Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

95 million Millennials want music discovery.

Radio wants the ratings they get from PPM when they play the same songs over and over in high rotation.

Millennials leave for streaming services and turn to other devices to satisfy their appetite for music discovery.

And radio winds up unnecessarily losing audience with a damned if they do and damned if they don’t strategy.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In my generational media work I have discovered a way to give the next generation the music discovery they consider mandatory while not losing radio ratings to unfamiliar or unpopular music.

No one is doing what I am proposing.

And the reason is because radio would have to disrupt what it does on the air in a way even more radical than when Top 40 came on the scene to redefine radio at the start of the television generation.

Yet stations can do the same thing today.

Redefine what a music station is.

For example:

• How to safely add two-thirds more music discovery to a winning hit mix. That’s not a misprint – it’s two-thirds music discover to one-third repetitive hits.
• And without losing PPM ratings – in fact, probably gaining share.
• How far should a radio station go in selecting the songs for music discovery.
• And most importantly!  How to fit it all in each format hour. 

That’s what I am going to show you at my upcoming Philly meeting.

This is important enough to add to the agenda because streaming music services are taking their toll on radio audiences and in the case of Pandora, local ad dollars as well.

Best yet, Pandora cannot do what this plan does for radio.

We stop imitating them.

They can’t imitate this.

Certainly if any station doesn’t have the resolve to do it, I understand.  You have to be in the mindset to disrupt what has worked so well but isn’t working now.

And they most certainly don’t want a competitor to beat them to it because first in wins.

This is one of the important topics that makes a trip to Philly worthwhile for all the details, strategies and your questions.

Here’s the rest of the 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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