Why Bill Drake Still Matters

I've been trying to get out of the habit of looking at my email after midnight, but I had a lapse early Sunday morning. I'm sorry I looked.

John Rook thoughtfully emailed his legion of followers that we had lost the legendary radio programmer Bill Drake (Phil Yarbrough) to lung cancer at the age of 71.

It couldn't be.

Bill Drake was in his thirties, wasn't he? Or was that just the way some of us will always think of him. I still remember my first meeting with him in Philadelphia when he drew a few hot clocks for me over lunch. He was great at hot clocks and a lot of other things that made for good radio.

Bill was thinking of getting back into radio again -- was even toying with a new format.

It's radio's loss -- again.

Todd Storz, Gordon McLendon and Bill Drake -- in my opinion -- led what I call the second golden age of radio -- after the advent of television. Each made major contributions to radio's comeback, but it is Bill Drake who takes with him the answers that radio should be searching for today -- how to make radio appealing again.

It's all there -- if the current owners care to look.

Bill Drake and the Drake format touched many of us -- programmers, talent, owners. I became conversant with the Drake way when I worked as a young man for Paul Drew, arguably once one of Bill Drake's great technicians.

The entire Drake format fits double-spaced on fewer than five pages. Paul Drew used to write our names on the five pages just in case we got the idea of copying it. I was so intimidated by "Chief" (as I called Paul) that I would never copy the format. I inherited Paul's files when I followed him as a PD at a Philadelphia radio station years later and got my copy back (with my air name on every page).

To have a format that can be embraced by air talent, make it easy to understand and logical to follow.

I've seen what passes for formatic leadership today and there is no wonder why what's left of air talent has a different mission for every shift.

Drake always showed respect for the listener. Who else would have personally cut station IDs that started with "... And now, ladies and gentlemen, Gary Mitchell".

These were youth-oriented radio stations. Perhaps it wasn't cool -- or in the day, hip -- to refer to teenagers as ladies and gentlemen, but as Dale Carnegie always said, "give a person a reputation to live up to".

Respecting the music was also major. We owe Drake for getting overly loquacious jocks off the vocals -- on both the intros or on the back sells. Listen in any market now and see how far adrift jocks have come. In focus groups over the years -- again and again -- listeners say, stay off the vocals. Drake institutionalized that respect. You wouldn't last as a Drake jock if you violated the rule.

Respect for the audience.

Today consolidated radio can be summed up by using Clear Channel's own favorite phrase "less is more".

Drake gave just enough to make every 15 minutes work -- totally self-contained. In other words, he carefully and thoughtfully placed more formatic elements in just the right amount of time.

Uptempo records after the station break which, after all, is and was the signature of the station's identity. Jock logos following the break (and also in the odd quarter hours). The dj's name sung by Johnny Mann singers with station business, oneliners, being done in the personality of the jock.

Contests that were exciting.

Double goldens (two oldies in a row). Remember, this was before oldies stations. Drake respected the past and found a place for former hits by including oldies in a hit format, features like "Years Ago Today" where Drake himself voiced the setup using a crashing tympani.

Million Dollar Weekends.

Every other song an "oldie" -- to shorten the wear and tear on a top 30 playlist over the weekend when listening time increased.

Hitbounds.

A nice percentage of new music added each week -- what a revelation to stations these days that seem to have forgotten how important new music is to a hit radio station.

Lots of entertainment built reliably into the hot clock.

Drake also had the right idea then and now for what to do with commercials.

He limited them to 12 an hour in morning drive and during his glory days, it was one unit per stop set. The idea of running six or more minutes of commercials together was someone else's bad idea, not Drakes.

When I asked my students at USC a few years back what the right number of commercials would be assuming they would listen to radio (which they were reluctant to do), they couldn't agree on the total number but did believe Drake was right -- one commercial, back to the music. Another commercial, back to the music. A third commercial, back to the music. And then music sweeps around the quarter hours -- with no commercials. The length of the commercial, by the way, didn't matter to them.

The right number of commercials per stop set is -- one unit.

Drake knew that promising "More Music", which was his thing, would only work if it was "More Music" all the time. Not just after ten minutes of commercials in a row. If a Drake hour had only four commercial units, the music sweeps got bigger without making listeners pay for it with bloated stop sets elsewhere in the hour.

Drake paid a price for this inflexibility later when greedy owners wanted to stuff as much revenue as they could into his hours. He eventually walked away. Of course, Drake was right here, too.

It's better to raise the rates than the commercial load.

One would think that because the format was tight, with very strict rules of engagement for djs, that it would be bland and without personality.

Bland and without personality is today's voice tracking. Not the Drake format done right.

If you have never heard Robert W. Morgan or Charlie Tuna, then you can't fully grasp how great talented personalities sound when they work within this magical format. Drake was a personality format after all. It was the antidote for sloppiness that set into music radio by the early to mid-60's.

If Drake hadn't come along, radio might have lost its golden encore.

Personality radio works best within a well-defined format.

Of course, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Stations all over the country, in every genre, began adopting Drake formatics. Sometimes they failed, because their PDs failed to understand them. Other times, these format elements enhanced great radio stations.

In Philadelphia, Jim Hilliard, Lee Sherwood and the great Jay Cook did their version of Drake which was pretty true to the best elements of the format. WFIL was a mega station for a long, long time.

To give you an idea of how well Drake formatics worked in such a tight environment, morning show legend Dr. Don Rose was not exempt from keeping his mouth shut. I still can hear him coming out of a record, doing the call letters, time, temperature (a sound effect for his "cow" Lula Belle) and Rose saying this -- "I used to go out with a girl with a wooden leg but her parents made us break it off".

Bang. Into a commercial.

Joe McCoy, a Drake PD, led WCBS-FM, New York to several decades of dominance in the oldies format. McCoy knew what he was doing. He knew how to implement it. Cousin Brucie, who was an icon from his less structured days at WABC, never sounded better than he did working for McCoy using Drake formatics.

I consider myself lucky to be called a Drake PD although it wasn't always a compliment. Remember that sales manager I worked with called "the Snake"? He wanted me and the format out the door. His answer? Air anything a client would sponsor and as much of it as possible.

My many programming friends who also consider themselves Drake PDs are hurting today. We lost a great radio person who knew what to do, had the guts to do it -- and paid the price later in his career.

When he came back to reinvigorate K-Earth in LA, he lost nothing from being away from the action. His instincts served him well.

Still, as we lay this unusually important icon to his eternal rest, radio would be better off to do whatever it took to channel its inner-Drake going forward.

You see, Less Is More, is John Hogan's hallucination.

More Music was Bill Drake's life's commitment -- with respect to the audience, the advertisers buying the commercials and the jocks whose careers he made better for having been a radio programmer.

So forgive me for borrowing one of Bill's own familiar production pieces to pay tribute.

Bill Drake was "Number One then (cue the crashing tympani) -- And number one now".

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Can More Consolidation Save Radio?

That's what Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey thinks -- only the strong will survive.

That's funny when you differentiate the strong from the weak by calling a $3 stock price strong.

Cumulus closed at 75 cents Tuesday which is pretty weak -- so go figure. Oh, and Lew Dickey is in acquisition mode.

The world is bankrupt. China is bankrupt. You're bankrupt when your debt exceeds your assets. The American people are fast going bankrupt. Banks are going bust. And there are 130 banks on the Fed's watch list to go down next. Governments of the world are trying to stabilize their economies and ...

Lew Dickey is predicting consolidation for a penny stock industry.

Can anyone get real for a minute?

Dickey is arguing that over the next 36 months some of the weaker groups will be selling stations (don't ask where the money is going to come from to buy them or how low their selling prices will be). And to Dickey because under his scenario half of his competitors will be gone. After all, Dickey is quoted as saying “Fundamentally this is still a very sound business" in a recent Atlanta Business Chronicle article.

I guess the next thing he'll say is that radio should have only one rep firm.

Oops. We do. Katz just signed Interep's two biggest clients -- CBS and Entercom. Kaput, as Tom Taylor put it.

So let's get this right.

All the radio consolidation that was rolled up from 1996 until, say, 2005 didn't work -- even before the present economic downturn. Radio has become a declining business that C.L. King analyst Jim Boyle says may not bounce back until 2010 -- if then.

So, how about more consolidation? More of the stuff that didn't work.

