Category Archives: Radio

Hometown Radio

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A long-time radio pal shared this item from AllAccess:

DELMARVA BROADCASTING adds an FM partner for Talk WICO-A/ SALISBURY- OCEAN CITY, MD, flipping WXMD (MAX FM)/POCOMOKE CITY, MD to Talk as WICO-FM and installing separate programming from the AM side. The WICO-FM calls move from 97.5, which changes to WKTT, but retains its Country format and CAT COUNTRY slogan.

After a 5-6a simulcast of “AMERICA IN THE MORNING,” the FM carries syndicated QUINN AND ROSE, PREMIERE’s GLENN BECK and RUSH LIMBAUGH, TALK RADIO NETWORK’s JERRY DOYLE, MICHAEL SAVAGE, and RUSTY HUMPHRIES, and then simulcasts WESTWOOD ONE’s JIM BOHANNON and PREMIERE’s “COAST TO COAST AM” with GEORGE NOORY. Weekends feature music programming.

The AM side is carrying DIAL GLOBAL’s MICHAEL SMERCONISH, TRN’s LAURA INGRAHAM, DIAL GLOBAL’s NEAL BOORTZ, syndicated DAVE RAMSEY, DIAL GLOBAL’s CLARK HOWARD and TRN’s MICHAEL SAVAGE. Weekends include “best ofs” from LIMBAUGH, HOWARD and BOORTZ along with the syndicated KIM KOMANDO, CIGAR DAVE, TAMMY BRUCE, and CAR AND DRIVER shows.

My pal estimates that four major network syndicators provide 95% of programming on 80% of all talk stations in the country. Just a guess, he says, but not far off.

Twitterize listeners to your radio station

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Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I worked at a radio station that served a lot of small communities. We did our best to get news from as many of these little towns as we could. I remember one of the things we did was give away little plastic rain gauges (with a sponsor logo). On a morning following a big rain these “Weather Watchers” would call in and report how much rain they received.

I was reminded of this today when I came across @reportstorms, the Twitter page of ReportStorms.com. (“Almost 2″ of rain in Rockford, IL area”)
If I worked at a radio station that was trying to serve a regional audience, I think I might set up a Twitter page for each community and recruit a few people from each burg to feed them. I might even provide a mobile phone with minutes so they didn’t have to use their own. Bet you could build that into a sponsorship.

So when Holcomb, MO gets a down-pour, you get up-to-the-minute reports. Even pix. Nobody covering the Holcomb Hornets basketball game? Twitter away.

Pull the RSS feeds of all of these community Twitter pages into a branded and sponsored page on the radio station website. Maybe feature a different community feed on the station home page every hour.

Can’t find good news people to work at your station? Why not have hundreds? Once you get some traction, I bet you’ll have people waiting in line to join up.

Oh, and one more thing. The new iPhones coming out this summer are rumored to do video.

PS: As far as I know stations are already doing this. If you know of any, link me up.

Phone call to the 14th century

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If you had 30 seconds to give advice to someone living in the 14th century, what you tell them? Great segment from recent This American Life.

“Sketch comedy troupe Kasper Hauser performs a radio game show, where a race car driver, a guy fluent in middle English, and a teacher take turns cramming all the 21st century wisdom they can into a 30 second phone call to the 14th century.”

It’s a funny bit but what could you tell them that they would believe? If you received a phone call from 500 years in the future, would you believe it? Could you buy that human and machine intelligence had merged, for example. Could you even believe it was possible to make a call back in time?

I, for one, am reassured that we are incapable of imagining the future.

Are radio commercials spam?

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A little preface here: Most of the food I ever put in my mouth was paid for –directly or indirectly– by radio commercials. My father was a radio guy and for many years I wrote and produced radio “spots.” Lots and lots of them. Some were good, some were just the right length, if you know what I mean.

So when Seth Godin –one of the keynote speakers at the recent Country Radio Seminar in Nashville– refers to radio commercials as “spam,” it’s a problem for me. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Godin’s blog and have purchased and read a number of his books. I think he understands marketing in the 21st century as well as anyone.

So what’s spam and what’s not?

When you get your hands on my email address and send me an unsolicited email trying to sell me something (or get me to give you money, or visit your porn site, etc) …without my permission, we call that spam. You invaded my inbox without my permission.

When I turn on my local radio station, I know there will be commercials. They pay for the music/news/weather programs for which I tuned in. I’m giving tacit permission for the the station to try to sell me something on behalf of their advertisers. Value for value. That doesn’t sound like spam to me.

And if every commercial I heard was talking about something I cared about, something of interest… I’d probably pay more attention and the commercials would be worth more to the advertiser.

This is how cable TV programs work. If I’m watching HGTV (House & Garden), there’s a pretty good chance the commercials will at least marginally relevant.

I’m sure a lot of radios stations attempt to do this when and where they can. But it’s tough. They’re trying to reach the largest audience they can and will sell a spot to damn near anyone (preachers and politicians pay in advance).

Given the choice, most of us will choose NOT to listen to a poorly produced or irrelevant message. Commercial or otherwise.

So are are radio spots spam or not?

Only the listener can answer that. And he or she does, every time they punch the button to another station. And keeps punching it until they find a song or talk show they like (at least more than the commercial). Or pull out the iPod.

Seth talks “Tribes” at radio seminar

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J. T. Gerlt (Program Director at KTKS, Lake of the Ozarks) recently attended the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, where Seth Godin was one of the keynote speakers. From Country Aircheck:

“Best-selling author, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “agent of change” Seth Godin delivered one of the best received keynotes in seminar history. Beginning with the premise that “ideas that spread, win,” Godin detailed the changing realities for mass media. “It isn’t ‘mass’ anymore,” he warned. And he laid out a new approach. “Music isn’t in trouble,” he said. “The music business is. The good news is, there’s a huge number of opportunities.” Those can only be met, however, by those willing to commit to innovation. “Timid trapeze artists are dead trapeze artists,” he joked.

The business model, Godin explained, is shifting to the point where the radio business will look a lot more like the magazine business. Fragmentation of mass media, in Godin’s view, means building strong and self-perpetuating communities he calls tribes. “More isn’t the point,” he said. “Tighter is the point.” The “television industrial complex” is being replaced by the “fashion/permission complex.” He suggested that stations will know they’re reaching their tribe with the crucial “anticipated, personal and relevant” messages when they get complaints from listeners when it isn’t sent out. Getting there means a break from the pattern of demanding success before making a full commitment.”

“Demanding success before making a full commitment.” We’re not going to try something new (risky) unless we’re sure we can make a lot of money doing it. Man, that sounds familiar.