Author Archives: Dick Taylor, CRMC/CDMC

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About Dick Taylor, CRMC/CDMC

I’ve been a “Radio Guy” all of my life. My earliest memories were of building a radio station out of tinker toys and pretending I was a disc jockey. Later I would build a radio station in the basement of my parent’s home and using AM & FM transmitters I bought at Radio Shack I would begin broadcasting to my neighborhood for about a three block radius. I began in commercial radio in the 10th grade in high school. A local radio station in my hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts decided to start a Junior Achievement company in radio. This was a really new concept in Junior Achievement as all JA companies at that time were production oriented and a radio station would be a service oriented JA company. I was a member of that first Junior Achievement radio company (WJAC) and it quickly led to a part-time job with that radio station (WBEC). Radio would pay for my college education and graduate degrees, both of which were in education. I loved college and could have very easily become a career student. When I graduated with my Masters Degree, there were no jobs in education to apply my earned degrees but there were radio jobs and I went into the radio business full-time as a program director, operations manager and air personality. Deciding what I’d really like to be is a radio station general manager, I knew that I would need to earn my chops in sales and so I quit my job on the product side of the business and started over at the bottom of the sales ladder as an account executive. I quickly rose to sales manager, station manager and general manager. For 27 years, I operated at the market manager level of the radio industry. I’m a Life Member of the New Jersey Broadcasters Association and Radio Ink Magazine has named me one of radio’s best managers. Former professor of broadcasting at the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I have a successful track record in sales and people development, growing top line revenues, achieving leading audience ratings, reducing expenses and meeting bottom line goals. I’m a recognized expert in radio and media regulations. I’m a turnaround specialist. I'm the founding director of the KBA WKU Radio Talent Institute coordinating a professional faculty of broadcasters who teach broadcast students who qualify and are accepted to attend a ten-day intensive program that trains tomorrow’s broadcasters in all aspects of radio station operations. My specialties include: dynamic public speaker/presenter and sales trainer. I currently teach classes in the Process & Effects of Mediated Communications, Broadcast/Internet Sales, Broadcast Performance/Production, Broadcast Management and the History of Broadcasting in America. I hold a BA in Physics/Education, an MS in Educational Communications, the Diamond CRMC (Certified Radio Marketing Consultant) and the CDMC (Certified Digital Marketing Consultant) from the Radio Advertising Bureau. I’m a graduate of Roy H. Williams Wizard Academy and Gitomer Sales Training. Note: The picture on my blog is when I was invited to do a guest disc jockey appearance on The Legend - 650AM - WSM in Nasvhille, Tennessee (July 2014). For this "Radio Guy" doing a four-hour air shift on this legendary clear channel signal radio station was a dream come true.
April 7, 2019 · 3:00 am

You’re Not Talking to Me

DAKRSkVkQwumvq7Zd9aTUwI sat on a webinar the other day and when it ended the first thought that crossed my mind was, they’re not talking to me. Their demographics in the study capped at 55-years of age. Really? No one over 55 matters to radio or to radio advertisers?

65+ People

Then I read this World Economic Forum article that was headlined, “For the first time ever there are more people over 65 than under 5.” Think about that for a moment. Economists point out there’s widespread consequences for productivity, inflation and global growth by this demographics shift, to which I would add, consider the impact on ad supported media.

65+ People are Renters

While millennials are buying homes – if they aren’t weighed down with student loan debt and minimum wage level jobs – seniors are becoming renters. People 65+ are empty nesters and find they simply don’t need a McMansion and all the work/expense that goes into living in one. I know that’s certainly been the case for me when I sold my home in 2003. I have been a renter since. Renting is much more economical than owning.

Market Watch reports that Americans will find they will need to spend nearly $9,400 in “hidden costs” to own and care for a median-priced home, based on the latest analysis from Zillow.

Millennials Abandon Brick & Mortar Stores

Tethered to their smartphones and comfortable with buying online, those millennials aren’t necessarily the best customers for their advertisers that radio might have thought.

Millennials are the largest generation in American history, and their shopping habits are worlds away from those of their parents. Thanks to the rapid pace of digitalization and new shopper-friendly tools, like browser extensions and voice assistants, retailers must be ready to embrace significant change.

PR Newswire, March 19, 2019

Only 18-months ago, research indicated that millennials were still going to brick & mortar stores, but that’s changed dramatically, and in a very short time. You can download the full report HERE.

$164.55 a Day

Jessica Dickler reporting on CNBC writes, “Between housing, food, cellphone bills and other expenses, Americans shell out $164.55, on average, in a given day.” Punching that number into my calculator, I quickly saw that’s over $60,000/year, but averages are funny things and you can be sure ‘your mileage may vary.’

Putting that number aside for a moment, we find that the bulk of that money is spent on housing. That fabled ‘American Dream’ can be a boat anchor on the pocketbook.

