You – and EVERY retailer in your market – know that I’m not over-stating the status quo to use the word “Survival.”
So when The Holland Cooke Summer-of-’09 Consulting Tour kicked-off in Tyler TX last month, client KTBB packed a restaurant with business people who had been assured “No advertising will be offered or accepted” at this event.
“You are invited, your checkbook is not.”
The invitation offered retailers, agency people, and other would-be advertisers lunch, and the opportunity to “Meet marketing consultant Holland Cooke” and see-and-hear him outline “specific tactics that are driving success in media markets across the USA.”
OK, OK…it also mentioned that one attendee would win an iPhone. But that particular door prize was chosen to make a point.
You don’t need me to tell you that advertisers are spending less. They’re also spending differently. I can tell you how, and how radio can take advantage. My presentation is “Survival Information, For The Way Things Are Now.” It spells-out how media use has changed, how advertisers are spending accordingly, and why NO – repeat, NO – other marketing medium partners with the Internet better than local radio.
Click here to see and hear my presentation. Click here to ask KTBB owner Paul Gleiser about the impact this event had. Click here to inquire about me-firing-up-YOUR-advertisers.
The Man has lost control of the media.
You are in control now.
Look no further than Iran, where it’s tyranny vs. Twitter. Got something to say? Want to say it on the Internet?
Got a product to sell? A message to market?
Want to do a show anyone can hear, anywhere?
Listen as HC guests on: The Jim Bohannon ShowFree Talk Live.
HC with longtime amigo and long-ago client Ed Schultz, now nationally syndicated radio host and host of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” at Talkers magazine’s New Media Seminar in Noo Yawk.
Some FIVE HUNDRED assembled here, on, ironically, the day R&R published its final issue. And it’s a Who’s Who…everyone-over-two-feet-tall in Talk radio and Internet. Big-deal-of-the-weekend: Rush Limbaugh’s appearance, accepting Talkers’ Freedom of Speech Award. Click on his mouth to watch the video:
Life AFTER Radio: Your Personal Plan B” was my session. Here, chopped-down-to YouTube’s 10-minute limit — thus, mercifully, minus LOTS of DJ quips — are “the Cliff Notes:”
“Over my dead body” radio stations will pay record labels for airplay, vowed outgoing NAB President David Rehr. From the grave, Frank Sinatra calls his bluff. Internet music sharing merely turned-up-the-volume. This dispute has been raging for generations, as Nancy Sinatra’s more recent Congressional testimony demonstrates…and while labels lined radio station walls with appreciative Gold and Platinum records.
It is unclear which inning this game is in, but smart stations aren’t waiting for the final score. Credit Rush Limbaugh for leading the Talk Radio Revolution that repurposed AM radio, back when AM radio became obsolete as a music delivery appliance. FM is already following.
Why now? Why did a dozen years of “FM Talk”/”Hot Talk” hype fail to find traction? Bankers. If you asked them, they’d tell you that music = FM and Talk = AM. Now, they just want their money.
Phase One – FMs simulcasting in-place News/Talk AM brother stations – is a trend well-underway, with impressive ratings results.
Phase Two: Station owners and managers tell me that, if these music fees are imposed, they’ll flip FMs to stand-alone Talk overnight. Literally hundreds of new Talk FMs will quickly exhaust the supply of available syndicated longform programming.
Know your options. If you missed my recent piece on this subject in Inside Radio, download it here.
That’s 17% of the 12+ USA population; up from 13% last year. 61% are 25-54.
From the recent Arbitron/Edison Research conference call introducing the 17th Arbitron/Edison Internet study: “The Infinite Dial 2009: Radio’s Digital Platforms AM/FM, Online, Satellite, HD Radio and Podcasting,” these headlines:
• “Americans’ consumption of [all] media is higher than it’s every been.”
• 85% of Americans have Internet access; 82% of USA homes have broadband.
• 69 million Americans (1-in-4) listened to online radio in the last month. A year ago it was 17%, 42 million.
• Key growth demo is 35-54; 61% are 25-54; they’re “upscale, well-educated, and employed.”
• “Variety” and “control” are top reasons for listening to online radio (“audio you cannot get elsewhere”).
• Most learn about online radio from AM/FM radio (32%); 28% hear about it from friend or family member.
• “Online radio is the soundtrack to e-commerce.” 47% listen while researching products/services; 33% while shopping online.
• 1-in-3 wants online radio in-car.
• 42% own a portable MP3 player (1/3 a year ago), “growth in every demo except 65+.”
• Online radio listeners more likely to have purchased digital audio online.
I attended/spoke-at/covered the National Association of Broadcasters convention.
Read my notes in the next Talkers magazine, and in my May newsletter.
Radio-and-the-Internet:
As usual, the best ideas seem to sprout in the smaller markets. Hear a couple, from “The Small Market Idea Swap,” in my interview in NAB’s podcast from the convention floor:
If you’re a first-timer Vegas funster there now, you’re probably just giddy.
But to-the-trained-eye, it’s quiet…at times sadly so.
Last time I was there was for the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Since then, several major construction projects seem to remain halted.
Cranes over half-built palaces sit idle.
Debt-fueled zeal collides with rececession.
‘Sound familiar?
From before I “went blonde” (and was I ever really THAT thin?)
Recently-unearthed footage shot in the WTOP/Washington newsroom November 3, 1986. Step-into the time warp…
Beyond the antiques, and some DEAR-departed folks it was my privilege to manage, here’s what’s REALLY wistful about what-you-see: Unlike most-of-radio-today, we were actually able to DO local radio, unfettered by the crippling debt that prevents Clear Channel, Citadel, et al from the kind of meaningful local content creation you see as WTOP business-as-usual in this video.
Today, few industries exemplify what’s-wrong-with-the-economy better than radio. Talk about “toxic” mortgages!
And here’s the happy ending: WTOP’s current owner, Bonneville, might be the least-insane owner in radio. As busy as that 1986 operation looks today, 2009 WTOP is an even bigger, more-bustling operation. SOMETHING in radio is actually improving.
You’ll hear the judges compliment a contestant by saying “You could sing radio hits,” or “You have a good commercial sound.” Even in The Age of iPod, airplay remains a standard of success.
I really “got” this when I met Stevie Wonder. As he was moving through a crowd of people every-bit-as-starstruck-as-I-was, someone sang out the old Drake “CKLW” jingle. Stevie paused, and sang it back. Imagine? And imagine HIM, living in Detroit back in the Motown heyday, hearing his latest hit for the first time on The Big Eight?
Will there be new attention to localism? Syndicated hosts worry.
While crafty Obama plays Rope-a-Dope with El Rushbo, conservative talkers continue to fret over reinstatement of a Fairness Doctrine the new president has several times denied support for.
Hear why, in my opinion, there won’t be a new Fairness Doctrine, in my interview on The Heidi Harris Show on KDWN/Las Vegas
