Connect Personally And Keep It Real

For the last few days I've been sharing info-graphics from "State of Listening in America" which haven't gotten press coverage and yet I believe impact you very directly much more than than "good news" headlines picked up by media the day after the New York data presentation.

1.  CONNECT PERSONALLY WITH LISTENERS

Listeners have deep affinities with DJs and value the time spent with them.

2.  DJs ARE CONSIDERED CELEBRITIES WHO KEEP IT REAL”

Listeners expect a lot from us.

How have you delivered on those hopes in the last few minutes on your air?

Radio Cornerstones Of Lasting Engagement

"State of Listening Today," according to Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, “Confirms that radio’s reach and appeal remain strong regardless of the platform, geography, ethnicity, or age group.  American listeners – particularly younger generations – feel a strong connection to their favorite on-air radio personalities – which is made stronger by social media – in a way that isn’t replicated by other media.”

The study also helps explain why:

It Was Actually More Than Just Great News For Radio

The trade press coverage of "State of Listening in America" in the last week has focused largely on the many positive aspects of radio in 2013 as a vehicle for advertisers.

Dr. Subramanyam also did something very clever at the conclusion of the presentation in New York that hasn't gotten the coverage that I feel it deserves.  Once the media buying targets were nodding "yes" to data about the reach, impact, target and power of radio, came this advice I want to underscore. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETERS 

These are the messages that I wish more of our trade media had covered and that all of us in radio need to share with our production departments, our talent and our clients.

Pass it on!

No Bones About It

It's demoralizing for those of us who believe in local radio driven by powerful local brands to have to watch Clear Channel doing what it seemingly feels is must do to compete while paying down the huge mountain of debt facing the company.

Demoralizing too for Bobby Bones and his terrific team, it seems, since they claim to have been receiving "a lot of hate mail" about the move.  Even their affiliates learned about it yesterday on the air.

They have a poll on their website asking their listeners what they think.  When I voted, here's how it looked (not exactly a rousing welcome/sendoff):

I must confess that I am not demoralized.  Actually, I am one of that 42%.  I love how organic the show is, how authentic.  I feel confident that it's going to find a place, much like Ryan Seacrest has in Top 40 and and Hot AC, in country radio where a local show is stuck in its ways and has been slow to understand Gen Y and Z.

I am energized.  It will be fun to watch what Bobby does on WSIX.  He's certainly not Gerry House in a litany of ways, and yet his unpredictability and honesty, that un-radio approach that endeared Gerry to Nashville radio listeners is alive and well within Bobby Bones.

This move means, of course, that as contracts end for many Clear Channel morning personalities over the next year or two, there will be a plethora of great morning talent seeking to find a new city to fall in love with in hopes that place will love them back.

If you're on the air in the morning on a successful country station now, it's time to up your game.  Think about today's and tomorrow's available target audience.

These are exciting times, and if you don't enjoy competition and innovation, I feel sorry for you.

Just like I feel sorry for anyone who has to face $10.1 billion in debt obligations which come due in three years, but of course a challenge like that can focus the mind and push one to quickly realize that they need to take risks and do big things.

Radio needs Bobby, his employer and all of us who compete for country radio listener ears to do our very best.  Now.

To me, that's exciting.

Bad Timing

The Mays family's decision to sell Clear Channel in 2005 following the family patriarch Lowry's stroke might have been termed "great timing," since it took multiple lawsuits to force the buyers to actually do the deal after the financial collapse of 2007-2008, which put him at #1062 on the year's list of the world's wealthiest billionaires.

Bad timing, of course, for Bain Capitol and its investment bankers, who have been helped at least a bit by the low interest rate environment even as they have been wacked and wacked again by the years-long no-growth economy.

One trade publication last week, as the axe fell again just before yet another year's Holidays, estimated that 10,000 people have lost their jobs since Clear Channel and the other post-deregulation consolidators starting enlarging their holdings in the mid-1990's.

Bad timing for so many people to hit the ranks of radio's unemployed all at the same time, making it even less hopeful that many of will land on their feet until well into the coming year.

Radio Info/Talkers editor Michael Harrison put it bluntly last week in an interview with The San Antonio Business Journal:  “I think Clear Channel is run by extremely intelligent people.  They have tremendous muscle and collective powers, including economies of scale. They are doing the best they can with a difficult situation. The jury is still out. A lot of this has to do with the economy,”

He was even more blunt in his own pages, calling it "iHeartless radio."

It's hard to disagree with him.

Bad timing all around.

As usual, A&O&B is currently looking for experienced people for a number of our client stations, so many other radio companies are expanding and hiring. 