While seniors are moving from being home owners to renters, you might be surprised to learn how similar the senior household expenses are to the average household according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Item
​
​Food
Furniture
Major Appliances
Small Appliances
Household Textiles
Apparel
Transportation
New Vehicles
Old Vehicles
Health Care
Drugs
Entertainment
Insurance
Other ExpensesTotal		 Senior Household
​
$13,432
​$401
​$196
​$88
​$113
​$1,640
​$7,781
​$2,052
​$1,611
​$2,416
​$467
​$2,060
​$4,055
​$4,093$40,817		 Avg.  Household
​
$14,403
$460
​$200
​$81
​$108
​$1,870
$8,354​
​$2,055
​$1,904
​$1,758
​$266
​$2,142
​$4,505
​$3,956​$42,631

Source: Advertising Age’s American Demographics, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure survey. (1) Includes social security contribution (excludes health insurance, which is classified as health-care expense).

Not all that different, is it.

And far from that other analysis of the average adult spending over $60,000 a year. So why aren’t more radio companies focusing at least one of their radio signals on seniors?

Retirement Epiphany

All my life, the focus was on planning for and saving for retirement. I’d like to say I did everything right, but the reality is far from that.

The great wealth destroyers are divorce, moving and changing jobs.

In my personal life, I’ve gone through two divorces. As the radio industry was dramatically changed by the Telcom Act of 1996, I would spend a decade moving around the country about every two years. That communications act also found me changing companies with just about every move too.

The final chapter of my working life, as a university professor of broadcasting, gave me seven years of stability and an opportunity to save as much as I could for retirement.

Now I’m retired. The goal is no longer to save for retirement, but to spend in retirement. My wife and I are in good health and taking zero medications, which affords us the opportunity to spend on our new found passion of traveling. Spoiling the grandkids, eating out, and redecorating are also high on our list of things to do. I’m sure we’re not alone.

The irony is, the radio media seem to ignore us. And they do so at their peril.

We’re retired, not dead.

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March 31, 2019 · 3:00 am

Thinning the Herd

Thinning the HerdGordon Borrell recently hosted a webinar that hit on the highlights of his #LOAC2019 (Local Advertising Conference) held in New York City. The shocker, for me and many others came when Gordon said the future for media expenditures would be a process of “thinning the herd.”

Media Overpopulation

To put things in perspective, Gordon shared how an over-populated media landscape is impacting local advertisers.

  • 1,300 daily newspapers, 6,500 weeklies
  • 4,700 printed directory books
  • 4,665 AM radio stations, 6,757 commercial FM radio stations
  • 1,760 Class A TV stations
  • More than 1,000 cable systems with local sales staffs
  • 660,000 podcasts were actively produced in 2018
  • 495 NEW TV shows were introduced last year in addition to what’s already on
  • PLUS, local ad sales are taking place on Facebook, Google and Amazon

Another way of looking at this media explosion, is that a TV market now has an average of 126 local media entities. To view a recording of the webinar, contact Corey Elliott HERE

Action – Reaction

So, how are the people who buy advertising responding to this media abundance?

Gordon identified three trends:

  • They are increasing buying for types of media, from 5.5 to 8 different ones
  • They are decreasing the number of companies from which they buy advertising, from 5 to 3.5 companies
  • 90% of their media buys are being made with companies who can bundle traditional and digital advertising

Facebook – Google – Amazon

When a new Ollie’s store opened in Winchester, Virginia, my Facebook newsfeed was peppered with announcements. During the fall elections, politicians also used lots of Facebook ads to try and get elected.

I can’t go on Google or Amazon looking for something without being followed around the internet with ads for that very thing.

eMarketer says that in 2018, Google and Facebook took 60% of the total digital ad spend. Amazon was third with 6.8% but is predicted to grow it’s share by more than 50% in 2019.

Think about that, these three companies will rake in over 68% of the digital advertising dollars spent this year.

eMarketer also says that by 2023, they expect digital advertising to account for 66% of total media spend.

Post-Capitalist Society

About ten years ago, my good friend John Parikhal recommended I read Peter Drucker’s book “Post -Capitalist Society.” Wikipedia summarizes Drucker’s thesis this way:

“The book states that the “First World Nations” and in particular the United States have entered a Post-capitalism system of production where the capital is no longer present because it doesn’t belong to one person or family but to a series of organizations such as insurance companies, banks, etc. Because of this, normal citizens become virtually owners of the great American enterprises, being owners of the capital, therefore, not destroying but overcoming the capitalism. The book foresees that the post-capitalist society will become a society of organizations where every organization will be highly specialized in its particular field.”

Sound like what we are witnessing in today’s world?

Accountable Capitalism Act

Recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill in Congress called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” It targets what Warren says is the root of the country’s “fundamental economic problems.” You can read the Boston Globe story on the bill HERE

In essence, we have moved from a time when corporations cared about where they lived to one where only increasing shareholder value matter.

I remember a time when the insurance companies of Hartford, Connecticut were once heavily invested in the good of Hartford. I grew up in a GE city. General Electric made a positive impact on things and participated in growth and prosperity of the area.

