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.

The New "Transistor Radio" Is Also The New "Alarm Clock"

While Arbitron and Edison Research's 21st "Infinite Dial" study proclaims that in 2013 AM/FM radio remains, for now at least, "king" in the vehicle, our early birds are migrating south.

It's imperative that your smart phone app have a "wake up to your station" stream function if you want to be in the at home early morning game

Especially if you target under 35's.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway!) that your morning show needs to be as personal, fresh, fun, entertaining, interactive and as consistently-relevant as your real competition for listening time at home in the morning:  an alarm sound, email, social networks and a browser!

Triangulation

It will take many days to fully digest all of the findings released yesterday by Arbitron, Edison Research and NPD Group, but one thing is already obvious.

Thinking about many research reports one at a time won't give you the full picture of broadcast radio's place in media usage.

As yesterday's post proposed on an entirely different set of info, before you make use of any research findings you didn't pay for, it's important to understand who did pay for each study and what their motivations are.

For example, this chart from NPD's “Music Acquisition Monitor:"

As Tom Taylor notes in his report of the study: "That headline needs a bunch of qualifiers – like the age of those “younger Americans” (13 to 35) and the fact that the 23% figure relates to music listening, not total listening to radio and/or other audio sources." 

Arbitron's Bill Rose and Edison's Tom Webster were quick today with insightful recommendations in their recaps of Infinite Dial 2013, so I simply want to share the following chart from it through which I think we need to view the NPD data:

Certainly, not many people use their two ears to listen to two separate audio sources at the same time, but that's about the only form of media multitasking that isn't going on - and growing - now.

The strength of "radio" is that it's available to use while you're doing other things. 

Simultaneous media usage is our future.  It's no longer a zero-sum game.  You need to look at as many data points as possible to get the full story.

Heck, even the word triangulation has more than one meaning.

The Future Was .. When?

“The only time I download anything on iTunes is in the rare case that I can’t find it on Spotify.”

   - Sam Broe in today's New York Times article,  "As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle"

Meanwhile, last weekend, Seattle radio reporter Joshua McNichols wrote for his in-depth report "The Day The Internet Went Dark And How It Changed History:"

"A little over a year ago, Wikipedia, Google and thousands of other websites went dark. They were protesting an Internet privacy act being considered in Congress. It was the largest protest ever conducted on the Internet. And it worked.
 
"One of its organizers was Aaron Swartz. Swartz advocated for the Internet to be free. His quest for free information got him in trouble.  He was caught trying to leak academic papers to the public. The US Department of Justice tried to make an example out of him. But he committed suicide."
 "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar."
     - Federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz

Hopefully, these strong characters and their compelling story lines will engage you to spend the time to read the NYT article and then listen to McNichols' entire well-balanced radio report chronicling the complicated media revolution now underway.

Swartz wanted what he termed "legacy media" to abandon long standing financial models and - as he did - exploit the internet to find new business approaches.

At one time I would have said "he has nothing to lose and everything to gain" by embracing open source for fun and profit," while those of us owning businesses holding intellectual property with established revenue streams much larger than new media can equal don't have that luxury.

How sad that it came down a matter of life and death for a brilliant young man.

Shhhh... I'm Not Prepping My Show, I'm Writing My Blog

I spent time with a dominant major market morning show team last week who told me that something major has changed in the last five years for them.

It used to be that they all conversed when they first hit the station early in the pre-dawn hours, sharing "what are your 'five talkabouts?', here are mine" and refining the big event content together.

Now, they say, you can hear a pin drop for the first half hour as they all create their blog posts.

Then, instead of talking together, they all read one another's blog and then think about ways to engage with listeners and each other about them.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  

Once upon a time, I'd recommend that every air talent carry a notebook with them throughout their day and then refine that content into "bits" for use during the four hours they were on air.

Now, that notebook is Twitter and your listeners don't want to wait 20 hours to hear what's happening in your life.

You personal brand has a unique "voice." 

Technology is opening up new ways to express it. 

It's as important as ever, in spite of the many new channels now open in addition to the microphone in the control room.

Follow The Money

Facebook's latest report to analysts contains this stat:  the social networking giant is only able thus far to generate about 40 cents per user per month in spite (or perhaps because of?) having more than a billion users!

As a result, Facebook is considering offering a gift-buying retail online store for its users as a means of getting their ability to monetize the 14% of the world's population who are using Facebook.

