What's In It For You?

When it comes to excuses on "why I don't need to do that," I've heard them all.

1.  "I don't need to do remotes or other personal appearances.  It kills the theater of the mind I create.  I'd prefer to use the magic of radio and have them picture me the way they want to.  If they meet me face to face, that's gone."

Nice try.  My theory on this one is that this person is naturally shy and insecure.  Maybe they got into radio so they could be outgoing and be themself without ever having to face rejection.

As their manager/coach, assure them that everyone is insecure and shy and those of us in the entertainment business can't be as successful as our potential if we don't face and overcome that demon.

Sometimes you simply have to force them out of that comfort zone, placing a set number of remote broadcasts and public appearances in their employment agreement so they have no choice but to do them if they want the job.

Make them get out in front of the broadcast desk close to people, looking each listener they meet directly in the eye and repeat the listener's name as least three times as they interact with them. 

Often, this alone fixes the problem as they begin to realize that people who come wanting to meet them enjoy their personality and they have nothing to fear.

2.  "I don't do social media.  My entire show is social."

No, it's not.  It's a broadcast.  If you get too personal on AM/FM radio by playing every request people ask for, using every phone call you get on air without editing them, your ratings are going to go down because your show will be loved by the folks who call, but boring to the mass audience.

If being on the radio for you is just to have people call you and tell you how wonderful you are because you do your show just for them, you're never going to be as successful if you talk to everyone, but do it with a "one to one" vocabulary.

Your task when the microphone is open is to curate everything that is going on right now.  Choose only the best material and maximum value to the listener who chooses to sample you.

Keep them listening longer by being as entertaining and engaging as possible.

Use all of your social tools to build those personal relationships one person at a time.

Tailor which social platforms you use to the tastes of each individual listener.  Use them all, but don't broadcast one post to all of them.  Consider what makes a user of each platform choose that one and make sure they know you understand what makes them unique and special, not just a number in your database.

Need a good example of how this is done?  I have one word for you:  Ellen.

If her great example along with those intellectual/logical explanations don't work, I go for the jugular and tell the personality that failing to use every medium at their disposal in exactly the way its users expect will cost them competitively in the ratings.

To #1:  if you don't get out into the community and also use social and expect the audience to grow every day, you better be the most consistently entertaining personality available to your target in every minute of every day so that they never get tempted to try anything else.  Cume is always going down unless you work hard to keep it growing.

To #2:  If you knew exactly who had ratings diaries or was carrying a Personal People Meter right now, wouldn't you want to take extra care to find out what they are doing, what they like and dislike?

Try this experiment:

Go to the mall and randomly ask people if they have ever participated in the radio ratings.  If you ask 100 people, you'll be lucky to find five who say yes.

At your next public appearance or remote broadcast, ask the very same question (do NOT do it on social platforms or you'll probably get delisted!) and you'll find that as many as one in ten (or even more) answer in the affirmative.

The point is not to do stealth marketing, but to prove to your recalcitrant talent:

The people who reach out to you socially and come out to say hello to you are more than twice as likely as the average person to participate in the radio ratings when they receive that call.

Don't you want as real and close a relationship with them as you can possibly have?

Impersonally Personal

Creating universally relatable emotional experiences driven by personal stories:  that's what the best of AM/FM audio media does to engage more than 90% of the population every day of the week

You can only do that by talking to as large a cume audience as possible - one person at a time - when the microphone is open.  That's called intimacy, and it's our greatest strength.

Each listener feels that you are talking only to her personally, even if he is riding in a van pool with six others.  At some level, they know they are an "audience," but due to theater of the mind it feels like you're talking only to each individual.

When the mic is off, all other hours of the day, live appearances and social media require a completely different approach.

Change gears.  Genuinely talk to each person.  Listen to his story, being as personal in response as possible.  Make each individual who "likes" and "follows" you feel as if you want to get to know him by name, face to face.  This is what makes being an AM/FM personality so important.  As a bonus:  it feels good to do.

There is no other medium that can equal the real, enduring relationships built on mutual trust that doing it consistently well creates.

It's Not Personal

There's a battle of the vehicle and mobile brewing.


No wonder.  Edison Research president Larry Rosin in New York at IAB Digital Audio Agency Day last week:  “We don’t see a lot of evidence of people listening to less AM-FM radio.  It’s that they’re listening to more internet radio.”  He says the research continues to show more ways to listen to audio is driving up total consumption.  

Inside Radio created the chart from Rosin's presentation.

Adding even more credibility, as Pollack Media's Pat Welch blogged, that the 89-90% number comes pretty close to Nielsen's (92%) estimate also just released.

The percentage jumping off the pages is 18-34's use of "personalized radio" and "on-demand music" twice as much. 

“The main advantage of AM-FM remains very much in the car.” Rosin points out that 81% of 18-34s listen to AM-FM while in cars and trucks, compared with just 30% who listen to web radio in that listening location.  In other locations, Millennials report listening to web radio while at home than those who turn on AM-FM (63% vs. 48%).  At work, 41% told Edison they listened to web radio in the past week compared to 31% who said broadcast radio.  “It all breaks down on the nature of the work.  If people are facing a computer screen all day, they’re very likely to be listening to internet radio.”  Digital listening also scored higher among young adults in locations like at the gym, walking around or on public transport. 

“In all of these other (non-car) locations internet radio is being used more,”  according to Rosen.  Edison’s research found reasons include more choice, clearer signal, song ID, more convenient, stations outside their local area, and live event listening.  At the same time, 40% of those same folks told Edison that they’re actually listening to more AM-FM than a year earlier and another 40% said that they're listening about the same amount of time.  Just 20% of 18-34s claimed to be listening to AM-FM less at the same time 70% of them are using more web radio too.  “Audio is a booming category right now and young people are spending more time with more audio options than they have ever before.”

The findings are based on a 2013 online survey of 3,016 people age 12 funded by TuneIn, Spotify and Pandora.  A video of the entire day is posted on Kurt Hanson's RAIN website.

Jukeboxes are not new.  Top 40 radio was famously created when a smart programmer back in the 50's noticed that the majority of people were putting coins in the machine to hear the same songs over and over.

People have been willing to spend money to hear their favorite tune immediately for as long as live performers have been willing to play requests.

AM/FM radio has never been about personalization.  It was smart of the researchers to create new categories of "radio" for this study.  Our success - the "need" we can still fill better than anyone else - is building community with information, universals, relatables and entertainment value.  I don't see anything in this new info on uses of emerging technology to change that.

It would be a mistake for today's AM-FM radio to try to be something new technologies can do better, just as it has been to cut the resources that create the things nothing else can do as well.

The quality of the service - what our talent talk about and music we select - provides to them has more to do with how much time listeners give us than competing technologies.

Those are the best weapons to take to this inpending on-the-road battle.

We all had better take that very personally.