Those folks are going to have a lot more people to choose from than they would have expected at this time of year, but - knowing that there are far fewer opportunities than there are newly-employed - it's hard to call it a good time right now for anybody involved.

Going Out On A Very High Note

29 years at one radio station is a lot to be proud of and perhaps when you saw the amazing ratings in the last two months for Milwaukee's #1 radio station, WMIL, you were unaware of the fact that last month was the final one on the station for the venerable Mitch Morgan.

As Clear Channel implements its cost-efficient WAN-based Premium Choice national programming in more and more places, the axe finally fell on Mitch in Milwaukee.

They call it "retirement," and being the class act he has always been, that is precisely how he took it.

Do an internet search for his name and you'll not find a disparaging word either from or about this yoeman personality.

Whatever comes next for WMIL in midday, it has a very high ratings number to match in Mitch's final two months and the entire radio station performed very well. Clear Channel has a wonderful team in their Howard Avenue studios in Greenfield, WI. I hope the company appreciates that.

Mitch, you know you have many wonderful, devoted friends and loyal fans which have been built thanks to your great work on air, refined Music Director "ears," deep involvement in the Wisconsin community on the streets, constant support for thousands of artists and mentoring of other radio people who look up to you as a role model.

Count me among them.

Was I Wrong?

The instant I heard about it, I felt pretty certain that Kenny and Tim would be featured 2012 artists on the next "I Heart Radio" music festival in Las Vegas.

It seems that I wasn't alone, as Country Aircheck's RJ Curtis turned to Clear Channel SVP/Programming Clay Hunnicutt to ask what was behind the company's unprecedented heavy first days' airplay of “Feel Like A Rock Star” and what CC received in exchange for what sounded like another "Artist Integration Project".

It looks like I was wrong.

Hunnicutt called it "more of a world premiere event with elements of artist integration. One of the key components of an AIP is utilizing unsold commercial inventory to build the brand of an artist. The plan for Chesney/McGraw, anchored around 28 straight hourly airings of the song didn’t include commercial inventory. That contrasts with the AIP run for Madonna earlier this year. With her, we had billboards in the markets, promoting and counting down to the world premiere of her video.”

Hunnicutt says he was not involved in that promotion. “It’s more than just saying the album is on sale now; it’s about telling the bigger story of the project and the artist. We all have an interest in creating hit songs and more core artists. It helps everybody: listeners, radio, labels, publishers, artists and touring. It was one of those times where everybody was excited about it, and that’s when things can really take off. The song wasn’t exclusive to us; everybody had it at the same time. We didn’t beat anybody to the proverbial punch and we were clear about that, but it goes back to whoever has the best idea wins. We sprung into action after that.”

What benefits does Clear Channel reap after utilizing its airwaves and other platforms to further an artist’s career?

Hunnicutt told Curtis on Monday: “I’ll sum it up in a simple way. A better listening experience for our listeners on the air and creating a moment. There are never any conditions on these, no quid pro quo. This is who we should be – contributing to a greater good when we have the opportunity to do it. We all benefit when there’s more music that is known, familiar and helping to support Tim- and Kenny-level acts.”

I think I'll wait until Clear Channel announces the artist lineup later this year for "I Heart Radio Festival" this year before fully admitting my skepticism was completely unfounded. Meanwhile, if you compete with a Clear Channel station and feel like you "own" reporting status and thus access to big artists exclusively in your market, it's time to step up your game in the same way too, and that is a good thing for all of us.

As long as Clear Channel and Cumulus don't abuse the power given by their footprint in the format at the expense of the rest of country radio, several thousand individual comparatively mom- and pop-owned stations which don't have the power to act together to monopolize promotional airplay in the same way as the Goliaths potentially can.

Let's all watch their actions extra carefully in the coming year.

With unequalled size must come unprecedented additional responsibility.

History

Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman seems to be at every broadcast meeting and in every trade publication putting a positive spin on the wrenching changes affecting local radio service as the era of consolidation which started 15 years ago with high price mergers and acquisitions has culminated in massive junk bond debt.

Pittman showed a chart with competing media revenue adjusted for usage, in an ideal world. Newspapers would get much less of the advertising pie, TV stations would get somewhat less, and radio's take would mushroom from about $15 billion to $38.1 billion. Pittman says it's crucial for radio to "make new revenue to the radio sector our priority." And he has this advice, as a former radio programmer and executive now returned to the business: "Don't badmouth your own industry."

I admire Bob for taking on the immense task before him and hope he's successful, for the same reason I hope that Europe is able to find a way through the Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Italy (etc, etc) financial mess.