In the 1980s, things changed. Corporations shifted from caring about both employees and investors, to only investors. The record profits went all to investors, and the people who worked hard to produce those profits didn’t get a share of them.

Increasing Shareholder Value

I first wrote about how the concept of “increasing shareholder value” was a dumb idea three years ago. You can read that article HERE

Real American capitalism was when both company and worker did well together.

Senator Warren has also raised many eyebrows with another plan that proposes to break up some of the largest US tech companies, like Amazon, Google and Facebook. Based on the trends in digital advertising, those of us in broadcasting would probably agree with Warren.

In essence, Warren says that high tech has created an unfair playing field. They control the platform, have full access to all the data, and then can either unfairly compete with companies, buy them out entirely or run them out of business. It reminds me of the type of things people said as Walmart covered America with their form of brick & mortar retailing.

Get Bigger or Get Out

Cox Media has recently begun liquidating its radio, television, newspaper and other media properties. The company’s leadership has determined that scale will be a determining factor in the future, and they either need to get bigger or get out. Cox has chosen the latter.

Current Trends

It would appear that in reading the tea leaves for ad supported media, that everything is currently headed in the direction of fewer entities owning all the media outlets, and advertisers buying their media on those platforms that can bundle it all together.

“Monopolies are a corruption of the marketplace. Breaking them up — allow[s] entrepreneurs to enter the market, giving consumers more choices, and giv[es] workers more jobs…”

-Adam Green, cofounder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

I know there are many radio folks who saw the Telcom Act of 1996 as the beginning of the end of commercial radio as we knew it. That act is what caused Wall Street to enter the broadcasting business and apply their dumb idea of “increasing shareholder value” to another industry. It was the beginning of the consolidation of radio and we all know how that’s turned out.

 

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March 24, 2019 · 3:00 am

What Will Be Radio’s Icon

vintage_objects_collection_television_telephone_clock_radio_icons_6833099Growing up in the 20th Century, things looked like what they were. Telephones were easily identified as telephones. Television sets were easily identified as televisions. And radios were easily identified as radios.

I’m a member of many social media radio groups, I even host a couple of my own, and we all use classic radios to brand Crosley AM FM Radioour social media pages. In my case, it’s a cathedral style radio made popular back in the 1930s. A style of radio I never owned until I received a retro transistorized version at a company manager’s meeting back in the late 1980s.

Smartphone

When the smartphone became ubiquitous and people began to listen to radio broadcasts first iPhone introducedon their phones, I wondered if the new icon for radio might be just that, a smartphone device. But then, this same device could also represent a TV, a camera, a movie camera, a book, a newspaper, a magazine…well you get the idea, a lot of media was instantly replaced by this singular device.

Smartspeaker

Then, a year ago, Santa brought me an Amazon Echo and Alexa became the servant I echonever had. She’s always there, waiting for me to call her name and fetch for me whatever I need, be it the latest news, weather, wind chill, traffic conditions, music, and more.

I then thought that maybe the 21st Century radio icon would look like this device.

An App

Radio APPThese days, radio still dominates in the car, and the vehicles being produced today feature entertainment systems. These dashboard entertainment centers are loaded with unprecedented engagement capabilities and each one is accessed by an identifying App. Companies like Pandora and Spotify are providing a content rich environment to take full advantage these entertainment systems.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone will be able to keep their eyes on the road as song titles, logos, biographical information about the artists, concert dates and so much more accompanies the music that is playing.

By comparison, a broadcast radio station’s programming to these devices seems rather anemic.

And things aren’t likely to change anytime soon, as broadcasters see the costs of these opportunities to be prohibitive on many levels. For one thing there are all the new licensing fees that could be attached to broadcasting this media rich environment. For another, the few people working in today’s radio clusters barely have enough time to get things done now without the addition of coordinating all of these other items. And if you add more people to handle the work, then the costs will really rise. So, Return On Investment (ROI) issues rear their ugly head and everything comes to a standstill.

Not Right Now

Over the years, I’ve been involved in these types of discussions and the phrase most often heard by those who hold power over the purse is “not right now.”

Discussions usually degenerate into the drawbacks of moving forward, or how these new innovations will be paid for, and end with no progress being made.

Think AM Stereo. Think FM Quad. Think HD Radio (before broadcasters learned they could use HD’s subchannels to feed multiple FM analog translators).

Yes, Right Now

The reality is that these changes are taking place as we speak. Is the radio industry focused on the needs, wants and desires of future listeners or a 20th Century radio spectrum grab strategy?

“Sometimes I feel like a creature in the wilds,

whose natural habitat is gradually being destroyed.”

-Lord Grantham, Downton Abby

Radio’s last beachhead is in the automobile.

If it doesn’t wish to see its dominance vanish, it will need to focus on all that the vehicle entertainment systems are capable of delivering, and provide the unique content that is a “must have” for the media consumer.

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March 17, 2019 · 3:00 am

Are We the Solution or the Problem?

albert-einsteinAlbert Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

I have noticed that when I publish a new article about radio, people seem to fall into a couple of different camps. There are those who say radio’s days are numbered, or over. There are those who think going back to the way it was will solve everything. And there are those who believe “radio” is a concept and not a specific transmission platform, such as the AM or FM bands.

