Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

Radio broadcasters are used to building content in a hot clock – an hour of programming with certain elements built into it.

But in the digital age, an hour is a long time.

And some of those elements – music, traffic, comedy, news, contests, commercials, don’t seem to fit in.

Anyone who owns a DVR knows that we ALL want what we want when we want it today – not just 95 million Millennials who seem to be resisting radio’s best efforts so far.

To make matters worse, we as an industry aren’t exactly doing the best radio we’ve ever done and any honest person would know that.

It’s about cutting expenses and standardizing programming today.

Getting out of big personality contracts and piping in a cheaper solution from out of market.

Who even mentions audience? It’s “best practices” or “right-sizing”. No wonder we’re losing our edge.

We want to sell commercials for whatever we can get and dump them into two long unlistenable stop sets an hour.

The big boys are dropping their rates pressuring the price of everyone’s inventory downward.

Listeners don’t want any part of it.

To show you how dumb advertisers have become, they should want no part of it.

And the big groups are rolling out programmatic buying, a digital industry idea, where buyers bid on ad prices. Programmatic buying was supposed to be used for selling remnant space now radio groups want it to save sales commissions.

On-air, we do weather.

But listeners have iPhones or Androids – they’ve got that at their fingertips.

Ditto for traffic and transit and news in the unlikely case that we do that anymore.

Today’s audiences already know the news because they’d be waiting to no avail for radio to tell them.

But listeners want music discovery and they have the digital tools to get it on-demand.

Spotify, Pandora, YouTube and other streaming services have answered the audiences desire for music discovery and they get it their way not the limited, repetitious approach that radio still adheres to.

Name something radio has innovated in the last 20 years?

New technology will soon let drivers record up to 30 minutes of programming from their radios.

So one of the things I will challenge those attending my March Philly conference is tell me what you offer that a listener would value enough and play back on-demand for even 30 minutes?

What is it – what’s the most compelling thing you have to offer in light of all this competition?

Not to worry.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m going to share lots of ideas you’re going to like and hopefully we will get out ahead of perhaps the biggest story of our age – the compelling popularity of on-demand content.

Even real time broadcasting will have to adapt to on-demand.

The groups and independent stations doing great local content and starting a separate digital revenue stream are already in.

I’ve got the content divided into 7 key things we need to be working on:

1. Specific ways to compete with on-demand content as a 24-hour a day broadcaster.
2. Methods to master digital as a second, separate stream of revenue alongside broadcasting. Things like replacing your website with something better that will attract followers and actually make money. Eliminating podcasts for a product --- I know, I know – all of a sudden podcasting is in but it doesn’t make money and there is something better worth your time and effort.
3. The nuts and bolts of starting your own station’s social media network independent of Facebook, Twitter or the next alternative about to descend on the scene. From there, how to grow your fan base.
4. A well-defined strategy to change the sound and on-air approach of your radio station at one coordinated time.  You won’t want this to get into the hands of a competitor, for sure.
5. What you need to know about starting your own short-form video business – one that will be unlike anything else you’ve ever seen and that is likely to more than make up for any on-air advertising shortfalls you may run into this year. I’ll have video examples and reveal winning game plans.
6. From my work as a USC professor in the area of generational media: the critical Millennial checklist. This is what I use as my new business bible. I shared it with a recent custom workshop I did for Disney and even the Millennials present took copious notes. Seven things the next generation of listeners must have.  But to know just that would be only half the story. How to implement these things in your format, content, persona and marketing is what we’ll spend time on, too.
7. Smart strategies for selling against competitors who continue to cut their rates and drive down the marketplace.

This event will not be available by stream or video – only live and in person.

Join the radio executives who have already reserved their seats for this event, which is one month from today.

Independent broadcasters and digital entrepreneurs are invited to the 6^th annual Media Solutions Seminar at the Hub Conference Center March 18^th in Philadelphia, walking distance from Amtrak’s 30^th Street Station and 20 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport.

Buffet breakfast, lunch and all breaks prepared by James Beard award-winning chef Jean-Marie Lacroix, former executive chef at The Four Seasons included.

Register Now

Contact Jerry about the conference and group rates here.