Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

Hanging on to the 230 million people that RADAR says listen to radio every week is truly tantamount to just simply hanging on.

Look, I’m not taking anything away from the metrics – if you are willing to bet the future on metrics.  Heck, we know that people still listen to radio, just not enough of them and increasingly not the ones advertisers covet.

What I have an issue with – and you may, as well – is that in the money demo, radio has taken a declining position when digital media is factored in.  This is not just 80 Millennials coming of age, but even baby boomers and Gen X.

Can we agree, then, that beating our chest about some meaningless metrics is not a substitute for never seeing a younger person listening to a radio or identifying with a radio personality?  Can we agree that news/talk is an old white man’s format that is actually hard for even 50 year olds to handle?  Or that Pandora is indeed making inroads against music radio and will continue to unless or until radio does the one thing that will stop it in its tracks?

If you’ll give me that, I’ve got some solutions for you.

CREDIBILITY

Younger listeners especially Millennials love authenticity.  Radio is the polar opposite of authentic.  It’s a hype machine for iHeartRadio and other promotions that don’t matter to real audiences these days. 

Try admitting on the air that “we play the same big hits over and over – sometimes too much – but we have also discovered some new hits we’d like you to hear – here are 5 of them”.

Talk stations take a lesson from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.  We know her politics but we don’t know when she is going to challenge even the usual suspects to say things they don’t want to say – be more unpredictable.  Radio is too predictable.

News is the greatest asset of a radio station and few stations do much that passes for news.  You don’t have to read it, just say it.  Hire a few credible people on staff not to do scheduled newscasts but to break in and be the FIRST to share things that are important to your audience. 

TOO MANY COMMERCIALS

Our listeners have been right about this all along – we did nothing and got away with it because they had few other options.  All that has changed now.

Cut the commercial load in half and charge double for the ads.  But make the ads better.  Test them for your advertisers.  Schedule them in a way that is respectful for an audience.  The first thing I would do to fix a radio station is to cut the spot load in half and make the remaining half great commercials.  The first thing you would do is fire me.  But you would be wrong. 

Keep running a garbage pail of commercials in between whatever your format is and you know what it is going to get you.  There are at least three other options to deal with this number one listener irritant.  At least try one of them and stop killing your audience off.

Let’s also discuss the new role of personalities, the remade morning show, a strategic change in afternoons (radio’s new found top listening time), imaging, where digital makes a radio station more popular – stop doing it to just do it, go digital to increase your audience and revenue or don’t do it at all.

You won’t find the answers to these critical issues at the usual talking heads radio conventions, panels of “experts” or shows.

But you will find them in just one full day at my upcoming Media Solutions Conference Radio Refresher.

The curriculum:

1.  Disrupt Your Radio Station

• Blow it up without losing listeners.
• We clear up how to gain audience by attacking all the things digital age listeners hate about radio before a digital competitor does it.
• Use this plan to drastically alter and destroy the old structure the way Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and Netflix did.
• Turn ordinary radio into new revenue streams.
• Solve virtually every critical objection digital-age listeners have about radio with newfound confidence to innovate.

2.  Master Digital

• Learn how people you probably don’t know make millions of dollars in digital without running commercials or even selling banner ads.  It is being done right now but traditional media isn’t doing it.  Consider this your game plan. 
• Reinvent the station website to churn out money.  Rethink social media.  Forget clicks and “likes”. 
• A better option than streaming and a way for your station to become the “Netflix of Radio”.

3.  Succeed With New Social Media Strategies

• End radio’s social media slump:  Instagram is ousting Facebook.  And Twitter is in trouble.  Time to alter the way you do social media with this new plan.
• Social Media Shakeup: texting with pictures is where you should be.  Fast track it.
• Social Media SOS:  social media is no longer just about staying connected so if your radio station is relying on today’s social media, this is a heads up to get with it.

4.  Reinvent Radio For the Digital Age

• Shake up the way you do radio to make it a growth industry again.  3 month plan of action to get started.
• Better radio on a budget
• Harnessing personalities – how to build a stable of personalities from you station, your farm system and the ones let go by competitors to be part of a new venture.  Best yet, you never have to pay their salaries.
• Finding the digital sweet spot – creating something so compelling that you put a big price tag on it and wait until the first advertiser pays it.  It won’t be a long wait.
• Don’t go down with Facebook and Twitter, boost social connectivity by building your own local replacement.
• Fiscally responsible alternatives for innovating local radio. 
• Learn the most effective approach to reinvigorating a radio station that is under attack from digital competitors.  The secret is in one paragraph you will want to memorize as your credo. 

5.  Growth Opportunities in Short-Form Video

• Discover how entrepreneurs are making millions by doing short form video that contains no ads and has no subscription fees.  This more than pays for your tuition!
• Target key areas of growth for short-form video.
• The one-stop solution to making social, short-form video for a profit.

6.  Engage 80 Million Millennials

• Audience building secrets to engage Millennials and win them back to radio. 
• One-Day Life-Changer:  Make radio instantly cooler.
• I will share my work in generational media that indicates this young and massive audience is available to traditional media such as radio, TV and the record industry but not by continuing the status quo. 
• Come away knowing their hot buttons and their turn offs.

7. Time Shift Radio

• New rules:  All content must be available on-demand – everything.  The audience is demanding it all and all at once. 
• The real solution for creating time shifted radio content. 
• Critical question that will be answered: Whether to rely on over-the-air broadcasts for time shifting or create new content. 
• Boost revenue by marketing time shifting as a new stream of revenue.  Go to school on time shifting.

Click here to register now.

Early bird discount ends soon.