Tag Archives: Tim Cook

August 2, 2015 · 7:00 am

What if…

I had the opportunity to sit in on a webinar on “The Creative Economy” that is considered to be the direction the future of business is headed in compared to the traditional business methods of the past. What is meant by the term “The Creative Economy?” It’s one where business revolves around the customer versus the past where the customer revolved around the business.

The Creative Economy also breaks from tradition in the sense that it means the goal of a company is no longer about making money for the stakeholders but about delighting customers. But, you ask, isn’t “maximizing shareholder value” the mantra of Wall Street? Good question. Listen to what these CEOs have to say about that mantra:

            Jack Welch former CEO of GE: “the dumbest idea in the world”

            Vinci Group Chairman/CEO Xavier Hulliard: “totally idiotic”

            Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever: (has denounced) “the cult of shareholder value”

            Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce declared this still-pervasive business theory “wrong”

I guess it’s quickly losing favor with those who should know.

The Internet and “The Cloud” are enabling “The Creative Economy.”

Which brings me back to my initial question, “What if…”. What if radio stations were supposed to be small operations? What if the radio industry wasn’t meant to scale?

When I entered the radio business, companies were limited in the total number of radio stations they could own; in the entire USA. It was known as the 7-7-7 rule. A single company could own not more than 7 AM, 7 FM and 7 TV stations in all of America.

What this created was competition between owners of radio stations in a market. Each station was a team of people working as hard as they could to win the audience in that market. The focus was all about the listener or the viewer. Win the most listeners/viewers and advertisers would soon follow to showcase their wares on that radio or TV station’s airwaves.

Hearing “The Creative Economy” described on this webinar was like radio déjà vu.

In 1996, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Telcom Act of 1996 into law. That was the moment that the “land rush” for broadcast properties began and Wall Street became heavily invested in the radio industry. Wall Street would bring its “maximize shareholder value” mantra to broadcasting.

This point was really brought home to me in 1999 when my stations were sold to a large radio consolidator. The head of this “big box” radio operator told us that we needed to “sell, sell, sell” that it was all about making money for the company and “maximizing shareholder value.”

This “pump up the troops” speech left me cold. I was brought up in a radio world that was about operating “in the public interest, convenience and/or necessity.” I was brought up in a world where if we treated the members of our team well, our team focused on delighting the listener, the advertisers would flock to our station and the owners would be rewarded for doing everything right. That view of life served me well my entire radio career.

Needless to say, I opted not to remain with this new company.

However, I would find myself playing “musical chairs” going forward as it was getting impossible to not be working for a company that hadn’t adopted this modus operandi.

Steve Denning, who writes for Forbes, lead this webinar and pointed out that economics was driving the change for companies worldwide. He told us that no company is doing it all right. Companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Salesforce are moving in the right direction. In fact, Tim Cook is better at navigating the change to this style of management than Steve Jobs ever was and it no doubt is contributing to Apple being the most valuable company in the world. To give you an example of what it means to focus on the customer first, consider Tim Cook telling an investor in Apple this:

“If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”

That was kind of radio world I grew up in. We always tried to do the right thing for our employees, our listeners, our advertisers and the money would follow.

I’m encouraged that radio people who sold out when Wall Street was buying, are now getting back into the radio business with that same ethic, spirit and sense of innovation that seduced me into a four decade long radio career. They understand the concept of “The Creative Economy” because that’s how they built their radio companies the first time around. They also understand that today, radio is more of a concept of operation than a method of delivery.

I’m excited to be working with the next generation of radio broadcasters at my university knowing that radio’s future has never been brighter.

7 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 28, 2015 · 9:28 am

AM Radio, Streaming Radio, FCC Spectrum Auction & the Future

6Every June, I set-off on a road trip back to New Jersey to speak at the annual New Jersey Broadcasters Convention and Gala in Atlantic City. The roundtrip spans 3-weeks and I drive over 3,000 miles.

This year on the drive up I listened to AM radio and on the drive back I listened to streaming radio. I’d like to share my thoughts with you about what I heard and observed, as well as ponder what the future of both might hold.

Small signal AM radio stations primarily identify themselves with their FM translator dial position (How’s that saving AM radio?). The “pups” are mostly syndicated, automated, religious, sports or Spanish. They aren’t very engaging, which is probably a good thing if you’re driving because you don’t care when you lose the signal. Oh, and just try to hear their translator FM signal; forgetaboutit.

The “big dawg” signals (Bill Bungeroth, former Cumulus Broadcasting president used the term “big dawgs” for those monster signal radio stations and “little pups” for everything else and that’s where I picked it up) on AM like WOWO in Ft Wayne, Indiana, WJR in Detroit, Michigan, WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio and KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are in another universe when it comes to radio programming.