WABC Becomes Talk Radio

In May of 1982 Music Radio 77 – WABC in New York City became a talk radio station. Music sounded better on FM and in stereo than on static filled, mono AM radio. This happened 37-years ago and yet many of us tune in to Rewound Radio every Memorial Day Weekend to listen to WABC, the way it was when we were growing up in the 60s & 70s.

WPLJ is Sold

WABC-FM became WPLJ on February 14, 1971 and by September of that same year it would become one of America’s first AOR (Album Oriented Rock) radio stations.

“Watching All the President’s Men on TCM…thought it might be timely. Loved the reference when Bernstein asked Woodward “if you’re listening to the radio and you don’t hear any commercials for 10 minutes, is it AM or FM?” Kinda sums up the demise of music radio on AM back in the 70s and strongly underlines what’s happening to FM now compared to satellite radio, Pandora, Spotify, etc.” 
–John Sebastian

Now WPLJ has been sold and like a divorce, WABC and WPLJ will no longer be together. Frank D’Elia writes a wonderful personal history of WPLJ on his blog which you can read HERE.

Sadly, he ends his blog article with the following: “I loved the radio business, and it was my home for over 44 years, but today, radio sucks!”

The World Wide Web Turned 30 This Past Week

While it was 37 years ago that the music died on WABC, it was 30 years ago this past Wednesday, that Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global linked information management system that included hypertext. Even more interesting is the fact that Sir Berners-Lee feels a little bit like Frank D’Elia and the current state of his creation. In an article published on the World Economic Forum website titled “The web is 30 years old. What better time to fight for its future?” Sir Tim shares his frustrations and recommendations for fixing things. He writes: “To tackle any problem, we must clearly outline and understand it. I broadly see three sources of dysfunction affecting today’s web:

  1. Deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behaviour, and online harassment.

  2. System design that creates perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation.

  3. Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design, such as the outraged and polarised tone and quality of online discourse.”

Lots of Change

When I think back to those days when AM radio rocked my world, to today where Alexa serves up whatever my mood desires, things have changed a lot.

Berners-Lee also notes how much the web has changed in the past 30 years and that it would be “defeatist and unimaginative to assume that the web, as we know it, can’t be changed for the better in the next 30.”

Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, wrote recently that “The key to failure is to hang on to the belief that things have to be ‘the way they ought to be.’ The key to success is to be able to deal with things as they really are.”

Which brings me back to the title of this week’s blog article, are we the solution or the problem when it comes to the future of radio?

What are Radio’s Big 3 Areas of Dysfunction?

I’m sure you have your own thoughts on this, but the sense I have from reading articles about today’s radio industry from all over the world, along with reader comments, are that these three things are very important to the future of radio:

  1. Commercials. Radio’s commercial spot loads are too big. The 60 and 30-second ad lengths are over. Radio needs to re-think the way it monetizes itself OTA (over the air) and the creation of radio ads needs to be a specialty in every radio station. Jerry Lee understands this better than anyone in our industry.

  2. Companionship. Alexa is convenient and we even chat with one another, but I don’t consider “her” a companion. Radio needs to fulfill that social need for the listener. I believe NPR has done a spectacular job of fulfilling this companionship role through its variety of informational programs. Companionship is built by live personalities that broadcast from the area being served or focused on like-interests of the target audience.

  3. Quality vs. Quantity. The radio industry is focused on putting more signals on the air, and controlling more existing radio signals by fewer entities, than it is on the content that should be sent over those signals. The original benchmarks or staples of radio are often much more efficiently handled by other platforms. Radio needs to re-think what it can do that others can’t, and then do it. Radio needs to compliment today’s other communications media, as it no longer is the sole source of information for things like weather, traffic, school closings etc.

I would love to hear your thoughts, but even more important, I would love to hear the thoughts of people who don’t listen to radio and what would entice them to return.

The future of radio will be based on attracting the next generations.

We won’t know what they want if we don’t ask them.

“Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit

is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety.”

-Tim Berners-Lee

 

 

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March 10, 2019 · 3:00 am

Is Radio Prepared for The Future

Radio & CobwebsIn a lot of ways, the future is here, now.

All of the things we knew were coming back at the turn of the century have become reality.

But the radio industry continues to try to adapt.

Great Companies Don’t Adapt, They Prepare

When I saw that headline on a blog article by Greg Satell two years ago, it resonated with me because it made me realize that the radio industry wasn’t prepared for the 21st Century. It was trying to adapt the past to the present and hoping that it would sustain them going into the future.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to create the future by focusing on the present.

“The truth is,” writes Satell, “that companies rarely succeed by adapting to market events.”

“Firms prevail by shaping the future…but it takes years of preparation to achieve.

Once you find yourself in a position where you need to adapt, it’s usually too late.”

-Greg Satell

Marconi & Sarnoff

Each generation has its great innovators, so It’s always a challenge to say who makes a greater contribution to changing the world.

