NAB Radio Show down with New Media

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Scott reports there are at least eight sessions on “New Media” at the NAB Radio Show going on this week in Dallas:

1) Pod Squad – Getting the Drop on Podcasting
2) Text Messaging – Where U @?
3) How to Make Your Radio Station Website the Newspaper of the Future
4) Promotions with New Technologies
5) Harnessing the Power of Blogging
6) Radio’s Future in Focus: What Millennials REALLY Think
7) It Ain’t Just Radio: Where Else Can You Find New and Bigger Revenues?
8) Email marketing

Let’s hope Scott fires up that Blackberry and files some dispatches from a few of these sessions. We’ll post them here if we get ’em. They’ve got some people who know their stuff on the blogging and podcasting panels. (Scottie: Make Roger buy the tapes for those two sessions.)

Stalking the prospect. Shhhhh.

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Dear J:

Thanks for sending me the newspaper story about the big liquidation at Reagan Hyundai. It looks like a great opportunity to buy a pre-owned vehicle!

Wait a minute. I don’t think this is a real story at all! You know what this is? It’s a sales gimmick! But that can’t be right, it came with a hand written Post-It note. What the heck is going on here?

This is what direct mail marketing has come to. Can the marketing wizards at the car dealership really think I’m this stupid? Or, do they think this is insanely clever and assume I will, too. My guess is they weren’t shooting any higher than just getting some chump to open the envelope. (“He opened it! He opened it!”)

From the same bag of tricks:

At a recent sales training session for a national marketing group, one of the more popular tactics for getting appointments was a how-to on hiding your phone number from the prospect’s caller ID. That one has haunted me all week. If the prospect knows it’s me calling she won’t take my call. So I gotta sneak up on her. How about dressing up as the Culligan man and toting in a big bottle of water? Once in the office, drop the bottle and start your pitch.

Radio: “Changing Its Tune”

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I pulled the following excerpts from an article (Media & Advertising) in today’s New Your Times (“Changing Its Tune,” by Richard Siklos).

“While more than 9 out of 10 Americans still listen to traditional radio each week, they are listening less. … As a result, the prospects of radio companies have dimmed significantly since the late 1990’s, when broadcast barons were tripping over themselves to buy more stations. Radio revenue growth has stagnated and the number of listeners is dropping. The amount of time people tune into radio over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.”

“Over the last three years, the stocks of the five largest publicly traded radio companies are down between 30 percent and 60 percent as investors wonder when the industry will bottom out.”

“Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio operator, is now considering selling some of its 1,200 stations in smaller markets after years of acquiring everything in sight, according to industry analysts. The CBS Corporation did the same thing recently and now says it is looking at further station sales. The Walt Disney Company struck a deal this summer to get out of the radio business altogether.”

” ‘A possible reason is that unlike other media businesses, radio appears to have come late to the game of focusing on viable online business models. Although digital revenues are growing fast, they accounted for only $87 million of the industry’s $20 billion in 2005 revenues, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson Communications. As an industry, we’ve lost the hipness battle,” said Jeffrey H. Smulyan, the chief executive of Emmis Broadcasting. “Like a lot in life, it may be more perception than reality.’ ” (Mr. Smulyan tried to take his company private earlier this summer in the face of its sagging stock price, down more than 40 percent since 2003.)

“Amid so much uncertainty, it is little wonder that sessions at next week’s National Association of Broadcasters radio convention in Dallas advertise things like: “Learn to steal money from your local newspaper” and “Harnessing the power of blogging.” It is also a sign of the times that the convention’s opening reception does not have a broadcaster as a host. Instead, Google will be buying the drinks.”

Chicken LittleI wonder if this isn’t a very positive trend for broadcasting. Could “small be the new big” here? Perhaps a locally owned and managed radio station could better serve the community than a cog in some monstrous media machine. What if you didn’t have to claw your way up through many layers of corporate org charts (and back down) to try something new? What if it really became about serving the local community and not the share price?

No, I don’t think it’s ever going to be the way it was. But a more nimble, self-directed, home-town radio station might be able to change course faster than the USS Juggernaut.

Interview: Dan Shelley, WCBS-TV

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In July, my old friend Dan Shelley left WTMJ in Milwaukee and moved to New York as Executive Editor of Digital Media for WCBS-TV. I spoke with him this morning about digital media, journalism, blogging, radio, life in NY and riding in the elevator with Andy Rooney. Dan is pumped about his new job and living in Manhattan.

