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A Look Back to Last March's CRS Conference For Radio's Future
With this week's NAB conference in Philadelphia discussing "The Future of Radio", a look back at the March 2005 CRS in Nashville is worthwhile to remember for its recommendations (as reported by Billboard's Airplay Monitor):While terrestrial radio is faced with increasing competition from satellite radio and iPods, not to mention DVDs and video games, there are measures that can be taken to stem the tide. That was the message that came out of March's "Country's Crystal Ball: What's Next and What Can You Do About It," a panel at the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville.
Moderator and media strategist John Parikhal, Saga Communications' Steve Goldstein, Rainmaker Media's Beau Phillips and Rene Global Associates' Richard Rene, while acknowledging the challenges, agreed that there were steps that could be taken to win the battle for listeners' attention.
Among the good news for country radio that Parikhal offered was that country has a "built-in bounceback," meaning that the children of people that listened to country during its peak in the early '90s are now in their mid- to late-teens. He says that the country music they heard as children will be a preponderate influence on them now.
Parikhal's advice for radio was "more convenience, more contact, more control." He later added a fourth "c": "more context" and used VH1's "Storytellers" and "Behind The Music" as examples.
In the context arena, Parikhal believes that country radio has an advantage because of the close ties between artists and fans and radio.
Parikhal urged radio stations to simplify their Web sites by reducing the clutter and making them user friendly. He pointed to the MTV Web site as an example of a user friendly space and suggested that programmers take a look at their own station Web sites from a listener's perspective.
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, September 22, 2005,