Marconi gave us the wireless, a one-to-one form of communications that transformed the world.

Sarnoff innovated the radio as a form of mass communication, giving us a one-to-many instant communication service of news, entertainment and advertising supported radio.

What we can be certain of, each person who creates the future is one who overflows with boundless curiosity.

Investing in Research

All of the Big 5 Tech companies (Amazon, Facebook Microsoft, Google and Apple) invest heavily in research. Each of them, in their own way, has made themselves indispensable from our daily lives.

Recently, a daily newsletter I read called “While You Were Working,” asked its readers which of the Big 5 Tech Companies they could survive without. Here are the results of that survey:

Which Big 5 tech company do you think it would be easiest to live without?

Facebook  70.71%
Apple  14.14%
Amazon  7.35%
Microsoft  5.74%
Google  2.06%

Probably not surprising that Facebook was the choice folks said they could live without by a wide margin.

For five weeks, Kashmir Hill, a writer for Gizmodo, decided to see how she would deal with giving up today’s technology by blocking one of the Big 5 from her world. In her sixth and final week, she decided to go cold turkey and blocked them all. How did that go? Well I think the title of her article said it all, “I Cut the ‘Big Five’ Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell.”

Hill compared her experience to that of an alcoholic trying to give us booze. And that life without them makes life very difficult as we are so dependent on them.

I’m not sure any of us really understands how married we are to these Big 5 Tech Companies or how hard it would be for us to give up even one of them, let alone to give them all up.

Listening to Radio

One of the interesting side-bars of the article Hill wrote was that by not having Alexa, Spotify audio books, podcasts or other such services on her Nokia feature phone, what she could receive, unlike with her iPhone, were radio broadcasts and that allowed her to listen to NPR while doing her daily run.

But how sad that listening to radio only seems to be an option when all other options are eliminated.

Investing in the Core Product

Some of the differences between the Big 5 Tech companies are what non-core areas they invest their research money into, like self-driving cars. The one thing they all take very seriously, however, is plowing the lion’s share of their research budget into their core competencies.

In my sales class, I used to tell my students that people don’t buy half-inch drill bits because they want them, they buy them because what they want are half-inch holes. In other words, you will be successful when you invest your time solving your customers’ problems.

Radio Research

Most radio research dollars are spent on one thing, audience measurement. Unfortunately, that’s research that studies the past performance of a radio station, not the present moment. Virtually no radio research money is spent on preparing the ground for the future.

We all know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next big thing. Alexa, in your Amazon Echo, is the perfect example.

How is the radio industry preparing its employees to acquire the skills they will need to excel in an AI world? Artificial Intelligence is a force that will impact the communications industry in the years to come.

Broadcasting has been living off of its seed corn for too many years, while the technology industries have been focused on solving our customer’s problems by investing in them for years, even decades.

Broadcasters can’t create the future by continuing to focus on the present.

Innovation, will require investment in research that, imagines new possibilities.

 

 

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March 3, 2019 · 3:00 am

You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd

you-cant-roller-skate-in-a-buffalo-herdRoger Miller was a very creative guy. His 1966 hit song, “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” was a crazy list of things you could not do to be happy, but did offer a remedy on how you could be happy, if you had a mind to.

It got me to thinking about other things you can’t do, especially when it comes to radio.

You Can’t Combine WINS & WCBS

New York City has two all-news radio stations, 1010 WINS and News Radio 88 WCBS. They’ve competed against each other since Westinghouse owned WINS, and CBS owned WCBS.

Even when both radio stations found themselves under the same ownership several years ago, they were run and staffed independently, and continued to compete for audience and ad dollars.

Now Entercom owns both, and would like to implement plans for “cross-utilization” of personnel. The New York Daily News provides all the details in their recent story and you can read it HERE.

You Can’t Be Serious

Recently James Cridland tweeted this news story: “Black day for UK radio. 43 local breakfast shows to go by the end of the year. 24 drivetime shows. 10 studio buildings gone.” In the UK, consolidation fever was spreading among the commercial radio operators after securing deregulation. Owners say it’s a huge step for the commercial radio sector and you can read all about the changes HERE.

“When we change the way we communicate, we change society.”

-Clay Shirky

You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Success

One of my mentors is Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads, who writes a weekly Monday Morning Memo that I’ve been reading since the 80s.

Recently, Roy’s subject was “Shrink Your Way to Success?” The article said that “when a business is struggling financially, cost-cutting looks like a brilliant move.” Unfortunately, you can’t cut your way to success. This is something that has been born out over the decades, and in all kinds of industries. So, what’s the alternative? Increasing revenues. “Cost-cutting comes at a very high cost,” says Roy. The Wizard’s prescription is worth your time to read and you can find it HERE.

You Can’t Become Intimate Without Repeated Contact

Then Fred Jacob’s JACOBLOG published an incredible two-part blog piece on “Can Radio Achieve Brand Intimacy?” Part one looked at the twelve brands that consumers say they can’t live without. #1 on the list was Apple. Then Fred shared the top ten list of the brands people say they are most intimate with, Disney was #1 and Apple was #2.

