How To Leave Cumulus & Clear Channel

Interested in taking your radio skills where they will be appreciated and compensated?

This piece is about how to work a game plan.  The specific skills you will need to work in the growing digital space and four fantastic new opportunities that will more than pay for your subscription. 

1.  Who is hiring radio people and which companies might be favorable to you approaching them?

2. If you’re an entrepreneur, an idea worth stealing today before someone else takes it. 

3. An opportunity so ripe for social media only a person with radio experience could do it. 

4. The pay day to end all pay days – the one you never thought you could get in digital is here for those in the know.

For the answers, click “read more”.

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Binge Viewing

Binge viewing is the rage …

Downloading content and consuming it all at once the way audiences are downloading “House of Cards” from Netflix or shows from HBO has major repercussions for content providers.

Learn about the trend here.  See the four entertainment content companies that will survive in tact.  And let me show you how a radio station can package content the way Netflix original series do – and make a ton of money. 

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Radio Branding Crisis Developing

A disturbing new trend that threatens to uproot established radio brands.

Get the first intel on how pressure from digital competitors is forcing radio stations into making strategic blunders that will be unfixable.

Then see what steps can be taken to protect the best radio formats and brands.

1.  How radio is starting to make an irreversible mistake in branding terrestrial stations so you can avoid this fatal error.

2.  What’s the new standard for protecting a brand?

3.  Five specific ways a radio station should protect its brand in the digital age.

4.  I’m just going to flat out tell you one thing you should never do – don’t aggregate digital content from other sites under your brand.  For more mistakes to avoid, read on.

5.  The best idea you’ll hear all year on how to protect your radio brand from the growing popularity of short form video. 

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More Clear Channel Cuts Coming

New intelligence just in …

Be the first to know which job category Clear Channel will eliminate in the next few weeks.  They met and approved it a few days ago.

Then, see whose head is on the chopping block for the rest of the year.

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Reversing the Radical Shift of Advertising Away From Radio

Chrysler is going to transfer about a third of its advertising budget away from radio to digital – a platform on which radio spends only 1% – or less, believe it or not.

It’s inevitable that other national and local advertisers will follow these drastic cuts.

Here are 6 solutions radio should counter with things that digital cannot do.

While radio geniuses remain in denial, you can beat your big competitors to the punch.

1.  How to create content so appealing to car dealers that you could be a broadcaster using two tin cans linked by a string and they would buy it.  That compelling!

2.  How to drive so many people to the dealer lot that the police have to turn them away.  It’s a promotion that can only be done by a radio station – albeit, one with balls.  It’s powerful – you could take it from dealer to dealer every weekend and obliterate a digital competitor for the same buy every time.  They can’t compete against this.  Don’t let your competitor read this before you do.

3.  Stop doing car lot radio remotes this minute!  They make you look old in the digital world.  Here’s a great alternative advertisers will look up to and support.

4.  What to do on-air when you are also doing digital promotions.  On-air support of digital campaigns are often weak.  Let me show you how to make them strong.

5.  Here’s a social media strategy that is better than Facebook, better than Twitter and costs you nothing.  That’s right – nothing!  You just have to know the secret.  Stop driving listeners away to social media when you can own this approach.

6.  A killer innovative idea that’s both digital and dealer-friendly that will blow away anyone looking to steal auto dollars – or any dollars – from your radio station.  Game over.

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Oklahoma City News Coverage

Here are four things radio stations are generally missing during their news coverage – or non-news coverage – of the recent Oklahoma City tornado tragedy and the “fix”.

No tragedy?  No problem?

Do them anyway and win fans + ratings:

1.  Next time a bigger than life event takes place in your market, borrow this strategy that always works for – believe it or not – hit radio.  Your listeners will thank you and you’ll reap the ratings rewards.

2.  Here’s a social network that hardly any radio stations know about that can be up and running within minutes when a disaster hits your market.

3.  The last thing radio stations think of in the wake of a big overriding news story should be the first thing.  Do you know what it is?  Now you do along with its track record for working.

4.  On what day should the big news coverage end?  Take a thousand guesses and you’ll be wrong every time.  Know when and everyone wins.

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Winning Millennials Back To Radio

Selling ice to the Eskimos might be easier, but there is a ray of hope to tempt the 80 million members of Gen Y to give a second listen to radio.

How not to do it:  keep doing what you’re doing now.

It’s dated, contrived, disrespectful (15 unit stop sets, etc.), not compelling – not local, not live and not authentic.

It’s the losing formula most radio companies – even the good ones – follow every day that is driving the essential next generation away from radio.

