Pollyanna strikes again!

By Don Keith N4KC

My favorite radio broadcasting "the glass is not only half full but it contains a fine, fine wine" publication does it again in today's edition:

July Fourth listener drop is a one-day phenomenon.
From trips to the beach, barbeques and firework outings, it’s little wonder radio use typically ticks down on July Fourth. But Nielsen data shows the drop may not be as large as many believe it is, and listening habits quickly return once the calendar page is turned.

That is the word from INSIDE RADIO, that any idea that radio usage is down on a major summer holiday is a fairy tale.  Actually, July 4 in particular and summer in general was a fine time for traditional radio listenership.  Anytime people were out and about, in their cars, at the beach, doing stuff, they had their radios with them.  Radio provided music, info, companionship, and background noise for all those outdoor activities.  It was, after all, portable.  Unlike TV, the newspaper, or any other medium.

Now, consumers have plenty of other choices for that music, info, companionship and noise.  Radio is actually pretty far down the list because those other choices are equally or more ubiquitous.  And they are more reliable.  Ever tried to find a traffic update on most stations on a weekend?  Or spotted storm clouds and tried to dial up someone who could give you a weather report?

Probably not.  You have an app for traffic and weather.

Look, radio listening may have appeared to drop on Independence Day because of the way radio was once measured...by people keeping diaries of their listenership.  People who were not quite so diligent in their record-keeping on holidays.  Now, with a more passive means of determining listening, more of it probably gets reported.

But keep in mind that same passive means of measurement is showing listening to traditional radio has already had its fireworks finale.  The medium may soon be as much old news as yesterday's bottle rocket.

AM and FM own the auto dashboard and always will...

By Don Keith N4KC

Google will soon stake a major claim on your car's dashboard.  To counter Apple's CarPlay, the Google folks took time from putting all those World Cup cartoons on their search home page to introduce Android Auto.

Take a look HERE.

Remember when the middle of the dash was dominated by the ubiquitous AM/FM radio with CD player?  Heck I remember when it was just an AM radio.  Then FM came along.  Then 8-track tapes and eventually tape cassettes and finally the compact disc.

Many AM operators ignored FM.  Where is AM radio today?  Then FM operators pooh-poohed 8-tracks, and cassettes.  They were pretty much right since those technologies were so clunky.  CDs didn't appear to be a threat, either, since the average-quarter-hour shares were still based on 100%...100% of people listening to radio...not a percentage of the whole population, many of whom were finding other things to listen to, like CDs.  Radio still tries to sell its air time using shares...a percentage of people listening to radio, not a percentage of all the people out there in the population.

In the car?  What else you going to do but listen to "The biggest hits of the 80s, 90s and today on FM108!!!"  Or "The biggest and best country, Yahoo 95.7!"  Or three guys arguing for an hour about whether the Padres have the pitching to challenge for the division title?

No wonder people began preferring CDs to dull, boring personalities and two ten-minute chunks of commercials every hour.  Or they listened to audio books.  And people began talking on their cell phones instead of listening to radio or CDs.

But shares of audience were still based on 100%...of people listening to radio.  Even if people listening to radio were becoming fewer and fewer and for much less time.  The radio still dominated the dashboard, after all.

No more.  That big chunk of real estate to the right of the steering wheel has become far more than an AM/FM radio receiver.  Choices are becoming almost infinite.  

Can traditional radio still play a big part in what people do in their cars?  Can Yahoo 95.7 still be a significant part of CarPlay and Android Auto?

Sure they can.  But they won't.  Talent costs money.  Creativity runs risks.

Why should radio spend money and take risks to produce compelling content that keeps them a part of the auto dashboard?  AM and FM own the dashboard, right?

Will the last one out of the last radio station please turn off the transmitter?

(Note: just a reminder that I am on record as predicting that the current AM broadcast band will be given to the ham radio operators by 2025.)

Are broadcasters ready for their Waterloo?

By Don Keith

Regular visitors to this blog know that I often give the guys at the Inside Radio email newsletter grief.  This industry "news" source consistently tries to put a positive spin on every aspect of how rapidly changing technology is affecting its primary readership: traditional, over-the-air broadcasters.

Believe me, they could have found something positive to report to Napoleon and his army after Waterloo!

Well, here is today's example:

Cross-platform data shows more devices boost listening.
As comScore continues on the second phase of its cross-platform Project Blueprint research with ESPN and four other media companies, the data is revealing a pattern that may help settle some broadcasters’ worries that more platforms will mean less radio listening. In fact, multiplatform users are consuming more content overall.