Radio executives live in their bubble. For years they've been saying less is more (in fact, that phrase may be inscribed on radio's headstone someday to describe death from consolidation). Now, Dickey is saying more for less -- more stations owned by fewer companies.

Have a good time.

Radio is declining for a lot of reasons -- it lost the next generation to the Internet and mobile devices; it has released many of its best programmers, sales people, doubled up on managers and fired top talent. What a time for cost-cutting -- when your stock is so low (with the audience, that is).

Dickey is clueless.

He says with great confidence that “iPods, Internet radio and satellite radio haven’t killed broadcast radio and never will".

Well, he's right -- for the wrong reason -- radio CEOs have killed off radio because they are out of touch, out of money and out of their heads when they think another round of same old same old is going to work.

Sam Zell has a radio group in waiting with Randy and the Rainbows, the talented bunch of Jacor people Randy Michaels hired away from Clear Channel to work on newspapers. There's a real good way for sharp radio people to end their careers -- on newspapers. Bad enough radio is becoming a black hole -- newspapers already are.

Zell, shackled by the purchase of Tribune, can only sit on the sidelines drowning in debt. And he's got the company already in place to run a group of radio stations.

So if you're naming your Thanksgiving bird this year, how about calling it Lew Dickey because only the selfishness, lack of vision, self-absorption of Dickey and his handful of comrades could come up with an idea so ridiculous.

Fortunately, the Obama administration is not likely to hear talk of any of this.

But if they want the advice of the anti-Dickey faction of the radio population, here's what they ought to do.

1. Breakup the de facto monopoly called radio consolidation. More competition is what made the radio industry attractive enough that Wall Street preyed upon its mom and pop owners. Not more consolidation. Not even the consolidation we already have.

2. Limit ownership to two stations per market and 25 markets max. I'm fine with negotiating these numbers as long as they don't get any higher. Back when owners were not allowed to have more than 14 AMs, 14 FMs, it was rare when anyone owned the full compliment. That was a good thing.

3. Help new owners get financing and require a real plan from licensee applicants to serve the public interest. Reward them with three-year licenses and review them before rubber stamping a renewal. Listen to competitors who may want to challenge a station owners fiduciary performance on a market by market, station by station basis.

4. Seek out minorities and women as owners of small groups. There is not enough diversity in ownership right now which may explain why all radio CEOs are reading the same lines together.

5. Require a plan to embrace new technologies before granting a license and do the new owners a favor because owning only radio in an Internet and mobile world is like owning a horse instead of a car today. Podcasting is the new radio. Internet streaming is the closest thing to radio a Millennial will hear.

6. Oh -- and fix the world's economies. Whew!

Bust this baby up. Radio monopoly ruined a lot of lives and killed off a good thing for millions of listeners.

What's not to like about the fundamentals of radio for Lew Dickey, Jr. He was paid approximately $8 million just to sign a new long-term deal as CEO of Cumulus. His hefty annual salary is additional.

With the playing field tilted so much toward the robber barons who run radio, why not turn to the only people who can save radio now.

Its talent.

Help them become the new owners, operators, content creators and digital pioneers.

Now that's a plan that has a future.

It's not going to happen. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't.

Fight for that wishbone!

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Guns N' Roses, Welcome To Today's Jungle

Axl Rose has been working on "Chinese Democracy" for 17 years and has spent $13 million (as of 2005) to complete his just-released CD.

Rose is now 46 years old.

There are no roses, so to speak, left in Guns N' Roses if Axl is considered the top "gun". All the original band members are gone.

Whether the album sells at their exclusive record store or not is less relevant than the changes that have been taking place in the record industry since GNR's last album.

The labels are mere shadows of their former selves.

CD sales have declined all but one year since 2000.

Napster (the real Napster, the rogue Napster) has come and gone and changed the landscape for record sales. Free is the new price for music with a generation junior to Axl Rose.

Radio is whimpering out as a major factor in selling music.

MTV is not what it used to be when GNR's first album rocked the world.

The die hard fans of Guns N' Roses will no doubt not miss an opportunity to go over to Best Buy and pick up their CD for around $11.99. That, in and of itself, is a major change since we were welcomed to the jungle. Back then, fans went to a record store -- any record store -- and paid a fortune for CDs.

Today, GNR is a Best Buy loss leader.

Reuters reports that at Best Buy's New York City Chelsea store -- you'd hardly know the album was there. Modest display and few other signs around the store that such a major marketing event was taking place in their midst.

Things have changed a lot since the "good old days".

In all fairness, no matter what shape the record industry is in now, it's hard to take almost two decades off without losing the edge. And some reviewers have already knocked the new work -- saying the intros are the best parts. The New York Times reporter Jon Pareles writes this:

"By way of comparison with the old Guns N’ Roses, Mr. Rose’s latter-day songwriting tilts more toward the pomp of “November Rain” than the thrust of “Welcome to the Jungle” or the pealing guitar lines of “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” The one song on “Chinese Democracy” written by Mr. Rose alone, “This I Love,” is by far the album’s most maudlin track, and he hams it up further with a vibrato vocal homage to Queen’s Freddie Mercury".

I personally don't like to critique music. If that's your thing, I'm fine with it. Music is a personal thing -- if it resonates with even one person it has artistically achieved a goal. On a business level, of course, that resonator must be a sonic boom in order to make profit.

It's safe to say the 18 million albums sold by Guns N' Roses' debut album "Appetite for Destruction" will not be equaled by "Chinese Democracy".

Hardly.

Rose could take his sweet time with "Chinese Democracy" because he was pampered, tolerated and got away with bad boy tactics that groups can't pull off as readily in today's dire music industry climate.

They've got other problems.

Rose is a complicated personality who suffered abuse and growing up without a father. He has arrived at where he is -- for better or worse -- because he experienced pain and pleasure that he can articulate in a gifted way.

Pain is an advantage in music. Alanis Morissette's best work -- in my personal opinion -- was when she was unhappy and able to articulate the songs on "Jagged Little Pill". In subsequent works, she became happier singing "thank you Africa, thank you India" and it lost something for me.

And "Chinese Democracy" probably wouldn't have been the name of the GNR album if it were produced, say, 18 years ago. Even Axl Rose couldn't foresee the rise of China as a major world power. Of course, being a major world power in the age of pirates makes bootlegged Guns N' Roses albums more lost revenue for the artists and label.

Things change.

But some things do not.

Like arrogance.

The arrogance of a very talented artist who decimated his band to eventually emerge with his major event with musicians he eventually pulled together.

And, lest we forget, the arrogance of the record industry that in many, but not all ways, screwed things up even when times were good.

Even when everything broke in their direction.

Even when they had artists who sold 18 million CDs.

"Chinese Democracy" marks the end of the age of arrogance.

Going forward, whatever the music industry is to become, it will become one artist or band at a time.

Building from the ground up through social networks and eventually finding new ways to monetize their efforts -- a way that has yet to be proven or even articulated.

The jungle may prove to be a lot friendlier than the unknown -- where the future of the music industry now lies.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Better Radio at No Additional Cost

The other day I mentioned Dick Carr in a piece called "Great Radio".

Dick was the architect of WIP in Philadelphia during its glory years at the top of ratings and revenues.

Dick emailed me shortly after he read it and reminded me of something worth passing along.

This is one of the reasons I always say we all benefit when we bring the wisdom of experience, along with the hard work of the present generation and the innovations and possibilities seen by the next generation.

Right now radio is stuck in a time warp created by a handful of CEOs who have tried almost everything but using their heads.

When Dick prevailed at WIP he had one operating principle that always served him well.

It cost no extra money -- it was a way to look for the additional benefits that make listeners appreciate you over and over again.

He called it "Another Reason to Listen".

Over the past 20 years radio has relied on the music aspect of their formats to the point of making it hard to distinguish one station from another. And lately, what's worse, is that when the music industry catches a cold, the radio business gets the flu. (That reminds me, I'm going to prove the point when I write about Guns N' Roses' new album).

I'm not saying music is not important -- of course, it is. But there's more to it than that and I think we've forgotten what it is.

Everything that is done on the air should be designed to give the audience another reason to tune in and stay with the station. As Dick Carr puts it, "Work to create a listener expectation wherein once they heard "a shoe drop", they would instinctively turn to your station".

