Let Me Second That Motion

The announcement from Country Radio Broadcasters that Jeff Smulyan will be given the 2015 Tom Rivers Humanitarian Award during the opening ceremonies of Country Radio Seminar 2015 is another great decision from the seminar's board.

If you want to peruse the many, many wonderful giving works Jeff has spearheaded and been involved in, click here to read the complete press release listing a lot of them.

I'd like to add a personal reflection on what Jeff has created for the people who work for and with him, which in today's corporate radio competitive environment is another level of humanitarianism.  As their company website notes:  "Emmis is the 9th largest radio group in the U.S (based on listeners) and has been voted the Most Respected Radio Company in a poll of industry CEOs."

Other owners wishing to establish a positive productive "family" environment for their employees would do well to go to click around Emmis.com and learn about a winning culture. 

He purchased my hometown baseball team, reunited two guys named Griffey and turned a losing ball club into a winner, though it wasn't a winner for Jeff.  He used radio marketing tactics and rallied a community to the team's side, getting attendance up after years of apathy by local fans.  He lost money on the deal, but made baseball fun again for Puget Sound fans.

That's when I first observed that this was a guy who did the right thing first and worried about bottom line secondarily.

"Emmis" is the Hebrew word for “truth," and I first got a chance to work with the company when they purchased "KIX" (now "The Arch") in St. Louis from Zimmer.  

We had a very good run and thanks to a wonderful group of people, managed to make a pretty good showing against a powerful incumbent.

In Nashville I was a fly on the wall when they made their first presentation to the Music City community after buying the now defunct KZLA, which was very impressive.  

Of course, from Terre Haute, Indianapolis and many other legendary radio stations, they have shown their ability to win long term in many markets.

I brought up the no-doubt painful Mariners, KZLA and KIX situations for two reasons, having seen Emmis' greatmedia.greatpeople.greatservice^® mission in action for a very long time, even in situations where circumstances led them in the infamous "other direction."   

Their people and the culture Jeff and his team have innovated show "class" even in places where it's not easy to do so, living Eleven Commandments of doing business with a humanitarian tone indeed.

Charitable works are terrific, and Jeff has performed many, but the way you live your life in all aspects is even more noteworthy.

Our entire industry is better because of the values exemplified every day by Jeff Smulyan.

Apps

Stop for a moment and look at your smart phone.  How many apps have you downloaded out of the "hundreds of thousands of possibilities?"

How many do you actually use on a regular basis?

My point, if you're a radio station or a radio personality, is not to discourage you from creating your own custom app, but before you do, think about what daily, hourly problem for your listener does your new app solve.

Especially if your app is going to be free.  There's no point in spending the thousands of dollars it's going to cost if it doesn't have a sustainable way to make money with it somehow well beyond that investment.

Of course, if you can create a fun, viral app that you can sell for 99 cents and gets downloaded 50,000 times in a day (which happens daily, of course), GO for it.  If you can replicate that trick once a month, you have earned the right to be called an app genius.  Maybe Apple, Google or Microsoft will buy you, turning you into the next Mark Cuban (or at least Fred Jacobs, who'd be the first I'd ask if I wanted to build an app since he has built a going business around apps)

I have downloaded almost 100 apps to listen to A&O&B client radio stations and even though they pay me to do it, I still seldom actually actually use them.  I find it more convenient to simply bookmark the station's streaming page and get there that way.

I admire TuneIn, SHOUTcast, iHeartRadio and the rest for what they are trying to do, but I find myself using Real FM Radio on my Android Phone where I already have my local fav preset.

Don't bother building an app for me unless it offers something better than that.  At the very least, include an "alarm" to wake me up to my favorite morning show, but the one already in my phone works well enough that I'd have to love your program a lot to go to the trouble to download and set it up, compared to just turning you on when I want to hear you.

Am I unique?  Perhaps I am, but at the very least put yourself in my shoes before you build your new app.

Who Do You Trust?

The stage is set for a terrific 2013, but nobody is going to hand us anything.  We live in a highly competitive world and just like virtually any other business, success will require us to be at our very best.  Our listeners and customers have nearly limitless choices.  So if our content (on-air or digital), service and execution are anything less than excellent, we will lose them.  At the same time, the opportunity to gain new customers from other media is greater than ever before.  We are a superior choice for any customer looking for enormous reach, local activation, and strong engagement at an attractive price.  No other medium can match us across these criteria.

With the start of a new year, each of us is awarded a fresh start.  A chance to raise our games, build on our strengths, and recommit ourselves to achieving our full potential.  Let’s steel ourselves with the determination to overcome our challenges and make the necessary changes to set a new standard of excellence in our work.  Let’s make 2013 a year of great accomplishment and pride.  

I trust David Field.

It’s a major breakthrough.  It changes the dynamic — and this is something that is going to make a lot of sense to the American public because they’re getting this for free and they’re not consuming data, so we think it’s a major step.

I trust Jeff Smulyan.

But let’s be clear about what this agreement involving certain Android and Windows phones is, and isn’t. Many smartphones already contain an FM chip (that’s the long-held belief of Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan). But you can’t just wave a Harry Potter wand and activate that chip. It needs software to make a “tuner,” and not software you can download from an app store in the cloud. In other words, this victory will have to be realized one new phone at a time – it’s not retroactive to the one you’ve got in your pocket or purse. The Emmis Interactive-developed NextRadio app is one way to control the tuner on your next phone, but there will be others. It’s probably not a coincidence that Sprint offers unlimited data – it doesn’t “meter” usage by customers. So its economic incentives line up particularly well with broadcasters who’ve been lobbying the wireless industry. Other carriers have the meter running, and they benefit when their customers listen to radio over the Internet, using a data plan. But even so, the NAB and the other enthusiastic backers of FM chips on cellphones like Smulyan and Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman call the Sprint deal a breakthrough, after years of talks (and sometimes ridicule).  

I trust Tom Taylor.

More than anything, I trust the Consumer Electronics, mobile dashboard, cable, satellite, internet, and phone industries to want to charge their customers - our listeners - more and more for what once was "free radio."

Ultimately, I trust that the average media consumer will want as much as they can get without having to pay for it.