Tag Archives: Digital

March 26, 2023 · 3:00 am

Dealing With Change in Media Sales

It’s human nature to both want change to happen, and rue the day it does.  The 12th annual State of Media Sales presentation was a mixed bag of good and bad news for advertising sales. During the webinar, SalesFuel Founder and CEO C. Lee Smith, BIA Advisory Services VP of Forecasting and Analysis Nicole Ovadia, and AdMail Director of Sales Denise Gibson presented the latest research.

Where Ad Spend Growth in 2023 is Expected

The research broke down the areas of expected growth for over-the-air (OTA) television, radio, linear cable, out-of-home, print/direct mail and digital, but without getting into the weeds, growth will be in the millions for traditional media and digital growth in 2023 is expected to be in the billions.

What’s Getting Easier

All media sales managers say that selling online/digital advertising is getting easier, as well as the ability to upsell existing accounts, compete with other media, meet advertiser expectations and sell mobile advertising.

What’s Getting Harder

All media sellers say that generating new business and overcoming advertising churn are tied for #1. Those are followed by meeting management/corporate expectations, the ability for them to make more money, the difficulty in selling traditional media advertising and getting/staying motivated to do the job.

Top 5 Job Frustrations

Sales managers today say their top job frustration is the lack of sales talent but that’s probably due a general lack of optimism about the future of the media industry everyone is reading about. Rounding out the Top 5 Frustrations are account attrition, sales staff turnover and lack of lead generation.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands.

Yet it is experience, rather than understanding,

that influences behavior.”

-Marshall McLuhan

All Things Digital

The media companies that will not only survive but thrive are those that embrace the change from traditional to digital media. Expect “the demand for skilled digital marketers to only increase in the coming years,” says LinkedIn.

If you’re a seller, digital marketing is the top skill you need to learn in 2023 to boost your career. Yes, change is challenging, but all the arrows point to now being the best time to learn these new skills and kickstart your career.

Every success story is a tale of

constant adaption, revision and change.

-Richard Branson

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March 5, 2023 · 3:00 am

What’s Your BHAG?

The past couple of weeks have featured some pretty intense webinars on where the media industry is headed and my mind is still spinning from all that was shared.

Let’s start with the meaning of BHAG (pronounced Bee-Hag); which means to have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, a term coined from the book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Poras. President Kennedy presented America with a BHAG when he said the United States would put a man on the moon.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”


-John F. Kennedy, President

The Elements of a BHAG

All companies have goals; probably too many actually, causing employees to have a lack of collective focus on what’s really important. So, what are the elements of a BHAG?

  • A BHAG is a compelling, long-term goal that brings employees together and inspires them to take action.
  • BHAGs should pull employees out of a slump and give them a reason to tackle a big-picture-type plan.
  • BHAGs should cause an organization to focus on a common enemy, and on a defined target, while bringing about an internal transformation.

From what I’m hearing in these webinars,

the radio industry needs a BHAG for digital.

Gordon Borrell

In a Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) webinar “Digital Sales Approach $2 Billion” Gordon stressed the importance of have a long-term revenue BHAG for digital sales. He said radio stations should consider hiring digital-only sales reps.

Larry Rosin

Edison Research President Larry Rosin co-hosted the 25th Anniversary of Edison’s “The Infinite Dial Study.” It was truly eye-opening to realize how much audio media access has changed over the last quarter century.

  • Internet access 1998 (31%) versus 2023 (95%)
  • Households with computers 1998 (~50%) versus 2023 (91%) where computers have become smartphones we carry with us
  • Streaming digital audio listening 1998 (6%) versus 2023 (70%)

Why I Stream ALL My Radio Listening

On January 9, 2022, I began my 8th year of blogging with an article on why I stream all of my radio listening and how it’s so easy for anyone to do what I do. In our home, we effortlessly connect to the internet and streaming digital audio using Amazon’s Echo. I can’t remember the last time I played a record, cassette tape, reel-to-reel tape, CD or thumb drive; anything I want to hear can be heard on demand by voice command.

As a family, we don’t’ have the latest cars, Sue has a 2006 Subaru Forester and I have a 2009 Honda Accord, but both vehicles seamlessly connect to our iPhones when we enter the car and allow us to stream any digital audio content through our car’s audio systems.

Comscore Year-in-Review

As of December 2022, 91% of America’s population over the age of 18 are digital users. The Comscore webinar was especially eye-opening, when they told the audience that the “digital population grew relatively 2x more than the total population in the last 3 years with increasing emphasis on mobile usage.”