Today, anything that costs money stations are cutting back.

On-air, production and support talent.

Sales staffs.

Sports and special programming.

Contests and promotions.

You could go on and on.

For WIP, every personality, every piece of music, every newscast, every promotion and even Philadelphia Eagles football on Sundays was designed to give the audience another reason to tune in and stay with the station.

I recognize that football does cost money and lots of stations are letting their contracts with pro teams run out.

But look further.

Every newscast?

Who does news? If they do, a barter service is doing it. Nothing remarkable, just noise.

Every promotion?

Who does promotions? They cost money. A few ticket giveaways here and there and other fluff that has little value to your listeners. But promotions don't have to be cost prohibitive. Creativity can trump the size of the prize. Unfortunately, stations are not in the mood to be creative.

As I said the other day, WIP was the "Cash Call Station".

WIP was also "Great Radio" -- their term.

And "Eagles Radio".

With the most popular personalities in the city.

And the acknowledged best local news operation in the city -- even keeping in mind that Westinghouse was trying to build its KYW all news franchise across the street. They did it on ten people. Ten more than owners want today.

Carr also wanted to make sure the music was great and well presented -- not just records tossed at the listener.

With all due respect to computerized music programming, it sucks. No, it's not the computer that's the problem. It's the lack of showmanship for presenting the musical categories. Garbage in, garbage out. The computer is an aide to programmers not a replacement for creativity. Can you imagine radio without computerized music?

Try.

When was the last time your station made a commitment to find new listeners?

I'm waiting.

When was the last time you invited them to join the family (as it was called then) or the social network (as we call it today)?

Have you ever uttered these words or even thought of them (from Dick Carr's mouth to yours):

"Extend ourselves and care for them by doing all we could so they would stay longer and come back more often."

So if you've lost your way or if the radio CEOs of today are headed in the wrong direction, it isn't so hard to get back on track for little or no money.

I write this not for Lew Dickey or Farid Suleman or David Field.

This is for you -- the radio pro who still cares to do a better job even though your resources are being depleted by the minute and your ability to compete has been compromised.

You can't go out and sign a football team to build your Sunday around it -- I realize that.

But you can try to do the other things Dick Carr did then that will work like a charm even now.

Attract them.

Give them another reason to listen.

Don't just throw music at them -- rethink the presentation.

Great promotions -- money doesn't make them great (every PD knows that). Creativity and longevity does.

News and info even if you can't field your own news team. Now you have Internet resources for free. You can get local for not a helluva a lot of money.

Then -- and this is the part I love to say over and over again -- care for them.

When have we used that term. I know most radio people who have survived their owners really care -- no doubt about that. But this is about the audience -- not us.

Care for your listeners so they visit longer and come back more often.

The decline of radio has caused some good people who became CEOs to lose their minds and their hearts -- and some, their ethics.

For the hardworking radio programmers, managers, talent and sales executives, even without budgets, you can do more to take care of your listeners.

It doesn't cost much and the clusterf#@ks who you usually have to run everything past, don't even have to be consulted.

They'll never know this kind of customer care. Many would recognize it anyway.

This is between you and the listener.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

The Auto Industry Is Radio

The auto industry and radio have a lot in common.

Let's start with the most important things first -- flying private.

The big three automakers went to beg Congress for $28 billion in stopgap, bail out money recently and they hit Washington in style. The heads of Ford, GM and Chrysler all showed up on private jets (and limo rides to Capitol Hill).

I always say, if you're going to beg, go in style.

Some of the companies said flying private was for safety reasons?

Huh?

Northwest isn't safe?

Ordinarily it is probably none of the public's business how CEOs choose to travel unless, of course, taxpayer money is being requested to keep them afloat.

Many of the radio CEOs fly private even as they complain about the economy, fire people, cut budgets at radio stations and just can't seem to find the money (or resolve) to get into digital media in a meaningful way. Taxpayer money isn't paying the freight. The shareholders are. And apparently these see-no-evils don't see anything wrong with stock prices under $1 and their CEO geniuses avoiding the incivility and inconvenience of flying scheduled carriers.

Now that I got the important stuff out of the way, here's a trivial item -- I suppose.

Automakers have been able to finagle their way out of building fuel efficient, green cars. That's why shipping docks are overflowing with cars local dealers can't sell and don't want. Yet you can't find a fuel-efficient Prius for a discount.

In other words, Detroit has had no vision or willingness to see the changing market. That's funny because Japanese automakers have. They build fuel efficient and increasingly environmental autos.

The American automakers want a bailout that doesn't restrict them from spending the money on building fuel efficient cars. The president backs such a plan. So, the bigger sin is that even after getting themselves into this fine mess they are in, they still aren't visionary enough to know now is the time for change.

Take radio, their leaders will assassinate the character of anyone who dares to say that terrestrial radio is on the decline. After all, it's just a glitch. The Internet is a mirage. There's a recession -- that's it. We beat the age of television and we can beat the Internet, too -- damn it! Unfortunately, none of them -- that's spelled none -- have built a bridge to new and generational media, the kind that is taking the world by storm. Instead, it's towers and transmitters.

They want to sell ads in between talk or music because that's the cleanest, simplest and least complicated way to build a free cash flow bonanza -- never mind that the party is over. The world has changed. Advertisers have changed.

But the radio industry has remained the same. One suspects that these radio CEOs actually think that they haven't done anything wrong.

Automakers have laid off tens of thousands of skilled employees due to their inability to direct their companies toward the evolving marketplace with consideration of the world economy. Their employees, the ones who build the cars and make their products, must now pay the price while CEOs take their bonuses and inflated annual paychecks and while their lawyers insert clauses that say they must fly private for safety reasons.

When radio fails, the CEOs are immune from repercussions. They get to fire everyone else but themselves. No one including their our boards of directors will hold them accountable. The people who made the product that they profited from when they went public now have to pay for their bosses mistakes with their jobs.

It's not business economics. It's nonsense.

Over the years that led to today's economic crisis, the automakers had successfully lobbied for consideration from Congress so that they would not have to meet higher standards such as tough emission laws (as they have in California) or MPG improvements on a progressive, yearly basis.

In other words, they have been coddled by the lawmakers to let them off easy even though it was not in their best interests in the end.

Radio and it's lobby group, the NAB, won passage of The Telecommunications Act of 1996 that was the instrument that allowed consolidation. They bought up competitors at a record pace. Mini-monopolies were created in the interest of deregulation. In fact, they had hoped to win a second law enabling further deregulation to tighten their control over local radio markets which never materialized.

Turns out consolidation was not in their best interests. As I said back in 1996, these CEOs cannot run that many radio stations successfully because radio is a local mom and pop business -- not a national, investor fed money machine.

Some politicians are saying that the automakers should just be allowed to go bankrupt and the free market will fill the void. That means Toyota comes in and increases its market share because Toyota is smarter.

By the way, the Japanese have the best auto workers in the world.

They are called Americans -- and they are building high quality cars in this country under the leadership of managers who know what they are doing.

The big three autoworkers are often blamed for building inferior quality vehicles.

Same workers -- Americans.

Different leaders -- selfish, destructive and without vision.

Doesn't that also describe the radio industry today?

There is no need for the radio industry to be on the decline. It should be leading the way into the digital future (that is, not just streaming terrestrial stations online). They need to be investing at least 20% of its budget in new and generational media -- with more earmarked for subsequent years.

It is unnecessary for radio to be on the decline when it has skilled workers who are capable of building the digital future to compliment its existing terrestrial platform. Just as Americans are quality workers for Japanese automakers, radio people could be the absolute best resources for new age CEOs who actually grasp the digital future.

A lot of radio's CEOs are old, tired and out of touch. They haven't run a station in decades and they know nothing about new media other than how to work their own personal Blackberrys.

I'm thinking of writing a piece next week on a radio tactic that can be embraced by those great and talented radio workers who have to suffer fools to keep their jobs.

It's about one easy to implement strategy that can build a station -- even in hard times -- and doesn't have to cost money.

If I throw the idea out there, watch some of the smart people in radio run with it -- and their bosses will never even know what happened.

Christmas Radio Format Strategies

By Jerry Del Colliano

(With our "Scottsdale Study Group" good time, great oldies monthly luncheon -- from left to right, JD, John Sebastian, Bruce St. James and Todd Wallace).