Also this week, the Wall Street Journal is trying to sell a $3.99 ebook to the people who already paid $2 to buy the newspaper.

Disney "and almost every major media company has had a difficult tangle with the Web or gaming. Time Warner and AOL. News Corporation and Myspace. Viacom and the Rock Band game maker, Harmonix."

Is that our future too as we go online?  If so, just how much should a smart businessperson with solid profits and good revenues risk?

The Facebook report makes no claims about how often that average user comes back to the social network, but in spite of that fact I did a bit of back of a napkin number crunching using radio weekly cume and annual revenue estimates from Country Aircheck's June 2012 "Ratings And Revenue" issue and even taking note of the fact that the radio "revenue per average weekly user" probably understates what would be radio's monthly or annual cume vs annual revenues, it's easy to see why it's so difficult to radio and other old media to chase the smaller revenues of the internet when we're doing such a good job compared to Facebook.

Just a few randomly-chosen stations in various size markets, ranked by their ratio of revenue per user in 2011, compared to Facebook's:

• WZZK, Birmingham - 9.4:1
• KFDI, Wichita - 8.5:1
• WGNA, Albany - 7:1
• WBCT, Grand Rapids - 6.5:1
• WUBE, Cincinnati - 4.7:1
• WGH, Norfolk - 4.4:1
• KEEY, Minneapolis - 4.3:1
• WUSN, Chicago - 3.4:1
• WXTU, Philadelphia - 3:1

Do your station's own math (divide your annual revenue by your cume), using your own napkin, but I bet you'll find out that your local analog radio is converting your users to revenue MUCH better than Facebook is.

Our medium may be "old," but it seems like out-billing Facebook on a per-user basis from 3 to 1 to more than 9 to 1 is pretty "cool."

Does Selling Local Digital Make Any Sense?

If you attended CRS 2011, I don't need to introduce you to Shelly Palmer.  His keynote which placed terrestrial radio in context with all the emerging techno gadgets, websites, mobile devices and media consumption trends, if you missed it last year, is worth downloading.

Never a boring speaker, always challenging conventional wisdom, Shelly is doing it again this week in the wake of last week's Madison Avenue Advertising Week:

I asked him how much he thought he should spend to create a website that would increase his business. “I don’t know,” he answered. “The one I have was free.”

When I reiterated that his free website was probably hurting his retail business rather than helping it, he asked me for some free suggestions that he could implement for free that would … yep, you guessed it … get him to the front page of Google.

This is a real conversation that actually took place. I’ve changed the owner’s name, but other than that, this is exactly how it went. Let’s review:

• A retailer with two doors, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.
• A website that was created for him as a promotion by a template-using website company with the hopes that he would eventually pay.
• A business owner with absolutely no clue how advertising, marketing, sales and PR work in the 21st Century for local retail businesses in his vertical.
• A business owner with zero aptitude and zero headcount to implement even the simplest technological solution.

This week, I have seen about 20 pitches from companies offering hyper-local and location-based solutions targeting local advertisers. Next week I will probably see 10 more. Hasn’t anyone spoken to Harry?

There is no incremental local retail advertising to be had. The money simply isn’t there. If a local company is big enough to advertise, it is already doing it. If it is not big enough to advertise — there’s a reason. The myth of local advertising is that it exists at all. It simply does not.

Local online advertising a myth?

That will come as a surprise to Borrell Associates, which in early September reported:

1. Local online advertising is growing 21% this year.  If your operations are growing more, you’re gaining share.  If not, you’re losing share.
2. Our forecast might shock you.  It calls for 30% growth for 2013.  While it’s a bit early to issue accurate forecasts, our surveys of local advertisers indicate that this rate of growth is likely. If you find this hard to swallow, perhaps the information on page 3 will help.
3. Local media companies should be aiming for a 15% to 20% share of online ad spending in a DMR.  The upper limit is 42%.

However, percentages aren't the same as real dollars and when you start with the estimate that terrestrial radio will bill something like $15 billion in 2012, and you look at the measly portion of total revenues digital is contributing in that same Borrell report it begins to look like Palmer is on to something.

Wouldn't it make more sense to chase after a larger share of the 97-99% piece of our pie, let alone the swiftly-shrinking newspaper ink money, and permit the lemmings to trumpet digital growth?

Start showing your local merchants copies of Shelly's perspective and then share your "radio gets results" testimonials from their local competition using your station successfully right now.  Finally, pull out this video.

