The necessary steps the radio industry should take to ensure the future growth and viability of the business begins with low-hanging fruit: cheap and easy ways for radio to make more money.

1. Dump bad initiatives and start good ones: HD is DOA. Spend your time and energy tapping everyone except the most senior executives, who seem to spend too much time with each other and not enough in the trenches. Stop surrounding yourselves with `suck-ups' who agree with bad ideas because they are afraid for their jobs.
2. Push hard for a 30-59 demo buy: For decades, radio has been driven by advertiser's demands for 25-54. It's so out of date. Get modern. Already, 16 million Baby Boomers are 55-59. They spend billions and radio ignores them. In the next four years, another 16 million will be 55-59. Meanwhile, 25-29 year-olds are less interested in radio than ever. Get real. And, if I hear `we can't tell advertisers what to do'- stop acting like a victim.
3. Encode song ID: A simple, inexpensive fix. Make sure that when you play a song, the title shows up on car radios. iPod does it. Satellite does it. But some stations won't spend the money, even though 50% of radio listeners want to know the titles each time they are played.
4. Tap into your 2.0 employees: Get serious about innovation. It's usually `bottom up'. Radio has proven you can't do it top down. The best ideas come from those closest to the customer. Put a process in place to listen to your employees who actually interact with your listeners and advertisers.
5. Advertise: Stop acting like poverty stricken corner stores who cut their ad budgets when sales are down. Act like serious players. Let people know what you're doing, what's new and why you matter. You have to spend the money! Build it into the budget and don't cut it if times get a bit tough. Yes, it's a financial crisis now. If you plan to be here in three years, you have to act like it now or you won't be here in three years.
6. Learn about your customers: Do you know that fewer than 4% of your listeners ever text a radio station? Do you know that almost 25% of those who go to a station Web site are also listening to at least one other Internet-only station too? You learn this by researching your customers. I do a lot of market research for clients ranging from radio to Internet companies. The reason for the market research is because I learned 40 years ago that if you take your eye off the customer, they take their eye (and ear) off you.
7. Get serious about your Web site: Update at least every day. Optimize search. Make it easy to find the `listen' button. Include a phone number in your `contact us' information. Post lots of photos. Do usability testing.
8. Adapt to the new world: Drop the clichéd slogans and connect with the real world. Accept that 30+ listeners are the future for at least another 5-10 years and figure out how to make them really happy with you.

Leaders today have to find broadcasters who want to encourage younger people to come into the industry. Decide if you plan to be in business in three years. If you do, then stop getting rid of your intellectual capital like human beings who actually come up with the ideas and do the work. Without fresh blood, the industry will become almost completely networked and syndicated. At that point, it's nothing more than a transmitter business. Like the oil pipeline business instead of the business of finding oil.

Labels: 2009, Parikhal, Radio, trends, Year-end

Labels: 2007, Actionable Ideas, CMW, Conference, Programming, Radio

The latest Bridge Ratings study of satellite radio subscribers calls the retail market for receivers "sluggish" and notes that sales have been light enough in recent weeks that the company has had to use more locations nationwide to achieve its target sample of 4,000 respondents.

Sales are off 29% from Labor Day weekend and were flat week-to-week last week after a 16% dive the week before. In addition, the survey found Sirius' retail lead softening, with its share at 54% after spending much of the summer above 60%, and sales highest among adults 25-54, with 18-21s interested but resisting due to cost.

Analyzing churn rates, 30% retail buyers said they would not renew their subscriptions when they expire and 15% were undecided, but 48% of OEM car radio subscribers would not resubscribe with 10% undecided. And the percentage of people saying they subscribed because of Howard Stern has dropped back to the 18% level after peaking at 38% on Labor Day, with Bridge estimating that Sirius added about 1.46 million subscribers as a result of Stern.

As a result of recent numbers, Bridge has reduced its projections to predict 7.9 million XM subscribers and 6.5 million for Sirius at the end of the year, and warns that if fourth quarter disappoints, the estimates may be high.