No sooner than I waxed eloquent about WCBS-FM in New York as the bastion of radio's better days, the station switched to all-Christmas music.

I used to read Tom Taylor at Inside Radio and then Radio-Info document all the stations that just dump their formats each holiday seasons to go whole hog Santa.

Of course, there are some very interesting sociological implications to an industry that embraces Christmas in a world that has never been more secular. Nordstrom, the department store retailer, waits until Thanksgiving before you see any holiday decorations in their stores.

Are they smart or out of touch?

You can't really have pre-Christmas sales if you don't recognize that the Christmas buying season is here. But Nordstrom has long been one of the few beacons that seem to say Christmas as a retail holiday is too long. Of course with a recession in our midst and retailers fearing the worst, many stores started holiday decorating in September. (You should see how weird that is in Arizona when it's still 100 degrees).

In radio, the strategy of stations dropping their formats so far in advance of the holidays to play Christmas music appears to be a no-brainer. If you believe research, you don't have to look any further. If you believe in Arbitron ratings -- big ones -- then you have found sugar plums dancing in your head.

Jerry Lee at WBEB in Philadelphia has been cleaning up with his early Christmas strategy for many years. This year WBEB is offering a separate stream off the terrestrial signal for those who want to hear the usual adult contemporary music format with holiday music.

Christmas brings out the best in some radio operators -- at least on the air. If they just get out of their own way, Christmas music seems to work. It's important for them to commit to all- Christmas music every year and back up the switch with great off-air promotion. More often than not, the promotion part is paltry.

It's also important to tell your listeners when their favorite regular format will return -- especially if you're CBS-FM, a station that has been yanked away from its hard core audience once before. "Playing holiday hits right through Christmas Day" or whatever the end date is. It's comforting to let the audience know their favorite station will be back.

Radio could make the all-Christmas format even more powerful by granting Christmas wishes and putting people on the air. This is a time for great creativity. CBS-FM can carry it off, but some stations have gutted their production capabilities. CBS-FM is giving away $1,000 a day -- small stuff for a big market but understandable when you look at the CBS share price.

Here are my additional thoughts on all-Christmas strategies:

1. Stations that opt to keep their usual music formats can integrate holiday music into the format -- not brain surgery as it has been done for years -- but keeping in mind that just because one or two market competitors may have switched to all-Christmas doesn't mean your listeners won't like to get the holiday feel.

2. It's also okay not to do any holiday format. Many regular radio stations still get hefty ratings in the ramp up to Christmas.

3. Non-music formats can go all-Christmas, too. Of course, they don't play music, but they can use Christmas beds, production and even some songs here and there to enhance their format. Then, a killer promotion that grants -- you guessed it -- Christmas wishes for their listeners is really the essence of the holidays.

4. Use YouTube as a Christmas card and ask your listeners to do their own production (even using their cell phones) and send the link to your station. Then you aggregate the video cards and sell the concept to some advertisers -- online. YouTube is television for a growing number of people. Television is a goner -- at least when you look at the next generation.

5. All-jocks (if you have them) should use Twitter on-air to keep the constant conversation going. Avoid making the mistake CNN makes when one of its anchors, Rick Sanchez, lets Twitter become the star. It's a tool -- an increasingly popular tool, but you are the star. Teach the audience how to go to Twitter. How to communicate in 140 characters or less and interact with live djs. Don't promise interaction if you're not going to deliver. (If you've never used Twitter or don't know what it is, go to Twitter.com and look me up. Try it out).

6. Put some meaning into each year's Christmas format. Don't just play Christmas songs. I've got 12 hours worth of the best Christmas stuff on my iTunes. I don't need you for that. Give me more. In Detroit and markets that are facing lots of unemployment this year, brainstorm on five things your Christmas station could do well to enhance the music. This is more fun than you know if you've never done it. Invite everyone in -- kids, interns, relatives of staff -- you'll not be sorry.

Most Christmas formats do not retain the huge audience gains that they earn during the switch. This is for a good reason.

Radio is generally vanilla -- caught in its budget restraints, paralyzed by its growing lack of creativity. Returning to vanilla is not a game changer for your station.

Here's the next one, if you dare:

7. Brainstorm during the holiday season for five things you'd like to offer the new listeners you've gained or to reward the ones who have increased their listening time this holiday season. Don't make it tripe like -- a new HD channel of all -- whatever. Make it real. Valuable. Compelling. For example: if you're a hit music station, on the first day of the new year debut your amateur hour hosted by a non-radio personality playing his or her music in or near your genre. Or iPod discovery time -- three hours straight of new music on-air and available as downloads linked from your site. There will be nothing in your station stocking once you leave the Christmas music format if you don't carefully plan how to keep the new listeners you may have attracted or rewarded your regular listeners who have listened longer.

Obviously, I love this kind of brainstorming and wish I could show all of you the way we did at USC.

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for radio.

But to keep that mojo working, make the day after Christmas more than a just let down.

That's when your listeners should be getting five presents for the new year -- from you! After all, it is better to give if you want to receive.

Anything less is a stupid format trick.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Designer Radio Ratings By Cumulus

I suspect the radio industry is getting the wool pulled over its eyes by the likes of the Dickey brothers and Nielsen.

The Dickey's have been publicly leading a crusade for -- let's call it what it really is -- cheaper audience ratings for some of its smaller markets. If you believe that better ratings were their main motivation, I have a three week old cheesesteak that I found under the seat at a Flyers game that I'd like to sell you.

The Dickey's did all the right things -- bid it out, try to build industry support from small market operators.

Now we know -- the REST of the story (as Paul Harvey likes to call it).

The first small market operator to join Cumulus is -- Clear Channel. How comforting. Two quality operators acting in an unselfish way to bring truth, justice -- and low prices to the radio industry.

And Nielsen?

Well, they were in bed with Arbitron as little as a year ago with a venture called Project Apollo in which they planned to produce so-called "single source" ratings measuring media usage and product purchasing.

Oh -- and Arbitron's People Meter was the centerpiece. Funny about that. Since then, there has been a divorce.

Nielsen is also feeling its oats because it has been rolling up successes worldwide in traditional and new media platforms.

Here's what the "group think" of Clear Channel and Cumulus will buy you.

1. One rating book a year in 50 under-top 100 markets which is really giving a rejuvenated meaning to less is more. Fewer books, less information upon which advertisers can make decisions. Sounds like a win-win to me.

2. Cheaper rates.

3. No Arbitron numbers to fall back on -- 50 Cumulus markets are not going to use Arbitron and Clear Channel will subscribe in 17 of the 50 markets where they have stations. Talk about betting the farm on this service. At least we're not in an economic downturn or anything -- right?

4. Cheaper rates.

5. A new methodology that will use old paper diaries (sounds new to me, how about you?). This variation is a peel and paste sticker methodology that Nielsen is using in many of its worldwide markets. That's better than a scratch and sniff sticker because diary keepers might be likely to vote that radio programming today stinks due to cutbacks and lack of creativity.

6. Cheaper rates.

7. A new address-based sampling method instead of the old random digital calling approach. This is thought to be the workaround for the telephone placed diary method which has been adversely affected by a decrease in land line telephones. Panelists will also provide information on consumer products that stations hope they can use with advertisers. That's one-year old information at the end of the rating book life cycle, remember? Now that's an improvement. Nielsen has agreed to use between 1,200 and 2,200 respondents but Arbitron agreed to up their totals as well.

8. Cheaper rates.

Look, I have nothing against Nielsen or any other competition for that matter. I think Arbitron has done a credible job although I agree that it could do better and price is always an issue. Arbitron is what advertisers want -- not that radio cares about what advertisers want.

But the Cumulus move is not all about better ratings. It's about cheaper ratings. Cheaper, like in everything radio operators do today.

And it's not wrong on its face to want to cut expenses, but cutting off your nose to spite your face is wrong. A bad strategic decision.

Whether radio CEOs will admit it or not, they have run this business into the ground. They have consistently fought the wrong battles.

Satellite Radio -- their imagined competitor from the heavens.

Internet Streaming -- by their relative lack of support for efforts to gain a fair and just royalty fee for Internet stations. Shortsighted because Internet radio will overtake terrestrial radio and their inaction will cost them on the back side when terrestrial operators will be forced into the Internet streaming business to cover its losses.

