EXCLUSIVE ROUNDTABLE: RADIO VS. THE IPOD Chuck Taylor – Billboard News flash: Technology may not be the enemy. A challenger at times, certainly, but not the competitive antagonist that many inside and outside the radio industry have made it out to be.
In fact, with high-definition side channels, podcasting and re-energized radio station Websites, technology has become a requisite collaborator in terrestrial radio's ongoing battle for increased market share, brand extension and revenue building.
While iPods, Internet music destinations and satellite radio present a threat to broadcasters' quest for consumers' time, the medium's own arsenal of technology-driven tools will lead its charge into the future.
Such was the consensus among the seven industry leaders who gathered Jan. 19 at Billboard Radio Monitor's headquarters in New York for the fourth in a continuing series of exclusive round-table discussions, "Radio vs. the iPod." Executives represented Clear Channel, Joint Communications, BigChampagne, Greater Media, Edison Media Research, CBS Radio's news WINS New York and Emmis' R&B/hip-hop WQHT (Hot 97) New York. The forum was led by Scott McKenzie, Billboard Radio Monitor's managing director.
"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, which is among the few major radio groups that remains privately owned. "We have a willingness to embrace new technology and take risks. We have extreme passion for our brands and what we can do to make them better for listeners and customers. 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."
On the day of the round table, a number of major radio groups unleashed HD side channels in 28 markets, including the top 13.
OPPORTUNITY
All of the participants saw rediscovering the joys of daring programming as an opportunity for radio in the context of the HD side channels.
"When FM first came on the scene, it was being championed by the guys smoking weed in the back room," WQHT PD John Dimick (pictured left with Sean Ross) said. "Those are the kind of people we need to tap now for ideas about making HD work.
"For the first time in a long time, we've decided, 'What the fuck, let's take a chance.' We sat down to listen to stacks of music, and I didn't have to pay anybody $20,000 to tell me what tests," he added. "We sometimes eat our young, because sometimes we think we have to figure everything out scientifically about a song before we put it on."
Knight agreed: "As an industry, we all need to get back to that excitement, that innocence we started with, the kind of spirit that would piss off the owners. We've gotten way too serious about things and forgotten about why we got into radio in the first place—we were young and stupid, but we knew how to find the fun.
"With HD we can experiment, we can take that wild-eyed jock or put an unknown band that we just like on the air," he said. "This change gives us the chance to remind ourselves why we love radio."
Clear Channel's side channel for mainstream top 40 WHTZ (Z100) New York features all new music, said Poleman, who is also PD of the station. "We're hitting new niches, we're more experimental and we're not obsessed with getting ratings. It's counterintuitive to everything we've learned."
YOUTH APPEAL
A question raised during the discussion was how to attract young listeners to the new outlets, who are already distracted by numerous other entertainment sources. The answer: Play it cool.
"You don't try to educate listeners; another kid does," said John Parikhal, president of Joint Communications, which explores media trends and develops marketing strategies. "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 over communicated world. If the product is good, they'll eventually pay attention to it."
Poleman suggested that the selling of HD side channels begins on a station's primary channel, where trusted personalities can lead the charge. "The real selling will come from what we do on the air. The morning guy can talk about experiencing it for the first time. Listeners trust it because they've known your station for years and they emotionally connect with the brand. It's about creating supply and demand; right now, we're creating supply. Exposing people to it and explaining what the benefits are will create demand."
WINS VP/GM Greg Janoff added, "If [Z100 morning host Elvis Duran] is telling listeners about this really cool thing, people will try it. 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."
HD RADIOS, HELLO?
Participants agreed that the way to ingratiate HD radio with consumers is to make the units readily available.
"How was FM introduced? We gave away FM radios," Parikhal said.
Dimick suggested the $200 million that the radio industry has earmarked for marketing and promoting HD might be better spent on purchasing radios and handing them out at every remote across the country. "People will want to find out how they can get it, and we need to make it easy for them."
Poleman said that on Clear Channel's station Web sites, a link now explains what HD radio is and where receivers can be purchased, with click-through windows to buy. Other participants stressed the importance of manufacturers developing multifunction devices, such as portable MP3 players that include HD radio.
Even so, Parikhal warned that for HD side channels to succeed, they have to somehow improve life for listeners. "There was a pent-up demand for FM: It was stereo, it played music you couldn't hear on AM and there were fewer commercials. [HD radio] must make life better, not just increase choices in an already over communicated world."
HD: IS THAT HILARY DUFF?
Another point: education. Participants nodded in agreement that it took years for HDTV to just now begin making sense to consumers. A station that says it is broadcasting in HD radio needs to explain to listeners what it means—that digital-quality sound and additional channel options are available, as long as they are willing to invest in a next-generation radio. They also agreed that the price of such units, now in the $250-$400 range, needs to drop substantially to become affordable for the average Joe.
McKenzie added that the need for education remains on all sides: "You walk into Best Buy and ask them to show you the HD radios, and they take you to the Sirius display," he said.
Round-table participants also addressed the ubiquitous use of iPods—and the burgeoning podcasting revolution. Poleman said that last summer, features originally broadcast on Z100 rhythmic top 40 sister WKTU New York ranked in the top 10 on iTunes' list of most-downloaded recordings.
