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”
“When one out of five of everyone you know is listening to music on a portable device packed with hundreds or thousands of songs, commercial-free, what can your station bring them that they can’t self-program better?”
— Mark Ramsey quoting a national study by American Media Services
Mark Ramsey asks: What’s the point of music research when every listener personalizes his or her music to his or her own tastes? And where’s your NON-music content, Mr. Broadcaster?
He also wants to drop the term “streaming” in favor of “Internet radio.” My only problem with that is where that leaves us verb-wise. Now I typically write/say: We’ll stream the governor’s speech at 7:00 p.m. If what we’re doing here is “Internet radio,” do I say we’ll “broadcast” the speech? It certainly is not a broadcast.
I’m becoming a fan of Mark’s blog. He seems to really know the radio business and has a firm grasp of new media.
Mark Ramsey offers some insight into what’s happening (and is likely to happen) as terrestrial radio rolls out the HD channels (frequencies?).
“It couldn’t be clearer that HD will be a new battlefield where the intent of the broadcaster will be to draw the blood of their competitors. We will try to eat our young. As you evaluate this list as a listener, ask yourself the big question: do you want to buy a new radio?”
Seems like broadcasters have a lot riding on listeners adopting HD. I suppose it’s possible they’ll put some really good formats on the new channels but I’d have to hear it before I’d pop for a new receiver. And I can’t (easily) hear the new stuff …until I buy a new receiver.
Mark Ramsey (Radio Marketing Nexus) doesn’t think so:
“I have never seen any perceptual research support the notion that adding play-by-play to a music station is good, on the whole, for that station’s non-sports listenership or image. If anything, I’ve seen cases where a music station ends up standing for one thing only: The sports franchise.”
The post above referenced pro football and I have no idea if Mark thinks the same thing about collegiate sports. But it seems like something our sports affiliate relations guys would know something about.
I’ve been reading Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book (Get Back In theBox: Innovation from the Inside Out) and was delighted to come across an interview with Rushkoff at Radio Marketing Nexus. Mark Ramsey talked with Rushkoff about “how to make radio relevant again.” Ruskoff misses the same things about radio that I do. AUDIO
“Because of my book tours I’ve been in a lot of radio stations, and even from 1995 to 2005 the amount of change I’ve seen has been shocking. There used to be this kind of quality to an FM radio station – I hate to be stereotypical, but there was a certain kind of chick who would be the receptionist at an FM radio station. There was a certain kind of guy that worked in the album room organizing the albums. There was a certain kind of geek figuring out the emphasis rack.
But FM stations are not really like that anymore. They feel much more like almost any other office, and if you didn’t see the control room you wouldn’t know you were in a radio station at all. They don’t ooze their culture anymore.
There was a smell and a quality and a texture to everything radio that I think was the fun of the industry. There was something so real about it. In the early days when I was a kid, you had Ron Lundy and Cousin Brucie – you just somehow knew those guys were there even though they were playing top 40 stuff. You knew it was a world of guys with records and personalities. And there’s so little of that on the radio today.
There’s almost nothing in mainstream radio that has that sense of this as a club of people in a cool place having a great time sharing some of their ecstasy with those of us driving to work or sitting in our bedrooms who wanted to have a taste of what it’s like to be an adult who understands music, who reads “Rolling Stone,” who understands why we’re fighting the Gulf War, or whatever it is. And I want to piece of that.
When I turn on the radio now I don’t feel that these folks have a piece of anything that I can’t get a piece of by going into Allstate to work in the morning. It’s just another working stiff with some computer telling them what to play and when to play it and when to read the ads.
I don’t trust the voice behind the music anymore because I don’t know that he’s really an expert or that he really cares. He’s not part of a living, breathing, fertile culture whereas if I go online and look at these Podcasts I know these people have done it not for the money but for the love of it. And radio is going to have to go a long way now to convince me that there’s somebody there who cares about what they’re doing for some reason other than the cash.
Finally, I would say the purpose of radio is to keep people company. And in order to keep people company there’s got to be a human being on the other side of it. The more truly human your radio station is the better it is at keeping people company. And the more computerized and business-like it is the farther outside the box you’ll find yourself.”
So there you have it. The pure, distilled essence of what’s wrong with radio today. And it seems like it would be very easy to fix. To get back in the box. But I fear we don’t even remember where we put the box.
Mark Ramsey (Radio Marketing Nexus) explains the difference between posting mp3’s for download and podcasting:
“…podcasting represents the passive movement of audio to your iPod without having to download it yourself. If you think that’s not different then consider the difference between going out to a restaurant and having your meal delivered to you at home.”
Another one of those things you have to experience to understand.