If they can't fix the real problem, we're all going to see it at our local bank branch and in our retirement accounts.

So, the hyperbole spinning reductions in force not being about cutbacks, but about reinventing radio's local relevancy reminds me of 1998 when Randy Michaels was trying to motivate the Clear Channel of that time and, just like Pittman is today, the rest of the industry as well.

I'm not sure the downsized folks bought it then and today people like me who lived through that history now hope that Pittman, as with Cumulus' executives see things as they really are, not like they wish they would be.

They are managing toxic assets.

The problem is excessive debt and there's not enough revenue in new media to solve it in the time frame available.

While it's very nice to hear Pittman's optimistic speeches about radio's value (and I agree with him that we need to be positive about the efficiency and effectiveness of radio) the cuts that he's been forced by reality to implement throughout his company are rippling through our entire industry and are equally essential.

Saving an upside-down business in a low-growth economy requires brutal honesty and hard choices.

It's about survival.

Leadership means telling harsh truths, whether in business or politics.

I hope we're all ready for it.

It Doesn't Matter Where You Sit In Front Of A Mic

It matters what you do.

Thanks to Radio Ink for digging deeper and finding some supporting opinions on my October post reminding talent that content is the new targeting and relatable is the new local.

Burns & Associates CEO Alan Burns tells Radio Ink people don't really care if Rush Limbaugh is local.

"In most cases and places, being entertaining is more important than where you originate from. Listeners will say local is preferable, but they’ll listen to what’s most entertaining or most useful to them. But local does matter. You can win with local if you do it well and thoroughly and are in roughly the same ballpark as the other guys on entertainment or information. Clear Channel’s move to more nationalized content will cause some broadcasters to try to do a better job of local service, and that’s good for the industry."

For local to matter, Burns says, you have to do more than just pay lip-service to it. "Just saying the names of three suburbs after the weather won't work. I’ve seen some of CCU’s Premium Choice stations do very well against nominally “local” programming. You have to know the market and care about it, serve it and reflect it on the air, and be everywhere in it. That’s where the national companies and content will have a hard time competing. Clear Channel, and anyone else who wants to emulate what they’re doing, has to be thinking about several questions regarding staffing levels: How many markets can one talent empathize with? Do you have enough people at the local outlet to actually be in touch with the market? Do you have enough people left to generate sufficient local presence?"

RIF or RIP?

Applying the term "reductions in force" to the firing of people and reordering of financial priorities from content creation, street presence, local middle management and customer/listener service to debt reduction can be a misnomer, sending the wrong message to anyone hoping to gain market share as companies like Clear Channel and Cumulus decide what to keep and what to discard.

Asian martial arts proves that it's quite possible to quickly prevail against a stronger, bigger adversary if you understand what true force is and how to leverage it.

My first lesson in this fact came in the late 1970's when I left local radio in San Jose to join consultant-syndication company Drake-Chenault.

One of my first client station visits was to North Carolina Summit Broadcasting General Manager Roger Stockton, who I was trying to convince that his radio station should move from one of our 24/7 syndicated formats, "Great American Country" which was voiced by the legendary Bob Kingsley to adding a live morning show and other "live and local" dayparts.

"Don't people wonder if Bob ever sleeps?" I queried Stockton.

He replied, "they don't seem to, since we have an 18 share in those time periods."

Consistent music rotations, a familiar voice front and also back announcing all of the current music and tight formatics compared to what other choices Triad country listeners had was sufficient force to win big at the time.

That station was WTQR and fortunately Stockton and his company had the foresight to add budget for some great personalities over the next few years, thus maintaining a ratings juggernaut that has endured for decades.

Now, of course, it's a Clear Channel station and is both in the crosshairs of its present ownership's "RIF" and its Entercom direct country competition which is working to make it an "RIP" instead.

Jay Meyers, CEO of Adelante Media Group and a former Clear Channel executive told Inside Radio yesterday that where a personality is located doesn’t matter.

“Local and relevant are important but live and location are not,” he says. “What matters is whether the content keeps the listener in touch with their community and gives them the same bond they used to get when there were jocks around the clock.”

Meyers is talking about a force that matters most right now if you're across the street as Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman shakes things up in the programming ranks at radio’s largest company, relevance.

IR also quoted Pittman from Facebook’s f8 Developer Conference in San Francisco last month: “We’ve got to get our program directors to rethink. We’ve got creative talent and great programmers but we have to figure out a way to unleash them so ideas come flooding in.”