And even if every smartphone was personally blessed by Jeff Smulyan and activated with an FM chip, Millennials still wouldn’t listen. 

I’ve written courses and taught generational media at The University of Southern California. 

My background is radio, television, publishing and digital media.

And still I’m here to tell you that broadcasting in and of itself is not necessary to this generation and increasingly to older listeners but there are proven ways and innovative new approaches to win them back.

You supply the guts.  Here are the ideas:

1.  The one thing a Millennial cannot resist on the radio – one thing and it’s powerful if you play it up.

2.  How to program a Millennial-positive broadcast day from 5am until 7pm with key attractions they cannot and will not ignore.

3.  No traffic, no weather and none of this radio staple either.

4.  Finally!  How to do great youth-oriented radio and innovative digital content all at the same time.  And it’s very inexpensive, but shrewd if you know the plan.

5.  The new rules on formatics – the total makeover I’m about to describe will be necessary first.

6.  Six keys that are worth their weight in gold.  And, they’ll even work wonders with older listeners.  Hey, older people buy iPhones, iPods and iPads, don’t they? 

7.  How long to make the content to maximize results in attracting Millennials.

8.  No radio station has even a small chance of winning back Millennials if they don’t have this feature.  Steal it now before your local competitor does.

Plus …  One more thing!  You’re going to have to reinvent radio commercials.  The current way will no longer work with young audiences.  Peek at the radio commercial that definitely will.

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13 Radio Turnaround Strategies

The radio industry has stopped being a growth business and now fights each quarter just for zero growth.

Digital devices are not going away.  YouTube is used like a radio by teens for music and content.  Attention spans are growing shorter.  Advertisers are heading to digital (9% increase last quarter) and social media has replaced djs as music authorities.

So does that mean shut down the transmitter and quit?

Not if you build a recovery plan around the new ideas I’m going to share with you.

1.  Win back your audience TSL by changing the way you run commercial sets.

2.  What one thing a music station should do every 15 minutes that they’re not doing now to gain listeners.  That’s right, I said gain not just keep the ones they have.  And what one thing should news or talk stations do every quarter hour.

3.  Something that is on every smartphone that ought to be on every radio station.  Do you know what it is?

4.  A better solution to deal with listener-hated voice tracking that is economical and sensible.

5.  What you should stop doing right this minute, it’s killing radio listening.

6.  The one thing that is so important to Millennial audiences that if you add it right now, you have a chance to win many of them back.

7. The big mistake radio stations make that is killing their billing.  Try this and your revenue will go up even without attracting more listeners.

Plus … 5 digital strategies to jumpstart digital (YouTube, paid sites, what’s more saleable then “clicks” and “likes”, smart streaming)

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Yahoo’s Tumblr Deal

Yahoo just dropped a cool $1.1 billion to buy a fledgling blogging/social media hybrid that only bills $13 million a year.

And that’s the good news!

There is a fundamental change emerging about the digital space and advertising.

1.  How Yahoo is doing business the old fashioned way – by paying for an asset and then selling ads but archrival Google appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

2.  Why digital is running out of advertisers.

3.  Everyone – even you – will be monetizing their digital businesses a drastically different way within the next couple of years – here’s a preview of what it will be like.

4. Why Yahoo didn’t buy Tumblr for its 100 million social media contacts.

5.  Yahoo plans to keep Tumblr management in place and semi-autonomous.  Can you image Cumulus doing this when they buy CBS Radio?  Here’s Yahoo’s grand plan.

Plus … why we’re moving away from an advertising-based model and what it means to your business.

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Shocker: Time Spent Listening To Radio in Free Fall

An industry source close to the situation says radio time spent listening is in “rapid and drastic decline” – that’s a quote.

Now we know why radio groups have been recently trying to deceive advertisers about troubling audience erosion that they are trying to keep secret. 

Trumped up research studies.  A media buyer’s bash.  Even a Rod Stewart concert to say it isn’t so.

1.  How widespread is the time spent listening decline? 

2.  How long has TSL been declining this badly? 

3.  Which format is immune – talk, news or music? 

4.  How big is the decline year to year? 

5.  The one type of listener to target who is still listening like it’s 1999.

6.  How low one group just went to deceive advertisers. 

Plus, two proven strategies to reverse the continuing time spent listening decline that most stations overlook.

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Fantasy Sports

How snake oil salesmen are talking desperate AM and FM radio owners into dumping talk for a format that is going to lay an egg.  But here’s the one compelling new format for stations wishing to successfully compete in the digital age.

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Paul Drew

When I worked for Paul Drew, one of the most successful and influential program directors of the second golden age of radio, I lived in fear of making a mistake.

