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 car 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 the radio industry characterized an automobile as “a radio with four wheels”.

The connected dashboard is a mirage.

Every station in a market will all be fighting for one of only 6 pre-sets.

Then it’s everybody for themselves.

The new iWatch due out this month is reportedly going to allow drivers to start their engines with a wave of their wrist.

You can only image what their new CarPlay feature is going to allow along with seamlessly syncing with your car to allow phones calls, dictate test messages and emails and play music while driving.

Siri will be your constant companion up front.

Siri will control the app and other third party apps including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora and other sources of entertainment. And CarPlay will have its own dedicated button on the steering wheel of cars from Mercedes Benz and Ferrari to GM, Ford, Toyota among others.

If you study the habits of listeners 33-years-old or under, you already know that the smartphone is all they need to live, communicate and enjoy.

A radio is no longer necessary as phones seamlessly connect in 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 less than 1 week.

Just how should a radio station deal with losing its number one source of listening in the dashboard of every car?

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 are easily accessible through features such as CarPlay. Google is developing one of their own for automakers, too.

If the average radio station is doing less than $200,000 in digital billing (and keep in mind the station gets to define what digital is when they report such numbers) then that’s not a business worth being in.

We’re going to put all this together with digital, audio, video at my March 18^th conference.

This one-day seminar is not available on tape or stream.

Just in person March 18^th at the Hub Conference Center in Philly less than one week from today.

Examine the modules that make up the curriculum here.

Reserve a seat.

Inquire about group rates here.

Here’s the Agenda:

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

REGISTRATION / COMPLMENTARY BREAKFAST

8:00 am         Registration / Complimentary Breakfast

9:00 am         Current State of the Radio Industry
                      Short Attention Spans & Radio
                      Solutions to Commercial Clutter
                      Listen Longer Strategies
                      Eliminating Radio’s 3 Biggest Objections
                      Selling Against Competitors Who Cut Rates

10:30 am       Break

10:45 am      Ways To Compete with Online Content
                      What Millennials Want From Radio
                      8 Millennial Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make
                      Available Radio Listeners

12 Noon        Complimentary Lunch

1:00 pm        How To Attract Millions To Your Website (Laurie Cantillo interview)

2:15 pm         Break

2:30 pm         Innovative Sources of New Radio Revenue
                      Telling Stories – the New Spoken Word
                      Why You Should Pass On Podcasting
                       Radio’s Potent New Competitor
                       Listener Engagement More Than Ratings

3:30 pm        Audience Q & A

4:00 pm        Conference Concludes

Here are program details:

1. Attracting More Website Visits. WTOP in DC does 2 million every month and 31.8 million page views. So we’re bringing PD Laurie Cantillo in to sit with us and discuss. We can question here together.
2. Solutions to Commercial Clutter. Look, running 8-minutes of unlistenable commercials every hour is a suicide wish.  I know, they pay the bills.  I’m going to present you with 11 ways to make this problem get better.
3. How Much Radio, How Much Digital. I can tell you right now I am going to show you the digital initiatives that have no payoff. But you’ll be impressed by the few that do and you’re going to want to jump on them. One costs under $1,000 and is pretty impressive.
4. Listen Longer Strategies. Radio TSL has been dropping every year since the early 1990s. This calls for disrupting the way we build our hot clocks. I’m going to show you how to throw that hourly clock out and replace it with something better.
5. Eliminating 2015’s 3 Biggest Listener Objections. Outdated morning shows, too many commercials and repetitious music. Do even one thing on these three listener objections and you’re ahead of the market.
6. Effective Ways To Compete With On-Demand Content. I am going to play dirty with Millennials developing content they cannot possibly resist about employment, college loans, themselves. We can do this – as you will see.
7. What Millennials Want From Radio. This list has seven things on it and I can tell you I live by this list every day whether I am talking to Millennials or not.
8. Selling Against Programmatic Buying. This is essentially bidding down rates so its time to have an action plan to combat it. How to walk from a deal that media buyers ruined by bidding down the rate on a competitor. The secret to getting longer term contracts. A few very smart stations are way ahead of the industry on this.
9. Start Your Own Short-Form Video Business. Digital shouldn’t be an add-on to what you do on the air.  Do the best on-air radio you can possibly do and a separate stream of revenue from the hottest digital project ever. Let me play some short-form videos for you that are being done by young people who are making more money than most stations do from all their digital initiatives.
10. Beyond Clicks – Listener Engagement. Social media is changing rapidly from mass audience to small groups of participants. Radio must rethink using social media to promote what’s on the air.   It’s a waste. Let’s talk about what your listeners who “like” you really want.  Which social media site is ascending at the pace of YouTube?
11. Telling Stories – the New Spoken Word Radio. You don’t have to run a talk station to cash in on storytelling.  And it is highly saleable.
12. Why You Should Take a Pass On Podcasting. Podcasting is another form of talk radio. It may appeal to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers but it sure hasn’t made any real money. Ask me about storytelling and how it could find its way onto your station – even a music station. Especially, a music station.
13. 8 Millennial Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make. There are 95 million Millennials out there – the largest generation ever, even larger than the Baby Boom generation. Here are the 7 things Millennials want most from radio.

Reserve a seat.

Inquire about group rates here.

Look through the online program brochure here.