Z100 offers "Celebrity Sound Files," "Romeo's Celebrity Crank Calls" and the morning show's "The Adventures of Greg T the Frat Boy," while WKTU has posted its "Baltbusters." All content can be downloaded free from iTunes, but sponsors have paid up to be alongside some of the content.
"It's all about establishing emotional connectivity with the brand. Viral e-mail is important, but also we need to have the morning man talking about what it is. Even if the radios aren't out there yet, we're providing information. It's an opportunity for us to get into this new frontier," Poleman said.
Edison Media Research VP of music and programming Sean Ross suggested that podcasting has the potential to extend the schoolyard version of water cooler banter in the office.
"If the Z100 phone tap hadn't been important to listeners, there wouldn't have been any reason to put it online," he said. "One of the great things that could come out of this is that radio once again becomes the mass shared experience that it was when most of us were growing up."
Dimick added, "We have the ability to reach a lot of people with podcasting. You don't want to walk into the office or to school and not know that Z100 had a new phone tap that you missed hearing."
Janoff noted that WINS has repurposed its headline news in Spanish as a podcast, which has proved to be a winner. "We're a station that doesn't ask anything but just to listen—no contests, no big promotions. But we've found that we're able to reach people online and our podcast in Spanish has really worked out, because it's creative content for a specific audience."
TALENT IS TOPS
Parikhal suggested that developing talent remains radio's ticket for success, and starting at the podcasting level is the ideal training ground.
"Radio has never really invented anything—it does a brilliant job of packaging what's already out there," he said. "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."
Ross added that record companies need to work out issues to license music on podcasts. He said, "The outlet I am amazed that people are missing is podcasts that have label content. The next level comes when the record companies get together and finally allow radio to use their content in podcasts."
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."
A VALUED ACRONYM: PPM
Another potential technological breakthrough for radio broadcasters is Arbitron's Portable People Meter, which will provide a read on minute-by-minute listening, within a day's time, instead of a look at listening habits from three months ago.
Even so, participants were guarded about the challenges that the new measuring technique will present.
Knight suggested, "We have to be careful about overanalyzing with the PPM. There's so much data to freak out over. My fear is that the industry might run and hide instead of having the guts to stick by what it believes in."
Dimick, whose audience at WQHT is primarily black, said, "I'm scared about telling a 22-year-old African-American male that he needs to carry around a little black box with a blinking red light all the time—and that if they don't, Arbitron will be calling them." Even so, he added, "The PPM is going to make things more challenging, but a lot more fun, too."
Knight raised the issue of cost to radio groups. "We're being lured into something because the methodology we have now is antiquated. A scarier thing is that whatever costs we're being quoted now for the new service may be nowhere near reality."
Poleman, however, noted the vast possibilities that passive measurement might present. "We gave Arbitron an encoded Z100 podcast, and they are able to measure it. This will provide a way to measure our content in different formats."
OTHER PLATFORMS
Parikhal, who as a consultant sits slightly outside of the broadcasting industry, stressed, "I don't care who wins the greatest audience. The biggest winner in all of this is the consumer." He warned that radio groups should be wary of kowtowing to Wall Street interests: "The people controlling the equity money are mostly a bunch of morons. The leaders on Wall Street are not that smart, they're just survivors. What the radio industry needs to understand is that the advertising model has changed fundamentally. Push advertising, where you ask the consumer to react, is being replaced by pull advertising, where they are motivated to act.
"That's why radio has a good shot. Ads should be live and 10 seconds long. At 4 p.m., no one knows what they're going to have for dinner. A jock can plug a take-out restaurant . . . If broadcasters don't take advantage of buy-oriented opportunities, it will rapidly become irrelevant."
OTHER TECH ISSUES
A discussion ensued about the value of digital download sales in helping radio stations accurately read consumer tastes.
Fleischer stressed that it is not unusual for sales spikes to indicate a band's burgeoning impact—which should be a reliable indicator for radio stations. Whatever consumer reports reflect and despite iTunes' increasing influence, he said that illegal file sharing continues to thrive.
He revealed that trends show an erosion in alternative and active rock downloads—which reflects radio's ongoing abandonment of rock formats—while pop, R&B/hip-hop and country continue to grow steadily.
Fleischer pointed to the band Fall Out Boy, which hit BigChampagne's top 10 list when radio was barely noticing the act, with 200 spins. Top 40 radio then caught on, propelling first single "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" into the top 10 at the format. Follow-up "Dance, Dance" has made the band a bona fide hit act, also scoring top 10 airplay. (Fleischer is involved with the management of Fall Out Boy through another company.)
Poleman said, "It's important for radio to follow the indicators. We added Fall Out Boy at Z100 because we saw the downloads. It's always been the desire of kids to find their own music, and we can track that. It's that first step, and then radio picks it up. You find those things creating a buzz, and then it moves to the mainstream and blows up."
Overall, the round-table participants insisted that the cloud sitting over terrestrial radio's reputation in a competitive listening environment will dissipate as proponents work toward better programming, new ways to reach audience and faster methods to assess reaction to what listeners prefer.
"What we're focused on is what is between the records," Dimick said. "It's not radio vs. the iPod, it's about choice. It's incumbent upon all of us to figure out how to make 240 new [HD side channels] work. I like to stay up at night thinking of all the crazy things we can pull off. Anything that gets our product in the hands of people wherever they are is what's going to keep the light burning bright." |