Clear Channel Bombshell

Clear Channel is ready to unleash an unprecedented company wide move as early as this week that could reveal where they’re headed for the first time in years.

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Dickey Dicking With New Cutbacks

Cumulus uses a growing list of techniques to cut operating expenses including layoffs, 50-60% pay cuts, voice tracking and syndication, one PD per major market and no market managers.

This is what’s next.

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The Next Big Media Disruption

Startling new research shows that audiences have changed their media preferences in the past year alone while radio, TV and the entertainment business stubbornly refuse to give them what they want.  If you’re a radio station, here’s how to disrupt them back.

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All Market Managers Wiped Out in Two Large States

It’s happening faster than anticipated.  Another radio group has eliminated all market managers in two large states – almost 50 stations – choosing to run everything from headquarters.  Here’s how they are pulling it off and which other groups are slobbering over the possibilities.

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Here’s Where Your Listeners Are Going

Not your smartphone.  Not Apple or iTunes.  Not Netflix or YouTube.  No to radio and TV.  What you’re about to see is the future of content in the media business and you’re not going to like it, but at least you’ll know what you’re going to face.

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“F” For Boston Bombing Coverage

Media coverage of the Boston bombings was a disaster for TV, cable, news services, radio and yes, even social media.  But next time a critical news story occurs, there is a better way within the skill sets we already have to come up bigger and better.  Here is that plan.

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What’s Really Driving Music Sales

What if I told you that iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, radio and social media are all not what you may think they are to driving music sales.  Dangerous new studies are being floated to mislead but new evidence suggests something off the radar is driving song sales and there’s a new use for radio that fits in perfectly.

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Massive Radio Audience Theft

It’s not digital that’s killing radio ratings.  Radio is losing significant audience that it has legitimately earned because a few powerful radio groups are playing with their low-powered “translators” when they should be demanding a fix for this astonishing problem.

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Twitter Music

I would be surprised if the just-released new Twitter Music app revolutionizes a music industry that has reduced itself to being a condiment instead of a main course and yet, believe it or not, the old analog radio industry could outperform digital wonders like Twitter if it would just do this one thing.

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Country Nash FM Number 1 in Bullshit

What most people don’t know is that the new Cumulus Nash FM in New York, a city that has clearly rejected country radio previously, isn’t chasing ratings or even on-air advertising.  If they get away with it, this tricky little plan I’m about to share with you will make the business of “losing” a big winner.

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Minot Happened Again At Clear Channel

Clear Channel got caught with its pants down big time Wednesday saving money over saving people’s lives.  It’s real embarrassing and you won’t read this anywhere else.

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Cumulus Starts Purging

A dangerous stealth plan to conduct major personnel cutbacks is being slowly rolled out right now in Cumulus test markets, but the real blow that’s coming will devastate career radio people like no “layoff” before and set a bad example for other radio groups to follow.

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Lew Dickey’s Talk Radio Plans Revealed

The CEO of Cumulus was overheard saying some drastic things about his plans for talk radio that included the fate of Limbaugh and Hannity, a bizarre move to make the format skew younger and a startling move that could happen in less than 12 months.

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The Tragedy of Radio Covering a Tragedy

How do you thank a radio industry in which 99% of its stations don’t program news, or have a newsroom, a reporter, or a budget for covering a tragedy like the one in Boston a few days ago?  You don’t. 

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Losing Takes Care of Everything

Radio’s most influential groups are losing their way to success so effectively that if you want to see what’s in store for the industry next, consider this MBA-driven next phase of radio consolidation.  The next Cumulus is coming and I’m not talking about Entercom – although them, too!

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Employee To Entercom: CEO Is “Kim Jong” Field

It’s worse than most people know at Entercom as critical talent is quitting under its CEO strongman, which is why Friday’s “town hall” meeting at the troubled Boston cluster does not bode well for the rest of the company and for that matter the next radio group planning to pull a “Cumulus”.

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Rebellion At Entercom

At least when Cumulus fires an employee, they leave scared to death to open their mouth.  Not at Entercom where an ugly and fearless uprising of employees at one of their clusters threatens to spread to other cities and bring CEO David Field down.

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Radio Managers Being Eliminated

There is an alarming trend in radio to eliminate market and general managers and operate under this new less expensive structure that allows groups to shield themselves from wrongful dismissal lawsuits and radically redefine the radio station of the future.

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Radio’s JC Penney Problem

The sorry industry of retailing is starting to look like the sorry industry of radio after retailer JC Penney just fired their “golden” CEO after only 18 months.  Both industries have a lot in common and they’re both going to end up the same.

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Dickey Disease Spreading To Another Radio Group

Which major radio group is in such financial trouble that it is demanding big pay cuts from existing employees?  It’s the kind of raw deal you’d expect from Clear Channel or Cumulus not this company begging the question what other draconian measures are radio’s cheap bastards planning next?

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WABC Employees Openly Mocking Lew Dickey

What few Cumulus employees are left in New York City are openly laughing at their boss because they know as WABC goes, so goes talk radio at Cumulus and that means a format change. 

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Empty Promises For AM Radio

The FCC is pandering to AM radio operators with a new series of “solutions” that will never work.  Here’s what will.

