Hear 2.0

If you don't understand this, then please resign now

You've read it in my book, you've read it on this blog, you've heard it from Gap Media, and now you can read it from BIA (referring to TV):

BIA continues to emphasize that local TV stations will see a return to profitability the quicker they see themselves as local information and entertainment companies rather than simply television transmitters.

Remove "TV" and insert "radio" and your strategic challenge is clear.

This is a transformation much more total than most broadcasters understand.  This has structural, sales, programming, talent, content, and technology consequences.  Are you setting the table right?

That's why I and others are actively working (often under the radar) to help "old media" radio transform into what it's becoming.

It's the "it" we always talk about...

As in "broadcasters just don't get it."

From Zero to 6% of Revenues in 6 months: Transforming your Station's Digital Strategy

More than a few stations and radio groups are now earning a significant fraction of their total revenues from digital sources.  And one of the ones that impresses me most is Gap Broadcasting.

Gap puts to work some of the stuff I (and others) have been talking about for some time.  Check out this conversation with Erik Hellum, President of Gap West Broadcasting, and learn some of their secrets.

MP3 File

And here's a presentation prepared by Gap which outlines some of those strategies in vivid detail.

Transforming Radios Business Model With Multiple Revenue Streams

View more OpenOffice presentations from mramsey1.

The point I want to make is this:  Digital isn't an add-on.  It's part of a wholesale redefinition of the radio business that is way beyond whether or not you have a "good website."

Gap gets that.  You should too.

Radio: Stop Making Excuses

Despite plenty of marked progress over the past couple years, I still don't think most broadcasters understand where we're headed.

We're headed to a place where boundaries between sound and pictures and text are dissolving before our eyes and ears.

We're headed to a land where ratings and reach matter less than what those folks you reach do when you reach them.

We're headed in the direction of advertising evolving into marketing, of messaging evolving into relationship-building and community-nurturing.

We're headed in the direction of consumers - not broadcasters - determining what's worth having and when and how.

When I hear broadcasters tell me they don't have enough resources to do what needs to be done in these areas, I am not sympathetic.  You don't build a house with three walls, do you?

There remains a fundamental misunderstanding - one which extends to radio's digital strategies all too often - that we can cut our way to success.

If you can't afford to compete in radio in 2009, then I say get out.

Recently a broadcaster asked me a perfectly fair question:  Why should we focus our efforts on digital when the likes of Will Ferrell can't make money there?

Here's my answer:

Will Ferrell doesn't own your radio station.  Will Ferrell doesn't have your loudspeaker.  Will Ferrell isn't in the business of connecting consumers with advertisers like you are.  Will Ferrell doesn't have the advantages you have - advantages that are the envy of most pure-play digital players.  Will Ferrell uses his digital activities to spark interest in Brand Will so that next time a Will Ferrell movie comes out, the line will form at the box office.  He doesn't need to make money online.  He just needs to make money.  You are not Will Ferrell and he is not you.

That's aside from the fact that if you asked Will Ferrell himself whether his online efforts have paid off, my guess is he would say yes.

Meanwhile, another conversation.  This one with a well known provider of premium digital pure-play video content.  For a short series of videos, a sponsor just ponied up $250,000.

So if the guy with no tower - no loudspeaker - can make a quarter of a million bucks with one series of videos, what can you do?

Now stop making excuses.

Tweetmic - a great iPhone app for Broadcasters

What is Tweetmic?

TweetMic is a simple and intuitive Twitter client app for the iPhone that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings or "Tweetcasts" and publish them directly to Twitter. There is no limit to how much you can record and you don't need to sign up for any additional service to start using TweetMic.

(Thanks to Todd Little for the tip).

What would or should you tweet?  The same kind of stuff you tweet now.  Or how about an interview highlight or a promo for stuff upcoming or a hook montage or a backstage tidbit, etc.

We are, after all, a primarily audio medium.  Building that capability into Twitter makes it even more a natural extension of radio.

"Why should I come back?"

Perhaps the most important question for a radio station's digital strategy to answer is not "how do we monetize our traffic?"

It's "why should I, the fan, come back?"

What are you offering me that's dynamic, that's must-see, that is ever-fresh?

Indeed, the days of the website as corporate brochure are over.  Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Radio Site with the list of personalities and the list of events and the "what's playing right now" and the list of this and that and the other.

Your web strategy should not be reduced to the equivalent of a Wikipedia page.  It should be a "re-imagining" of your proposition (not simply your station) for a digitally savvy audience, which is the only audience any of us will have one of these days.

Nor should your web strategy be reduced to simply your own website - that's exactly why you see many corporate brands now messaging their Facebook page, for example, rather than their own product's website.

Just as our radio stations need clear reasons to return, so does our digital effort.

There is no monetization without a steady stream of new and return traffic.

"Why should I come back" is the most important question you face - right up there with "Why should I come at all?"

Commercial Radio's Podcasting Myth

When it comes to radio station podcasts, we’re generally talking about two flavors: 

One is the Public Radio kind, usually weekly shows with beginnings, middles, and ends or clips of information updates or highlights. 

The other is the commercial radio podcast – often three hours of this or four hours of that.

The myth of podcasting is that this long-form way is the way listeners want to consume our content simply because it’s the way they consume our content over the air – a context in which they have no choice in the matter, by the way.

Actually, they do have a choice – it’s to tune in and out, ever-hopeful for a “hit” or “highlight.”  And tune in and out is exactly what they do.

But wait, doesn’t an on-demand environment give us the ideal opportunity to showcase the “hits” or “highlights” that our active listeners demand? 

Let me ask this another way:  What’s likely to be more popular, the brief clip of the 47-year-old woman startling the judges with her vocal talents on Britain’s Got Talent – or the entire episode of Britain’s Got Talent?