Automating radio's programming is nothing new and neither is this tested and proven theorem:

• Great beats local.
• Great local beats unengaged execution, no matter where it comes from or how famous the voice.
• Fun, originality, creativity, passion, interactivity, proper targeting, position, excellent formatics dominate as long as it makes the listener feel something more than anything else on the radio right now.

May THAT force be with you, radio people, as you navigate your career in these turbulent times for us all.

News And Comment

News: A bit of poetic justice and extreme irony as CBS Radio resigns from the Country Music Association just as the organization started Country Music Month, after CMA signs a ten year deal for TV broadcast rights with ABC. They told CBS Radio/Phoenix OM and KMLE PD Jeff Garrison to resign his longtime position on the CMA Board Of Directors. Now, he gets a new assignment, as he explained to Country Aircheck “helping our Country stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects" as VP/Country Artist Relations, in addition to his role in Phoenix.

Comment: Every country radio station in the world needs to join the CMA. Now, more than ever. As a board member, I promise to work with the other radio representatives on the board to make it more worth your while than ever in the coming year!

CBS may have a lot of reporting and monitored station muscle, but no one in the industry is as well positioned to aggressively assist “Country radio stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects." Join. Then, let's join hands with CMA to do what CBS hopes to do without CMA within it and even better for all radio stations in every market size and ownership affiliation. That's what CMA was founded to do.

News: Cumulus/Atlanta has decided that the future for their new acquisition WKHX is to offer a choice rather than battle head-on anymore with Clear Channel's WUBL KIX has just gone from 220 tunes in its Gold catalog the week prior to 381 last week. If every song is a marketing message, KIX is saying "hellooo, 45-54." They now play only 37% current and recurrents and have added early Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, the Judds, Patty Loveless, Diamond Rio and many others from the 80's and 90's. CC's The Bull is 68% current/recurrent. It's "best country hits" vs "today's new country."

Comment: A&O's 2011 "Roadmap" national perceptual study certainly has shown that there's a large upper demo appetite for more variety and less repetition and Coleman's CRS 2011 research project replicates that it's also quite possible to build a very viable and unique music coalition centered on the highly familiar music of the class of '89 boom.

However, are there enough meters in the Atlanta country sample for two stations to create a "difference" that only half the audience will love?

Both Cumulus and Clear Channel managements are savy and smart, so you can be sure they looked hard at it before making this decision.

It's a first for PPM measured markets, though Cox's classic country KTHT/Houston, has proven that an even older narrow country target can perform consistently in a PPM market with a large enough country cume.

Keep an eye on Atlanta and be prepared to learn something about country's narrow demos and metered sampling.

The pressure is on ARB to deliver consistent samples in 18-44, men, women, and 40-54, men and women.

If they don't, the ratings for 'KHX and 'UBL will be more of an indication of ongoing panel sample issues than with the differentiation strategy Cumulus unveiled last Friday.

Really? Why?

Report: Radio Stations, Record Labels Begin More National Partnerships

Ever since former New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer extracted multimillion-dollar payola settlements from all four major-label groups in 2005, tighter boundaries have been drawn around the relationship between the radio and music businesses. But large national partnerships appear to signal a new level of cooperation between two industries that have long had a symbiotic, albeit sometimes contentious, relationship.

The article notes that Show Dog/Nashville coughed up a $34,000 boat stocked with fishing tools and reels to "tie into" Trace Adkins' "Just Fishin'," requiring listeners to "like" one of 110 Clear Channel country station Facebook pages to be eligible to win.

CBS Radio, it says "has been marshaling radio, TV and online platforms" for it's "Live On Letterman" Ed Sullivan Theater webcasts and flyaways, which started in October 2009, starring Curb's Tim McGraw.

With Cumulus and Citadel about to merge, don't be surprised to see the stakes of these "events" get even higher as the biggest conglomerates woo the music business, trying to outdo one another promotionally in pursuit of cash and prizes.

Meanwhile, the remaining several thousand non-monitored, non-reporting, non-major group-owned country stations whose listeners all consume lots of music too and often buy CD's at rural WalMart, Target and other retailers, stand by and wonder what it takes to share in all the largess.

A humble suggestion: let every radio station in North America which wants to support music they play get in on the promotions.

Call a halt to all the exclusive partnerships, which leave the majority of us out while hoping the preferred "friend" spins the music enough to make up for the anger and alienation it creates across the street, thus, potentially proving as toxic as permitting one station to "present" a concert and shutting the other ones out regardless of the sizes of their audiences.

As with "neutral shows," maybe it's time for "neutral promotions" too, encouraging ALL of us to promote the music to the max of our creative capabilities and mutual needs.

Marrying one artist or song with one major group or another is both too expensive and counter-productive in the competitive landscape that is records and radio in 2011.