Labels: Radio

Researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University say most men are always thinking of sex.

A study released Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists found 54 percent of men and 19 percent of women admit they think about sex every day -- or several times a day -- in a society where they are bombarded with subconscious erotic images.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota found sexy subliminal images competed for attention in the brain even when the images were not right before a subject's eyes and most people are not consciously aware of them, ABC News reported.

Researchers also found sexual orientation often determines how the brain reacts to erotic images. Heterosexual women, for example, were more tuned in to pictures of naked men, the same reaction exhibited by homosexual men. But homosexual woman were equally attuned to naked images of both sexes, the report said.

Labels: Jointblog

As the radio industry evolves at a rapid pace, critical decisions about the medium’s future become increasingly more urgent. Technology issues have enveloped the industry to such a challenging extent, that the call for radio leaders to be actionable has never resonated so loudly. John Parikhal has never met a challenge he didn’t like, he relishes the very concept. While Parikhal’s client list continues to remain firmly entrenched in radio, the macro version finds him involved with a variety of media and marketing companies. His latest foray with strategic Internet initiatives with some large clients has him thinking about the future 24/7. It’s spring and time for our annual check-up with one of our industry’s deep thinkers.

Labels: cellphone, FMQB, Google, HD Radio, Internet, John Parikhal, Joint Communications, Jointblog, Karmazin, Media, Media Trend Watching, MySpace, PPM, Radio, Sirius, XM

* Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

* More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

* Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging.

* When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

* About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost that many, 16%, have used it to break up with someone.

Labels: Jointblog

"The Nielsen ratings for this year’s Oscars were down 8 percent, and for the Grammys 11 percent. During the last half of 2005, the Enquirer’s newsstand sales were down by a quarter and Entertainment Weekly’s by 30 percent. The American OK! is said to be unwell, the magazine Inside TV was launched and killed last year, and a magazine called Star Shop was killed before it launched. Like other American social tides, the fascination with celebrities has been cyclical, and after several decades of rising (as it also did from the twenties through the forties), perhaps it will now (as in the sixties) ebb."

Labels: Radio

"Radio has been attacked from a lot of sides, but it's held up to videogames, satellite radio and iPods," said Buzz Knight, VP of content development for Greater Media. "There are significant challenges ahead, but there's room for optimism. It's a very exciting time."

Tom Poleman, senior VP of programming for Clear Channel/New York, added, "We have an opportunity to reach consumers in new and different ways with the technologies that are out there." With HD side channels, podcasting and on-demand video platforms, "this is an exciting time for radio. We need to ride the wave."

"You don't try to educate listeners; another kid does," said John Parikhal, CEO of Joint Communications. "No matter how much we want people to pay attention to us, a filter goes up. They're spending 70 hours a week with media in an overcommunicated world. If the product is good, they'll eventually pay attention to it."

WINS VP/GM Greg Janoff added, It's about building community and getting listeners to tell their friends about it. Radio is not dead; it just has to reinvent itself. We're the original community builders."

More from John Parikhal: "Radio has never really invented anything—it does a brilliant job of packaging what's already out there. What the industry needs to do is accelerate the rate at which talent gets to radio. Spend the time to train people who want to bring stuff to the medium. Take everything we know about formatting and packaging and teach it to people who want to be on the air, through podcasts. Use formal training methods, and you'll find talented people who could be really good if only they knew how to do radio."

Joe Fleischer, principal of BigChampagne, which tracks traffic on illegal file-sharing platforms, added, "The music industry now realizes that they're not in the business of selling plastic discs anymore. They're now selling content. Unfortunately, they missed the biggest transition since vinyl to CD by three years. Now it's up to them to figure out how to work with everyone that needs content."

One more from John Parikhal: "One of radio's great strengths is repetition. There's nothing worse for a listener than a song that he or she doesn't recognize. It's a balancing act between comfort and introducing new music. The problem for radio today is that young listeners are getting their new music from friends via" instant messaging.