An average adult internet user will spend almost 4.5 hours a day

accessing the internet via desktop or mobile.

-Comscore Media Metrix Multi-Platform United States 18+ Total Digital Population

Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks, responded “because that’s where the money is.” Now you know why all media entities are racing to win with their digital media offering.

The interconnectedness of audiences

is where the wins will be found in measurement.

-Jason Clough, Senior Director, Partnerships & Insights, Comscore

I think Jason Clough perfectly summed up what radio’s BHAG should be in the above slide from his presentation: if media wants to stay relevant to its audience and win with any audience measurement metric, it must interconnect with them.

But, instead of “interconnectedness”…

Think “EXPERIENCES.”

Is your radio station delivering the best listener experience, wherever and however they access your programming?

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February 5, 2023 · 3:00 am

Option A or Option B

Over the years as I’ve been writing this blog, some of my critics have accused me of being negative on the future of radio broadcasting, comparing me to a “radio chicken little” that each week proclaims the sky is falling.

It’s hard to read something that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Predictably Irrational

I’ve been a fan of Dan Ariely, with his Predictably Irrational  books and his column “Ask Ariely,” which was published in the Wall Street Journal for just over ten years. If you don’t know, Dan Ariely is an Israeli-American professor and author, serving as a James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University.

On September 26, 2022, he announced that he was ending “Ask Ariely”, a weekly column that he has been writing since June 2012.

At that time, the reasons he gave were “our society now confronts some big, important, collective problems. We haven’t yet made up our minds as to how we will treat our planet, confront fake news, cope with a post-COVID workforce or mitigate the effects of inequality, hatred and political fragmentation.”

WOW, it kind of makes anything I write about concerning radio seem trite, doesn’t it?

Then, in December, Dan emailed his subscribers a letter called “End-of-Year Alternative Ask Ariely”, with thoughts that I’ve been mentally marinating.

Stay or Change

In life we are often faced with Stay or Change decisions.

  • Stay in our current job or Change to a new one
  • Stay married or Change to go our separate ways
  • Stay on the couch watching TV or Change to a more active lifestyle
  • Stay in the radio format we’ve done for the past 10 years or Change to something new

“In general, when we look at the decisions we make each day, most of them are not an outcome of active deliberation,” says Ariely.

The Future is Digital

One of the tough facts facing the radio industry is the move to an all-digital world. Inside Radio started off the new year with the headline story “Digital Audio Listeners Expected to Top 225 Million This Year.”

The facts they presented in the story were:

  • 74% of American internet users listened to digital audio in 2022
  • Time spent listening (TSL) to digital audio is increasing by its users
  • Digital audio consumption is nearly even with the TSL of broadcast TV daily
  • Digital TSL beats streaming video, using social media or playing video games
  • Digital adoption remains most common among younger generations
    • 91.1% among people aged 16-24
    (Smartphones are the dominant way young people listen to digital audio)

Last year saw the majority of Americans listening to digital audio on their smartphones while at home, and this number is expected to grow to 55.8% of the U.S. population by 2026 according to eMarketer.

eMarketer also points out that more than six in ten digital audio listeners in America were  paying for a streaming audio subscription in 2022. (Full disclosure, I pay for two different streaming audio services that began in 2022.)

The latest from Dave Van Dyke at Bridge Ratings research shows that digital media was the big winner in 2022, with 95% of consumers using websites or apps and 88% interacting with social media.

Then there was this headline from Edison Research, “Mobile’s Share of At-Home Audio Listening Leads AM/FM Receivers.” Edison has found that Americans over the age 13 now spend 35% of their daily audio listening time with digital audio via their mobile device while in their home. In contrast, Americans who are still listening on an AM/FM radio receiver is down to 26%. This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the most recent Infinite Dial research found 39% of American households have zero radios.

BBC Without Broadcast

BBC Director-General Tim Davie was recently reported saying: “A switch-off of broadcast will and should happen over time, and we should be active in planning for it.” Davie went on to say: “consumers are awash with choices from traditional broadcast and new streaming services [and that] a change to [the BBC’s] traditional model is necessary.”

The internet has removed

the historical distribution advantage

of broadcast media.

Changing Your Perspective

Most of the people who read this blog, have grown up with broadcast media, but a person born just 10 to 15 years ago is presented with two options for listening to audio content, broadcast or digital. For these young people, these two options have always existed.

Think of it as buying a new car with or without air conditioning. People buying cars in the mid-90s didn’t even consider buying a car without it, as it was offered as standard equipment by virtually all manufacturers on new cars.