HD Radio -- Talk about a money waster.

Local vs Redundant Programming -- Cheaper wins again as stations flock to syndicated shows, show sharing among group owned stations and vanilla voice tracked formats.

Morning Shows -- The most popular and productive daypart has been ravaged by these maniacs who think they can build a better morning show for less money and fewer people.

Someone please tell Cumulus, Clear Channel and Nielsen that radio is dying. And that they are representative of what's killing it.

Radio needs a new ratings service right now like it needs another Clear Channel.

This small market ratings debacle is going to blow up in their faces because radio doesn't need better ratings or even cheaper ratings.

It needs new and better programming -- that most owners are unwilling to invest in -- so whatever rating service they are propping up at any given moment can show lots of new audience.

You don't take the pulse of a dead person.

And you don't change your ratings without changing your commitment to what's on your air.

You can buy this sham if you want, but to me it is indicative of the thinking that made radio a loss leader instead of a growth industry.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

If Radio & Records Employed a Team of Rivals

We've been hearing a lot lately about how president-elect Barack Obama is channeling his inner Abe Lincoln in putting together his cabinet appointments.

Doris Kerns Goodwin wrote a book called Team of Rivals chronicling the way Lincoln did it.

Lincoln chose the man who ran against him, William Henry Seward, as his secretary of state. Then he crossed to the Democratic party to pick Edwin Stanton as his secretary of war -- the same Edwin Stanton who humiliated him years earlier when they worked together as trial lawyers. There was also Salmon Chase, a Lincoln critic and rival who landed the treasury secretary job as well as other rivals integrated into Lincoln's cabinet.

The idea was to get the best person -- without regard to whether they are supporters -- and give away some of your power.

Not the usual power grab that gets the predicted results -- a power sharing, if you will among great minds.

It's hard to know what Obama will end up doing. Skeptics must keep in mind that Nixon promised to install a strong, diverse cabinet. History shows he didn't keep that promise. Look no further than to Nixon's Interior Secretary Walter Hickel who opposed his president over the Alaska oil pipeline.

He got fired.

Same with the Democrats.

Jimmy Carter once said "There will never be an instance while I am in office where the members of the White House staff dominate or act in a superior position to the members of the Cabinet".

Oops. That didn't last long.

Obama's reported interest aside in appointing his rival, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, we only have Lincoln to go on right now -- but the recent interest in this concept has applications beyond politics.

Say, to the music and media business.

Look, it's not that there aren't critics -- plenty of them -- embedded deep into the big four record labels and almost every major broadcast group. I know plenty of them.

But, they have no power and they're walking a fine line every time they oppose the increasingly unilateral approach media executives take to running their businesses.

Still, I can't get it out my mind - a team of rivals.

What if?

What if the big four labels made an effort to not only hire those who oppose their current and traditional policies but gave them the power to have an effect on their operating strategies.

Of course, this means not just hiring lawyers who favor suing consumers who steal music. That train left the station a long time ago with RIAA's attorneys the only passengers still on it. The strategy has failed.

Take Napster.

Insiders will tell you that at least one of the labels tried to buy Napster during its first iteration as a pirate music downloading site. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence to back this up. There is the ridiculous claim that Napster wouldn't sell to the labels.

If the labels had staffed themselves with a team of rivals -- not easily controlled -- and vested with the power to act, do you know what is a distinct possibility? That the labels would have purchased Napster to take it out and then embraced it to gain early entry into music downloading -- perhaps, legally.

But no -- the powers that be -- were dead set against it and instead by their actions over the next ten years acted like downloading did not exist. That it was something you sent to legal to handle. They still think like that today.

Imagine the fools who think young consumers will pay $19.95 for all the music they can hear on just about any platform you can concoct. The labels fail to understand the next generation. Gen Y already has a way to get all the music they need -- for free. It's called stealing. And without condoning music theft, it is a reality that isn't going to go away.

Teams of rivals would also include young people.

No, not interns or underpaid college grads.

The next generation is very different. They are very bright, however.

On the radio side, imagine for a moment what would have happened if consolidators actually looked to put together a team of rivals back in 1996 when Congress enabled the building of mini-monopolies?

Let me stop for one second -- I know what some of you are thinking. That this will never happen.

Of course, it will never happen.

That doesn't mean that it shouldn't -- just that it won't.

The big kahuna of consolidation was Clear Channel -- a nasty group of people who were called "the evil empire" (I wish I thought of it, but I didn't). To get that name -- there must have been some truth to it. They were full of themselves and absolute power corrupted -- as the saying goes -- absolutely.

The industry leader hired its friends and suck ups -- managers who kissed their butts and later lost their jobs along with their dignity. It wasn't in the Mays playbook to hire diverse points of view and -- and I said and -- give them power to act on their own without interference from the family.

Remember when Clear Channel bought AMFM and they then found themselves with two quality radio heads -- Randy Michaels and Jimmy de Castro? Clear Channel should have retained both of them in some type of power sharing arrangement if necessary. They didn't. Who cares if they don't get along. Put them in a room and let them fight it out. Clear Channel was worse off for letting its talent get away -- a practice it has honed to a specialty today.

When Clear Channel and I traded $100 million lawsuits, some strange things happened that have never been revealed. One Sunday I was being deposed in Manhattan by a bevy of Clear Channel lawyers, executives and Randy Michaels. The law offices were empty -- after all, it was Sunday. These video depositions tended to last the entire day. At one point we took a break and I went to look for a men's room. I walked down these long corridors around corners, through cubicles and finally to the men's room. Moments later Randy Michaels found the same bathroom. No lawyers. Just the two of us mano y mano -- unzipped. And what did we do? We lined up at two urinals side by side and exchanged our fairly civilized differing points of view. No pissing match between the two of us.

I mention this because subsequently before Clear Channel settled the suit, they removed Michaels from his role. In spite of the fact that he had it in for me for my investigative publishing at Inside Radio back then, I knew it was a bad decision on their part. Bad decision.
John Hogan, stepped up and took over.

Which one would you rather have running your company?

Clear Channel blew it.

A team of rivals contains people who differ.

It also should have different types of people.

Radio is a male-oriented business to its discredit. All these years later, only a few women have real power to run radio groups. This is wrong. Where are the Hispanic voices outside of Hispanic stations? There is no real diversity in racial makeup or for that matter in points of view. That's my opinion.

Clear Channel is by far not the only example. Just about every radio group is a fiefdom created in the image of its own warlord and rivals are not valued let alone tolerated.

Take Citadel.

Farid is a bean counter not a radio visionary. He's not even a good businessman if you use the stock market as your standard. Farid holds power very close to his vest. There is no team of rivals. In fact, there's hardly even a team -- after all the firings.

Perhaps the most important reason that very few governments, businesses or for that matter universities seek to put together a team of rivals is because it takes confidence in one's self to not only seek opposition but empower rivals to act.

Now I don't know about you, but the federal government today isn't what I thought it would be eight years ago. And, radio today isn't what I thought it would be eight years ago, either.

The Robert Mugabe's of the radio industry (he's the dictatorial head of Zimbabwe) have pillaged the landscape of this fine industry to enhance their own fortunes. The hell with what's good for the industry.

There are many reasons why the unthinkable has happened -- the radio industry is becoming a mere shadow of its former self.

The obvious ones.

And the not so obvious ones that I am offering for your consideration today as food for thought.

It takes abundant self confidence to employ a rival -- and give them decision making capabilities without the fear of retribution.

It takes confidence in one's self to hire young people whom they do not understand or relate to or for that matter older people who have been prematurely dismissed and put out to pasture.

Yet, I can guarantee you that if the radio and record businesses had the courage that Obama says he wants to have -- and that President Lincoln, in fact, had -- then you would be looking at two growth industries today instead of dying businesses. Steadied by their best thinkers and ushered into the digital future by their youngest and brightest future stars.

It could have been music media's fabulous Camelot.

Instead it wound up being the farce of Spamalot -- a Monty Python-type parody of what could have been.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Great Radio

Over the weekend one of my Jersey buds, Big Jay Sorensen sent me a Facebook message to say that he was going to do a shift Sunday night on WCBS-FM in New York as one of their "radio greats".