Public Radio shows are generally like episodes in a series (for longer form stuff) or immediate and disposable, but useful in the moment (for shorter form stuff).  Or - in rare cases - the entertainment value of the whole (i.e., Car Talk) can't easily be atomized into its parts.

Commercial radio shows, by contrast, almost uniformly lack beginnings, middles, or ends.  Arguably, the first hour of your morning show is not much different from the last.  And – by design – you do not usually need to hear the first hour to appreciate the ones which follow.  Nor, I would argue, do you need to hear today’s show if you miss it.  Indeed, today’s show is relatively similar to tomorrow’s show and yesterday’s show.  Wait a few hours, and like the movie Groundhog Day it will all come back again.

If I miss Hannity today, no sweat.  I’ll just catch him tomorrow.  One listener call on Dr. Laura can be substituted for any other listener call.  Thus the very consistency of the show reduces its value in an active on-demand environment.  When something is the same all the time, it’s never special – or at least any one show in its entirety is never essential.

Further, even though you can count your podcast downloads you generally can’t count the degree to which a listener is hearing the whole podcast – or any of it, for that matter.  My iPod doesn’t care whether or not I hear what is on it – it dutifully downloads podcast updates regardless.  No wonder most podcasts are heard online - not on portable devices.  At least a few minutes of them, anyways.

What this all suggests – at least in part – is that when we transform the radio show to the podcast we are thinking about the medium all wrong.  In an on-demand world for much of commercial radio, the unit of currency is not the “show,” it’s the “hit,” the “highlight.”

Sure folks will still listen to the long-form audio, but what many of them would prefer is that we carve out the “hits” – those special moments worth actively seeking out and hearing.  The “water cooler” gems.  Not the mundane same-old same-old that characterizes much of what lay between the “hits”

Listen, more folks will read your email if there’s only one short message in it.  And more folks will click your audio if it contains just the “hit” they’re looking for – and only the hit.

This, after all, is why people buy songs instead of albums.

Listening to radio over the air is as different from listening on-demand as an album is different from a song.

Share your content accordingly.

Your Local Media Opportunity is Slipping Away, Radio

Recently I tweeted about this site, MomsLikeMe, which rallies communities of moms - LOCAL communities of moms - to do the kind of sharing and caring for which social media is rightly famous.

I made the point that this was an illustration of radio's LOCAL opportunity slipping away.

More than one reader commented that they didn't get the connection.  "What does this have to do with radio?" they asked.

I wrote about this topic in my recent book, but for the sake of those who haven't read it, let me try to explain this clearly.

Radio is not in the "radio business" any longer.  You're now in the LOCAL MEDIA business.

But unlike the creators of MomsLikeMe YOU already have tens or hundreds of thousands of willing consumers and scores of relationships with advertisers in your local communities.

In the battle between MomsLikeMe and YOU, YOU can win.

Unless, of course, you're too busy being "radio."

Slip, slip, slip.

Another way to listen to listen to YOUR radio station - on the iPhone and iPod Touch

It's like buying a radio that can get any station anywhere - for a measly ten dollars.

It's called RadioShift Touch, and here's a screenshot.

Open it in iTunes here.

Now I know lots of stations are now racing to create their own custom iPhone buttons, and this is a great thing to do.  But keep in mind it's not nearly enough.

That's because the iPhone is not about you, it's about your audience and what they want.

While it's fine to have your own station's button on the iPhone, history will prove that listeners will be way more interested in buttons that allow access to many stations rather than just one.

Just as history has shown listeners prefer radios that get all stations to "fixed-tune" radios that get only one.  

I'm not saying a $10 app is better than the free one, I'm saying a free one that gets lots of stations is best of all.  The advantage will favor whatever provides the greatest value with the greatest simplicity.

The opportunity for your station is not to try and narrow the choices listeners have, it's to be the worthiest choice among many.

Radio is missing a hyper-local opportunity

Smart.

Can you see the application for a "local" medium called radio?

A Tale of 22 Websites

Recently I heard about a broadcast group in one quite average market who was doing something very interesting and very effective - very quietly.

You see, Radio is not nearly consolidated enough to do things on a system-wide basis. Thus there remains tremendous secrecy when it comes to "strategies that work." Some of the best ideas, in many cases, are not publicized because a broadcaster doesn't want his or her secrets out.

Too bad. Because here comes a Great Reveal....

In my forthcoming book (more on that later), Making Waves: Radio on the Verge, I provide a new definition for radio - one that has vast implications for the way you do business.

And here it is:

Radio is the web of local relationships between advertisers and consumers mediated by your company – no matter how or where you connect those relationships.

That means, as the book will describe, you're not in the radio business anymore. You're in the connection business. And the "loudspeaker" of your over-the-air signal is what you use to grease the movement in the relationships.

And that brings me to my tale.

The market cluster in question doesn't have one website for each of its stations. In fact, they have 22 local websites.

Because when you're in the business of relationships - the business of moving consumers to advertisers no matter where or how - then why should you be limited to websites with radio call-letters on them?

In fact, these 22 websites are largely local "vertical" sites - each addressing one topic of interest to one facet of the local community.

I haven't seen the site roster (and I don't even know the group or the market, so don't bother asking) so I can't tell you what they are, but could they be local music sites or local pet-lover sites or local moms sites or local sports sites?

Yes, they could be.

And they need not be branded with your radio station ID, because they are not about your radio station.

They just happen to be owned by you and run by you or your agents.

This is the kind of opportunity created when you own relationships in your local markets. You can move people wherever they want to go.

And if you're smart, you'll profit from those destinations.