Broadcasters weighing whether they should “stay” with what they’ve always done versus “change”, should reframe this question by labeling the choices as “Option A” or “Option B”.

  • Option A: Broadcast Media
  • Option B: Digital Media

As Dan Ariely explains, when you change the framing of this decision from one that considers “stay” versus “change” to one that considers Option A versus Option B, you put each choice on a more equal footing.

“The problem is that the natural framing of “stay” versus “change” gives an unfair advantage to the “stay” decision because it is simpler, it require less change, less work, and does not make us feel that we are making a decision. It also doesn’t make us think much about what we would risk if we made the wrong decision. Of course, staying might feel like we are not making a decision, but by staying we are making a decision. By reframing the decision as “Option A” versus “Option B”, some of the advantages of the stay options are reduced and it becomes clearer what we really want to do.”

So, what say you? “Option A” or “Option B”?

I’m all ears.

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December 4, 2022 · 3:00 am

Follow The Media Money

You’ve probably heard the catch phrase, “follow the money,” first popularized in the movie about the Watergate scandal, that detailed the work of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Since the 1970s, “follow the money” has seen extensive use by investigative journalists, and that’s what the most recent Borrell webinar looked at for 2023 with respect to media advertising dollars.

Media Spending Forecast

On November 29th Gordon Borrell and Corey Elliott presented Borrell’s Fall 2022 Fall Survey of Local Ad Agencies. Here’s how I interpreted the information they shared starting with the Top 5 types of media that agencies said their clients are planning to invest more money into next year, and also the 5 they will be cutting:

            Investing More $$$                Planning to Eliminate

            Streaming Video                     Printed Directories

            Social Media                           Newspapers

            Search Engine Marketing        Other Printed Publications

            Streaming Audio                     Magazines

            Website Ads                            Cable TV

At first blush, things don’t look so rosy for print media, however, wrapped into that media category “Website Ads” are the digital versions of newspapers and magazines, to name just two.

I’ve been a digital subscriber to the Washington Post newspaper for a couple of years now and I also read Atlantic Magazine digitally.

When it comes to radio, the number of advertisers who say they will buy more radio ads about equals the number who say they will buy less. In other words, broadcast radio advertising looks to be treading water in 2023.

High Usage, High Effectiveness

When it came to what types of media direct buyers say are the best, we find five of them:

  • Social Media
  • Search Engine Marketing
  • Events
  • Banner Ads
  • Radio

OTT, Streaming Audio & ???

During the webinar I asked the following question:

“Streaming video is called Over-The-Top (OTT),

podcasts & other digital audio is called Streaming Audio,

what are digital newspapers and magazines called?”

Turns out the answer was both newspapers and magazines are included in the media category “Banner Ads” in this research.

So, while advertisers may not be interested in those paper and ink publications, they are interested in their digital products, and their digital offerings compete for the same ad dollars as broadcast radio and TV.

Broadcast TV was rated higher in effectiveness than radio by advertisers, but saw lower usage as one can assume it was most likely due to the cost of television advertising.

Streaming Audio

You can’t help to look at the high interest in “Streaming Audio” and not wonder why it doesn’t command more advertising dollars. Corey Elliott said the answer to this question of why they weren’t spending more ad dollars on streaming audio was simply that “no one pitched them.”

Search Engine Marketing #1

For direct buyers of advertising, Gordon Borrell pointed out that “for the first time in 13 years of surveying, broadcast TV doesn’t occupy the top spending spot, falling to roughly half of what it was in prior surveys.”

What beat broadcast TV was “Search Engine Marketing.”

Search Engine Marketing is a form of Internet marketing that involves

the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility

in search engine results pages primarily through paid advertising.

-Wikipedia

In 2023, DIGITAL will account for $7 of every $10 spent on local advertising and 45% of local ad buyers will purchase their advertising from fewer than 3 media companies.

2023 is forecast to see broader usage of virtually everything.

The media companies that are positioned to enjoy success in 2023, are:

  1. The companies that have invested in training and retaining their sales people in the area of all things digital, and
  2. Focused their company to deliver media products consumers want and enjoy on every digital media platform.

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November 29, 2020 · 3:00 am

Media Convergence, As Cold As Ice

When I was working on my undergraduate degree back in the early 70s, I did a research paper on media convergence. At that time, we thought that convergence would occur around cable television. But not today.

