The Infinite Dial

With the conversion of Classic Rock KZPS Dallas to Classic Rock/Country/Americana hybrid "Lonestar 92.5," Clear Channel becomes the latest broadcaster to try and replace the traditional spot sales paradigm with sponsorships and the integration of advertisers and content (think "American Idol" or "The Apprentice"). Edison VP of music and programming Sean Ross gives a First Listen to the new station. And you can also link to previous Ross On Radio columns on Classic Rock/Country hybrids and replacing spots with sponsorships.

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The Infinite Dial 2007: Radio's Digital Platforms, the latest study by Edison Media Research and Arbitron, is a follow-up to last year's Infinite Dial study -- in it, we further explore the digital audio platforms (online radio, satellite radio, HD Radio, and podcasting among others) that expand the radio market, their impact on AM/FM radio, and implications for advertisers and media planners. To view the report, click here.

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Nearly a decade ago, at a time when Country radio was at the depths of its doldrums, veteran radio consultant and programmer Bill Hennes tried doing an all-current Country format on WGRX Baltimore. At the time, the current product that might have justified a Country version of "Hot Hits" wasn't really there, and WGRX became Rock AC WZBA not long afterwards. But Hennes, now the publisher of industry Website AllAboutCountry.com is trying it again with the AllAboutCountry.Com:Hits channel.

Hennes' Hits channel is joined by a "New Country" channel (which sells slots to new releases) and will soon be joined by a Country Gold and a Country Legends format. If you're in New York without regular terrestrial Country radio, or if you'd just like somewhere to hear current Country without the heavy gold and recurrent lean of many major-market Country outlets, it's a nice resource.

Here's 45 minutes of the Hits channel this morning:

Kenny Chesney, "Beer In Mexico"
George Starit, "Wrapped"
Carrie Underwood, "Wasted"
Joe Nichols, "I'll Wait For You"
Bucky Covington, "A Different World"
Carolina Rain, "Isn't She?"
Bon Jovi, "(You Want To) Make A Memory"
Rascal Flatts, "Stand"
Toby Keith, "High Maintenance Woman"
Taylor Swift, "Teardrops On My Guitar"
Sugarland, "Settlin'"
Gary Allan, "A Feelin' Like That"
Kellie Pickler, "I Wonder"
Sarah Buxton, "That Kind Of Day"

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Since his arrival at WSM-AM Nashville last year, new PD Sam Easly has gone to great lengths to modernize the gold-based traditional Country outlet and Grand Ole Opry flagship. So it's not surprising, but still amusing to get an e-mail listener newsletter for the station with three items: the station's iTunes podcast and listener archives, the station's MySpace page, and the slightly less high-tech CMT Dukesfest, celebrating everything Dukes Of Hazard-related.

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So far, broadcasters have shown an admirable amount of restraint in trying to get an all-'90s format on the air, instead leaving it to Internet or satellite broadcasters (particularly XM's '90s channel and Sirius' '90s-based Hot AC The Pulse). But it's still fun to speculate on how a '90s format might manifest itself, particularly when the mass-appeal music of the '90s went through so many changes. The XM approach is reminiscent of some of the all-'70s stations, acknowledging all the decade's extremes in turn. And for a truly unusual listening experience, there's the Devadesatka '90s Channel of Czech Hot AC station Radio City.

Maybe because the hits in Europe were different, Radio City does manage to find a pop center to the decade--a mix of pop, Eurodance, and the softest rock and hip-hop crossovers. There will be plenty here that's not familiar to most Americans, but as I write, they are about to segue from Shanice's "I Love Your Smile" to White Town's "Your Woman." Here's a recent sample hour:

