Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

Hear me out.

Apple just signed nine more auto manufacturers yesterday to its CarPlay technology which allows smartphone users to carry over their favorite music experiences to a car, use voice recognition and a vehicles existing navigation display for a safer experience.

Full disclosure:  I own Apple stock but competing Android software is also being deployed to do the same thing.

Ironically, radio has been locked out of the car.

Now, I know radio trade associations and researchers who suck up to fidgety radio people will scoff at this idea, but they are pissing in the wind.

Radio is all screwed up.

We think Pandora is no match for terrestrial radio (sorry, Scott Herman I know you hate that word) yet Pandora keeps growing and its users are very happy with their relationship together.

Radio hated satellite radio back in the day fearing the worst and nothing happened to diminish radio – at least at the hands of its satellite competitors.

Now satellite radio has problems because no young person with lots of student loans to repay will fork out those outrageous monthly subscription fees for music when they can get it for free on an app.

Radio keeps living in denial and one of the biggest points of denial is that it will have a prominent place in the digital dashboard of the future.

Those days are over.

A place, yes.

A prominent place?

Not unless prominent means along with an infinite number of websites and apps.

Now radio would be wise to concentrate on their relationship with the end user – or as I like to call them – our listeners.

We have been crapping on our listeners for almost two decades.

Taking away their favorite morning personalities, dumbing down the stations to save money, eliminating reasons for listeners to remain addicted to radio, offering less music variety in a world where listeners have endless music discovery right in the palm of their hands.

And did I mention the mother of all audience disrespect – the garbage dump of commercials for 8 minutes every half hour. 

Unlistenable and unremarkable.

The only thing dumber than that is an advertiser or buyer paying money NOT to be heard in those bloated stop sets.

No, it’s not about the digital dashboard any longer.

It’s about rebuilding a relationship with listeners.

Where WTOP outperforms everyone else is because it is not just a radio station.  It’s a favorite place for listeners.

WTOP has an implied relationship with each and every one of them.

The station is not on autopilot.

So, we can huff and puff all we want that radio will always be in the car and people will always listen to radio but we will be wrong.

The car is no big deal.  In fact, young people love public transit and love to live in cities.

And Millennials have already given up on radio.

If I’m running a station, I am forgetting about being stroked by RAB, NAB, Nielsen or whomever and I am going to blow up the way I do radio.

Learn how to talk nice to the audience again.

Appeal to the six things that matters most to them – not our venture capital owners.

Get rid of the arrogance.

Be real and authentic.

Give listeners a reason to tune in other than they have nothing else on their dashboard but a basic radio because the car radio is dead.

If you plan to be relevant in the future, bet on rebuilding relationships not building your station into a car.

And one more thing.

If you’re content to say my stations or company does not operate like Cumulus and Clear Channel so we’re still okay, you’re not.

Companies like those and Entercom and Townsquare and others have blighted the radio business.

Make 100% of the focus on rebuilding the relationship with listeners as the best strategy for competing with a smartphone seamlessly in tomorrow’s automobile.

The digital dashboard is just an illusion.

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