Even in the 90s, the concept of media convergence seemed like the world of Jules Verne. People consumed each source of information, on its own separate platform. Print came in the form of a magazine or newspaper. Radio, via a reception device designed to pick up only AM or FM radio signals and television, through a big picture tube encased in a giant wooden cabinet. It was beyond most of our imaginations that print, radio and television would ever be delivered to us on a single device that we could carry in our pocket; like today’s smartphone.

Even more amazing is the fact that our smartphones can also publish our written thoughts, broadcast our spoken word and even transmit our pictures/videos to today’s global village.

Maybe even more shocking to us as Boomers, is the fact that the Millennial generation doesn’t even have memories of the fragmented media world we grew up with.

How Innovation Changes Our World

In order to try and help media people understand how innovation can change the world as we knew it, let’s take a look at how bringing “cold” to the south set-off a change reaction of change.

Two hundred years ago, if you lived in the south, there was no way to escape the heat. Frederick Tudor, Boston’s “Ice King” would spend a decade figuring out how to transport ice from New England to the south and even around the world. New England’s natural ice would become so treasured, that in the early 1900s, it would become America’s second largest export after cotton.

Then a physician, Dr. John Gorrie, wanted to try to cool the hospital rooms of his Florida hospital, in order to make his patients who were burning up from fever more comfortable in the sweltering heat of the south. Gorrie invented a refrigeration machine, and when he applied for a patent on his invention, he wrote: “Artificial cold might better serve mankind. Fruits, vegetables and meat, would be preserved in transit by my refrigeration system and thereby enjoyed by all.”

When ice fishing, Clarence Birdseye learned how the Inuit Indians of the north flash froze the fish they caught, by leaving them out in the frigid air. This caused their catch to be instantly frozen and allowed the Inuit to keep their catch fresh to eat at a later time. This inspired Birdseye to improve artificial refrigeration to enable the flash freezing of all kinds of produce,  creating the frozen food industry.

Fred Jones, created refrigeration units that could be placed on tractor trailer trucks, shipping containers and railroad cars, allowing for long-haul transportation of perishable goods.

Innovation Eats Its Own

In the 1800s, having an idea to bring cold to a part of the world that was always hot, was considered an insane idea. Everyone thought Frederick Tudor was an oddball. His efforts to perfect the transportation and storage of natural ice at one point put him in debtors’ prison, but his persistence would eventually make him a very wealthy man, until the birth of mechanical refrigeration. Gorrie, Birdseye and Jones would bring an end to the natural ice industry, with their innovations in cold.

Big ideas don’t come from a “Eureka moment.” They come from one person asking themselves, “I wonder if…” From having a hunch that just won’t go away. Big ideas are created from many other people having small, incremental ideas, that then get networked together, and over time become the next big thing.

The Internet

Fifty-one years ago, at 10:30pm, the internet was born with the transfer of one simple message. Charley Kline, a student programmer at UCLA, would type the letters “L” and “O” and electronically send them more than 350 miles to the Stanford Research Institute’s computer in Menlo Park, California. The computer system immediately crashed after they were sent, but a communications revolution had begun.

Now if you think of analog communications as “natural ice” and digital communications as “artificial ice,” you can see it really isn’t unusual for new innovations to extinguish original big ideas.

While today, we’d never consider putting an old fashioned ice box in our modern kitchens, the business of selling ice still exists. I for one, still frequent my local convenience store’s ice box, to pick up a couple of bags of ice cubes for my picnic cooler.

Likewise, I think a need for a few local radio stations may remain, but only if they provide a unique and unduplicated service to their listeners.

But I also believe that the analog communication model will slowly fade into the background as new communication innovations come along and replace it.

AM/FM radio’s days, as we Boomers knew it, are numbered.

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April 8, 2018 · 3:00 am

Who Controls the Future of Digital?

digital futureI recently participated in a Hootsuite webinar by Simon Kemp on “The Future Forces of Digital, 2018 & Beyond.” It’s eye-opening and rather intuitive in its conclusions for where the internet of things is headed. Let me share with you what I learned.

The State of World Digital 2018

First, a dose of current reality:

  • World Population: 7.593 Billion
  • Population connected to the internet: 4.021 Billion (53%)
  • Active on social media: 3.196 Billion (42%)
  • Unique mobile users: 5.135 Billion (68%)
  • Active mobile social media users: 2.958 Billion (39%)

Right off the bat, seeing that 68% of the world’s population are now mobile users, most likely on a smartphone, was a wake-up call. And while social media is now ten years old, the world is still joining the conversation on social media at a rate of a million new users every day.

