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.
September 29, 2014 · 7:34 pm

Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow

Kritin CantrellWhat do you need to do to be successful in life? Adopt these simple nine words as your mantra. “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

I had the opportunity to interview Kristin Cantrell, owner and operator of four radio stations in Frankfort, Kentucky about the radio industry. Kristin said these are exciting times to be in radio, because radio is so well positioned to pull from all the various media platforms and put it together to solve problems for local businesses.

Radio is a “high touch emotion” medium and as long as it continues to deliver all that it’s capable of delivering to the listener, it will always be relevant.

Cantrell will be the first to admit that she has no idea what radio will look like in the future. Maybe we will just say the word “radio” and it will start playing in our ears. Maybe we won’t even have to say anything, just think it and it will start up, like Stephen Hawking can make his computer talk using his thoughts. But what she does know is that wherever radio is going, her radio stations will be there.

Cantrell also knows that radio is better when it reduces clutter. She said when she took over the radio stations in Frankfort; she immediately reduced the commercial inventory per hour on all four of her radio stations. Today she airs ten minutes of commercial messages per hour with a couple of the drive hours running no more than twelve minutes.

If you’re a student who’s thinking of being in the radio industry, Cantrell advises that you be well read, passionate and genuine. People who have these qualities will succeed.

It all comes down to just nine simple words: “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

If you’d like to see my interview with Kristin, you can view it here: http://kbawku.nationalradiotalentsystem.com/index.php/guest-faculty/23-faculty/111-kristincantrell

Kristin really must love what she’s doing as she just recently announced the purchase of seven more radio stations in Pennsylvania.

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September 25, 2014 · 12:43 am

“Do The Bartman”

1I do most of my radio listening these days via Internet and radio station streams. Two of my favorite radio stations that get a lot of my listening time are WCBS-FM in New York City and KRTH in Los Angeles.

I’ve been listening to K-Earth 101 (KRTH) for quite some time via the Internet. Unfortunately the sonic quality of the stream was anemic at best. This point was really driven home when I took a college spring break to drive the Pacific Coast Highway.

My drive began at LAX. Just as soon as I was handed the keys to my rental convertible, I turned on the radio and cranked up K-Earth 101 and one of my favorite radio personalities, Shotgun Tom Kelly. (Kelly just marked his 17th anniversary of holding down the PM drive slot, a position previously held by fellow Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, The Real Don Steele.) Man, did that station explode from my car’s dashboard; big and bold with a sound that begged for a driver to put the pedal to the metal on the 405.

When I got back home to Kentucky, I put the K-Earth stream on and was disappointed by the lack of audio gusto. That is, until recently. K-Earth now sounds as good on their stream as they do over-the-air. And that’s not surprising as a lot of stations are really paying attention to the audio quality of their streams. But that, unfortunately, is all they are apparently paying attention to.

Which brings me to “Do The Bartman.” That was a song that Michael Jackson (yes, that MJ) wrote for Bart of The Simpsons. Michael was a big Simpsons fan and he called the show’s producers and volunteered to write a hit song for Bart. (He did and it was.) How do I know this? K-Earth and WCBS-FM told me. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again….well you get the idea. They told me this factoid a lot. And I’m not talking over a course of days, try in the same break. Sometimes this factoid ran back to back in that break.

OK, I realize that someone thought it would be a good idea when the stream didn’t have the same amount of commercials sold that the over-the-air programming had, to fill that extra time up with something cute. And it was cute, the first ten times I heard it. But cute goes bad quickly. And cute can really begin to annoy the listener with a very high burnout rate.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether I listen to WCBS-FM with Scott Shannon in the morning (Scott’s doing some of his best radio work ever by the way) or drive home with Shotgun Tom Kelly on K-Earth 101, I will be subjected to the “Do The Bartman” factoid quite a few more times before a new factoid is researched, written and replaces it.

You don’t hear this lack of attention to detail on pure play streams. And that’s where pure plays have the advantage over broadcast radio stations that stream.

Brian Boyer of NPR nails it when he says “Our biggest rule is that if it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work,” adding, “Mobile-first design is a great mind hack.”

Today’s broadcasters now understand that the sonic quality of their streams is as important as their over-the-air signal, but they still haven’t got the programming of the breaks right yet. It’s really more than just the length of the breaks by broadcasters vs. pure plays, but that’s a big deal too. Broadcasters need to listen to their streams and ask themselves, “Am I happy with the way this sounds?” My bet is they would not be happy.

Oh no, here comes “Do The Bartman” for the umpteenth time.

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September 17, 2014 · 8:12 pm

Clear Channel Media & Entertainment becomes iHeartMedia

Tom Taylor wrote this morning in his NOW digital publication “A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet.” What interesting about that old Bill Shakespeare line from Romeo & Juliet is that researchers have actually found that would not be true. Turns out a name can affect how we perceive a lot of things – smell, attractiveness etc. Teaching the next generations at the university I can pretty confidently say that iHeartMediathey have no clue what “clear channel” means when it comes to either class of AM radio station or to the behemoth media company (The exception being those who take my History of American Broadcasting class). Since the Clear Channel name is posted on tons of billboards across our land, they most likely equate the name with that form of media. (And iHeartMedia is not changing the name of the billboard division). However, ask my students about iHeartRadio and not only do they have an opinion, but the App on their smartphone. To the radio diehards it may feel like the tail is wagging the dog, but the reality is digital is now the dog and broadcasting is the tail. But what a mighty tail it is and radio has an incredible advantage if it puts that tail to work for it’s future in digital.

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