reality is - it's time to remake our business.  It's time to get hungry again and re-invent our programming and our sales systems for a new world that is already here and passing us by.  

PPM has now spread it's wings to Canada with the first release of the Fall ratings in Montreal.  The rest of the bigger markets in Canada will adopt the system over the next 2 years. There are some differences as they have set the meters to measure it minute by minute and they print out the Cume by both the Average Daily Cume and the Cume for the whole survey.   It was interesting to see that Cumulative Cume number - the top 3 stations reached over 3 million people in a market of 3.3 million, 4 more stations reached over 2.5 million!!!  Wow you could reach nearly the whole market by just buying 1 station if you ran the message for 13 weeks.   Don't know any other media where you can accomplish that.  

PBS - Make Em Laugh should be must see TV for your air staff.  This is a complete history of comedy from all angles.  Billy Crystal and Amy Sedaris host the show and gives your air staff a big picture look at what makes comedy work.   All the styles from shocking to physical prat falls are showcased with a complete history of all the greats in each style.  If you're going to entertain an audience you need to study the craft and this is a great resource.   

Music Thoughts for 09:  In 08 we had a good year in rock with veterans like AC/DC, Metallica, Guns n' Roses, and Motley Crue adding to an already strong line up of more current bands like 3 Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, and many more.  The year starts off with U2 returning and perhaps a Pearl Jam and STP CD later in the year.   It doesn't look as promising as 09 did, but you never know. 

A Programming Thought For the New Year:  Radio has been all about the format for a very long time.  I don't mean being Rock or CHR or AC - I mean our programming structure on the air hour after hour.   It's the same clocks and rotations nearly every day.  10 in a Row every hour with breaks :40 and :50 or some other robotic plan.   The same rotation system day after day to the point where we have to trick the software so everyone doesn't know what A is next in the stack.  Why can't every day be unique, surprising and a little different?  It's time to get creative - anyone with a computer can duplicate robotic-formatic radio.  In any research we do the biggest audience complaint is repetition and while they often cite the music a little probing also shows they mean the formatics that rule every hour over and over.  For your brand to stand out and be a leader you have to lead them somewhere.  Let's quit being robots and start being outgoing - creative humans again.   

The 00 Decade

Happy New Year!!!  We're into 2009 this week and the last year of the first decade of the new century.  We've been defining the decades for a long time.  It probably started with the Roaring 20s and picked up steam in the 60s and 70s.  The revolution of the 60s and the wild days of the 70s, the conservative and yuppieness of the 80s and the digital 90s decade all had 'themes' that defined the trends in our culture.    

These themes all have had a lot of influence on our music and entertainment choices as well as evolving new media.   The 60s brought on the maturity of network TV, pop music super stars with music as a revolution messenger, and the top 40 format,  the 70s saw the beginning of Cable TV, the evolution of FM radio and a continued growth of the music industry into the Super Groups.   The 80s conservatism re-established Pop music trends, saw cable TV evolve to a new norm, and FM radio grew to the dominate music platform.  The 90s brought in the digital revolution which evolved over the decade finishing with a wealth of new WWW based media on a platform that was a government project at the start of the decade.   

The 00's or Ought decade or maybe the twenty-ohs is nearing an end and Jonah Goldberg from the National Review Online (and CNN) makes some interesting observations in this article.  

Goldberg's observation's on the 00 decade being one of self centered-ness maybe best illustrated on the factoid from the 90s that bottled water consumption passed beer in the decade.  Goldberg notes - Beer gets the party started.  Water is the thirst quencher of choice for the solitary fitness addict,.   Beer the outgoing social drink - passed by bottled water and it's inner driven world. 

He also notes that the Ipod follows a similar trend - the personalization of music and entertainment generally.   An inner driven world where music is personalized - not shared or experienced in a community like a live performance or a radio station where we all hear it at the same time.   He goes on to point out the IPod culture, is a mix of self-promotion and atomization: broadcast yourself, indeed.   

Yet at the end of this decade perhaps we are seeing a big clue that the tide is turning away from this me driven, self absorbed, over personalized and customized world of the 00s.   

A key clearly stood out in the election - Change was the KEY mantra and turning out in big crowds and joining in a huge community voter turnout were the clear signs.   From a world revolving around the solitary keyboard and monitor to communities filled with real people and personalities.  A movement from individualistic concerns to UNITY.   A movement away from 'greed is good' to a far more social and sharing society?   The signs are starting to show up on a very regular basis.   

This could be a great movement for radio to re-invent itself upon.   Don't you think???? 

Hope you had a great holiday and are ready for the evolution that starts in 2009.   

Opportunities for Radio- The Wrap

Looking back on the 4 opportunities for radio that we've covered in the last few weeks I bet you can't believe they are SO SIMPLE.   Outside of building our brands into the web and embracing new distribution channels most of the opportunities here lie in getting back to the basics of our products.  

Focusing on our LOCAL presence, being special and creative, and refocusing our sales effort to be effective with the new competition are ingredients we've all used over and over.   Yet, the only plan we seem to see right now is cut costs in every direction, and many of the cuts are no doubt going to hinder efforts in these basic opportunities.  

Yes keeping or re-building local presence means keeping people in the building on the air and in the streets.  Being special and creative also means having the staff to create and execute.  Refocusing the sales effort will also take time, good sales folks and a well crafted plan.  While there are not many low or no cost solutions here I bet most of you could build a plan and find a way to make it work even in the present tight times.   

If there ever was a time to pull it off - it's NOW.  With the economy in a holding pattern and so many advertisers rethinking their whole approach Radio has a golden opportunity to come out of the down cycle with a big rush.  

No doubt advertisers will be looking for low cost opportunities to get their business' flowing again.  Radio to the rescue with huge reach, low costs and so many opportunities to get images and messages to the consumers.  

Our biggest problem is that our image is tattered with many advertisers.  We are not the new 'sexy' media.   But, we are the affordable, big reach, still local, and we can be as creative with the message as well as any other media.  That is the message we need to get out there right now.  But we need to start building a focused plan on both the local and national level.   

Yes we are the underdog in many ways, but just like so many success stories where the underdog pulls out a big win we need to set the table for our wild card team to bring home the winning run.  That takes a plan and the team to execute it.  

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.