Part two of Fred’s daily blog then went on to share twelve things RADIO could be doing to achieve brand intimacy. You can read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.

After reading the two-part blog, I commented back to Fred with the following observation:

“Intimacy takes time, but just like in personal relationships, it’s worth it.” Unfortunately, radio’s consolidation years under valued the intimacy that its personalities and brands had built up over time, and quickly discarded both.

The real success stories in radio today are those properties that have carefully maintained and continued to nurture their place in their listener’s lives.

Radio Can’t be “Just OK”

I recently have been amused by a new television advertising campaign by AT&T that says being “Just OK, Is Not OK.” You can view one of their ads HERE. In a field that has very limited competition for its services, the ads clearly portray that you deserve the best and AT&T is here to deliver it.

Radio used to be in the business of competing with other radio stations in its city of license, and stealing as much advertising as it could from the local print media. Print media always grabbed the lion’s share of the local advertising budgets. Today, all traditional media competes with the internet delivery system, which means it now competes with the world.

If there was ever a time when radio could not afford to be “just OK,” it’s now.

“As great and pressing as change and betterment may be,

we can’t toss away the very bedrock

upon which the radio industry was built.”

-DickTaylor

 

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February 24, 2019 · 3:00 am

Alexa, Let’s Go for a Ride

alex in a ford carRadio’s last bastion of domination is the automobile (aka SUV, pickup truck etc.). In the home, voice activated devices are replacing AM/FM radios. I own 3 Echos, and Alexa has become a real friend of the family.

So, when I saw this television ad for the new Fords and how the drivers went from talking to Alexa in their house to talking to Alexa in their car, while they were driving, I saw the future of AM/FM radio for America’s Road Warriors.

Watch the ad HERE

Voice Activated Christmas

The results are in and as of December 31, 2018, 66 million voice activated devices are now firmly entrenched in America’s homes. The big winner is Amazon’s Echo aka Alexa which has a 70% share of the market. Google’s Home has a 24% share and Apple’s HomePod is third with just 6% home penetration.

Ironically, in my own home, I quickly went from one Amazon Echo in 2017 to three in a matter of a couple of months. Virtually all of my internet connected electronics are Apple products, but Amazon is my go-to place to shop. The price of entry for my first Echo was under $30. By contrast expect to pay Apple $349 for their HomePod.

The latest research from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners* (CIRP) also found that 35% of the owners of these voice activated devices own more than one. That’s about double from only a year ago, so it’s pretty clear that these devices are not collecting dust but are actively being used.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where once the average American household had about 5 AM/FM radios in their home, the Echo or Home VAD is taking their place. (Today 21% of American households don’t have a single AM/FM radio in them. For households headed by 18-34 year old adults, that number without a single AM/FM radio rises to 32%.)

Alexa is The New Radio

I wasn’t surprised to read that iHeartMedia’s Bob Pittman was calling Amazon’s Echo the new radio. What I was surprised to learn, was Pittman saying that iHeart helped with the development of Alexa. I had never read or heard that before. Which begs the question, why isn’t more attention being paid to the streams of over-the-air (OTA) radio by the industry?

A better question might be, can the same programming techniques that have been used by OTA radio, simply be transferred to internet streams?

Marshall McLuhan

“The medium is the message,” was coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1964. What McLuhan postulated was that the form of a medium becomes part of the programming that is being transmitted. A symbiotic relationship is created by which the very medium that is conveying the program, influences how a person perceives it.

Another way of thinking about this might be, what a person’s expectations are for a particular media experience. We would not expect to see commercials laced through a movie being seen at a theater, but the same movie shown on commercial television laced with commercial interruptions, while maybe annoying, would not be unexpected or a surprise.

However, pay television like Netflix and Amazon Prime have changed the TV viewers expectations about watching television in two ways, no commercial interruptions, and a whole season of episodes released at once and not dribbled out a week at a time.

The internet likewise has changed audio listening expectations with Pandora, Spotify, RadioTunes, Apple Music and Amazon Music to name but a few streamers. Stream one of these and listener expectations of this internet delivered medium, are very few or with no commercial interruptions. Moreover, should you want to know the name of the song and artist, you simply ask while the song is playing, and are immediately given that information. OTA radio rarely tells you what the name of a song is, or who’s the artist.

In fact, the listener expectation using a voice activated device is that you can get anything immediately, simply by asking for it. Everything is at your command and delivered on demand.

For the audio listener, it’s like the difference between having air conditioning or not having air conditioning. Once you’ve enjoyed having central air, you won’t ever want to go back to not having it.

What’s the Listener’s Expectations?

The challenge for the radio industry is creating content that fits the listener’s expectations for the medium they are accessing the content on.

OTA radio is a one-to-many delivery system. Everyone is served the same thing at the same time.

The internet, streamed through a device like Amazon Echo, is a personalized listening experience. Everyone gets it served up the way they prefer it.