So, radio transmitter-on-the-hill broadcasters, since there are more and more ways for potential listeners to consume audio, things are just rosy for you all.  Break out the champagne!  comScore has determined that since people have more and more ways to get the songs and talk they want to hear, then you guys can continue to stream music--the same music that listeners can get on all those other platforms they adopt, but without your endless self-promotion, repetition, tight playlists, and little else to listen for--and your syndicated talk shows and your listenership will only go up, up, up.

Huzzah and hosanna!

But wait.  As I understand what comScore is saying, the number of listeners is not going up with the proliferation of devices on which they consume media.  The same number of people are consuming slightly more media because they have the devices.  Where in that research does it say that this group of people will listen more to dull, boring broadcast radio with their shiny, new devices when there are myriad more attractive entertainment and information choices available to them?

As I have pointed out to broadcasters for years, if someone is talking on a cell phone, he or she is not listening to your radio station.  And clearly, if he or she is consuming satellite radio, Pandora, Spotify, or any other source on those cross-platform devices that are quickly becoming more ubiquitous than the radio in the dash of the car or on the nightstand at home, then that person is not listening to "the biggest hits of the 80s, 90s and today" that your station continually spews out.

Please, Inside Radio, tell me how that is good news for radio in the midst of a traditional-media Waterloo!

Milestone

For many, this particular milestone may not seem like much:

Milestone moment as radio overtakes newspaper. In a historic crossing of revenue trend lines, for first time the radio industry was larger than the newspaper industry in terms of revenue last year. Eight consecutive years of declines for newspapers are to blame. The Newspaper Association of America reports total revenue fell 9% to $17.3 billion. That’s $349 million below what radio logged last year in what turned out to be a flat year for broadcasters.

To those involved in the radio and newspaper businesses and the advertisers who use those media, it is a massive change.  Be assured it is a day many thought would never come...that is until the last few years.  Then it became inevitable.  Rapid technological development in the media realm made it so.

Now, I would like to see stats on where all traditional media--over-the-air TV and radio, print newspapers and magazines--rank against new media such as satellite radio, music streams, and the biggest big dog of them all, internet search.

Radio and newspaper advocates might then be arguing about whether their horse finished ninth or tenth.

Hooray for us! as we lose the battle

Followers of this blog are aware that I firmly believe traditional over-the-air/tower-on-the-mountain radio broadcasters have long since given up in the battle against all the other newer-technology competitors for the ears of listeners.  Oh, they don't admit they have given up, but they most certainly have.

At a time when they should have been gearing up, innovating, creating vivid and dynamic content, and doing all they could to keep a share of the public's attention, traditional broadcasters did just the opposite.  They pulled in their horns, cut everything they could cut, streamed music and political or sports talk from syndicators, and, in effect, stuck their heads in the sand.

Example: one of the industry trade pubs consistently looks for tidbits of good news to make subscribers believe things are not so bad and all will turn out fine, just as it did when radio was threatened by TV in the early '50s.  Here is a blurb from today's email issue of that publication:

Radio still top pick for many Millennials.

The investment bank Piper Jaffray just released its semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” report. Survey takers asked 7,500 teenagers which platform they spend the most time listening to music on. One in five (21%) reported local broadcast radio captures the biggest segment of their music listening time.

Well, thank goodness!  All is fine!  Teens--the very demo radio feared was going to web streaming, satellite, smart phones and anything else but their grandparents' old FM radio--still pick that ancient technology and dull, boring programming over all the other choices.  The future of tower-on-the-mountain radio is secure!

Horse hockey!  How could radio be anything but scared to death when they see that only 21% of their future still listens to "local" radio for music?  (Don't get me started on "local.")

That means almost 80% of the very people radio needs to become loyal fans are getting their music somewhere else.  80%!  Even ten years ago, I suspect that number was less than ten percent...and they listened to tapes and CDs of songs they had originally heard on the radio.

Oh, and no minor point: what do advertisers think when they want to reach teens and see that 80% of them no longer spend most of their time with good old Superhits 107?

So, INSIDE RADIO, explain to me why this is good news.

Goodbye 60- and 30-second commercials...and good riddance

Written by Don Keith N4KC

I’ve been preaching for a while that the traditional electronic media mainstays—the 60- and 30-second commercial spot announcements—are going to soon fade into the ether.  They have to.  Blame the DVR, the proliferation of programming choice, satellite radio and Pandora, the short attention spans of Gen X and Y, or the simple inability to easily tie results to investment, but the spot announcement will soon join the newspaper classified ad, the Yellow Pages, and the ad-supported wall calendar in the pages of advertising history textbooks.  Assuming the textbook itself still exists much longer, which I doubt.

