Category Archives: Radio

Doing what radio does best

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Tornados hammered parts of the midwest Sunday night, including Springfield, Illinois. TV was off, cable down, power out, Internet out, newspaper 12 hours from publication…but radio station WMAY was on the air, doing what radio does best. GM Glen Gardner shares this sentiment from a caller that illustrates how to keep radio relevant. [AUDIO: 2 min MP3]

Notice that the person on the air who took the call didn’t interrupt. Didn’t feel the need to jump in and start yapping. That is so rare. If radio has a future –and I hope it does– it won’t be endlessly playing the same 400 songs or turning the signal over to Rush for 3 hours. It will be in on-the-ground, local relevance like this. Thanks, Glen.

Slow growth for HD radio

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Radio research firm Bridge Ratings projects HD receivers will be in the hands of 1.06 million consumers by the end of 2007, 2.0 million by the end of 2008 and 8.84 million by the end of 2010. Meanwhile, Bridge predicts that XM Satellite Radio will grow to 9.0 million subscribers by the end of 2006 as rival Sirius grows to about 6 million subscribers over the same period. (R&R via RAIN)

Shop Talk: Covering the state basketball tournament

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Three of our four state radio networks do sports reports as well as news. It’s state tournament time and each of the networks are providing coverage. Depending on the network, we do two or three brief (2-3 min) reports a day.

Doesn’t give much time to cover all the games of the tournament. Throughout the years, we tried various formats that would appeal to our affiliates but –as a general rule– each station only cared about the teams from their region of the state. This is a little less true in Iowa and Wisconsin. But the state tournament is just not a big deal (to radio stations) in Missouri.

You smell another Long Tail example, don’t you?

We knew there were “x” number of fans who cared very much about the games…but had no way to get our reports to them. And now we do. I’ve been following Missourinet Sports Director David Sprague’s reports from the state tournament. He filed a dozen reports over two days and you can see/hear a few of them here, here and here.

Basketball TournamentI assume he was in press row with his laptop and digital camera, posting reports to our website, with no limitation on the length or frequency of his reports. No satellites, no studios. Of course, the next thought that pops into my head is that any talented reporter (or fan) could have covered the state tournament just as easily as David did. It all comes down to the quality of the reporting, not to advantages of distribution. I realize I’m stating the obvious here, but after so many years of trying to meet the needs of our affiliates and their listeners, it’s…liberating…to be able to finally reach them directly.

If I were still programming the old KBOA, I like to think I would have a heavily-promoted website with a special “State Tournament” section on my sports page. And –as a Missourinet affiliate– I’d have David load it up with lots of reports on the teams of local/regional interest. I’d take everything he had time to produce.

If you spot any interesting online coverage of state tournaments…put a link in the comments below.

Audio broadcast flag bill proposed

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Tod Maffin says a proposed new bill will be the “death of radio.”

It’s 2012. You turn on the radio. Some song is ending. The DJ introduces the next song and you only hear the opening second of it, when suddenly, a voice cuts in and says:

“I’m sorry, but since you indicated your household has more than four people in it, and you haven’t licenced your home for ‘public performance’ of musical works, we are unable to play this song.”

This just became a very likely reality thanks to U.S. lawmaker Mike Ferguson. He’s introduced an audio broadcast flag bill that would let the FCC force radio stations to provide “so-called “flag” technology be used to prevent content on HD Radios and satellite digital radios from being re-distributed.”

Cool. I can’t wait to buy a new HD radio with this cool feature. Worser and worser.

Does public broadcasting need a new name?

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“…broadcasters (should) start viewing themselves as multimedia companies, and even changing their names to help spread the message both internally and externally. The internet is NOT broadcasting, and the more we understand that, the quicker we’ll get on with business models that’ll meet our needs in a Media 2.0 world.” – Terry Heaton

A couple of years ago we dropped the “network” from one of our networks because it was felt to be somewhat…limiting. No long reflective of what we are or are becoming.

Buy the content, not the channel

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In the future, listeners will buy the content, not the channel. They’ll be more apt to listen to what’s ON your station, not your (radio) station itself. … Talk to the TV networks and they’ll tell you that creating content is a risky, expensive business. But a handful of hits make all the risks worthwhile. The radio industry will have to awaken to new market realities: Investment, trial, failure, success. More programs, less programming. There will be no free lunches and no shortcuts. It will not be possible to operate multi-million dollar franchises like an FCC-licensed CD player.

Once again, Mark Ramsey demonstrates real insight into what’s happening in/to the “radio business”

Altman films “A Prairie Home Companion”

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“It is an imagined last show and so it’s in the context of being taken over by a radio conglomerate, which is happening to a lot of radio shows at home.” Written by Garrison Keillor and starring Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline and Lily Tomlin. [Reuters story]

I always liked the Wolfman Jack scenes from American Graffiti. Something about being on the air, alone in a radio station at night. Something we’ll never experience with podcasting. That real-time connection with listeners in the middle of the night. Sigh.

Oprah & Friends on XM

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Oprah Winfrey has signed a three-year, $55 million deal for her own channel on XM Satellite Radio. “Oprah & Friends,” as the channel will be known, is aimed at closing satellite radio’s gender gap. Men account for about two-thirds of the 9.3 million satellite subscriptions nationwide, but XM and its rival, Sirius Satellite Radio of New York, expect to attract more women as they purchase cars equipped with satellite radios.

Somehow, I just think the XM guys understand this satellite radio thing better than the other guys. This sounds like a really good idea to me.

Selling radio spots online

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Broadcast sales execs are still upbeat about the future. Sort of. From an informal Banc of America Securities survey of 46 GSMs and other sales execs at the recent Radio Advertising Bureau meeting:

  • Nearly one-quarter of respondents indicate that they already use online services . . . to sell available airtime,and another 30% plan to use such services in the future.
  • The new worry is the iPod and the Internet radio, not satellite radio. 26% think Internet radio is a bigger threat than satellite radio. That’s up from 10% of respondents a year ago.

From Billboard Radio Monitor [via RAIN]

Cell phone radio

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A Canadian wireless company is offering subscribers more than 1,500 podcasts via their cell phones. The catalogue of podcasts will updated throughout the day as new feeds are received, bringing fresh content to subscribers continually. Unlike terrestrial radio, though, it won’t be free. It’ll cost subscribers $5 per month. But then subscribers can download their choice of podcasts for immediate listening, and save the ones they want to play again later on their phone. [iloveradio.org]

When I started doing affiliate relations back in the early eighties, Don Osborn said something that I have never forgotten: There is no dead air. Every minute is filled with something (music, news, sports, weather, etc). To add some of our network programming, a radio station must take something off the air. My challenge was to persuade the station decision-makers their listeners would be better served by our programming than what they were currently airing.

What does this have to do with cell phone radio? Every minute I spend listening to a podcast on my my cell phone (or nano) is a minute I’m not listening to my local radio station. The listener is now the program director but he/she still has the same 24-hour clock. Do I listen to The Ricky Gervais Show on my cell phone…or the local morning show on KXYZ?

There’s a lot of smart radio guys out there. I have to believe they understand this. The “cell phone radio” story reminded me of an interview I did with Mary Quass last year, in which she saw this coming.