Eliminating Radio’s 3 Biggest Weaknesses

Okay, let’s at least attack the 3 things we know are killing radio.

I mean, Spotify, Pandora and streaming music services are not only ruining the record business. They are killing music radio.

YouTube is the biggest competitor that music radio has but most stations (not yours, hopefully) just sit there and crank out the same old music that has become not much of an attraction.

Millennial listeners – some as old as 32 and firmly in the money demo – have 3 big problems with music radio.

SAME REPETITIVE MUSIC OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Add 2/3 more new music each hour without losing audience. In fact you likely will gain audience following this approach we will discuss face to face at my Philly learning conference in about two months.
Why no one under 30 listens to a song all the way through and what music stations should do about it. Hell, radio is built on the notion that if we play the right songs, listeners will stay with us. All of that has changed. Now we must change.
Two ways to undo the stranglehold streaming music services have on audiences who no longer want to buy music and don’t want to listen to radio. I’ll lay them out for you.
How to add music discovery safely. I just bought an album today by Djessou Mory Kante. I heard it on the radio! That’s right. But not a music station. It was on PRI’s “The World”. What we can do to become the leader in new music discovery without hurting our ratings.

TOO MANY LOUSY COMMERCIALS

Seriously? You think listeners are gong to like a station that plays too many crummy commercials when it even sounds like more because of all the :10s and :15s that are being sold. Listeners hate radio for this reason. There are several new plans to mitigate these long stopsets without putting a crimp in your billing.
How to fix the long commercial breaks that they hate by reconfiguring the way you present commercials. And a way to try this experiment out of prime time until you become comfortable that it works.
The one-type of commercial young people repeatedly say they “loved” (not just liked). Let’s drill down into what they say they crave and address the problem by doing more of this.
Making commercials that work better for advertisers. This one piece of advice alone is worth the trip to Philly (maybe the cheesesteaks, too).

OUTDATED MORNING SHOWS

Younger demos find it hard to relate to what constitutes a radio morning show – even the ones that are trying hard to sound young. But they love personalities. Here is the kind of personality you can build a new age audience on – it may surprise you.
The elements of a radio morning show that must go and what should replace them.
How to come up with morning show content that digital services cannot compete with.

Here’s more of the content of the March 18^th Philly conference:

Do the opposite of consolidators. It can’t be done by just changing formats and running sweepers all day long. It’s going to take the nuclear option and this programmer has one for you that is so big it will push your consolidated competitors back with no option to compete with you.
Blow up digital. Digital is making the average station only $166,000 a year. Let’s talk about doing 2 things: short-form video and storytelling (not podcasting).
Create your own social media. We’re blowing it. We are making social media a promotion tool. It isn’t. It’s a credibility builder to keep even more listeners engaged and in the conversation. Discover the social media worth your time (Twitter isn’t, for example) and how to make compelling content (Instagram is).
Radio with no rules. No hot clocks. No scheduled stop sets. 95 million Millennials hate rules no matter your feeling. The station of the future has to be unpredictable and compelling. Want to see what that station looks like before your hear it on the competition?
Master short-form video. YouTube is everything. We need to be experts at creating video content as part of being content creators. See how to do it on a budget and how to make more money off video in one year than you’re likely making in all your digital projects. I’m going to tell you about how teenagers outbill radio stations in digital revenue using YouTube.
The key to attracting Millennials. This is no longer a pipe dream. They are here – 95 million strong. We’re going to study the 5 things that are key to attracting Millennials. If you’ve got an open mind, you can transform your station. Steve Jobs didn’t design the iPod for older audiences. He built it for Millennials and voila, the older audiences adapted. It doesn’t work the other way around – the way radio is currently doing things.
Create binge content. It would be foolish to just think that younger audiences want to binge on only Netflix, Showtime Anytime, FX or HBO Go content. The mission of broadcasting has changed. It doesn’t mean the end if we know how to make content money demo audiences crave and feed their desire to binge listen.

Join the radio executives and digital entrepreneurs who have already reserved seats.

Two months until Philly!

Wednesday, March 18^th.

Reserve a Seat

Inquire About Group Rates

If you want to know the best hotel options, contact Cheryl here

Post Views: 62