Perception of Radio Not a Shared Problem
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Don't suppose you've had a chance to listen to the five radio industry leaders who made an appearance at the New York Market Radio (NYMRAD) CEO Summit. If not, spend 58 minutes with the audio rolling in the background by using this link. Hear what's said to see if it resembles what is happening in your little corner of the radio world.
Before offering comments about this conversation among today's titans of radio, let's applaud the people working in medium and smaller markets. Those stations not owned by major companies are holding their own and keeping radio revenues from tanking at a much faster rate than the reported 11% drop between August 2007 and August 2008. There are many small to medium market stations that still serve the community and are not chasing the digital dollar. That's fine, as long as the programming is local and community-centric.
We're not going to push the smaller folks aside here for they are an important part of the radio industry. But what was said in New York City during this Advertising Week event with the panel of super star CEOs shows a disconnect between reality and desire. It also emphasizes that there's still a belief that all our radio industry executives need to do to get people to drink the Kool Aid is to echo the same phrase(s). "Radio is local" is one that sprang from nearly every CEO Summit panelist's lips.
First, though, mark down this keyword uttered by CBS Radio's Dan Mason: "engagement." A quick check at Dictionary.com shows how "engagement" is another nebulous word that radio should avoid, or start using examples to explain its use.
Peter Smyth, Greater Media CEO, is looking for "integrated solutions." He also points out that "radio moves with you" and that the radio industry is moving with a greater degree of cooperation than at any time in its history.
Clear Channel's John Hogan then stepped up to proclaim that his company is a content company, which is quite a step away from Lowery Mays' 2004 comments in Fortune Magazine: "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products."
Jeff Smuylan from Emmis promoted his new Emmis Interactive and its concept of "360" delivery, which includes attempts at putting a radio tuner in every cell phone. An excellent concept, if started in 2002. You'll find this a near impossible task now that the cell companies know they have youth locked into their own content.
Then we heard from Farid Suleman, CEO of Citadel Broadcasting, who suggested "raising [advertising] rates 20%" - which was about as intelligent a thing as he said. So we'll drop his other comments from this discussion because, like his input into Citadel's operation and its resulting stock price, they added nothing.
Now you might be expecting that the audience these people were talking to was primarily media buyers (with this being held during Advertising Week). But it appeared through numerous comments made that the audience was more like a get-together of New York City radio account executives. Strange that this group of CEOs would be gathering to spur on the troops instead of convincing advertisers to keep advertising money with (or move it to) radio.
So this doesn't become a rendering the length of "War and Peace," let me explain that what's above covers approximately the first 18 minutes of this 58-minute panel discussion. What follows is a summary of the remaining time. If you download the audio from this page, you'll be able to go directly to these marker points in the discussion and catch exactly what each panelist said.
At 19:30 in, John Hogan mentions that what radio suffers from is not a "consumption problem but a perception problem." At no time here, or farther into this exchange, does John Hogan speak of a content problem, which is what those who these executives now call "purveyors of negativity" have been claiming since consolidation started the firing of thousands of creative programmers, talent, and production directors.
About 24:00 in, Dan Mason brought up how agency creative types are not known for wanting to write radio commercial copy. Unfortunately, he did not go into how radio copy is not being written well within the walls of radio stations, either.
Mr. Mason did start to extol the virtues of the "minute-by-minute accounting of the online radio audience." If anyone is wondering why CBS is moving faster into the online radio world than anyone else, it's because Dan Mason understands how important this has become.
There is approximately another half-hour of conversation that reflects what you'd expect to hear from a group of CEOs who are just now understanding how bad they've let radio get. (It's analogous to the Wall Street bigwigs who claim they didn't see the bust coming.) We can't go over all of it here.
But, we can leave you with these two tidbits of information that I found particularly intriguing.
1) John Hogan used the formation of Clear Channel traffic reports as an example of his company walking new ground. Inadvertantly, it's also a great example of how Clear Channel has continued to degrade the quality of programs delivered. Here's my take. Before Clear Channel Total Traffic Network, traffic reports outside of drive time - and, in some cases midday - were extremely rare. After CC started offering Total Traffic reports, we're now hearing traffic at 2am on a Sunday morning in Cleveland, Ohio. That's a time when there are more people in the local CC studios than on the roads in this town.
Programming played when it doesn't belong is as bad as bad programs played at other times. It drives audience away. Thanks to Clear Channel's ownership of this Total Traffic Network, traffic reports are now played whether a market needs them or not.
2) The last item of interest was very telling, whether anyone on this panel would admit it or not. It's really the most telling point about the radio industry that you'll find within this conversation and, certainly, the most blatant example of what's not hot.
In this entire 58 minutes of discussion with five of the most powerful CEOs in radio, the term HD Radio only showed up once - at 32 minutes into the conversation. It was as a side mention to another topic being discussed (navigation systems).
HD Radio is not considered part of radio's future, at least as it was demonstrated by this panel in talking about "the status & future of radio advertising."
That's a step in the right direction.
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