Scorpions, "Send Me An Angel"
Madonna, "Beautiful Stranger"
LaBouche, "Be My Lover"
Prince Ital & Marky Mark, "United" (mid-'90s reggae rap from before the rapper-to-actor transition had completely taken hold)
Roxette, "Run To You"
Roy Orbison, "Oh Pretty Woman" (counts apparently because of the movie)
Culture Beat, "Mr. Vain"
Des'ree, "Feel So High"
Double You, "Please Don't Go" (a different studio group doing a similar arrangement to the KWS version)
Cranberries, "Dreams"
Sasha, "If You Believe"
Prezioso f/Marvin, "Tell Me Why" (late '90s Eurodance)
Aerosmith, "Cryin'"
DNA f/Suzanne Vega, "Tom's Diner"
Pet Shop Boys, "New York City Boy" (their hit streak ended here in 1988 but went on elsewhere for years)

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One of the ironies of the Imus firing is the strange coalition that it has brought to the debate about lyrics in Hip-Hop. Imus' supporters, many of who quickly defaulted to, "Yeah? Well, what about rap?" as their defense, have suddenly found themselves on the same side of the debate with the African-American community leaders, columnists and even Hip-hop artists who have publicly bemoaned the current state of the genre for the last few years. The column that begins with, “I always loved Hip-Hop but I can’t excuse what my kids are listening to” has become an Op-Ed perennial around the country over the last year, but Jason Whitlock’s Kansas City Star piece, “Imus Isn’t The Real Bad Guy” has been widely circulated since last Wednesday by those hoping to make it part of the Imus debate.

So far, it’s working. The “What About Hip-Hop?” story was prominent on CNN, among other places, throughout the weekend. And in the same way that liberal meets conservative in some strange places, we now have those who sincerely want to advance a dialogue about what impact certain language has on society joined by those who mostly hope to minimize a separate offense. The most extreme manifestation of the "What About Rap" argument is Phil Mushnick's New York Post column that faults the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team for not having already raised their collective voices about misogyny in Rap.

Much of the press coverage I’ve seen is treating these complaints as being of a piece. But there’s a difference between being upset that Hip-Hop is not what it was in 1979 and just not having ever liked it since 1979. Hip-Hop, for various reasons, has lost the “only current music that matters” status that it enjoyed in the early part of this decade. There are internal critics who see addressing its perceived lyrical negativity as a way of restoring that status. There are a lot of external critics who would be happy to see Hip-Hop further marginalized. And given radio’s history of backing away from Hip-Hop as if burned in the early ‘90s, they could easily get their wish. Top 40 PDs, in particular, won’t go looking for “positive” Hip-Hop to fill the void, they’ll just play more Maroon 5 and Justin Timberlake (whose recent hits have language issues of their own).

For many of those looking to move Hip-Hop forward, that's not how the story is supposed to end. One of the themes in this weekend’s CNN coverage was that many of the previous critics were happy to finally have the story brought to the fore. But the debate about Hip-Hop lyrics deserves to be conducted by people who are sincere about improving it. And the best way to ensure that is to demand that it be conducted separately from the Imus fallout.

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I don't have much to add to Sean's excellent Ross on Radio this week about Life After Imus, except to point out that "conventional wisdom," or what I prefer to call received wisdom, can sometimes overstay its welcome in the radio industry. There was a time when one could toss off trite axioms like "there's no such thing as bad publicity" and get away with it. Who knows, if Imus had not been fired by MSNBC and CBS, maybe Mark Ramsey's math would have been dead on. But this isn't 1996, or even 2000, and the landscape has changed significantly in this post-consolidation, post-wardrobe-malfunction world that we now inhabit. Independent voices now speak truth to power on the Internet, while the "shock jock" becomes increasingly more anachronistic.

So, Fred Jacobs is right that radio has lost another star, albeit one who courted his own demise repeatedly. Meanwhile, I have heard conservative talkers speak of Imus getting 'lynched,' which, frankly, is about as repellent as what Imus said; another knuckle-headed DJ already getting the ax for echoing Imus' stupidity; and a fairly well-known syndicated morning show team (who I won't name) widely circulating a mass email volunteering their show's services to stand in for a free two-week trial for those poor stations left in the lurch. I hear these things, and I am almost as disgusted as I was when I heard Imus slander a team of young college students, and an entire race.

