Innholdsfortegnelse for September 28, 2020 i Radio Ink Magazine

There is a famous quote from John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Wanamaker sent us on a quest to determine “what is working.” It is a worthy quest. Enter the Yellow Pages. They figured how to twist the Wanamaker Question to their own advantage. “Put a different phone number in your Yellow Pages ad, and when people call that number — boom! — you know the ad is working.” Brilliant — for the Yellow Pages. Here is what those yellow demons knew: that it would make them look good. Think back to the days of the Yellow Pages, when there was no Internet. Did you ever do this? “What was the name of that HVAC company again?…

When the brain trust at iHeartMedia decided they wanted to make a big-time competitive run at podcasting, Conal Byrne’s company, Stuff Media, fit right into their game plan. With many of radio’s big brands already producing radio-centric podcasts, what iHeart needed was more original content. Stuff Media had been in the podcasting space for years when iHeart started showing an interest. What Stuff Media needed was salespeople to help generate revenue for their popular podcasts, and ways to promote those shows. Hundreds of salespeople all across the country and 850 radio stations checked both of those boxes. It was a perfect match. So in 2018 iHeartMedia purchased Stuff Media for $55 million. In addition to iHeart’s powerful and popular radio podcasts, what is now the iHeartPodcast Network, under Byrne’s leadership,…

As we all know, we really don’t sell anything. We just provide enough information for people to make an informed decision to buy, right? That said, in order to succeed, we need to understand, with enough depth, the strength of our offering, the depth of our product’s reach, and its ability to satisfy a prospect’s needs. At the same time, we need to have just as deep an understanding of the prospect’s needs, wants, aspirations — and his or her likes and dislikes (even if we disagree with them) in order to find that sweet spot: the intersection of our offering and their needs/wants. We need to go one step beyond that; we also need to have the same understanding of the prospect’s customer’s needs, wants, and aspirations. Think of…

Most broadcast managers come from backgrounds in programming, sales, finance, or law. Traffic and billing systems, e-mail, document storage, program automation, and web functions are mostly thought of as utilities. You turn on the tap and expect water to come out. These systems have streamlined our industry, allowing us to shave expense, reduce headcount, and improve the product. Yes, most of us experience occasional glitches, but they’re generally infrequent and without significant revenue impact. A call to the help desk generally sets things right. Meanwhile, we have moved more and more of our enterprise infrastructure to the public Internet. Gone are the expensive leased telephone company circuits that connect studio and transmitter. The Internet provides the connection. Orders, scheduling, billing, receivables management, the program log, and the programming we air…

While the COVID-19 pandemic has done serious damage to so many industries across the United States and throughout the world, podcasting has remained strong. Executives in both the radio industry and the podcasting industry have heaped praise on podcasting since the coronavirus put the brakes on normal life, and we set out to figure out how this happened. So we assembled a very impressive list of experts in both industries to tell us why. Jenna Weiss-Berman is the co-founder of Entercom's Pineapple Street Studios Dan Franks is the co-founder of Podcast Movement Rob Greenlee is the VP of Content & Partnerships at Libsyn and Chair of The Podcast Academy Suzanne Grimes is EVP/ Corporate Marketing, Cumulus Media, and President of Westwood One, which includes the Westwood One Podcast Network Dave…