Here’s a great article about a company that gets it: http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/relativity-launches-branded-entertainment-agency-madvine-signs-evian-mondelez-as-clients-1201151723/

Word of disclosure: this is the same Relativity Media that still holds the film option on my novel FIRING POINT and still says they are going to get it made this year.  I assume our
submarine will float in a sea of Evian water!

Agencies who think they can still skate along, dazzling their clients with their skill buying CPM or cost-per-point or Tapscan rankers, will see less and less return for the people who keep the company juice bar stocked and a charge on the agency CEO’s Tesla battery.
Advertisers who rely on “social media consultants” (read: “charlatans”) to help develop strategy will end up prolonging the life of MySpace, Yahoo, and others who have long since outlived any ability they might have once had to deliver brand loyalty or eager customers for a company, product or service.  (I’m not quite ready to throw Facebook into that pile of drying bones, but the time is coming unless some of these seemingly goofy investments they are making turn out to be just what they need to actually give some value to all those eyeballs they have assembled.) 

Media—and especially traditional radio and TV—who don’t realize that they must be what Relativity calls itself—a “content engine,” and one with myriad ways to reach and engage potential customers for advertisers—will soon have nothing left to sell. 

Nothing except air. 

I'll show you my dashboard if you'll show me yours

By Don Keith

A couple of companies you may have heard of--Apple and Google--want a stake in the dashboard of your automobile.  A big stake.  They are busy developing apps for your iPhone and Android device that will pretty much allow you to interact with the video monitor that will soon be as ubiquitous in auto dashboards as that old-fashioned device, the AM/FM broadcast radio.

And there is the rub for radio, a service that was once one of the three legs of the media stool: radio, TV, newspapers.  The day is coming in which everyone--many can already--will be able to very easily and seamlessly hook up your wireless device to your car, giving you not only all sorts of navigation tools (say goodbye to Garmin, TomTom, etc.), video conferencing with everyone from your spouse to the weekly call with the home office, and weather radar for your route ahead, but also an endless number of entertainment choices.

Hear that?  Endless.  From Pandora and Rdio to some kid in his basement streaming eclectic Albanian folk music.  From the complete replay of last night's Letterman show to all the cute kitty videos you ever wanted to watch while you sit there stalled in morning rush hour traffic.  Your entertainment and information choices will be literally without end, amen.

Not just a million choices.  Add some more zeroes. Some will be bad.  Much will be boring.  Some will be absolutely delightful.

Now, you can imagine what that means for traditional, tower-on-the-mountain radio stations, who have historically owned that dashboard.  Every person watching cute kitties will be one more person NOT listening to radio.  And if that one person happens to be carrying one of the little meters or keeping a listening diary for Nielsen, the folks who measure radio listening these days, he or she will count for several thousand listeners.  Ratings go down.   Response to advertisers' messages diminishes.  Revenue declines.

One of my favorite broadcast researchers/consultants has some interesting thoughts on the subject.   Mark Ramsey has long warned broadcasters that they are asking all the wrong questions about rapidly changing media usage and what their (former) listeners want.

Meanwhile, on the same day as Mark's blog post linked above, one of the radio broadcasting news sites is touting how wonderful it is that some phone manufacturers are building in an FM chip for their users.  In the process, the news site is doing a wonderful job of proving Mark Ramsey's point.

Radio stations--the old-fashioned over-the-air kind--do not need to worry about whether or not they have their own chip inside people's phones/mobile devices.  Even without those chips, they will still be just as available to potential listeners as that kid in his basement streaming Albanian folk music!  And even if they do offer another route to becoming a user of traditional radio, they will still be just another one of those millions and millions of entertainment and information choices resting there between the steering wheel and the glove box.

Every radio station on the air will be available in dash boards anywhere in the world.

Instead, radio should be concentrating on how they can stand out from among all that buzz and whir.  What can they put on their air that would cause someone to turn off the cute kitties to listen to their station's offerings instead?  What kind of compelling content can they be developing to make sure they are part of the mix?  What can they do to establish a brand strong enough to pull somebody back from the endless horizon that will soon be the auto dashboard?

(Ratings will soon be meaningless.  How traditional broadcasters will be able to sell advertising in the future, to make enough money to keep the transmitter on, is a subject for another post.)