| January 12, 2009 |  |
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A New Breed of Indie Artists
Free Music and Programs for Radio and PodastersRadio Industry "Change" is Slow, Inadequate
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This is the time of year reserved for talking about the future. What 2009 will deliver to the radio industry depends on adjustments radio makes to a quickly dissolving business model. |
"Everything in the radio industry is a "we're going to do" type of story. There's very little about "what we've done."" |
You cannot escape the drop in revenue, of which some can now rightfully be credited to the bad economy. However, the biggest decline in radio revenue is not from an advertiser's reluctance to spend on advertising. It comes from a dissatisfaction with radio's product - the quality of commercials and programming - and a desire to advertise with media that has the ability to prove results.
Let's kick around a few headlines making the radio industry trade publications over the past couple of months:
- There's now real time traffic in Clear Channel Markets on HD Radio
- Bonneville Pulls The Plug On iChannel Network
- Stations, and consultants are creating radio icons for iPhones
- Hundreds of radio veterans have lost their jobs
- HD Radio launches another ad campaign
- HD in Kia
- CBS Teams with AOL and Yahoo
- Interep folds
- Katz expands, and forms new media unit
- Univision forms new media unit
- Emmis forms new media unit
- Clear Channel closes its Radio Lab, Drops HD Radio Page
- Smulyan pushes for radio chip in cell phones
- Accreditation for PPM happens in second market
Bonneville and Clear Channel both closed internet initiatives in 2008. CC replaced its HD Radio and Format Lab web pages with a listing of its streaming radio stations. Anyone calling this anything but a lateral or backword move is viewing the audio landscape with rose-colored glasses.
HD Radio continues to be the biggest continuously-headlined story at industry trades. Not sure why. If you have heard the latest HD Radio commercials you may be asking what it is that the HD Radio Alliance is selling. After two years, and hundreds of millions of dollars in airtime donated to promoting this "future of radio," I'm waiting for the day when it's officially pronounced dead. All that these campaigns do is demonstrate the ineffectiveness of radio in persuading the masses to buy a new product.
Relative to the Consumer Electronics Show, read the trades and you get the impression that HD Radio is all over the exhibition hall. Only I've not seen mention of HD Radio at CES in any of the new media publications I frequent.
Interep folded and created, overnight, a near-monopoly for Katz (and its parent Clear Channel) in the radio rep field. Katz recent news that it's forming a new media division comes as no surprise. But, what will be a surprise is if it delivers new media's need for data analysis. Too often, what we hear is not what we get.
Everything in the radio industry is a "we're going to do" type of story. There's very little about "what we've done." One exception to this is the launch of iPhone icons for listening to radio. Individual station icons will be ignored. The future is delivering an ability to choose from multiple stations using a portal iPhone icon.
There does seem to be an overreaction with radio companies creating "new media" divisions. Take Emmis Interactive. Looking at an Emmis web site, there's no reason to think they've uncovered (or will use) anything that is valued by today's media buyers. An example is the Emmis station web site in New York, WQHT. Please let me know if you see anything within its design that's functional, new, or can lead the radio industry into 2009 successfully.
The last two items on the above list are the most useless actions in radio today: Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan crowing about a push to get cell phone manufacturers to include a radio chip in each phone, and the accreditation of PPM. Both are great headlines. Neither means much. This "accreditation" is for monthly PPM quarter-hour radio estimates only. It is NOT for the minute-by-minute reporting that PPM is heralded.
About the radio chip in cell phones. AT&T's latest move to go up against Sirius with subscription radio in cars is a telling sign of the difficulty ahead here. These companies realize that they are the new transmitters, and (just like a radio station would not make room on its stick for a competitor) we're not likely to see the likes of Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T add broadcast radio to their handsets. At what point will GM realize that it's OnStar is another option of subscription radio delivery?
What we do not see coming from the radio industry is what gives us the full story for 2009. It is failing to undo the quality damage that occurred over the past 12 years of consolidation; it keeps a distance from any form of response metrics for the product radio sells to advertisers; the same people are giving the same speeches at radio industry trade shows; and we have the same band of not-ready-for-primetime CEOs.
Take a read of this Radio & Records article on what was said by Lew Dickey and Peter Smyth at last February's Radio Advertising Bureau's conference. Then, please point out whatever progress has been made along the lines of their topics, if you can.
Radio is faced with a forecasted 13% drop in 2009 revenue. My bet is you can increase that to 17%, easily, and possibly hit 20% if some changes aren't made immediately.
We are hearing a lot of talk about change in the radio industry, but there is very little movement to implement anything that resembles change.
Until that changes, radio's revenue will continue to decline.
Today's indie artist introduction is to...
| Pop artist Dolly Rappaport |
 sample song |
Am I Dreamin'? Download Song
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Add it to your playlist, free! Such is the new world of music distribution.
It's time internet radio programmers reach into a huge pile of untapped talent.
It is here where new hit songs will increasingly be found.
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