While listening to WOWO, I heard a powerful morning show that was fun, engaging and tuned into the Ft Wayne area. WJR told me about Frankenmuth, Michigan while their midday show was broadcasting live from this unique resort town on the great lakes. WLW was talking about how the Cincinnati police were getting body cameras and how they were loaning them to the news folks in Cincinnati to wear and learn how they work. It was fascinating radio. And KDKA was a potpourri of information about all things Pittsburgh; thoroughly engaging and very enjoyable.

I rode each of these big dawg stations for hundreds of miles and enjoyed listening to them every minute. Each was different, unique, fun, engaging and LOCAL.

The observation I made was that maybe the AM band should be reserved for these high power AM signals that have the bench strength to do great radio.

My drive home started in Albany, New York. I drove back to my hometown in Western Massachusetts following the NJBA Convention and Gala to visit a close family member that had suffered a significant stroke. Thankfully, that situation is improving daily.

I decided my drive back to Kentucky would focus on the other kind of radio available these days; streaming radio. My streaming provider of choice is called Radio Tunes. I like this service because their music formats are curated by people who know and love their genres. Jimi King out of London, England curates the Smooth Jazz channels. Smooth Jazz is a format that has almost completely disappeared from America’s airwaves.

Side Note: WNUA in Chicago, Illinois was a top five radio station playing the Smooth Jazz format. That is until the PPM became the listener measurement currency in Chicago and the other top 48 American metros chasing this format off FM radio. Is Smooth Jazz a PPM unfriendly format for PPM encoding? Might a Voltaire have helped Smooth Jazz? Just asking.

My first day of my 15-hour drive back home allowed me to listen to this streaming radio station through my iPhone4S fed into my car’s audio system with no dropout, no buffering, no disruption of any kind. The audio fidelity beats anything coming out of AM or FM terrestrial radio or SiriusXM too.

On day two of my drive home, I again put on Radio Tunes’ Smooth Jazz channel knowing that Jimi King and Stephanie Sales would be hosting a LIVE 3-hour Smooth Jazz show (they do this every Sunday). This makes Radio Tunes into a real radio station, though I will admit that I love the channel mainly because of all the things it doesn’t do the other 165 hours a week. However, for three of the 7-hours of my second day’s drive, the companionship was really nice.

Again, I experienced no disruption to my listening as I proceeded from Maryland and through the state of West Virginia and into Kentucky. I carried Radio Tunes all the way into Lexington, Kentucky where I stopped to have some lunch.

While eating lunch it occurred to me how well my reception to streaming radio through my smartphone was. It’s scary good when you think about it. Excellent fidelity, no dropout, buffering or other disruptions.

Brian Solis recently spoke at the PromaxBDA Station Summit and told attendees:

“Disruption happens because someone innovated and innovation changes behavior. A good place to start is thinking about a mobile experience. 74% of businesses have no plans to optimize their sites for mobile viewing meaning they don’t have a plan to stay competitive in the increasingly mobile world. If most content experiences are starting here, then that experience needs to be reimagined.”

It wasn’t until I left Lexington that I found gaps in the cell service and finally gave up my experiment of listening to streaming radio through my smartphone in my car.

My observations were cell service is becoming ubiquitous. There are times when having the companionship of LIVE personalities are appreciated versus just streaming music without any talk. Your smartphone gets really hot when you stream on it continuously for a lot of hours. The data use for streaming audio is not huge, like streaming videos or downloading pictures and if all the cell companies make streaming audio free from a person’s data usage plan, it would provide a serious threat to over-the-air radio. Just as Netflix, HBO, Showtime and other OTT (over-the-top) TV services are proving a challenge to cable companies, OTT radio services could be just as challenging to the radio industry.

Then I read this article “Could LTE Broadcast Technology Supersede Over-The-Air Broadcasting?” Listen to what this technology can do:

“LTE Broadcast is based on the eMBMS (Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) point-to-multipoint interface specification developed for delivery of any content received by multiple viewers at the same time, including files and emergency alerts as well as broadcast video. The motive in all cases was to avoid consuming large amounts of bandwidth through transmission of the same data over multiple unicast sessions, which is particularly expensive in the case of HD video.”

Does that get your attention? Then read this second article “Further Consideration of LTE Broadcast”:

“LTE Broadcast is the most efficient mechanism to distribute the same content to many users, and is an important solution to address the 1000x data challenge. Initially focusing on venue-casting, LTE Broadcast can address many other media distribution such as software updates and breaking news. The evolution of LTE Broadcast makes it dynamic and more scalable, and in the long term, takes it even beyond mobile as a solution for next generation terrestrial TV.”

And anything done for TV is even simpler to do for radio.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has been reported saying:

“There is a widening skills gap where the existing workforce has been educated and trained to obtain jobs of yesterday and not the jobs of today and tomorrow.”

