Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

The radio industry has been hanging on to the hope that it will still dominate the digital entertainment center of the future in cars.

It was always a stretch.

The old radio has just a finite number of radio stations available on it with a finite number of satellite radio stations if the owner wanted the extra expense.

That’s why we proudly said for decades that “an automobile is a radio with four wheels”.

I’ve been consistently saying the digital dashboard is a mirage.

At best, you get one of ten pre-sets.

Then it’s everybody for themselves.

Today Apple dealt the ultimate blow to radio’s hopes.

They announced CarPlay.

CarPlay is an iPhone-to-car integration system that seamlessly syncs with your car to allow phone calls, dictate text messages and emails and plays music while driving.

Siri controls the app and other third party apps including iHeartRadio and Spotify. Siri will have her own button on the steering wheel of cars from Mercedes and Ferrari to GM, Ford, Toyota and others.

Pandora has its own built-in option to the digital dashboard.

If you study the habits of Millennials as old as 30 and Plurals, the teenaged next generation, you already know that the smartphone is all they need to live, communicate and enjoy.

A radio is no longer necessary.

You can’t go to a hockey game without a smartphone or to dinner or to bed and it makes sense that Apple has figured out that its products are all anyone needs to go for a ride in their cars.

One thing is certain.

Get Plan B ready because Plan A is changing.

I want to get to this at my Philly Conference in a few weeks.

Just how should a radio station deal with losing its number one source of listening.

Streaming is not the right answer.

Consumers prove over and over again that they don’t have the interest or attention span to use a smartphone as a radio.  They don’t even use the Internet as a radio except in perhaps 3% of all office radio listening.

Plan B is a two-pronged approach to radio and digital.

Disrupt the way we do radio on our own – right now before someone else does it.

Then start a separate revenue stream from digital projects that will be worthwhile.

If the average station is doing $166,000 in digital billing according to Borrell research, that’s not a business.  It’s a pain in the neck.

We’re going to put this all together with digital, video and time shifting at my March 26^th conference.

Here’s the initial agenda:

8 am               Registration/Complimentary breakfast
9 am              Disrupt & Reinvent Radio
10:30 am       Break
10:45 am        Attracting Money Demos

12 Noon         Complimentary lunch

1 pm               Conference Conversation with More FM, Philly owner Jerry Lee
2 pm               Break
2:15 pm          Digital, Video & Time Shifting
3 pm               Social Media

Guests include Sean Hannity in person to discuss ways to adapt to younger money demos (he’s got the youngest audience of major talk show hosts).  And Michael Harrison, the industry’s go to expert on the future of radio will sit with me and target what is next for radio.

This is the year of the local radio group that will eat consolidated radio alive while they are obsessed and distracted by refinancing all the debt they ran up.

For everyone else, it comes down to this …

1. Disrupting what consolidators have turned our radio industry into.  We can’t do this by just changing formats.  It’s going to take a nuclear option and I’ve got one for you that is so big it will push your consolidated competitors back with no option to compete with you.
2. Master digital.  Digital isn’t a product.  It’s a technology.  Every radio broadcaster needs to start a second stream of revenue separate and apart from radio.  Let’s create some content.  There are some dazzling possibilities out there.  I will share.
3. Create your own social media.  If you tie yourself to Facebook, Twitter or even the current rage, Instagram, you’re going down with them.  There’s a better way.  Make your own social network and drive it with content and revenue possibilities.  It’s being done under the radar by some smart people right now.
4. Reinvent radio.  Stop thinking of it as hourly hot clocks and redesign it to be compelling to the very audience we can’t seem to attract – 95 million Millennials.  They dislike radio but they like some things we’re not currently doing.  Interested in providing this content for younger money demos?  It takes an open mind and some creativity.
5. Video. Video. Video.  We’re wasting valuable time.  You must be in this business but it is not what you think it is.  Let me show you real success stories including one entrepreneur who makes $3 million a year by doing a free 5-minute weekly video.  No commercials, banner ads, product placement or subscription fees.  I’m going to play it, talk about it and answer your questions.  This is ingenious.
6. The key to attracting Millennials.  There is basically nothing radio has to offer right now that Millennials can’t get somewhere else.  The secret to attracting Millennials is to build your station for them.  I know, that sounds awful, but Steve Jobs didn’t design Apple products for later adopters.  He mastered the early adopters by finding out the “radical” things they couldn’t resist.  We can do this and here’s the plan.
7. Time shift radio.  Look, if you get nothing else out of this learning session you must become skilled at time shifting content.  Binge watching is the rage.  Broadcasting is out.  It doesn’t mean the end if we know how to time shift our content.  I’ll tell you everything I know about this.

A day of information and inspiration where we work together.  I’m putting more time aside this year for questions.

This event will not be available by stream or video – only live and in person. 

I can’t wait to share my enthusiasm and knowledge with you in person.

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