Author Archives: Dick Taylor, CRMC/CDMC

At this moment in time, I would have to say I’m thankful for having the opportunity to fulfill a life-long goal of one day teaching at a college or university. I’m now in my fifth year of teaching broadcasting at the School of Journalism and Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University. I’m grateful for my students that write a note to say how appreciative they are for the effort I put into my classes and how they benefitted from them. And I’m thankful for those students who stay in touch with me after they graduate to let me know how they’re doing in their broadcast careers.

I’m thankful for being able to have the whole family together for Thanksgiving for the first time in five years as each of us have moved to different parts of the country but this year will all return to my hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It will be our first Thanksgiving that will have three grandchildren celebrating this family holiday spanning four generations.

I’m grateful for my two sons that each have distinguished themselves in their chosen careers and are wonderful fathers.

I’m thankful for my two older brothers that always been there for me through ups and downs, thick and thin.

I’m grateful that a career in radio that I started in the 10^th grade in high school would allow me to pay for my college education, graduate school and raise a family. It’s a career that was all I ever wanted to do besides one day pay-it-forward through teaching the next generation of broadcasters.

I’m thankful for all the wonderful people I’ve met on this journey called life, people who were only strangers until we said “hello,” and then became friends for life.

One of my mentors, Zig Ziglar said: “You can get anything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” I’ve tried to live those words every day.

As we approach Thanksgiving Day 2014, remember you may make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.

Today, I’m giving thanks for you.

Growing up, I always thought I was blessed to have been born in the month of October. Why you ask? Because in September the Sears “Christmas Wish Book” would arrive in the mail and I would carefully comb through its pages to make out my Christmas list for Santa.

Doing this in September was a good way to let the members of my family know of my “needs” since my birthday was right around the corner. Sometimes, I’d get an item or two on my birthday from the Wish Book and I’d update my Santa list.

Well Sears ended its catalogs years ago. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Hammacher Schlemmer still publishes theirs and I’m on their mailing list.

So what’s hot for 2014? How about a high definition camera drone. A gravity defying clock (not like I’m planning a trip into space anytime soon). There’s the instant transmitting paper to iPhone pen. The hands free hair rejuvenator (Hmm, I wonder).

There are a lot of different ways to amplify or clarify people’s hearing. Makes me wonder if the Hammacher Schlemmer customers are all going deaf.

There are lots of things to connect with your iPhone or iPad; even a piece of electronics that will transfer your records or cassettes into the digital format for use on those same devices.

But what really got me excited was that my Hammacher Schlemmer “Last Minute Gift 2014” catalog featured not one, not two, but three different radios.

The first was called “The Best Emergency Radio” and Hammacher Schlemmer says it earned their best rating because it had the longest playback time and clearest reception.

The next radio I came across was the Bose Wave Sound Touch Music System. I have one of these radios by my bed. I love it. Paul Harvey sold it to me over the radio during his page two on his news and commentary broadcasts. (Yes, radio sells stuff!)

The third radio featured was the Longwave Shortwave Radio. You can listen to AM/FM and the world using this beast.

If you count the device that converts your cassette tapes and albums to digital, you actually will find four radios in this 2014 edition of Hammacher Schlemmer’s Christmas catalog.

What you don’t find is an HD Radio. You also don’t find a single TV for sale from Hammacher Schlemmer.

HD radio was introduced the same year that Steve Jobs stood up and introduced the world to the iPod; 2003. In 2014, after four hundred million iPods had been sold, Tim Cook quietly announced the iPod was over with the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6+.

I tried to find the number of HD Radios that had been sold in that same decade of time and the best number I could come up with was maybe seven million.

Is the HD Radio a solution to a problem the customer never said they were having?

The main application of HD Radio technology by the broadcaster has been to feed an FM translator with programming. Did you know that’s how radio broadcasters first used Edwin Howard Armstrong’s FM radio? Only back in those days, when FM was in the 40 MHz band, broadcasters were trying to avoid paying AT&T their high charges for dedicated phone lines. FM radio was an inexpensive way to get audio from one location to another and re-broadcast it over AM radio. The Yankee Network was built on Armstrong’s FM radio technology.

Hammacher Schlemmer is a catalog made up of cool merchandise. What does that say about the future of HD Radio? Just askin’.

Since I got into radio, the thing I’ve probably heard more times than I can count is “radio doesn’t work.” It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now. So why is this question even still around?

Radio stations that program Adult Contemporary, Gospel, Urban, Lite Rock, Classic Rock, Country and Oldies have raised over $250 million over thirty years for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The hospital says their “Radio Cares for St. Jude Kids” is one of the fastest growing radiothon programs. Who wants to be the first person to tell them the sad news “radio doesn’t work?”

In 1986, a budget hotel chain’s ad agency hired a home builder in Homer, Alaska to voice their new radio campaign. Tom Bodett was “discovered” by The Richards Group when a creative director heard Tom on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Tom Bodett would ad lib “We’ll leave the light on for you” as the closing line. He’s been their radio spokesperson ever since. The Blackstone Group paid $1.9 billion for the chain in 2012. Who wants to be the first person to tell them the sad news “radio doesn’t work?”