USA Digital 2018

Now that you have an idea of what’s going on globally, here’s what Simon told us about the current state of digital in America:

  • USA population: 325.6 million
  • USA population connected to the internet: 286.9 million (88%)
  • USA population active on social media: 230.0 million (71%)
  • USA population that are unique mobile users: 234.8 million (72%)
  • USA population that are active mobile social media users: 200.0 (61%)

We are past the tipping point for both mobile use and internet connectivity in America. In fact, 69% of Americans have now shopped online.

The researchers are forecasting content that inspires and educates will be more valued by this growing digital audience going forward, versus content that informs and entertains.

What Do We Do?

The big question we need to be asking ourselves in media is, what can we do that will make our target audience so excited about it that they would be willing to pay for it?

NPR/Public Radio and Christian Radio have figured this out and it’s why we have seen both formats doing so well in both audience ratings as well as listener support.

Every radio station should be asking this question, when planning any activity.

How Do We Know What Our Audience Wants?

Mayor Ed Koch knew how to find out what his constituents wanted. He asked them. Repeatedly.

Everywhere 3-term NYC Mayor Koch went, he asked “How am I doing?”

To get the answer to this question for your media property, ask your listeners. Your goal is to find out what your target audience wants, needs and desires in order to learn what will inspire them, educate them and make their lives better.Maslow's Needs Pyramid

Think Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” pyramid.

Tap into Your Influencers

Radio’s top influencers are their P1 listeners. To really understand your target audience, your P1 listeners are the ones you need to intimately know and take care of. Station logo’d stuff ought to be freely flowing to these important people, but it doesn’t stop there.

Your P1s are the people who understand what your target audience really cares about, and why. Think of them as consultants to your brand.

Lowest Common Denominator

In the next two to five years we can expect technology to accommodate the next billion users of digital media. People in the developing world, are the ones that will be shaping the internet.

They will impact ALL internet and mobile users.

Again, Simon gave these examples of that next billion users impact:

  • Literacy: lower levels of literacy will require different interfaces
  • Language: a greater variety of language needs will inspire new content formats
  • Technology: varying devices & connections will impact content format
  • Motivations: new wants, needs, and desires will inspire new products & services.

Most of today’s internet content is texted based but as populations of lower literacy levels sign-on, that will change this. Voice commands, image search and video content will become more dominant in the future.

Economies of Scale

Technology companies are already working to have all devices and interfaces operate the same way on a global basis. Everything will be designed to cater to the lowest common denominator because it makes fiscal sense. It’s already happening on Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

When Mr. Kemper walked his audience through this part of his presentation, I immediately thought of having Apple put FM receivers into their iPhones.

FM, HD Radio, DAB, DAB+ etc. are different standards for broadcasting OTA radio signals and do not meet the test of a global standard.

The Next Internet Revolution is Coming

Look for the next billion to drive the next internet revolution in the areas of:

  • Search: SEO will look very different for voice-centric search
  • Social: People’s social media interactions will be more video than text
  • Shopping: E-commerce orders will depend on spoken word
  • Addressing: URLs & Hyperlinks will move from text to image

Convergence

Something I researched back when I was an undergrad, convergence, is coming to fruition in my lifetime. Every form of media will be delivered over the same pathway and received on the same type of device plus it will be on-demand and on our schedule, not the creator’s schedule.

 

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September 10, 2017 · 3:00 am

Analog vs Digital

113Roy H. Williams writes a weekly article called the Monday Morning Memo. I’ve been reading it since the days when Roy used to fax it. Today it arrives every Monday morning via email.

Does it arrive via analog or digital?  Probably digital.

The fax days were when it arrived analog I’d guess.

The Other Kind of Advertising

Recently, Roy’s MMM was about “The Other Kind of Advertising.” What got my attention was that Roy made the comparison of analog world versus a digital world as the difference between Newtonian physics and Quantum Mechanics.

I was a physics major as an undergraduate in college.

In teaching at the university, I have often used elements from my physics education to give a better foundation to my students about universal principles that form the foundation for effective communication.

The Power of the Human Voice

When I speak to you, am I talking in analog or digital? You don’t care, do you? You never really even gave it a thought until I brought it up. What does get your interest is what I’m speaking to you about.

Radio gives the human voice amplification.

Word of Mouth is the Best Form of Advertising

Anyone who’s been in advertising sales has certainly been told over and over and over, that the best form of advertising is “word of mouth.”

My response to that has always been, “I agree with you!”

That’s why you should be on the radio because we are word of mouth, only we have the biggest mouth in town.