Blow the format and Paul was on the batphone taking you to task. 

There are many of us out there who suffered the same fate.

And for those who have never been on the receiving end of a batphone, it’s a high intensity floodlight that flashes so it doesn’t ring in the studio when the boss calls.

If I learned anything from Paul, it was to be thorough and hardworking – something that served me well later as a program director and in life.

Paul Drew died yesterday in his beloved state of California after years of a distinguished career in radio and music at the age of 78.

He was a mentor and one of the most colorful people that I have ever known in radio.

Today’s suit and tie CEOs are operating in an alien world compared to the days of Bill Drake and Paul Drew and a handful of other talented and great program directors.

Everyone has a Paul Drew story – and even if you dismiss half of it as embellishment, these tales are real and define this colorful man.

Paul worked at some big radio stations achieving success by adhering to high on-air programming standards. 

KHJ, Los Angeles.  KFRC, San Francisco.  WQXI, Atlanta.  And, of course, “The Big 8” CKLW in Detroit.  He was Vice President of Programming for the RKO Radio group at one point, the most powerful radio chain in the country.  He traveled with The Beatles on their U.S. tour along with my WFIL friend Larry Kane.  Dabbled in the music business with a Japanese act called Pink Lady and not long ago appeared once again on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

Paul Drew also worked at the less memorable WIBG in Philadelphia where I worked for him. 

The station’s signal was so bad, you had to rent a helicopter at night if you wanted to hear it.

On the night I was to do my first show, he sent me a memo that said, “Jerry, your name is Jim Barber.  Paul”. 

That’s it.

Paul didn’t see the need to share this type of information in advance and I had such a hard time remembering my name that I wrote it in big black letters and put it on the glass in front of me.

Paul once lectured me on the importance of a big news story.  He said, “A really big news story is a power hit and should be played as such”.

When I returned to WIBG to become the program director, I inherited his office and his files filled with memos to staff.  But I could never fill his shoes.

Paul loved to write memos – short, sweet, sometimes appreciative, sometimes critical.

Among the qualities I admired is how determined he was to stick to the format.

When he was going to launch the “All Time Top 300” Friday at 3pm running until midnight Sunday night, he secretly bought an ad in an afternoon newspaper with the “Top 300” printed in time for Friday afternoon so listeners could follow along.

Unfortunately, Jimmy Hilliard who was running WFIL (and with whom I was also privileged to work for) picked up a copy of the newspaper before 3pm and launched “WFIL’s All Time Top 300” at five minutes before three using our playlist.

WIBG’s 300 playlist, five minutes ahead of Paul full well knowing Paul would rather die than skip a record or two to catch up.  As a result, WIBG ran five minutes behind WFIL with WIBG’s exact Top 300 hit playlist all weekend.

Paul refused to skip a number and catch up.

The night before as we were auditioning Bill Drake’s top of the hour station break cut for the occasion, I noted that it said, “You’re listening to the All Time Top 300 counted down in order from” – and then an a cappella singing station ID “WIBG, Philadelphia”.

I said, Paul “Why is Drake saying counted down in order?”

Paul answered, “That’s the magic of a countdown”.

I knew he would never interrupt the magic to one up his able competitor.

Paul could be tough, very tough.

He fired one jock a week from the previous format every Friday.  You can imagine our nerves.  Once he joked to me and Jerry Stevens, the holdover afternoon personality, “It’s Friday”.  Stevens said, “So what”?  And Paul said, “you’re still here”.

A few weeks later, Stevens was fired.

The kind of firing that went on then was nothing compared to what happens in radio now because we could always get another job across the street.

There were no Clear Channels or Cumulus Medias owning all the stations.

For all the radio stories about Paul, my favorite is personal.

When my son decided to go to college at The University of Southern California 3,000 miles from Philadelphia, Jerry ran into Paul at a music school event.

All Paul had to do was hear the name “Jerry Del Colliano” and the conversation began.  They had not previously met because he was only a gleam in my eye when I was working for Paul.

Paul and his wonderful and kind wife, Ann, the best radio spouse I have ever met, took young Jerry under their wing, invited him to their LA home for dinners and kept a watchful eye on him. 

Paul and Ann attended Jerry’s graduation party.

Jerry had been used to hearing my stories about the batphone and how terrifying it could be working for a perfectionist like Paul Drew.

In a late night call, my son said to me “Paul Drew is a teddy bear”.

I had an immediate allergic reaction to that imagery.

But in the end, his public persona and private side were very different, as I knew well.

Indeed, he was a teddy bear.

