Thank you for letting me tell you about my annual media conference over the past few months. I’ve tried to make these promos instructional for those of you who cannot attend. You’re the best and I appreciate it.
This year the theme is the importance of catering to engaged listeners not just numbers or phantom drive-by PPM statistics. The kind of relationship in which advertisers have proven they will pay a premium.
That radio needs to undo its digital – we’ve made a mess of it.
The average station does less than $200,000 a year in digital billing – far less and remember that’s just an average. And stations get to decide what digital revenue is and it’s different in every company. They make up the reporting rules.
A mess.
We will need to reimagine what’s happening over our airwaves to an increasingly older and lesser audience.
And to create content for the appreciably younger target audience radio desires; not just pick a format flavor for a year or two and then play musical chairs again.
Quick question: Can you tell me your target audience other than their age group?
Knowing this then helps us make better decisions about what to do with our radio stations on-the-air and digital products.
Who is your target audience? What do they look like? What do they want? What do they need? What do they think of your station compared to other sources on the air and online?
How would they describe your station in a phrase (you can bet it isn’t the way you’re describing it in sweepers)?
We’re going to find that the reason our on-air product is less than what we are capable of being and why radio digital efforts are almost laughable is because we’re doing it all ass backwards.
But we can fix this – we can. I’m going to share the good news in this one-day teaching seminar, my sixth year in a row. It’s for independent minded content providers who don’t take Kool-Aid with their view of the future.
Another important theme is recognizing radio’s most devastating new competitor.
Most people have no idea what I am about to reveal.
Of course, it’s not satellite radio.
It’s not even digital.
Certainly not the screwed up connected dashboard.
And no, it’s not television or print or even streaming music services.
It’s user-generated content.
I’m going to present some compelling evidence that content being created by users – even people in your audience on YouTube and many other places – is the most potent threat to radio.
Believe it or don’t believe it at your peril. The die is cast.
True, the radio industry doesn’t want to change.
We are in deep denial.
But I see signs of hope.
Let me just be blunt – either we become content creators who also use our airwaves in new ways or we’re going down with the ship. So this conference is about doing the best radio possible for audiences that have changed and operating a separate revenue stream of digital content – I’m going to recommend short-form video.
There are cheaper radio conferences for sure. Ones that will rehash the same old blame game for radio’s problems (i.e., it’s under-valued, under-measured, unfairly being kept off cellphones and other things that don’t lead to a positive outcome).
And then there is our 6th annual Media Solutions Conference which is described by attendees as remarkably positive and inspiring with one last chance to see the future everyone else is missing and get a head start on the new growth opportunities.
Please join us Wednesday in Philadelphia if you possibly can.
Inquire about group rates here.
Look through the online program brochure here.
Here’s the final and full Program:
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
And here are program details:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Inquire about group rates here.
Look through the online program brochure here.
Recent Posts
- Playing Politics with Audacy
- It Feels Like Radio Is Giving Up
- Engagement Not Quarter Hour
- A Warning About Radio’s Digital Revenue
- Older Audience Listening Habits Changing
- Paywalls, Subscriptions and Younger Audiences
- Audacy as a Private Company
- Nielsen’s Proposed 3 Minute Quarter Hour
- How Listeners Would Reinvent Radio
- Audacy Eying Townsquare?