Believe it; champion it.   Local advertising is not a complete myth as long as we understand our medium's real strengths and teach those local prospects with budgets too small for the internet that by using today's radio we can help them grow no matter how many doors they own, even just one.

If we fail to do it while chasing pennies instead of dollars, we'll be responsible for making Shelly Palmer quite correct in a very few years.

Unbelievable!

News: One of Cleveland’s best-known radio voices has been silenced. Chuck Collier, afternoon host and music director at 99.5 WGAR, as well as midday host on Majic 105.7, died Thursday from a massive heart attack. Chuck was 64 years old. Chuck had been a fixture on WGAR for 40 years, starting when the station was still on the AM dial, and playing adult contemporary music.

Comment: Ask any of us to knew and worked with Chuck over the last four decades and you'll hear endless stories of hard work, a positive approach to life, a wonderful family and a dedicated professional who loved Ohio and Cleveland. That smile on his face was always there and it's incomprehensible that we won't see it again except in photos. Please remember his family when the memorial service is announced.

News: Cumulus' Thursday Conference Call For 500 Programming Executives in their newly enlarged conglomerated empire. Among many other rumored imperial dictates: no outside programming consultants, flip-flops, piercings, exposed tattoos or bluejeans.

Comment: It's a source of pride to find myself, by implication on THAT list. A&O worked with Citadel and had some great relationships there - which we'll sincerely miss - but if tattoos, bluejeans, piercings and flip flops aren't welcomed in the new configuration, I wouldn't want us to be there either. Bon Voyage, Cumulus. It's going to be fun to compete with you. I'm tempted to have that tattooed in an exposed place on my body today.

News And Comment (An Ongoing Series)

News: "In 2009, the majority of radio newsrooms (56%) relied on social media for story leads from "citizen journalists," and 34 percent of radio newsrooms said social media not only provided leads but can also provided possible sources of information for news stories. Today, only 31 percent use citizen journalists, down 25 percent from 2009. So while use of social media among stations has exploded over the past two years, the use within the newsroom in terms of leads has actually declined."

Comment: Hopefully, this study serves as a wake up call to radio newsrooms and reverses this troublesome trend. Get with it, news people.

News: John Klesewetter: “Heritage rocker 102/7 WEBN Cincinnati is looking for its next morning show for the next decade and beyond. We’re looking for a team or ensemble that can connect with men 25-54 in the confines of a music intensive morning show in a PPM market. Prior ratings success in a major or medium size market a must. Please no voice-trackers, wacky morning zoo types, syndicated morning shows, or shows that need a prep service for material. We want real, honest and fun. We haven’t had a morning opening in over 25 years."

Comment: Hellllloooo, wannabe radio personalities! This job description is for you in the year 2011. You'd think that by now everyone who aspires to do well in ratings in either PPM or diary market surveys would have gotten this memo by now.

News: Bobby Rich continues to prove that doing good in your neighborhood works as well as ever at Tucson's 94.9 MIX FM.

Comment: Let's all help out and bid that house WAY up for him!

News And Comment

News: John Gehron, in the Chicago Tribune, saying Rock "is not the dominant sound that it was in the '60s and '70s, when rock really was the sound of a generation." Today, in RBR, Lee Abrams asks "Is the Rock format dead? Well, maybe. But who cares?

Comment: Shhh. I have a secret for you. Guitar based rock of the 70's, 80's and 90's is very much alive and well, growing a huge audience. We call it today's new country music.

News: Skip Mahaffey back on the air in Tampa. He has to purchase his airtime now

Comment: You GO, Skip. Hopefully, this age-old entrepreneurial model still works, up there at 1340 AM. Many personalities around the country are watching closely and will follow suit if it does.

News: Radio revenue should increase from $14.6 billion this year to $17.2 billion by 2015. BIA/Kelsey also breaks out the “online” part of that revenue stream, and finds it growing from about $494 million this year to $783 million in 2015.

Comment: I have clients who feel that BIA's estimates understate their actual revenues, but even if that is true, the percentage of total radio revenues coming from new media (3.8% growing to 4.6% in four years) is disappointing. Surely, we can do better than that.

News: New York Post's Claire Atkinson asks CBS' Les Moonves about buying Pandora.

Comment: Please don't do it, Les. Instead of calculating what percentage of total revenues comes from digital, lets all start trending what percentage of PROFITS come from it.