Let's all work together and sell some music.

WZZK and 102.5 The Bull: Two Facebook Friends Worth Following

Tom Taylor's head: "Cox wins praise for its storm coverage in Birmingham" and a note last week from Townsquare Media/Billings OM Ray Massie "...with the southern storms, it's a great time to watch social media at work. 102.5 The Bull in Birmingham is doing an excellent job on Facebook," it's a timely reminder of the new channels we have to keep listeners updated.

Cox market manager David DuBose: "We were giving street-by-street projections on the storm’s path, and we continued warning as the storm approached Cullman and then into the western communities of Birmingham. By 9pm (last) Wednesday night, with many people hurting, without power, cell service, Internet and TV, only my radio stations stayed on the air all night providing emergency information, opening the phone lines, directing rescue teams to the injured, and helping to locate missing people.”

What's your website, social and on air plan for when the worst happens? Check out what Alabama broadcasters did last week as a stellar example.

Pandora Wants What We Have

Does that mean we should want what they have?

A&O has been very proud to work with Peak Broadcasting's WOW 104.3 in building the very first country-format listener driven radio station which embraced the concept of "you drive" more than a year ago, and it's gone very well as the Boise rating trends have shown.

(Thanks to the hard work and great creative content by some amazing people.)

A very small percentage of core listeners love the fact that they control the playlist, and that's nothing new. Just ask anyone who's ever answered a request line.

Maybe that's why Cumulus and Clear Channel are both buying companies which hope to give Pandora a run for the money.

A quick two points from history to put these developments in perspective.

1. All request shows and DJ's who played all their favorites on demand pre-dated music scheduling software, which introduced the concept of well-researched music, carefully-balanced and rotated for maximum cume and time spent listening. The latter smoked the former and still does.

2. "Radio" at its best is so much more than music.

"Entertaining, compelling people will also get more response on Facebook, or at a party, or sitting in the stands at a ball game. Do anything with Facebook that you like. It's fine, but in the long run, it just doesn't matter. The Facebook world may be larger than the pool of people who call, but it's still a minority, and there's no proof that it makes them listen more. The overwhelming majority of listeners don't call, don't go to a station's Facebook page, don't go to many (if any) of a station's events, and rarely, if ever, go to a station's website. Stations that try to be at every event, instead of picking the biggest parade and getting in front of it, always expend a lot of energy but still lose. Stations that will expend tons of energy trying to ignite Facebook response will have the same results. The plain truth is that most people listen to the radio for companionship, for information (Traffic, Weather), or to be entertained. That's never going to change. The cure for all of radio's woes--every single one of them--is to hire more entertaining people to be on the air." - Tommy Kramer

Yeah, "Radio" has what Pandora wants.

• A huge, loyal, responsive mass audience: (Radio Broadcasters Attract Another 2.1 Million Weekly Listeners According to Radar® 108)
• Profits. Growing profits.
  

No wonder Pandora's chasing US.

Let's not get lost chasing after Pandora.

Wise Words

“You have to make sure you have the right people doing the right jobs and that the entire staff is on the same page. To quote a phrase from the great Woody Hayes, "You Win With People.”

“Visibility in the market for any of your personalities is essential and if you don’t have the marketing tools to tout the virtues of an imported show, syndicated show or even a live and local show, it can adversely affect the adaptor process.”

“Less experienced programmers have a tendency to look at music research and callout and place too much emphasis on songs at the top. Certainly the research helps guide us with what our customers like or want, but sometimes there’s an over reliance of playing those songs over and over. There are a lot of different factors that come into play and should be considered.”

“The sales department has identified the digital platform as a viable area for revenue growth and the onus is also on programming to make sure we’re delivering content and getting our content spread among the platforms, especially the unique content we generate through our personalities.”

-- Rob Morris, OM KDWB/KTLK & PD KDWB, Minneapolis to FMQB's Fred Deane

The Syracuse Country Radio Scene Gets Real Interesting

.. and does so real fast! Two new country radio stations hit the airwaves yesterday afternoon in Central New York.

WOLF 105.1 launched at 4 p.m. playing hits by today's stars -- Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, to name a few. The unveiling came after months of changing formats.

Less than two hours later, Young Country 106.9 went live, replacing Power 106.9, which had an R&B format. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications.

The station's Web site was quickly replaced Friday afternoon, according to The Post-Standard reporter Douglass Dowty.

New Country WOLF 105.1 co-owner Sam Furco said his station will play country music of the past decade. WOLF, of course, is a heritage Syracuse radio brand with an illustrious history.