CBS-FM is my favorite terrestrial radio station so it doesn't take much to get me to listen and I was thrilled for Big Jay -- a yeoman radio guy who loves what he does. Jay has had some bumps in the road of late -- as a lot of my radio friends have -- but I knew he'd be a killer when he turned the mike on.

Great radio. A hot personality that wanted to entertain so much that it came through the speakers -- even on my Mac where I listened from out west.

Great jingles as always. Great voices. A great format. A local feel. Love of the music, artists and era. And, if I may say it -- fun. You couldn't help having fun listening in.

The music is challenging because CBS wanted to mix the 60's and 70's with the 80's -- a delicate balance to say the least. The Tokens and Heart in the same hour -- it's tough. But it isn't a deal breaker and the new CBS-FM format is attracting a younger audience and great ratings.

Once the bickering stops in New York over Arbitron's People Meter, I'll bet you CBS-FM is the number one station. It has returned to the market elite so they are close. It just needs a few more adjustments and they are there.

But this is more than just about CBS-FM -- a station that owes its rebirth to one person -- Dan Mason. You may remember the former CBS Radio President, Joel Hollander, saw fit to kill the format and the $40 million in annual billing that went along with it for "Jack" -- the station that plays what it wants. Well, Jack laid an egg in New York. Tough New Yorkers never bought into a station that didn't play what they wanted. Anyway, CBS-FM was loved. The listeners rightfully punished the company for leaving them without an oldies station.

I realized as I was listening to Big Jay that future generations will be robbed of their CBS-FM whatever that could have been. In the day, there were stations like WCBS-FM in every city. They were characterized by their ability to sell lots of records, loved the artists, cared about their audiences and had fun on the air.

You know I am not saying that the next generation should listen to CBS-FM. But the radio business got out of the radio business in the late 1980's when innovation became imitation and the idea became prevalent that teens would always be waiting to become the next 18-24s and then 25-54's.

This turned out to be wrong.

It's that mindset that became ingrained in the would be poobahs who eventually became today's radio CEOs -- the ones who hijacked a great industry and turned it into their own personal version of monopoly.

There are few Park Places left (CBS-FM is one).

They no longer can pass go and collect $200.

And I'm sure as hell not going to give any of them a "Get out of Jail" card. These shortsighted individuals are how we got into this mess in the first place.

Back to great radio.

Don't get me wrong. The students I came to know while teaching really don't want radio. They listen when they are in a car or when there is nothing else. It's like using toothpaste to them. It gets the job done but isn't something they live for.

No.

I want them to have their own CBS-FM.

I want them to experience what it is like to have this seamless stream of all good things music, news, personality, contests, local involvement, love of artists and -- fun -- always on, always good.

And maybe -- just maybe -- there is a connection between the demise of radio as we are experiencing it today and consolidators' inability to invest in the product.

Today, there is only one entertainer in music radio -- and that's Ryan Seacrest. Two in talk radio. Rush and Hannity.

Okay, I kid. But you know what I'm saying.

The poor owners don't have the money to run a real radio station with live local personalities and all the goodies that people love. But wait. CBS isn't exactly going broke running CBS-FM in its reincarnation. Boy, it sure sounded good to hear them giving away $1,000 a day from now until Christmas. I know it's New York and they can afford it, but $1,o00 is chump change in the Big Town. Still, CBS has found ways to make good radio on a budget.

I have been fortunate to learn from some excellent programmers. One of them is Dick Carr who programmed and then later managed WIP in Philadelphia when it was the number one adult station for years. Dick does a great big bands special now -- and when I say great -- I mean the kind of show that my young students would like because production values are high and it is just that good.

When Dick Carr ran WIP he built the station into a monster on the back of personalities, the number one news operation in the city (better than the all-news station at the time), music that was right on target even without research and -- Cash Call.

Cash Call -- you know, every hour the jackpot goes up until a random phone call to the metropolitan area found a listener who knew the Cash Call total -- 2,459 dollars and sixty one cents. It was always 61 cents because the frequency was 610. His audience used to listen all the time so they knew the amount of the jackpot -- and the entertainment wasn't too shabby either.

Unlike the radio that followed, Cash Call was synonymous with WIP. No one could equal it because no one was committed to it as WIP was.

Dick Carr was smart enough to never drop the contest. It was always on. No listener got tired of it and winning money never went out of style. Today, Cash Call is when Citadel's Farid Suleman gets a call from his accountant in which he learns he'll be making $11 million a year as CEO.

Dick Carr's way was better for radio -- as subsequent events have proven.

But here's the killer.

One day, a competitor of Metromedia, then owner of WIP, bought a crummy little station called WPEN and decided to hire away as many WIP personalities as it could and go head to head.

They spent $60,000 on a jingle package that droned on about something to do with "Warm and Wonderful". It made you want to buy Depends -- and they didn't even make them back then.

There was WIP -- raided, exposed, up against a rival who was giving away bigger jackpots of cash in a similar contest -- this had to be the end.

But it wasn't.

Forget that WPEN's signal at 950 was quite inferior to WIP's with a clear channel 610 frequency. Unfortunately the tombstone of many a manager will be engraved with "here lies so and so who had a great radio career until he tried to turn a lousy signal into a great one".
But I digress.

With all that competition and all the billboards and promotion you would have thought WIP would be a goner.

Actually it was the other way around. Seems that adult listeners liked their WIP personalities on WIP. I learned then and forever more that radio is a joint venture between great personalities and a great radio station. One without the other is not possible.

Many others proved it along the way. Bill Drake. Ron Jacobs. Paul Drew. John Rook. Rick Sklar. Bill Tanner, Buzz Bennett, Jim Hilliard. Innovators like John Sebastian. Formatic experts like Todd Wallace. I could get carpel tunnel if I typed everyone's name. What a great problem to have.

Ever the student, I learned in the employ of Dick Carr that great radio was this marvelous mix of elements aimed at a target demographic -- in WIP's case -- adults.

Today, great radio is an exception, not the rule.

Personalities are not valued -- they are being systematically eliminated from their stations for budgetary reasons.

Contests -- you're kidding right? You think consolidators are going to give anything away. It wouldn't be accretive for the shareholders -- you know, the ones they stuck with 25 cent stock.

News -- stop tormenting me! There is no local news on too many radio stations. Shame on them -- listeners like local news.

Jingles, production values -- this industry is either too cheap or too sophisticated to think investing in these things is worth the expense. Foolish little control freaks.

Fun? You try having fun when almost every owner is in firing mode. Have fun when your PD is running three other stations and is barely qualified to program one? Or as one of my readers told me recently, he was doing mornings quite successfully and then his station fired the PD and told him to take the job -- with no experience. He didn't want it, but what could he do? Now, the ratings are in the toilet. A great morning jock -- not so good a PD.

I'm saying it took more than poor financial management on the part of today's radio CEOs to ruin a good thing.

But I never forget that what went wrong with radio happened long before consolidation. When you listen to a throwback to the golden age such as CBS-FM you realize how much we've lost.

There are many people in the industry who could have done whatever the next CBS-FM would have been for Gen Y. But they never got the chance. And the next generation never got their chance to hear what all the excitement was about.

Even WIP couldn't be killed off by a competitor. It died when listeners migrated to FM.

By the way, in case you're wondering -- how did Dick Carr position his outstanding radio station on and off the air?

It's simple. He just called it what it was.

Great Radio 610.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

A Radio Promotion Almost As Good As Free Money

Yesterday I mentioned that I'd share with you the radio promotion that costs next to nothing to do and offers the one thing listeners want most -- next to, say -- free money.

When you walk in and tell the general manager you want to do it, he or she won't kick you out because the station doesn't have to spend anything on it and yet it will receive all the dividends.

If you are the manager, and your PD walks in and says let's give it a go, you won't get fired by corporate. I promise.

I must confess that this is a promotion that I did when I was a major market program director.

And it was during a recession.

The owner was a cheapskate.

No personality on the station made more than $60,000!

Need I say more?

Well, maybe.

Like the station cume increased by several hundred thousand in the target Arbitron demo over the three months this promotion ran.

Did I say that the station was in the fourth largest market -- but was one of the worst facilities in the city? I used to kid the chief engineer, a genial man named Archie Sitchel, that I was leaving each night to rent a helicopter so I could hear the station's signal on the way home.