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The Final Nail In TV’s Coffin

Fox is threatening to put all its TV shows on cable while cable is bundling itself to death with consumers, but nothing is about to kill television as we know more than this move that gained momentum in the past 7 days.

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Next Big Cumulus Management Move

Lew Dickey’s anticipated purchase of CBS Radio and a new corporate business plan will force him to make these big, bold scary decisions that will impact every one of his 570 stations in 150 markets.

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CBS/Cumulus Merger Developments

Clear Channel has some doubts about the kind of merger CBS Radio would be willing to do with Cumulus next year, but because of recent developments the way it is shaping up now, they may not be the only radio group that winds up shocked and disappointed.

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Cumulus A Seller

Cumulus is circulating a private list to potential buyers that for the first time helps reveal what their secret future plans are.

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Late Night With Comcast NBC

The smartest way to handle the generational handoff from Jay Leno to Jimmy Fallon is not the one NBC is choosing but this more effective strategy works equally as well for radio stations looking to attract younger audiences without making NBC’s big mistake.

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YouTube Gate

Leave it to the record labels to be so desperate that they actually cheat on their metrics.

A lot of you have responded to my revelation a few days ago that media companies are buying Facebook “likes” from Bangladesh.

But that’s no joke.

Clueless radio companies are doing it to make their social media numbers bigger than they actually are.

And now this bombshell that the major record labels are cheating – let’s just put it out there – on the popularity of their artists’ social media numbers.

This is idiotic.

Maybe it makes them feel more powerful and mighty.

And maybe the stations doing this are pandering to media buyers who want some type of Arbitron service for new media because they’re lazy.

And face it, that’s the knock on media buyers.  They’re lazy.

I know lots of radio stations that think their social media efforts are world class because they aggregate content and race to the finish trying to get clicks and likes.

Good luck with that.

Two things.

You don’t want to be caught doing the things I’m about to share with you.

And, there is a better way to master social media and it’s legal and powerful.

A surefire better answer that brings you abundant and legal social media followers whether it’s a radio station or music artist.

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Radio Research, My Ass!

Whenever an establishment media company like Arbitron that exists because Clear Channel is its main client says radio is the first choice for music discovery, I check my wallet next.

Yes, the happy talk radio press is slobbering all over themselves again saying that the 21st Arbitron-Edison study firmly concludes radio is great and digital media is not so great.

That radio is the number one source for music discovery.

Try to catch a young person, the people who buy the most music, listening to a radio. 

Go ahead, try.

But the study says it’s 78% and it includes AM radio so you would be wrong and they would be right if you believe this stuff.

Then friends and family are the next most influential.

Are they kidding?

That’s right, you parents know how often your sons and daughters sit around the dinner table and ask you, “What good music have you discovered lately?”  It’s 73% in the Edison-Arbitron study.

In fact, who has dinner together anymore?

Okay, maybe you do.

But who has dinner together without your kids on their smartphones?  I got ya! Only 53% of 12+ respondents had a smartphone in this study.  What world are they living in?  I mean, come on.

Only 75% have smartphones among the 18-34 demo.  I ask again, what world are they living in?

I could go on but you know the answer already.

Radio is right up there on top of the world and everything else is not exactly radio. 

This delusionary thinking is brought to you by people with a horse in the race – radio.  The research, I’m sure was professionally conducted because Edison is a very reputable company, but the findings are useless in the end because everyone with two eyes – okay one eye – knows that the conclusions are wrong.

In fact, if you only knew the disturbing information about listening habits and your audience, you’d cut the bullshit and start concentrating on things that can actually be done to save radio and music.

So here we go.

What’s the real threat to radio – not the imagined threat.  This one disrupter is what you need in your sights.

The one hope for an AM station – and after that there is no hope.

The overlooked source for music discovery among radio audiences – better keep an eye on it.

The renewed threat of music television with a new twist you should know about.

At last – what Millennials want for news/talk radio. 

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Take This Country Music and Shove It

Cumulus CEO Lew “Tricky” Dickey is at it again.

His half radio station in New York “Nash FM” is the biggest thing since ESPN in the world of brands – or should I say in the fantasy of his mind.

A 1.6 first book rating with a signal that doesn’t cover the city but I hear it booms into Newark for all those long lost country lovers there.

The hype.

The deals.

Why, it’s enough to make rival Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman wet – you know, tearful.

Dickey is playing with us.

New York doesn’t need a country station (as preceding radio operators found out).

“Nash FM” is not a brand.  It’s an excuse for something to sell advertisers – not even radio.

But there’s a lot of dirty doings going on behind the scenes that people don’t know about.

And it has to do with the record business where there appears to be some serious shenanigans going on.

Fake numbers.

Favors.

It’s embarrassing if not questionably legal.

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Phil Ramone

Legendary engineer and producer Phil Ramone passed away over the weekend at the age of 79 and that’s just it.

He was 79.

Never retired.

Never got old.

Never got arrogant even working with Sinatra, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and just about all of the highly regarded music acts of his time and after his time.

The eulogies have been glowing as expected but the real gift of Phil Ramone is something we should bottle and make available to ourselves for future reference and the next generation of people who really care about music.

Get this and you have the way the record industry can come back.

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