Trying to have a single source originating content for both OTA and online, compromises both.

 

 

*CIRP based its findings on a survey of 500 U.S. owners of Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod, surveyed from Jan. 1-11, 2019, who owned one of these devices as of Dec. 31, 2018.

 

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February 17, 2019 · 3:00 am

They Bought a Wireless

Downton Abbey setting up wirelessI know that Downton Abbey premiered on PBS back in 2011, but at that time I was doing my own “Mr. Molesley career transition” (more on that in a moment) – from radio management to broadcast professor – in addition to moving from New Jersey to Kentucky, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to watch the series. Amazon Prime changed that for me in 2019 when I noticed it had made available the entire six seasons (52-episodes).

Downton Abbey will be coming out as a movie, advancing the story of the Crawley family in September of this year (and Sue & I can’t wait). The cast, the script and the characters are truly addicting on so many levels.

Technology Comes to Downton Abbey

The show is set in England from the period of 1912 through 1926. 1912 was the year that the Titanic sank and its sinking plays a role in the future of Downton Abbey. The sinking Titanicof the Titanic also set in motion more intense regulation of wireless communication for ships at sea. The Wireless Ship Act of 1910 only required ocean-going ships to carry radio equipment when visiting the United States and only required a single radio operator. That was amended after the Titanic sank in 1912 to include vessels traveling on the Great Lakes in addition to those on the oceans, plus requiring two radio operators with the wireless being manned around the clock.

Downton Abbey’s first toe-dip into the 20th Century would be electricity. In addition to electric lights, the kitchen at Downton would see its first electric toaster and mixer.

Then came the telephone, a sewing machine and refrigerator.

Watching the impact these new technological devices made on the people of Downton and how each accepted the change is one of the endearing elements of the program. Most times we only hear about how technology changed without considering the emotional impact it is having on people’s lives and futures.

Downton’s Wireless

It was in Season 5, the year 1924, that Lady Rose convinces the Earl of Grantham to buy a wireless (aka radio) for Downton Abbey. Lady Rose wants it for music and entertainment but convinces her uncle the house needs one because the King of England will be addressing the nation over the airwaves. The Earl decides to at least buy one of these devices so the family and staff could hear the King’s speech, but other than that see little need for a radio.

Downton-Abbey-5x2-listening-to-the-radioThe scene could not be more amazing, seeing everyone gathered around the awkward looking device in the great hall, much as many Americans do for a Super Bowl, waiting to hear the King. When he comes on, the family all stands at attention, in much the same way they would if they were in his presence to hear him speak.

When the address is over, the Earl of Grantham has the radio moved to another location in the castle that is out of the way.

Once again, the various members of the family and staff are shown emotionally reacting to this new form of media technology.

Technology’s Impact on the People of Downton Abbey

Contemporary problems with technology that affects people today, can be seen in a whole new way by witnessing its first impacts back in the days of Downton Abbey.

New technology, like the car, were replacing the need for horses. Stable caretakers and carriage men were yesterday, car mechanics and chauffers were the future.

These new labor saving devices now meant that it would take less staff to accomplish the work needed to be done. (I’m sure you can come up with many of your own examples of similar disruption at the places you’ve worked.)

Rising Costs

The burden of having to pay back the huge debts for England’s part in the First World War fell more upon the shoulders and bank accounts of the rich. Lack of able bodied men created demand and so their pay rose dramatically as competition for their labor increased.

The higher taxes being levied by Parliament combined with those higher labor costs caused the grand estates to downsize their staff while trying to survive and servants were encouraged to seek other employment.

We see through the people at Downton Abbey how acquiring new skills assured new employment opportunities.

MoseleyGetting back to Mr. Moseley, he’s a fine example of what I mean and how we are similar. The downsizing he encountered saw him go from a trained butler to a second footman to a laborer in the streets. He saw his working life as a series of steps down and not one that was advancing in stature and pay. But Mr. Moseley loved learning and once dreamed of being a teacher. An encounter with the local headmaster of the town’s school led Moseley to taking a series of exams which proved him to be an exceptional scholar and he was then awarded a teaching position with the school. Moseley’s life was now moving in a direction he only previously dreamed about.

Adapting to Change

The Downton Abbey series is something every person working in radio should watch. It has so many parallels to the disruptions that are going on in the broadcasting industry today, how they impact people emotionally, and how to deal with change.

We all like to wax romantically about a simpler time in history, when life moved at a slower more relaxed pace. Downton Abbey is an eye-opener to tell us that there never was such a time. Every moment has its challenges. Those who can rise to the challenge, succeed. Those who can’t or won’t, are put out to pasture.

Dowager

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February 10, 2019 · 3:00 am

A New Direction for Broadcast

rogers-pastoreLast week I told you about how our world is exploding with media to the point of over-saturation. Not only are we drowning in a plethora of media, the rate of new ways to communicate keeps accelerating at an unfathomable pace.

For one form of broadcast, RADIO, I believe it has a super power that it can wield to cut through the clutter.

