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]

Chimps and Geeks

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If you also missed the careerbuilder.com chimp ads in the Super Bowl, you can see them here. I’d pay a hundred bucks to spend the day watching those commercials being made. Nothing on god’s green earth is funnier than a chimp in a coat and tie.

Did I mention I’m all registered, booked and reserved for Gnomedex 6.0? It’s five months away and I can hardly wait. For three days I won’t have to explain or defend blogging and podcasting and RSS and all the rest. I will be be among believers. Not just believers, but those who are creating and applying these revolutionary technologies. I have no idea who the speakers will be or what they’ll be talking about. But everyone in the room will have a clue.

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.

I owe it all to squirt cheese

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“To this day, the taste of squirtable cheddar is forever paired in Mays’ memory with the hot, dusty stench of chicken manure and mayonnaise; and yet, he cannot help but consume the delicacy at every opportunity. And though that day 50 years ago may have seemed trivial at the time, its lasting influence on the state of the blogosphere is but more evidence of the power of Squirt Cheese in History.”

— David Brazeal