There are No Wrong People

Roy has preached for years, there are no wrong people to be reached by advertising, only wrong messages. Great advertising not only engages the mind, builds curiosity but causes people to share with other people what they’ve heard. That’s the magic of persuasive storytelling aka radio advertising.

But the Data Says

Google Analytics got everyone thinking that targeting was the most important thing in advertising. The new digital world of advertising was all about “reaching the right people.” But is that really effective?

The data for my radio stations back in northern New Jersey said that we reached the most people who were employed. So why would anyone run “Help Wanted” ads on my radio stations? Wouldn’t they, by definition, be the “wrong people?”

Turns out, that would be wrong.

People who are employed are the very ones that know people who aren’t. And then there are people looking for a better job or a job that’s closer to where they live.

Often people who ARE employed are not happy in their current job and radio help wanted ads may entice them to make a change.

Belief Systems

If you have a deterministic belief system then you are like a Newtonian physicist. If you have a probabilistic belief system then you are like a physicist who works in the world of Quantum Mechanics.

In advertising, the first group would be marketers who use predictive data and the second group would be marketers who base their decisions on outcomes.

And just like with Newtonian physics and Quantum Mechanics, both are true.

Newtonian physics was used to put Americans on the moon and return them safely to earth. But it won’t explain how your computer or smartphone work. For that you need to use Quantum Mechanics.

String Theory

One of the goals of physics is to find a single theory that unites all of the four forces of nature. These are; electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. In other words what ties both Newtonian physics and Quantum Mechanics together. String theory maybe that unified path.

I believe that when it comes to effective advertising, we have already found our unified theory that ties analog and digital communication together.

The message is that string, that single element that makes both analog and digital equally effective.

The person who creates that message is critical.

Who is that person(s) in your organization? Do you even have someone dedicated to this creative, innovative, demanding, hypercritical position?

Sadly, many – dare I say most – radio stations don’t today.

Lightning In A Bottle

If creating persuasive radio commercials is part of your job description, let me give you a little help. Let me turn you onto some “Lightning In A Bottle.”

Blaine Parker is a Mercury Award Winning radio creative genius. He’s just published his latest book that reveals the 3 easy rules for writing more profitable radio commercials.

WARNING: This book is short & expensive!

Full disclosure, Blaine asked me to write the forward to his book, so I can truthfully reveal to you I’ve read it and believe in everything Blaine has written to be seductively effective.

I have no financial interest in the sale of this book. My financial interest is in you, your radio station and your advertisers to effectively tell their story and get results.

You can buy “Lightning In A Bottle” on Amazon by clicking HERE.

Analog or Digital, Who Cares?

I wrote today’s post on a digital computer. You received it via email or are a subscriber to my weekly blog articles (subscriptions are FREE) via the internet.

But whether I shared all of this in a face-to-face conversation or via AM/FM radio or via HDRadio or via an internet stream, the message conveyed would be the unifying element that either caused you to read all the way to the end or bail out early.

And powerfully, persuasive messages do not cause you to remember every word, but they will forever change how you feel about a product, service, business or person.

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January 25, 2015 · 9:18 am

The Problem with Digital Radio

The problem with digital radio is FM radio. FM radio is loved by the consumer. They don’t find anything wrong with FM radio (other than too many commercials). With no perceived need to change, the FM radio listener doesn’t. That’s not just a problem for radio station owners in America, but all around the world.

I often like to compare the start of HD Radio with the introduction of the iPod by Apple. Both happened about the same time. One has sold hundreds of millions of units and now is no longer made, and the other is HD Radio.

Interestingly enough, the introduction of digital audio broadcasting was born around the same time as the World Wide Web. It was born before MP3s and iPods. Born long before the advent of Smartphones and Tablets and yet, digital in the world of over-the-air radio transmission is still waiting to get traction with the consumer.

FM radio commanded 75% of all radio listening in America back in the 1980s when the number of AM and FM radio stations in America numbered about the same. So it’s no surprise that over three decades later that FM dominates when the number of FM radio stations, translators (FM stations) and LPFM (FM stations) far outnumber AM radio stations that are on-the-air today in the USA.

Across the pond, the British government was planning to switch that country’s radio listening from FM analog to digital when the penetration of digital radio listening reached 50%. They thought that would happen by 2015. Currently digital radio listening in England stands at only 36% and the government has now wisely put off setting a new date for this transition.