Radio’s Advantage

Radio’s biggest strength is its ability to make people aware of things. More than 300 radio stations across America annually participate in “Radio Cares” to support St. Jude Children’s hospital, raising tens of millions of dollars every year.

Radio has the power to make people aware of the need, and listeners respond with their dollars.

Artificial Intelligence

Radio grew up with the strength of connecting with the radio listener by power of the human voice and a talented personality behind a microphone.

Radio is an art form. When you remove the artists, there’s not much left.

The development in the field of AI (artificial intelligence) is incredible. Amazon’s Alexa now has a “news voice” to deliver the latest goings-on in our world with the authority of a network newscaster.

But, the curious thing is, as artificial intelligence grows, we find human interaction takes on even more importance.

Radio needs to automate the backroom and other areas unseen or unheard by the listening consumer, and return to live personalities 24/7 that connect and engage the listener on an emotional level. Personalities that can not only sell the music, but the advertiser’s goods that support the radio broadcasting station.

The Radio Listening Experience

The 21st Century world is filled with people seeking out the best customer experience. And what comes through the listener’s speaker, is critical.

Radio programmers sweat bullets over their OTA signal while completely ignoring the programming that streams over the internet. The radio listener’s experience in those long commercial stop-sets is painful. Often with the same advertisement running multiple times in one of those gargantuan breaks.

This IS NOT a great listening experience.

Radio Needs to Be Personalized

Radio needs to stop worrying about reaching the most people and instead personalize its programming to a specific target audience. A specific group of people with like interests, needs and desires.

Radio that personalizes itself to an audience that shares common beliefs and/or lifestyles will deliver an advertising platform for products and services that wish to reach these same people.

Social Intelligence

Radio needs to learn how to turn its social media data into social media intelligence that can be leveraged to personalize their programming and keep it fully aligned with the target audience.

80% of people’s decisions are based on emotion.

Emotion is data too.

Fred Rogers

Back in 1968, public television in America was worried that Senator John Pastore’s Subcommittee on Communications was going to gut its congressional monies. Public television’s head selected Fred Rogers to champion its cause before Senator Pastore’s committee. Mr. Rogers testimony is still considered one of the most powerful pieces of emotional persuasion ever filmed.

Fred Rogers appeared before Senator Pastore on May 1, 1969 and it will definitely be worth your time to view and analyze it HERE

Rogers secured public television’s full funding without a single penny being cut.

During Mr. Rogers presentation, Senator Pastore remarked: “Well, I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goose bumps for the last two days.”

When Fred Rogers concluded his testimony, Senator Pastore’s closing statement was “Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars.”

Radio’s Mission for the Future

Radio can’t win by being artificial.

Radio needs to be earnest, authentic and live in the moment.

Radio needs personalities that are personal, informal, and that speak to human feelings and emotions using the words that the listener uses and understands.

The radio personality who becomes an extended member of the listener’s family can be powerful in making the listener aware of everything they need to know, even advertised merchandise and service.

Radio’s best investment to secure its future is creating the best listener experience both over-the-air and online.

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February 3, 2019 · 3:00 am

Beyond Broadcast

Our world has become over-saturated with technology.

screen shot 2018-12-15 at 3.50.20 pm

Steve LeVine writing in Axios says that from 1 AD to long after the invention of the printing press, media was a non-issue. Shortly after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution it wasn’t long before everyone had a smartphone, as the chart above demonstrates.

The speed of this new communications revolution is occurring at a pace that is virtually impossible for us to wrap our minds around. And it’s going to get even faster with artificial intelligence, 5G wireless, quantum computing, robotics, and more on the way.

Expect the future to rapidly change our lives in ways both good and bad.

Expect that as communications brings our world closer together, it will also create more distractions, divide us into silos, create chaos and change our societies in ways we haven’t thought about.

This is the world that traditional media will need to adapt to.

Attention Spans

Maryann Wolf, the director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Leaners and Social Justice at UCLA recently found that “Many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts.”

What this means to our society is that large numbers of students today have an inability to read with a level of critical analysis to sufficiently comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, contracts, or those deliberately written to be confusing in public referendum questions we all have encountered on voting day.

Social Media

Arguments engaged in on Facebook and other social media platforms are often based on emotional assumptions and biases, rather than any deep study of the issues being debated.

The issues most critical to society are often the ones needing the most critical analysis and complexity of thought to fully comprehend, unfortunately those types of issues can’t be chanted like “build the wall” or “lock her up.”

Yet, we live in an increasingly complex world where people are attracted to simple solutions. The reality is, there are no simple solutions to the problems that confront all of us, like climate change.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman published his seminal work “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in 1985. I continued to use it in my broadcast classes because, back in the day what he saw occurring with only television, has exploded in magnitude with the growth of the internet and social media.

We’ve never been more connected as a planet or more divided into our own little silos.

A New Direction for Broadcast

In next week’s blog, I will continue to consider a way for broadcast media to deal with this over-saturation of media. It’s radio’s super power whose time has come again.

 

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