Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

All the financial experts agree – flat is the new growth curve for radio.

Putting the consolidators who are staring down bankruptcy aside, there are a lot of good operators being forced to sell in markets where rates have been driven down by desperate stations.

And even the good radio companies are uncharacteristically laying off – Emmis, for example handed out 32 pink slips.

All of this begs the question, how DO you succeed in a zero growth business?

• Give your station a Millennial makeover. If radio keeps fine tuning formats that just aren’t resonating with young money demos, it just keeps stunting radio’s growth.

• Focus on these 6 hours each day to return 50-60% of your profit. No one has resources they had years ago. Now, hyper focusing on the 6 hours that can bring in the most revenue makes sense. But which hours are they?

• What to do with 7pm-5am. If I told you you could start a new radio station somewhere in that time period and nurture it until it is ready to fly on its own, would you believe it? How about learning from someone who did it.

• Avoid podcasting. It’s not your friend. Will not make money to make it worthwhile. Even the latest Serial is laying an egg compared to the first one. Podcasting is for older listeners looking for an alternative to political talk radio. There’s no way to adequately monetize podcasting for radio owners. But there is one thing that podcasters – the good ones – do that can cross over to your station.

• Ditto with digital. No matter how many times we say it, digital by radio stations comes out sounding like, well – radio. With salaries being cut, jobs being shared, people be laid off and not enough potential upside to make digital worthwhile, don’t do it. But podcasting is doing something right that radio ought to steal.

• Cut spots, raise prices and then re-invent the commercial. It’s easier to just take the stuff agencies give us or run spots that our cheapest air talent can produce but that’s not going to get you higher rates. And radio cannot survive as your low cost leader. That’s a loser’s game plan. We asked Millennials if they hate commercials. No, they said … and they shared the kind they would listen to.

Sitting back is not the answer.

No business ever grew by getting smaller.

Millennials don’t care for radio but they are not that wild about streaming music services or podcasting for that matter.

That says opportunity.

So what I am proposing is about funneling resources to the things that are guaranteed to at least bring in more revenue if not tap into a need that even Millennials have for something new and better.

Here are a few other critical issues:

1. What to do with 75 million baby boomers 50-70. That generation is still almost as big as 83 million Millennials. Is it possible to do hybrid formats that cherry pick demos from each?
2. Mastering digital as a revenue source not as part of your radio station. I’ll tell you flat out, it’s video, video and more video, but the rules have changed even in the past year.
3. Gender neutrality. Young girls want to look like boys, dress like boys, wear boy’s clothes and assume “traditional” boy roles. And boys are comfortable reassessing their gender preferences.  This is going to have a major impact on what we are and what we say to audiences.
4. Radio’s most dangerous competitor is user-generated content. Your audience wants to be your new PD. Most stations don’t really get this so they are assuming the traditional role of content creator assuming that audiences are content consumers.  More than ever, this is just plain wrong.
5. Dealing with shortened attention spans requires a major revamping of radio’s format clock, delivery and formatic elements.  This is an audience that doesn’t even listen to songs they like all the way through, how do you work with that?
6. How radio can be like Netflix and create binge content – that’s right, programming to binge on – for audiences that demand it. There is a great example of radio bingeing that few people even in the industry recognize.
7. New forms of revenue such as subscriptions and product placement (“mentions”). Audiences 45 and under gleefully buy apps like it is nothing and most don’t use 25% of them even when they pay. Money left on the table ripe for the picking.

Now, does THIS sound like a dying business to you?

If you’d like to continue the discussion, clear April 6 for my New Radio Conference in Philadelphia.

Sean Hannity and researcher Richard Harker will be there live to discuss disturbing findings about how certain formats are losing the majority of their audience to PPM technology and ways to deal with this inequity. (Harker did a survey for Hannity’s show that will shock when you see how much audience was lost to PPM). And it’s not just talk stations taking a hit.

And former Cox and CBS programmer Dan Mason will help with the Millennial Radio Makeover – useful ideas that can transform your station from the past to the future.

See the Program / Reserve a Seat

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If you’d like to stay close to the Hub Conference Center, find nearby hotels here.