The problem in England goes beyond just radio sets in homes and cars. British folks also can listen to FM radio on their Smartphones. Unlike here in America, the FM chip that comes inside Smartphones has been turned on. These chips remain in the off position in America with no way for a Smartphone owner to turn it on without “jailbreaking” their phone which is illegal. The members of parliament aren’t about to turn off a system that serves around 25 million listeners, if they want to get re-elected.

I own one HD Radio. My local NPR FM radio station broadcasts with 100,000 watts on their analog FM signal. It’s crystal clear and comes in everywhere I go. They simulcast their NPR and other talk programming on their HD Radio signal too. That is plagued with dropout and a short range in terms of where I can pick it up. The same HD Radio that picks up the digital broadcast of my local NPR radio station also has an FM tuner (but no AM tuner). I can switch between the analog FM and digital FM, and to my ears they sound about the same. And therein lies the problem. No perceived difference other than one goes great distances with no drop out and the other is HD Radio.

At this point in time, what seems clear is that is FM radio isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. AM radio station operators would benefit by having a similar FM signal that delivers the same coverage area as their AM license provides sans the sky wave effect. Giving them a low power translator is an insult in my opinion. All Smartphones should have their FM chips turned on. NextRadio should be embraced by FM broadcasters. All broadcasters need to focus on their content and make sure that whether it’s over-the-air or over-the-Internet, it’s of the same high quality and offers all of the same content on both.

I’ve never heard an FM radio listener complain about the quality of their signal and what they do complain about, isn’t being focused on by broadcasters. We have no time to lose.

FM radio has the delivery system in place. Take advantage of it to serve, entertain and inform.

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January 11, 2015 · 11:43 am

Combined or Separate?

When I started in radio sales, the company I went to work for after leaving programming and operations ran an AM/FM combo that simulcast all of their programming. Selling for these two stations meant every spot sold was heard on both broadcast bands. (Piece of cake)

Then one day, the owner announced the signals were being split apart. The AM station would program an entirely different format from the FM station, but the sales team would be selling both separately programmed radio stations. (A two layer cake)

Anyone who has some history in the radio business will tell you the answer to the age old question of whether it’s better to field two separate sales teams for an AM/FM combo versus having one sales team. In fact they will give you a definitive answer: “it depends.” (Did someone leave my cake out in the rain?)

Before the radio industry could wrap their brain around this puzzle regarding sales staffing, along comes the Telcom Act of 1996 and companies now own clusters of radio stations. It was now possible for a cluster to number 5 or more radio stations serving a metro. (My cake is melting, melting. Did I mention I never really understood the lyrics to MacArthur Park?)

One brave company in Florida announced they were going with the single sales force concept for their nine station cluster. That got my attention as I was now in management. Well you can imagine I wanted to catch up with these folks at the next RAB Managing Sales Conference to find out how it was going. I did. I asked. The answer they gave me? “Oh well.” “Oh well?” I asked puzzled. They then explained it was very difficult to find radio sales person who could manage selling multiple formats (music, talk, sports, etc). They maybe had one person on their rather large sales team that could do it. A couple could handle maybe 50% of the cluster at the same time, but the rest maybe two radio stations in the cluster at most. The result was they abandoned the idea of one sales team selling everything.

Closer to home, I launched a print program at a cluster I was managing that had an AM station, an FM station and an LMA’d FM station. We had separate a separate sales team selling the LMA’d FM station and a combo sales team selling the owned AM/FM stations. It was decided that all sales people would now sell the new print program. I should explain the print program was actually two components. It was a quarterly coupon book distributed in five different mailing zones in the metro and then there was a calendar that was sold in all the mailing zones on an annual basis.

So, my sales force was now responsible for selling radio spots (and promotions) where you saw the advertiser today and he started in the next couple of days. A print coupon book where you saw the advertiser today and the ad would come out in the next quarter. And an ad in a calendar you sold today and it came out next year.

So how did that work out? Fabulously, actually. Till it didn’t.

What we would learn is it was a good way to launch and put immediate new revenue on the books. Over time the print program re-trained our radio sellers; which was an unintended consequence. They soon learned when an advertiser said they didn’t want radio ads; they had found themselves a print customer.

After an ownership change, I made the decision to break away our print program into a separate entity with its own management and sales people.

So it was no surprise when Borrell Research came out with their latest research study this week “2015 UPDATE: Assessing Local Digital Sales Forces” and it said that those companies that had sales people who were digitally focused produced more digital revenue than those that had one sales team selling everything. You can find the full report clicking on the hyper-link.