Now all of this occurred at a time when there was no such thing as a social network. Or, as I said yesterday, radio was the social network. Listeners looked to us for certain things on a local, news and musical basis and we delivered. We also asked for their support for the station, the personalities and our advertisers. God, imagine what I could have done with this promotion if the Internet was around then.

So, here it is -- the promotion that radio should do (and do fast, before a competitor does it).

Giveaway jobs on the air.

That's right -- nothing is more valuable today than employment (unfortunately, we know that all too well in the radio business).

Here's how I did it with some concessions to how I would adapt it to social networks and the Internet.

1. Use interns (that you are probably not paying anyway) to call local businesses and determine if they have hard to fill positions open. There's lots of jobs in nursing and in sales, for example, in Phoenix. What do they pay? What do they require? Benefits and restrictions? Now, if I'm your competitor, I am actually paying some part timers to work at home and put together this information for me and keep it coming.

2. Go and listen to Jack McCoy's version of KCBQ's "The Last Contest". You'll want to study his production techniques because the promos I am going to use against my competitors will not sound like the same mindless, meaningless, worthless promotions on lots of radio stations now. This is a big deal.

3. Speaking of production, I am assuming most stations don't have the kind of production I'm talking about here. I did back in Philly. A great voice and production tools. Get them ready to crank out the jobs (see below).

4. Once an hour on a rotating basis, a job opportunity will be offered. The temptation will be to go on the air and simply say what the job is. That's not what we did. Create the magic of the position so if it is for an administrative assistant to a travel agency and the job pays $30,000 a year -- you'll want to use the appropriate vacation Hawaiian music (and sound effects) in the background as you slowly -- I said slowly -- make the listener wait to hear what the job is. Fantasy of the mind -- kind of what I've done in this piece. Set it up, set it up again -- and reveal it -- except better.

5. There are many ways for people to call in (text in, email in) and win their job opportunity -- but they are going to get the first access to that job. The contacts. The interview. All of this is handled by the company but when the "winner" gets the "job" they are getting the opportunity to interview -- make sure to point that out for legal reasons. Don't feel like you have to be a recruiter here. Believe me, my experience indicates that people know which skills they have in applying for these jobs. In three months, my station never had even one problem with this promotion. All we had was listeners -- looking for work. In between, we entertained them and sold them products from our advertisers.

6. Run a job opportunity once an hour. Obviously, you can't re-run them so you'll need to get your production cranking. Hell, if you are typical of a lot of stations, may still have a few talented people hanging around or maybe you fired them already. Call them back in and put them to work.

7. Use liners to sell up to the promo that will reveal next hour's job and make it a point to get the "winner" recorded so you can play back lots of montages of grateful people.

8. We even called folks back -- seeking the ones who were actually hired (and, to quote Jack McCoy again "as incredible as it may seem" there were many) -- to build ongoing promos thanking us for helping them out. Their words.

9. Oh, I know -- you think I'm just a program director who doesn't know how to sell. Well, you would be wrong. We fired up the sales department to go out and sell ads to advertisers who wanted to reach the people most likely to be listening to the hottest station in town -- the one with the best prize of all -- a chance at a real job in tough times. Some sponsors even offered a few job opportunities for the job pool -- free publicity.

Keep in mind that we varied the jobs so not every one had to be an executive position paying lots of money. Many part time jobs were popular. But it was the way the production was done that made it work. We made the jobs sound great -- always a good thing. We never ran out of job opportunities even in a recession. We didn't play games. We played it straight. If I was smart, I would have continued the promotion for longer than three months.

If I'm in a major market and I wanted to actually invest in this promotion (like in money -- forgive me for saying that in a radio industry that only cuts back), the first call I'd make would be to Chuck Blore, the creative radio genius in LA. I'd wind up with the number one station and a tidal wave of advertisers who wanted to hitch themselves to the one thing people want the most (besides free money).

Who needs "one-day" sales fests and cheap, cheap ad blitzes?

And, lest I forget -- social networking.

Everybody who calls, writes, texts or emails becomes part of my social network -- one in which (if you remember what I said yesterday) the listener gets something back. Not direct mail. Not robo callers.

In three months I would build a base of active listeners -- not the ones hoping to win a cheap prize or unremarkable trip -- but the ones who would now see my local station as a local solution to problems and opportunities in their local lives (did you count the "locals" there?).

I'll be talking more about social networking -- the benefits and pitfalls in the months ahead.

One more thing.

Be cool.

Stop telling people to go to your website.

They know that already. Young people expect you to have a website. They just don't go there until they want to know more. No need to hit them over the head. They get it. We don't get it when we continually badger them to do what they already do intuitively.

So there it is.

Free jobs.

Almost as good as free money and a lot cheaper. Yes, it's work. Yes, it requires high creativity and 24/7 production. But you said you wanted to do good radio -- the kind that attracts people beyond their cell phones and websites. There you have a way.

Worked for me in Philly and it will work for you better in today's world of Internet, mobile and social networking.

By the way I have a related idea for morning shows-- 365 days a year -- but can't talk about it. I'm saving it for Jerry Lee because you need an owner like that to guarantee success in pioneering tomorrow's radio -- if there is to be a tomorrow.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

The Unharnessed Power of Social Networks

While radio stations keep hanging on to the hope that listeners will return -- along with advertisers -- we can all learn a lesson from the Barack Obama election campaign.

Obama, building on Democratic predecessor Howard Dean's early Internet efforts, took fundraising to a new level. It's news enough that Obama was able to outdo Hillary Clinton and Republican rival John McCain in raising money on the Internet.

But the real story is what happened on day one after the election.

Obama directed his 10 million contacts -- emails, contributors, cell phone numbers -- right over to a new site he started called Change.gov.

Stay with me -- this is not just about politics -- it's about harnessing the power of social networking.

All during the campaign, Obama and other Internet-wise candidates had easy and inexpensive constant access to their "fan base" -- if you will. Need a little more money? Out goes the appeal. That's pretty simple and Obama did it best.

But on day one after the election, Change.gov became a transition network for the 10 million contacts that he met during the primary and general election. It's not just a future beg-a-thon in waiting, it's a transitional government complete with a way for true believers to apply for a job.

I have read accounts in the online press within the past week that Republicans are worried about Obama's ability to not just raise money but have instant access to so many of his supporters. This is a first and it's hard to know for sure whether this base -- as it grows -- has a major effect on the president's ability to govern.

Could there be 20 million people in Obama's social network within four years? In ten years, will a president be able to email, text or communicate online with one-fourth of the entire voting population? Only time can tell.

It's early and too soon to draw conclusions, but we can look at possibilities with keen interest going forward:

1. If record labels had been as aggressive as Obama in building a fan base over the years -- beyond the usual and gratuitous band and artist sites -- can you imagine what they could have done with just the click of a mouse? If the labels had 10 million fans in their social network -- and when I say fans I don't mean just names and numbers, but passionate followers -- they could make a hit, sell it for the right price and followup with other goodies at virtually no expense to them.

2. If radio stations (on a local level) could amass several hundred thousand fans in a viable social network (or whatever the market would allow), they could break music, sell their advertiser's promotions and extend their brand almost at will -- as long as in doing so they could keep their fan base happy.

And that's a big deal.

Radio and records would ruin the concept by asking, bombarding, offering junk -- and it would lose the passion that Obama still obviously has from his fan base. They'd turn a good social network concept into direct mail marketing gone wild because they don't understand the sociology involved.

Notice Obama is giving back -- part of the covenant that must be there to participate in a meaningful social network. He's saying, now you've helped me (and I'm probably going to ask for your help and money again) but here's a way to get a job with my new government if you'd like to apply online.

There's a lot to learn about social networks.

They are more than Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn.

There is a critical ecological balance between asking and giving something of value in return.

And there is the presumption -- I believe -- that those who stay in the network expect direct communication and that which they would not get readily elsewhere.

So, while the radio CEOs sit down and figure out how to carve up their turkeys by Thanksgiving to save a few more bucks, is there not one forward thinker out there who wants to go to school on the unharnessed power of social networks?

Not mailing lists. Not phone banks. Not robo callers.

Real networks of fans who get something advantageous by staying connected.

This reminds me of a massive promotion I did as a PD at a major market radio station during a recession. It was a while back and doesn't qualify as a social network as we know them today, but radio before consolidation was a loosely fit social network with listeners looking to djs for music and concert tickets and stations looking to listeners for support.