AUDIO: Interview with Dan Shelley

Dan offered this warning to broadcasters: “If you don’t do more than just stick your toe in the water, if you don’t plunge head-first and totally immerse yourself in the digital media future, and do it now, you will die.”

For those that might have missed it, I interviewed Dan in May, 2005, right after he took over as chairman of the Radio and Television News Director’s Association. He talked the “digital talk,” and now he’s “walking the digital walk.”

“Baghdad Is Burning”

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The following is an excerpt from a dispatch written by William Langewiesche to his editors in June of this year (2006) and published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine. I was unable to find the full text online but will watch for it and post link if/when I find it.

“The government is hardly a government at all. There is some small hope–a last, residual hope–that the new prime minister may be able to pull things together, and through force (rather than conciliation) keep the civil war from growing. Nobody really expects it to happen, and they give him at most a few months. Afterward? The middle class is trying desperately to get passports and take refuge elsewhere, especially in Damascus and Amman. Meanwhile, a small group of elected officials and high bureaucrats, most interested mainly in stealing as much as they can before they escape the country, huddle in the Green Zone, protected by American forces, going through the motions of governing. The money they take comes for the most part from the United States, though apparently the on-again, off-again oil production is also making some people very rich. On every level corruption here is pervasive, inescapable, and beyond anyone’s ability to contain.”

Your Pet’s Best Friend

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Kennett pal Everett Mobley started blogging recently. He’s still finding his rhythm but is off to a great start. The blog is primarily a companion to the website for his veterinary practice and I predict it will be very popular if he keeps posting useful and interesting information like today’s on dental care for dogs. If you have pets, you’ll want to visit and subscribe to Your Pet’s Best Friend.

Podcasting, broadcasting, advertising

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Excellent interview at AdAge.com with Leo Laporte. Leo is the man behind TWiT (This Week in Technology), one of the most popular podcasts (monthly reach of 500,000). Which is why the podcast has attracted Dell, T-Mobile and Visa as advertisers. According to the AdAge piece, Laporte’s podcast mini-empire could rake in as much as $2 million dollars in a year, but he says he’s more concerned about how to not ruin the medium with advertising. Excerpts:

“…all podcasters agree that podcasting has more value than radio or almost everything and we deserve a high cost per thousands [of listeners] and are going to create an environment that’s worth it for advertisers. We don’t want to jam it for advertisers. And the audience will let you know — they’re not passive. It’s more of a conversation than a monologue. … We need to hold the line and really deliver quality advertising. It’s going to be hard at first, [podcasters will have to be] turning down advertisers, running fewer ads than you’d like, not take in as much money as you’d like. But if we can focus on delivering something of value we can make both advertisers and listeners happy.”

When asked if he thinks podcasts from mainstream media companies will exercise enough restraint in the advertising:

“I hope they screw it up. I see them as using podcasts to drive to their bread and butter. We’re narrowcasters and they’re broadcasters and there’s a big difference. “Ask a Ninja” wants to be “Seinfeld” but people like me and most I know are narrowcasters. We want to super-serve an audience and develop a relationship. [Broadcasters] see themselves as delivering a lot of people to advertisers and inefficiently. But those days are drying up. There will always be the Tides and Coca-Colas who can afford that but most companies in this modern world need to be efficient and they can be by using these new technologies.”

I have no doubt MSM companies (like ours) can produce quality podcasts. And, given our built-in promotional opportunities, we should be able to attract listeners. Will we “screw it up” when it comes to the advertising model? Don’t know. To be continued.

Apple polishing

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced some new stuff yesterday. These events get Mac users hopping from one foot to the other and –now that I have a Mac– I sort of understand why. I can’t explain why, but I kind of get it.

Speaking of “get it” … I’ll eventually have to get one of the slick new nano’s (I just watched the amazing ad for same). The new Shuffle is literally wearable computing.

And there’s a new version of iTunes. I’m a sucker for a pretty UI and this is about as nice as they come. I haven’t seen them but there’s talk of a new series of Get A Mac ads poking fun at Windows efforts to mimic the sleek look and feel of the Mac OS. I’m sure Vista is/will be pretty but if the new iTunes is a hint of what the new Mac OS is going to look like… it’s no contest for me.

If you spend 90% of every waking moment looking at a computer, that time is more pleasant…more fun… if it’s Mac.