The broadcast game is rapidly moving to the cellular platform. If you’re wondering why Tim Cook is jazzed about Apple Music it’s because he understands broadcasting is entering a new era. The future belongs to those who can deliver superior content to the global village known as planet Earth.

Now which company do you think has a better chance of winning this race? Apple with $178 billion cash in the bank or, I don’t know, say iHeartMedia with $20.7 billion in debt?

The FCC’s spectrum auction is all about creating more spectrum for the mobile communication platform.

Now do you understand why spectrum is being reallocated?

3 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 14, 2015 · 8:18 am

Remember When Radio Was Agile?

Have you heard about the latest management movement?  It’s called “Agile” (but it can also be called “Scrum”).

Actually, to be more accurate, there’s “management” and then there’s “Agile.”  They are not one in the same.  Another way to picture them is one is a vertical style of management and the other is a horizontal style of operating.

The vertical style is familiar to anyone working in one of today’s highly consolidated public radio companies that own hundreds of stations.  The top of the management pyramid says “jump” and the troops respond with “how high?”  You may also find that the company circulates a “Best Practices” manual and wants every station to implement it even though a person on the front lines may wonder if these are “best practices” in their particular case.

The military model was the genesis of the vertical style of management.  New York City’s tall vertical skyscrapers are literal structures of top-down management.

Then I started reading about Agile.  Agile is a horizontal mindset.  Everyone in a company is working towards the same goals and on an equal plane.  The planning and execution is a shared endeavor all designed with one goal in mine and that is to delight a customer.

While both vertical and horizontal styles are business models and the purpose of a business is to create a customer (and ultimately a profit), the radical difference is vertical puts that profit goal front and center and has everyone focused on achieving that goal.  The horizontal style says if we delight our customers, then the profits will follow.  The customer is front and center and the focus of everyone who works at the company.

I’ve worked with couple of the big consolidators and I’ve heard the CEO’s message of how much the stakeholders had invested in the company and how we all needed to be focused on reaching or exceeding our goals.

But that’s not the style of radio I entered.  Back in my early days, the radio station; often owned by folks who lived and were active in the community, the focus was on our listeners and our advertisers.  Everyone in the radio station worked towards the same goals of delighting our two constituencies.

We didn’t call it “Agile” or “Scrum” but doing GREAT radio and operating in the public interest, convenience and/or necessity.  OK, not to get too Pollyanna, there was a vertical structure of sorts – a GM, PD, SM – but we all worked side-by-side in the same building and everyone did whatever was needed to be done to delight our customers.  It was a team effort.  It was a horizontal style of operating.

What changed was the Telcom Act of 1996.  That new law would change the face of radio through massive consolidation of radio stations.  All of these little horizontal operating enterprises would be stacked one on top of another until we had a vertical style of operating.  Now a group of folks would declare they were “the adults in the room” and start passing out thumb drives filled with spreadsheets full of revenue goals.

Nowhere were there discussions of delighting the customers.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has made it abundantly clear that Apple is not always going to do things that simply fatten the bottom line and that if you are an investor in Apple that doesn’t like that way of operating, maybe you should invest your money someplace else.  Apple is going to delight the customer  – as Steve Jobs so simply stated – by making insanely great products.

How’s that focus on the customer working out for Apple?  Very well, thank you.  Apple has posted the largest net quarterly profit in history. Not in just Apple’s history but in the history of the world.

Radio is a fabulous business!  Radio entertains, informs and is there in times of emergencies to hold a community together.  But radio performs best when it is operated horizontally and not vertically.

Mary Meeker in her most recent “Internet Trends report at Re/Code” had a slide in her 180-slide deck that spoke most passionately I think to this concept of operating horizontally.  That slide was titled “Diversity Matters….It’s Just Good Business” and here is what the body copy of the slide said:

            “One of the things I have learned about effective decision making is that the best decisions are often made by diverse groups of people.

Saying or hearing these words is magic…..

‘That’s really interesting.  I had never thought of that way before.  Thank you.’”

That sure sounds to me like Mary was making a plea for companies to re-think how they operate and level the playing field by moving to a horizontal style of operating.

The reason the radio industry was so attractive to Wall Street investors was because it was a high cash flowing business that appeared easy to operate.

My roller skating coach used to tell me “Dick when you make it look easy, then you’re doing it right.”  Radio used to be doing it right.  It’s really a lot harder than it looks.  It’s time to go back to that way of operating.

OR – you can continue doing things the way you did last year and watch “flat revenue growth be the new up.”  Doesn’t sound like the radio industry has much to lose by changing their ways.

The good news is there are radio operators who are returning to the business that see the opportunities in the horizontal approach to radio station operations.  It’s a movement that will not only be good for the radio industry but the listeners and advertisers served by the industry.

It’s called Win-Win-Win.

3 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,