News: WTOP's Jim Farley in RBR: "My boss and I knew right away we should have a website, but the company that owned us back then (pre-Bonneville) would not let us spend a dime. But we did have something of value: our own content. We did a deal with AOL. They built us a website and we provided local news content to them. By the time that deal ended, Bonneville boss Bruce Reese was an early and eager proponent of investing in online. Initially we had one full-timer working on wtop.com. But Joel Oxley, who runs the Hubbard stations in Washington, decreed early on that the Sales Department could NOT give away space on wtop.com. No value-added. Clients had to pay for space online. As he started to see revenue coming in for online (mainly banner ads at the time) Joel reinvested it."

Comment: That's how enduring business is built, on a solid foundation, one brick at a time!

The Productivity Paradox

Digital marketing expert and CBC reporter Todd Maffin produced this thought-provoking video "awareness test:"



After watching it, ask yourself what you need to do to get attention and be remembered in this new environment?

Can radio help listeners manage their technology?

Or, will it manage us?

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.

Don’t Take This Advice

From CRS:

“Stop promoting your website, send listeners to Facebook where they can interact with you.” -Shelly Palmer

"Least listeners interest on radio station websites: DJ blogs, photos."
- Coleman Insights VPs Chris Ackerman and Sam Milkman

It was reinforcing to see the stats in the Coleman-CMA-CRS research project so closely replicate the national findings revealed Tuesday in A&O’s “Roadmap 2011” perceptual project. When two totally different research projects find the same things you know you’re getting pretty close to TRUTH and FACT.

And, Palmer is an inspiring new media example in his own life and personal career that his advice - designed to shake us out of the status quo - rings as valid as well.

However, it’s important also to remember that what goes between the songs is what defines your brand and commercial radio still makes billions of dollars from commercials, even as listeners also say they want more music and less talk.

So, since the only company who can monetize it if you abandon your website and drive your audience to Facebook is Facebook and telling the voices which humanize your brand and give it a face and a name to stop blogging and podcasting would halt the process of making money and building your brand on your multi-media portal just as radio is starting to grow that new business.

Don’t stop doing these things.

Improve them. Invest in them. Create something great so while the average radio listener sees no value in what the average radio station does, YOUR listener is drawn to your engaging, fresh, entertaining, micro-local, personal, interactive content like a moth to a flame.

Behind That Wheatstone "Technology Gap" Study

Of the 10 revenue generating technologies the study measured, streaming a station’s radio signal over the Internet was seen as having the most potential. Having a website that interacts with listeners was second, while streaming multiple channels of programming was third.

When respondents were asked which of the 10 technologies their radio organizations are now deploying, streaming was the top pick by far. For six other technologies (listed below), each requiring capital investment, respondents reported group owned stations as implementing them at a substantially higher rate than stand-alone stations:

• Having a website that delivers video: Group owned, 43.1%; stand-alone, 26.8%
• Promoting stations with a mobile phone app: Group owned, 43.1%; stand-alone, 22.8%
• Streaming multiple channels: Group owned, 38.5%; stand-alone, 20.3%
• Broadcasting in HD Radio: Group owned, 36.9%; stand-alone, 19.5%
• Websites that create musical discovery: Group owned, 27.7%; stand-alone, 17.9%
• Broadcasting multiple HD Radio channels: Group owned, 26.2%; stand-alone, 10.6%

What's holding the smaller broadcast companies back? (duh) MONEY.

For the remaining three technologies, which do not require capital investment (using social media to win more listeners, creating a website that interacts with listeners, and creating podcasts) responses for stand-alone and group-owned stations were comparable.

“This study comes to the radio industry at a critical time. As traditional ad revenue has declined, radio organizations are experimenting with new technologies that will add revenue by enabling them to deliver programming through a variety of new channels.” -- Wheatstone Vice President Andrew Calvanese

Evaluating the new radio business models is not easy. “Part of the difficulty is they are all baby models at this point, and they are all different. Different organizations are following different models: Some people are making money from streaming, others from local events, still others are making money from banner ads. Not everyone is good at following these paths. Radio could end up becoming multiple industries, because [individual] broadcast groups [could] have less in common with each other than they do with companies in other industries.” -- Mark Ramsey, president of Mark Ramsey Media

With the exception of streaming, stand-alone stations are falling behind group-owned stations in using revenue generating technologies that require capital investment. Group-owned stations are pulling ahead by a ratio of about 2:1.

