Innholdsfortegnelse for February 13, 2017 i Radio Ink Magazine

I Imagine for a moment that your transmitter went down for five days. How would you still make significant contact with your listeners to keep them engaged, to communicate with them, and to get them back once you got back on the air? You say it could never happen? Perhaps not, but sometimes the best plans do go wrong. Back in the 1970s, I was the PD of a station where this nightmare came true. Five full days off the air due to some tech issue that couldn’t be solved. Our transmitter was destroyed, and our backup was somehow destroyed as well. I felt totally helpless. Our team of air personalities went to work quickly on a visibility plan that included five full-page ads in the local paper. I don’t…

The day I committed to asking for local direct annual contracts was the beginning of my road to becoming the top biller in my market. And I learned how to do that by paying attention to the small advertising agencies that were stealing my clients. These agency principals were not creative geniuses by any means. But they were better at asking for and getting long-term contracts than the media salespeople. That was a fact back then, and it’s still a fact today. Here’s how to get started. Use a headline to get an appointment. “Hi, my name is Paul, and I just wanted to see if we could meet and talk about your advertising” just wasn’t working for me. So I’d say things like, “Hello, we noticed a huge mistake…

Our new president uses his social media to reach the masses — but not everyone in radio is using theirs. Somehow, quietly, without fanfare, over the past dozen years or so, everyone has been given their own “transmitter.” Their very own transmitter. This may come as a shock, but in many ways, each social media platform is its own “social media transmitter,” sending messages one-to-many — it’s strikingly similar to the basic premise of broadcasting. People don’t need a federal license to operate these multiple transmitters. They just start posting content. Listener Interaction Goes Global, But You Have The Edge The social media explosion means your listeners are “transmitting” their content, too. So there’s obviously more content to cut through. But radio people have the edge here (this is key):…

One of the questions I’ve been frequently asked over the years by group heads, owners, and sales managers is “Who’s making money on digital, and how are they doing it?” Luckily, digital has been the bright spot in revenue growth for many groups where traditional has been flat, or up by perhaps one point. One trait shared by groups generating digital revenue is that they understand that digital isn’t a separate “silo” or business unit that is mutually exclusive with their broadcast business, but rather an important component for delivering integrated, cohesive campaigns that generate ROI for their advertisers. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to successfully generating digital revenue. A large, national group with major-market stations is going to be much more successful at monetizing display and other digital…

CRS will present Peter Smyth, former chairman/ CEO of Greater Media, with its 2017 Tom Rivers Humanitarian Award at this year’s conference. There could be no one more deserving. Peter’s outstanding record of service to community is part of the reason his leadership has always been recognized and admired throughout the industry. What defines a good leader? A good leader is someone who hires individuals who can ultimately take his or her job. When you look them in the eye and think they can do it, you want them on your team! Great leaders are individuals who build strong organizations that can survive their architects because they hired the best people. A good leader doesn’t ask someone to do something he or she wouldn’t do. From salesman to chairman, I’ve…

We’re circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet. If this dirt-covered rock we occupy were the size of a standard schoolroom globe covered with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish would represent the air we breathe. Like it or not, we’re all in this together. All seven and a half billion of us. When it gets dark tonight, look up at the stars. You’ll be looking out the window of our spaceship. If we could aim our 11,000-degree fireball at the nearest of its siblings — those things we call the stars — it would take us 63,000 years to get there, even though we would be shooting through space at 52 times the…

Sales managers, raise your hands: How many of you are looking at your downtrodden, well-meaning, well-trained salespeople who return from a day on the battlefield, scarred by the big objection? Your clients are increasingly moving their money out of radio and onto the Internet — with more and more of it going to (yes) social media. Your clients have drunk the Kool-Aid. They’re so scared not to be there that they’ve even committed a chunk of their budget to hire a specialist — a social media expert. What to do? Well, even though you sharpened your spears and arrows (and your antenna), you may still be missing the mark. You need to tell your clients that everything they love about the Internet (and social media), you have right in that…