Quoting from Borrell’s Executive Summary: “The result is stark: Those with digital-only sellers report far greater confidence in their staff’s ability to understand market trends and clients’ digital needs, and they generate four times as much digital revenue. For instance, two different newspapers, each with a total of 22 sales reps, reported $7 million in digital sales last year and $360,000 in digital sales. The difference? One had seven digital-only reps; the other had none.

But before you get the idea that I’m taking the position separate is best, it really depends…..depends on the skill level of your sales people and their embracing of new technology and new ideas.

When I was starting out in radio sales I got to see and hear a lot of great sales trainers. One that I really liked was Don Beverage. Don would categorize sellers in one of four ways. They were “Commercial Visitors,” “Product-Oriented Peddlers,” “Problem Solvers,” or “Sustaining Resources.” See the snake in the wood pile when it comes to answering the question “Combined or Separate?”

If your sales team is made up of first three types of sellers, separate your sales force. If they are level four sales people, “Sustaining Resources” then you might win with a combined force.   But here’s one more twist. The very best sellers will be “Problem Solvers” with some of their clients and “Sustaining Resources” with others. Even Don Beverage was quick to point out that reaching the level of “Sustaining Resource” was being in rarified air.

So you know a “Sustaining Resource” level of selling is when the client believes in you so much that they pick up the phone and call you in BEFORE they take the first step in the advertising/marketing program. YOU are part of the team that will create and design the strategy and then plan out the tactical steps to get to the finish line and win.

So there you have it. Put on MacArthur Park by Richard Harris and spend the 7-minutes, 25-seconds and ponder what’s best for your operation.

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January 4, 2015 · 6:22 am

Entertainment for nothing….

When radio was born, no one had a clue how to make money with it. The early radio station operators made radio sets. They knew if they wanted to sell radio sets, they had to provide something for those radio sets to pickup and for the people who owned those radio sets, something entertaining to listen to.

It was AT&T, that didn’t make radio sets, that was the first radio operator to try selling the first radio commercial over their radio station WEAF. AT&T was in the phone business and the selling of phone lines to carry network radio programming. It put on-the-air a radio station merely to understand the business better. Not wishing for it to be an expense, they went looking for a way to make their radio station pay for itself, if not make a profit.

Many ways of making money with radio stations were tried, but by the late 1920s, the selling of advertising reached the tipping point for this business model going forward. Radio had conditioned people to expect, that if they bought a piece of hardware – a radio set – the content would be provided for free; albeit supported by advertising.

When the Internet came along, people expected to buy the hardware – a computer, modem and connection to the World Wide Web – but they expected that the content would be free, and it was; again supported by advertising.

Newspapers and magazines grew up with no hardware to buy, just the content that was printed on paper. The subscription cost was relatively low and advertising would pick up the rest of the expense along with providing the owners a nice profit.

The problem today is newspapers and magazines have joined radio and television in the new distribution channel of the Net. Two of these mediums should be adept at marketing their content in this manner and the other two, well, are finding it challenging.

Cable TV’s HBOs and SHOs, on the other hand, charged for their content from the get-go. And when Netflix came along, it also created the pay-for-content habit which it easily converted from the mail to the Net. They also provided their content commercial free. This created an expectation that when you pay for content, you don’t have to have your content interrupted by ads.

The pay walls that have been tried by newspapers and magazines include advertising, but that’s only part of the problem. You see the print consumer was never really paying for the entire cost of printing and distribution. They merely made a contribution to that cost. The rest of the cost was picked up by the publisher, who gladly subsidized the whole thing because of the tremendous profits they realized via the sale of advertising. The other is a case of supply vs. demand. The supply of content has never been greater and the demand, so fragmented. This post is just one example of the free content anyone can get off of LinkedIn with a free account or via my blog (DickTaylorBlog.com).

The bucket of cold water reality is that marketers are more willing to pay to reach consumers with their message than consumers are willing to pay for content they want to consume.

So why are radio and television spinning their wheels while others (BuzzFeed, Vice Media, etc.) are walking away with the mother lode? To paraphrase the famous line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”: What we have here is a failure to innovate.

Radio and TV merely want to put their content on the Net and count the money. To compare it to sports, these two legacy mediums are good at baseball (over-the-air) and now when they move to the Net, where the game is football, they want to continue playing baseball.

In radio, FM finally came into its own when young broadcasters were given the chance to innovate. We are living during a communications revolution. Revolutions are periods of huge disruption to what was, as what will be gets created. The new opportunities are being seized by those not clinging to their old business models. The bad news is the “good old days” aren’t coming back. The good news is, what will replace them will be just as good, if not better.

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