Long term, as revenue builds from these new technologies, stand-alone stations could find themselves challenged to compete economically. (grab the study report here - pdf)

Country Listeners Seem To Love Analog Radio In Their Cars

VIP Research and Mark Ramsey reported yesterday that while roughly one-third of 12+ consumers "would listen less to local radio if access to stations on the Internet was as easy to use as your radio...,“ 75.24% of respondents who listen to country music radio claim they would tune in just as much to “my local radio stations” (if offered the technology), a higher percentage than the other 17 format listeners included in the research.

The survey asked 2,000 radio listeners covering 22 markets, “If tomorrow you could get Internet access from the dashboard of your car and you could listen to thousands of radio stations from all over the world through an Internet receiver on your dash as easy to use as your radio, would you (a) Listen less to my local radio stations as I explore new ones online, or (b) Listen just as much to my local radio stations no matter what’s online.”

Fewer than half (48%) of of the country listeners (second only to 46% of classical fans, the group which was the least so inclined) want in-car Internet radio.

Would they rather have a radio in their portable mp3 player, iPod or an in-car Internet radio?

Again, (analog) FM wins (in the portable players, please).

The country radio consumers (38%) were second only to (40%) alternative listeners as the most likely to want a radio in their iPod/mp3 player.

The telephone survey of 2,141 adults was conducted August 10-25 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.0% at the 95% confidence level.

Post-Conclave Thoughts

Competition is the future for country and all "big" formats.

Personalities too.

The ONLY way to respond to it is to PLAN objectively and execute that plan passionately.

Learn the rules of offensive strategy and defensive strategy and keep reminding yourself WHICH of the two needs to be YOUR game plan at this particular moment.

We have gotten the knack of defining our targets better, using research and watching real usage patterns.

It's important to stay in close touch with your target audience, continually defining and redefining their evolving needs.

Change is the only constant in our business.

A few years ago, our positioning was defined almost exclusively by the music being played.

Today, targeting has become far more discrete than that. There are marketing positions, attitude positions and perceptual positions that have little to do with the music.

Two stations (or should I say "audio sources?") may play almost exactly the same music.

Yet, they are perceived differently by two different audiences who see them totally differently because they are presented differently.

Both may be on FM, one on FM and the other on satellite or a mobile stream and now there are new niches evolving due to this added listener choice, driven by the need for control and variety.

I Wanted To Be The Wizard Of Oz

I was a shy kid, inspired by the greats of Top 40 radio in the late-1950's and 1960's from Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago and Philadelphia.

My goal, (perhaps yours too?) if you worked in broadcasting in the 60's, 70's and 80's, was to get to the city of Oz (the largest metro station that would hire you) and find that little room with the huge transmitter and a booming "voice."

Many of those stations were high on the AM dial and it was exciting to exude the power of mass appeal which seemed to magnetically draw huge audiences.

Thankfully, radio remains an immensely powerful tool, made even more so when it works in tandem with phones, both land line and mobile, texting, the internet, and all sorts of emerging smart devices and apps.

The listener now knows that the power has long-since shifted away from the megaphone. It started with car radio presets, accelerated when "seek" and "scan" appeared and now the dial has become "infinite" in the number of instant choices on offer.

Tribes, communities, groups now know they are in charge. The learning curve is steep and old habits remain.

And, about the time you figure out YouTube, comes MYTube!

A quick bit of advice from a reformed wannabe wizard: social media is like a very crowded, loud party. You may be talking, but no one can hear you above the din.

Instead: listen. Weave a listener-generated tapestry.

Create, find meaning, context and entertainment from the chaos.

As Dorothy discovered, Oz is actually populated by people from her small home town and they're all yearning to get back to a more simple life. The wizard's magic comes from just being himself.

"Oh no, my dear, I'm a very good man; I'm just a very bad Wizard."

Roo Gets It

Something wonderful is happening every evening in Vancouver on JRfm. It's real social networking, using all the tools, being employed masterfully by Roo Phelps.

Tomorrow, I'll explain, share some recent studies, write an article. Today, just take a look at what happens when you engage and interact, "ask" instead of "telling":

93.7 JRfm - Vancouver's New Country hey it's Roo....I'm playing Train on the JRFM new country challenge right now..."Hey Soul Sister"...thoughts...comments?

15 hours ago · Comment · · Promote

2 people like this.