Paul Drew mentored a lot of radio people in his time and I am grateful to be counted among them.

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Cumulus’ Next Two Moves

While Lew Dickey is raising $4 billion to buy CBS Radio, he has two earthshattering moves in the works.  One is really drastic, but believe it or not Cox is already doing it secretly under the radar.  This is double scary.

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Damning Evidence About Radio’s Continued Viability

Even old people are now starting to turn on radio – the research I’m about to share will shake you awake.  But, I’ve also got some positive, doable strategies that can spit in the face of the industry’s demise.  Beat your competitor to them.

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Google To Disrupt Music Radio Next

Google is going to announce that it is launching a massive streaming music competitor to Pandora and the much-awaited Apple Radio later today.

But they’re not really going after them – there’s no money to be made there.

Google is targeting radio and make no mistake about it.

Now, what Google’s real intentions are and how smart radio operators can cut them off at the pass before they damage free radio.

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  1. Which radio operator does Google want most to be like?  Be careful, it’s a trick question but the answer tells you where they are headed.
  2. What’s the one surefire way for radio to come roaring back against the growing popularity of streaming music providers.
  3. Why selling downloads is fast becoming like selling vinyl – a sea change of consumer sentiment is taking music in an entirely new direction.
  4. But what is not being said – and you likely will not read it anywhere today – is that Google is really looking to deliver a deathblow to music radio.  Here’s why.
  5. Important!  Google has two new music services heading to market.  The other one is a killer. 

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The FM Chip Dumbphone

It’s just 60 days away.

Participating stations must cough up millions of dollars to one cellphone carrier in advertising trade for the next few years to get their FM chip activated.

Now, the return on investment.

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  1. Does the FM smartphone chip have a chance of turning a cellphone into a radio and increasing overall listening?  Even a slim chance?  You may be surprised.
  2. What’s the maximum increase in radio listening that can be expected once a station activates its FM chip according to results elsewhere?  We now know the accurate number.
  3. What broadcasters should be fighting for – a fight that could bring them even more listening on cellphones and other devices even faster and attract younger listeners.  But they’re not.
  4. What local stations can do to maximize a return on investment for their FM chip radios.
  5. Finally!  If the FM chip fails to deliver, this is the one thing every radio station must do to remain relevant with younger audiences.

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Panic in Network Television

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Radio Without Talk

Now that Cumulus is getting set to pull out of talk and is publicly trashing its demographics and Rush Limbaugh, its biggest star, the radio industry will soon find itself with one less viable format.  What then?

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Google Glass

Google is less than a year away from selling wearable computer eyeglasses known as Google Glass that could be the next iPad. 

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If that’s not a big enough innovation, Google has decided not to allow advertising on Google Glass apps – an unthinkable turn of events.

Radio, TV, newspapers and magazines could be further up against the wall unless they do some major disruption of their ad model.  Here are some ideas.

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Pandora’s Next Massive Assault on Radio

Today I want to share with you just how dead serious Pandora is about bleeding the radio industry dry of advertising money.  I have uncovered just how deep and expansive their next plan is.  Actually, radio ought to steal it fast.

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What Lew Dickey Didn’t Tell Analysts

They heard we lost money again and everything is great – blah, blah, blah.  But Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey didn’t dare tell them what he’s up to.

Click “read more” below for Dickey’s real plans

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Non-Competes After The Michael Savage Ruling

Can Lew Dickey and Bob “Clown Hall” Pittman still enforce employee non-competes in the wake of talk show host Michael Savage’s court victory over his former employer, Talk Radio Network?   It’s complicated.

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YouTube’s Paid Model

Google, the great disruptor, is at it again in a YouTube experiment that could undo the cable television industry and provide content providers like radio stations with a solid path toward monetization. 

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Dickey Targets 36 Markets

Lew Dickey plans to disrupt as many as 36 Cumulus markets in the very near future by doing the unthinkable.  It’s a dangerous move with lots of downside and very little upside.

Click “read more” below for where, when and why.

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Matt Lauer & Anderson Cooper

Comcast is opening Pandora’s Box by replacing Jay Leno and considering replacing Matt Lauer.  Learn an important media lesson at their expense because getting younger is suddenly harder than hiring younger.

Click “read more” below for how to transition to the money demo.

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Town Idiots

Clear Channel called all their radio employees back to work to attend an important virtual town meeting but it isn’t what they said that was cause for grave concern, it’s what they didn’t say.

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Sell Apple, Buy These Media Stocks

I just sold all my Apple stock and placed a new bet on the future of digital content.  And as you’ll see, the future suddenly becomes clear when you’re spending your own money on it.

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