Do you remember what everybody did on September 12, 2001 (pause, ponder...)? Answer: They went to a house of worship. Many hadn’t been before, and many haven’t been since, but people went to church (or synagogue, etc.). The point is, while the digital economy evolves at light speed, we all still have the inescapable need for human community. The view is better on TV, but I will still freeze with strangers in the Cleveland Browns’ stadium because of our inescapable need for human community. And that’s what we do with our local brands: nurture the local need for human community. Therefore, some local autonomy in bringing these brands together with our local communities is critical. It’s our unique position moving forward. And while our brands may be extensions of major…

they are some of the most important names in Nashville, and across the Country radio fruited plain. They are on a first-name basis with country music’s biggest stars and Nashville’s most important executives. Why? Because radio is still the most important outlet for music to be played and heard, and the PDs on the pages that follow carry around the keys to the radio stations country music fans love most. The relationship between country stars, Country PDs, Country radio stations, and the country music fans is like none in any other format. If you’ve ever attended a Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, you know exactly what we mean. The stars mingle with the programmers, great relationships are formed, and a lot of artists and PDs talk or text on a…

1. Live and local 5 a.m.-midnight, seven days a week. Voicetracking is fine if you must do it, but a radio station is more “alive” when people are on the air. It’s what makes radio special. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about how stations miss acknowledging celebrity deaths in real time because they are tracked. Talent would receive regular coaching from the industry’s best. 2. Creative programming in real time. I want the best PD/brand manager, who lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps his or her radio station. Imaging would be updated daily to reflect what’s going on in the market and around the world. Music might be adjusted daily, whenever new information or great new songs are available to air. 3. Constant research. I’d have weekly music and perceptual callouts…

Before we address the question of whether we’re killing the golden goose, let’s verify that broadcasting is still very much a “golden goose” compared to most other industries. According to the NYU Stern School of Business, we enjoy a 17.64 percent after-tax operating margin, well above the all-industry average of 9.51 percent. Our furniture and home furnishings advertisers struggle to surpass a 6.72 percent margin, automotive sales margins hover around 4.87 percent, and grocery and food industries eke out 2.78 percent margins. Even the lucrative aerospace/ defense industries only turn 10.57 percent margins. Our newspaper competitors struggle to reach 7.07 percent operating margins. So let’s agree: Our industry is still in its golden goose cycle. But we’re killing that goose by incurring debt to buy more geese than we can…

In 2003, Michael Lewis released the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The central premise of Moneyball is that the collective wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century has been subjective and often flawed. Lewis describes how Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s introduced a more sophisticated analysis of baseball statistics. By using statistics instead of subjective opinion to pick players, the A’s could field a competitive team on a small budget — a team that had a 20-game winning streak in 2002, and made it to the playoffs. The real lesson of Moneyball is that decisionmaking is risky and expensive. Decisionmaking is often flawed by unrecognized bias that tricks us into thinking we’re right when we…

In 2017, not only is Radio Ink celebrating its 25th birthday, our Radio Wayne Awards also turn 25. The Radio Wayne Awards were started in 1992, the same year The Pulse of Radio became Radio Ink. Chairman Eric Rhoads named the awards after “Radio Wayne” Cornils, and they recognize outstanding performance in radio leadership, management, and sales. In 1993 Weezie Kramer won a Radio Wayne for Sales Manager of the Year while she was working for WMAQ, which at the time was a 50,000-watt all-News AM in Chicago owned by Group W with a staff of 23 salespeople. Today, Kramer is the chief operating officer at Entercom, a position she has held since May of 2015. Weezie Kramer has compiled a very impressive 30-year radio career already, holding leadership positions…

In this issue, and the next several issues of Radio Ink, we’ll spotlight companies that are generating real digital revenue for radio stations across the country. XAPPMedia is a technology company that focuses on interactive audio services, and one of the goals of the company is to help radio stations generate revenue in the voice space, which includes Alexa and Google Home. Pat Higbie is the CEO and co-founder of XAPPMedia. RI: What is XAPPMedia doing to generate revenue for radio? Higbie: We are helping primarily right now in the new voice space that’s been created by Amazon Alexa and Google Home. We see this as the dawn of a new era in technology — the voice era. Like with the Web and mobile eras, there’s going to be big…