Cody Hendriksen

There is nothing country about that song

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Lisa Fowler

agree'd

15 hours ago · · · Flag

93.7 JRfm - Vancouver's New Country

call and cast your vote 604 280 9370

15 hours ago · ·

Ricke Pants

What Cody said. May as well play Drops of Jupiter.

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Brianna McDonald

awsome song, but not so country
please don't be like the Beat who play country music when they arent a country station
stick to the goold old country that JRFM is known for!

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Alexis Badger

hate that song, it's not country at all....it's the kind of song that belongs on Z or whatever that station is called now.

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Diane Paddle ʚϊɞ

I LOVE that song!!!!!!!

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Vicki Tunbridge Williams

Love the song!!

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Cecily Dickey

Love it!!!

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Claire Woofenden

I do love that song but it doesn't belong on a country station....

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Alexis Badger

yes for the love of god don't become one of those stations that play country one minute and R & B and other genres the next. I am afraid that JRFM is slowly drifting off of my regular radio play, mostly because I hear "the house that built me" SO MUCH IT'S ANNOYING! I've given up on doing those surveys, constantly saying I hate that song yet still hearing it numerous times in a day. But back to the point, that song is NOT country!!!

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Erica Kurpiela

It's kind of a sell out when you don't play music that's not country

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Robin Nessel

way overplayed

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Jennifer Parnell

Good song but its not country. Its like putting johnny cash or willy nelson on the beat.. =/

15 hours ago · · · Flag

Donna Sawyer

Variety is the spice of life!

15 hours ago · · Loading...2 people · · Flag

Alexis Badger

Variety doesn't belong on a station touting that it is "COUNTRY" .....variety is for 95.3

14 hours ago · · · Flag

Julz T

c'mon guys.... although i love it that you rock my country.... you can't make rock, Country

14 hours ago · · Loading...1 person · · Flag

Mathew Mosher

DISLIKE!!! JR is a COUNTRY station... not a variety station! Let's keep it that way!

14 hours ago · · · Flag

Marlene Pierpont

Love that song but it's not country... I don't think Train is trying to cross over into the country market but there are a lot of country artists that have crossed into the pop market which is why you hear country on the pop stations now.

14 hours ago · · · Flag

Heather Tottenham

dislike it as much as Carrie Underwoods new song,,JUST NOT COUNTRY!!!!!

13 hours ago · · · Flag

Tracy Mack

Love the song, but it does not belong pm JRFM.

12 hours ago · · · Flag

Jacquie Guyot

love it !!!!

12 hours ago · · · Flag

Jake Roder

NOT COUNTRY !!!!!! GET THAT OUTTA HERE. if i wanted to hear that i would listen to some other station

12 hours ago · · · Flag

Jake Roder

play Hicktown or something good instead !!

12 hours ago · · · Flag

Glenn Nelson

Very much dislike!!!

12 hours ago · · · Flag

Jody Hagel

Good song, but definitely not country in the slightest. Don't let JRFM lose its touch :(

11 hours ago · · · Flag

Gail Baker

AWE MAN - country challenge??? soul sister...ummm...YAH WHAT EVERYONE ELSE SAID...hey Roo...go look up country music in the dictionary..if JRFM changes to be just like everyone else...i will just have to go download all the country music i can, and drop the station -my Ipod still has room on it...lots of room - please dont make me do that. its too much work..lol

11 hours ago · · · Flag

Susan Jane Rothenbush

Absolutely, and without a doubt, NO!!!!! Keep JR unique, nothing but country!!

10 hours ago · · · Flag

Jody Hagel

To quote Tim McGraw: "I'm reading Street Slang for Dummies 'cause they put pop in my country.... I miss back when"

2 hours ago · · · Flag

Alexis Badger

Gail - I've started doing that, I rarely listen to JR now as I put all the songs I love on my ipod and have a radio adapter for my car :) ....I felt I had no voice with the music advisory panel, they still play that crappy Miranda Lambert song a million times in a day, so I said screw it and now I have my iPod with songs I want to hear!

about an hour ago · · · Flag

Leah Clark Shuttleworth

Alexis, you may not want to hear Miranda, but thousands of others do. I guess it's hard to please everyone all the time but good for you if you like your solution.

about an hour ago · · · Flag

Jean Dong

Not all country songs are good and not all good songs are country. I think "Hey, Soul Sister" is a good song and is country enough for JR.

about an hour ago · · · Flag

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