Very primitive by today's Internet standards.

My point is -- let's study the power of social networking as the game changer that it is. Let's not be left out on one of the more significant gifts that the Millennial generation is giving us.

Radio and records work at a great disadvantage.

They both alienated Gen Y.

Radio by ignoring them while they got their greedy hands on building radio clusters.

Record labels got off on the wrong foot when they failed to buy Napster and take downloading seriously while they could still be a part of it.

In both cases, you see the damage that these two industries did to themselves.

Tomorrow, perhaps I'll share with you the radio promotion that costs next to nothing to do and offers the one thing listeners want most -- next to, say -- free money.

I'll update it with modern social networking possibilities and I'll turn my friends in these two businesses loose on what they the very least could be a thought starter worthy of consideration and at best -- something you can roll out on-the-air and across all platforms in a week or so.

I always used to tell my students that I'd happily give up all the money I've made and any good reputation I may have earned in my career just to be their age at this time in the history of music and media. Of course, they thought I was nuts -- at first -- especially when I said I'd throw all that Clear Channel money in just to -- in essence -- be them!

Why?

The music media businesses offer so many opportunities for entrepreneurship that were never offered even ten years ago. While colleges still teach TV, radio and print -- students are out starting their own Internet-related businesses -- a most entrepreneurial generation.

And the next generation is sitting on the convergence of sociology -- not just technology as most of us previously thought -- and the potential for all of us is great.

I hope you will share my enthusiasm for the new media age in which we live.

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Why They Don't Fix Radio

It's not that radio CEOs are stupid.

They're not.

Yet you wonder, how is it that almost everyone but these CEOs know that radio is headed in the wrong direction?

Take radio stocks.

The cream of the crop at closing yesterday was CBS at $7.66, Cox at $4.91 and Saga at $3.31 -- and that's not saying much. Then, it gets uglier.

Beasley at $1.30
Salem 88 cents
Entravision 87 cents
Cumulus 85 cents
Entercom 66 cents
Emmis at 39 cents
Citadel at 21 cents
Regent at 19 cents
Spanish 17 cents
Radio One just 13 cents

Westwood One is only 15 cents and Sirius XM a quarter. I still can't believe these prices! When Clear Channel sent me to academia for four years back in 2002, radio was a thriving business. But there were ominous signs on the horizon that the men at the top ignored.

Obviously, Houston, we have a problem -- now!

I'm sure most of us would agree on that, right?

So why do the boards of directors turn their heads the other way? Why are the same CEOs entrenched at their embattled companies? A lot has to do with the chummy way the companies were set up.

But there's something else.

Radio revenues have been declining every month for over a year and a half with the larger markets leading the downturn -- all this, by the way, before the economy tanked. Even the better performing smaller markets now feel the pinch. Of course, the recession has a lot to do with it, but radio started its recession well before everyone else.

And there's more.

When Clear Channel's Mark Mays says "Merry Christmas" with the promise of more stringent cost cutting measures ahead, we know that the ten years of clipping and nipping at radio's essentials didn't work then and won't work now.

Never mind that the product is watered down even for those older listeners who still want to listen to radio. Forget the next generation -- radio has.

Every group -- consolidator, independent operator -- even Rick Buckley -- has let people go to pair down expenses. I understand economics. You can't spend more than you take in (unless you are the Federal government). But these "economies of scale" are like putting an anorexic on a diet. Death is imminent.

Don't the big boys know this? Why don't they fix it?

When stations start doing what Beasley is doing and offering advertisers "one day" sales blitzes in exchange for cheap prices and multi-month commitments, can you say desperation?

And Beasley is not alone. Hell, back in 2002 when I was publishing Inside Radio, angry competitors of Clear Channel used to send me one-sheets that some Clear Channel stations used to fax to advertisers to sell them cheap -- really cheap radio spots. That was then, when radio was supposedly a booming business.

Doesn't anyone know that prostituting your prices because you can't sell ads -- let's just say it because that's what it is -- never works. I know a lot of smart sales people who could help radio stations right now. Jim Taszarek, my neighbor out here in the desert, is one of them. And we all know a lot of good former and current GMs who have their hands tied behind their backs.

Why are radio companies not getting help when they need it? Why are they dropping their drawers?

In fact, radio companies are cutting their sales forces back when they actually need more sales professionals.

Doesn't anyone know there is a problem here?

Major market radio stations have a program director opening but almost always the poor PD running one or more stations elsewhere in the cluster takes on yet a third station so the company can save money. We're not talking Ajax Communications here. It's CBS. Clear Channel. All of them.

This is occurring with startling frequency now -- one person for more than one job. I don't know if my friend Joe McCoy, the WCBS-FM programming legend, remembers a phone conversation I had with him many years ago when I asked, "weren't we considered a genius when we programmed one great station in our lives -- not three at the same time?"

We laughed.

Prematurely, it turns out.

It doesn't take a lot of great programmers to know that one station is tough enough to program let alone whatever the company heaps upon you to save money.

Don't they know this?

Everybody and their uncle is on the Internet.

There's Facebook, MySpace, Pandora and on and on. Listeners who previously walked around with portable radios are never without their cell phones now (hint/hint). A new generation has arrived and radio ignored them. Now it's payback time. That Millennial generation was not raised on radio. They want the Internet. Their cell phones. Free music downloads. They look to each other not to djs as their music authorities.

Of course, the folks at Sleepy Hollow (Radio CEOs) must know that the Internet has arrived. But no -- they obsess about satellite radio -- satellite frickin' radio! Their professional association aka The NAB spent millions last year fighting -- you guessed it -- satellite radio. Maybe the Sirius stock price of 25 cents a share scares them.

Radio's idea of the Internet used to be putting up web pages with their jock's pictures. Of course that won't work today.

No jocks.

Just link directly to Ryan Seacrest's home page. The more "hip" (if I may use an unhip term) radio companies think the Internet is simply another channel for airing their terrestrial format. Great for at-work listening. Boy, did they miss the point.

When will they ever learn?

One more thing.

Once upon a time everyone knew that radio was local. Even in the days of network radio, the national programming appeared on stations that were very local to their communities.

You know -- and I know -- and hell, the listeners know -- that radio works best when it is local. Yet money losing CEOs have themselves convinced that they have no other option but to find ways to take one program and amortize it over many stations.

Starbucks announced a few days ago a 97% decrease in profits. That was due to the costs of closing stores. Yet if you listen to what their CEO said, the plan was to take the hit and implement a strategy for the long-term.

Long-term -- when have you heard that phrase in radio lately except maybe to describe the kind of unemployment insurance some of their ex-employees are on?

Why do we know -- why do the listeners know -- and even some advertisers -- that radio is not dealing with its many, real problems?

Listen, you don't have to look any further than Main Street to see the same behavior. Stores that are closing because they couldn't get up the courage or resources to respond to their competition.

I have seen it in academia as well where major communications schools are still -- I repeat still -- teaching radio, television news (a dying art to say the least if you follow all the local news programs that have been cut over the years) and journalism (presumably newspaper with a wink and a nod toward online -- whatever that means).

It is my belief that the human condition is that we want things to remain the same or revert to the past -- better days.

But the lesson -- why good, smart media executives keep making God awful decisions -- is this...

We don't do what we need to do until we hit rock bottom.

The sports team that just misses the playoffs thinks it's only one or two players away from competing again. Often, they are wrong. One season later when the bottom falls out, the franchise bites the bullet.

We don't answer the bell until we hit rock bottom.

And that's a scary thought when the rest of us -- those without $11 million annual salaries and private planes -- already know we're there.

Which is why you can expect more of the same in 2009 -- until the pain is felt by those who are inflicting the hurt to this industry and its people.

It's not like you can turn it around at some point once the Great Enlightenment arrives.

The next generation is still lost.

Radio listeners are still aging.

The Internet is still not going away.

And the replacement for radio's mobility became the cell phone while radio CEOs played Gordon Gekko.

The decline of radio will never become a Harvard case study.

It's a Shakespearean tragedy.

All 's Well that Ends Well, Act III, Sc. V

"No legacy is so rich as honesty".

For those of you who would prefer to get Jerry's daily posts by email for free, please click here. IMPORTANT: First you must check your mail or spam filter to verify your subscription immediately after signing up before daily service can begin.

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.