A single store jeweler in Springfield, Missouri became a major jewelry retailer. It was the advertising strategy and creative copy of Roy H. Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads that would see his agency’s first client double and then triple in sales volume each year. Roy used radio to build the customer base of Woody Justice’s jewelry store. At the time Roy began working with Justice Jewelers, the gross sales volume of the average jewelry store in America was less than $650,000. I lost track after Woody crossed $11 million in sales. Who wants to be the first person to tell Woody the sad news “radio doesn’t work?”

It’s the fact that radio does work that SiriusXM radio was born. It’s the fact that radio does work that we now see every Internet pureplay call their stream radio. Pandora Radio, Spotify Radio, Rdio, Radio Tunes, iTunes Radio, TuneIn Radio etc.

There are more FCC licensed broadcast radio stations on the air today than at any time since the birth of commercial radio in October 1920 with the sign-on of KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even more amazing is that radio still reaches over 92% of persons 12-years of age and older every week in America.

Radio works just fine. The difference between using radio to get results and not, depends on the person who creates the message. The skilled writer who knows how to write persuasively and talk to the heart of the listener is worth their weight in gold.

Last week I wrote about how Radio is Relationships and what I was talking about was the relationship between the air personality and the listener. However, relationships are also important inside a radio station.

My hometown newspaper recently wrote an article about the local high school radio station in Pittsfield, Massachusetts – WTBR – that might go dark. This FM radio station that operates out of one of the city’s two public high schools has been on-the-air for over 40 years. It was recently fined $7,000 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for violating the commission’s regulations at the time of its license renewal.

The body that holds the license for WTBR is the Pittsfield School Committee and the school committee appealed the amount of the fine. The FCC reduced the fine from $7,000 to $5,600 “based on Pittsfield’s history of compliance” the local paper reported.

Now to put this fine in perspective, WTBR operates on an annual budget of only $6,000.

How it’s able to operate on such a small budget is due to the fact that everyone who works at the station is an adult volunteer from the community or a high school student. The annual budget goes to pay for equipment maintenance, fees and other miscellaneous expenses.

So what changed? A long time advisor to the school FM radio station retired. With his departure, student interest in the radio station also diminished, to just five students.   Without this inside champion, the radio station is staring at a seven day a week, three hundred sixty-five day operating schedule with no people.

The school superintendent in addressing the school committee at a recent meeting outline three alternatives: invest in the program to develop a more professional broadcast curriculum, partner with a local media company that would be charged with overseeing the station’s operations or selling the FCC license.

The superintendent said with around five students interested in the operation, it didn’t appear that the investing option made much sense. Consolidation of the commercial radio industry in the area didn’t seem very plausible either. The last option could bring in $100,000 he thought.

The irony here is that WTBR is usually the only radio station in the city that is doing LIVE & LOCAL programming when I return home to visit family and friends during holidays. The local commercial radio stations usually are running either voice-tracking, syndicated or network programming.

The difference to me as a listener is the passion and one-on-one nature of WTBR. It’s the kind of radio that still attracts me as a listener. But without a visionary inside this radio station who’s building relationships with both students and the local community to run the station and be responsible for its operation and not getting it in trouble with the FCC, it may nearing its final days.

(Note: The first commercial radio station license was issued to Westinghouse for KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA in October 1920. In October 2020, radio will mark its 100^th Anniversary. That original license for KDKA is pictured above.)

Radio, from the very beginning, has been about relationships. The first radio stations were amateur experimental stations. Dr. Frank Conrad, a Westinghouse engineer, was a ham radio operator. On October 17, 1919 he broadcast a recording over his station and that precipitated requests for more musical broadcasts. Conrad obliged by programming two hours of recorded music on Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Conrad even took requests.

It was from these early beginnings that a Westinghouse VP decided that Westinghouse should build a radio station and encourage people to listen and acquire the habit of listening to the radio. Westinghouse would benefit, because it was in the business of building radio receivers.

Westinghouse would file an application with the Department of Commerce on October 16, 1920 and receive its license for radio station KDKA eleven days later.

Radio gave people at that point in time a new way to connect and build relationships.

When radio pretends that what can’t be easily measured doesn’t exist, it’s on the path to extinction. Radio is relationships. No one ever had a relationship with automation.

Throughout radio’s history, savvy operators have known that being different can be a competitive advantage. Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Seacrest, Casey Kasem, Arthur Godfrey among many others all knew how to distinguish themselves from the pack and build a relationship with the radio audience.

The competitive advantage that Pandora has is through its ability to be like your iPod, with an element of surprise. Each person creates his or her own personalized radio station.

But I seriously doubt anyone would say they have a “relationship” with Pandora. It serves a need in much the same way a low price retailer serves a need. Once someone comes along with a little bit better “mouse trap” the people quickly move on. That certainly was the case with Blockbuster when Netflix came along.

America’s radio stations that have a relationship with their audience will not have to live in fear. Relationships can transcend technology. Just ask Howard Stern’s listeners.

What concerns me is when audience relationships that took years to build are so quickly dismissed with automation in one of its various forms. Do you think radio would have grown to be the industry it is had it started out with automation?

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This post was previously published in RBR-TVBR’s “Thought Leaders” on October 3, 2014 and in the New Jersey Broadcasters Association’s “QuickNews” on October 10, 2014.