I will offer one man's humble answer to Mark's excellent question, "what is the lesson here?"--I hope the lesson is that we should stop insulting, tricking, humiliating and causing actual bodily harm to our listeners, and start connecting with them in more meaningful ways. Conventional wisdom is that controversy brings ratings, but maybe this 'truth' has gone past its sell-by date. One truth is that this kind of controversy does help at least one form of radio grow--public radio. As the Sterns, O&As and now Imus's of the world become increasingly more and more marginalized, shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered continue to thrive. Maybe the new conventional wisdom is that America prefers substance to shock.

There are now a whole bunch of new stations with a tremendous morning drive opportunity to see if that is indeed the case.

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Our recent study on Podcast listeners continues to generate lots of great feedback around the Interwebs. BusinessWeek focused on the "modest" revenues for podcasting at the moment, while Pronet Advertising (a great resource for online marketing, by the way) pointed out the highly desirable demographic being reached by podcasts. Some have challenged the "low" numbers for video podcast consumption by pointing out stats like comScore's recent report on US Video Streaming, which is a fine report--but is apples to oranges as far as our data is concerned.

Let's consider audio podcasts for a moment. It is true that audio podcasts are a form of online audio--but not all online audio can be correctly thought of as a "podcast." The rising tide of online audio does indeed lift all ships, but the actual behavior of downloading an audio podcast and saving it to listen to later is markedly different than leaving Pandora on in the background to stream your favorite music while you work.

The problem is one of metrics. Podcasters have little recourse but to use the same types of "reach and frequency" metrics that mass media providers have relied upon for years. This results in a currency of "downloads" that does podcasters a tremendous disservice, in my humble opinion. Clear Channel Online can measure and credibly claim almost 1 million unduplicated listeners per week to their online streams. There are two issues with similar measurements of podcasts. One is that there is no agreed upon metric--read this post from Adam Curry and the subsequent comments and decide for yourself if Podshow generated 12,000 or 52 million "download requests," whatever they are. The second problem with measuring downloads or "download requests" is that this metric is woefully inadequate in terms of capturing the level of engagement that a podcast listener has with the content. If I have a classical station on in the background for 6 hours, does it equate to my downloading and listening to Podchestra? Common sense says "no." In fact, advertisers and marketers are increasingly more sophisticated about the measurement of engagement.

Next week, the Advertising Research Foundation will be hosting its big annual convention, Re:think 2007, and we'll be there as well, giving a talk on the measurement of experiential marketing. Engagement is more than just a buzzword--there is a serious effort on the part of Edison and all of the other members of the ARF to craft a metric and methodology to place engagement where it belongs in measuring brand impact. If I download and listen to Leo Laporte's "this WEEK in TECH" podcast and listen to it in its entirety while driving to pick up Sam at daycare, I have done more than 'download,' I have engaged with the brand, with Leo as a credible host, and even with the sponsors of the show, who are generally more relevant to me (in that context) than anything I might hear on mass media. That's worth more than a "download."

Podcasting is not a replacement for other forms of reaching audience--it is a valuable tool in the context of a complete media mix. The continuing evolution of the engagement metric will provide a more equitable way to equate lower traffic, but higher involvement media such as a podcast alongside higher traffic channels such as broadcast radio and TV. In the end, I agree with noted podcaster Michael Geoghegan that the success of the medium should not be pinned on the success of the term podcasting. Nor should it be pinned on the number of downloads a show does or does not spark. What matters for marketers is the level of engagement, consumer trust and brand involvement a consumer has with a podcast. The combined market of audio and video podcast consumers now stands at 16% of the country, and it is a valuable, marketable and highly lucrative demographic. There's a real market there--but podcasters have to be a little smarter, work a little harder and exploit the unique advantages and benefits of podcasting to get there.

Watch this space for more on engagement in the weeks ahead.

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For all the air time that now goes to promoting the vendors of HD Radio, I've encountered surprisingly few radio station giveaways of HD receivers. Unlike the '70s, when FM converters were a regular giveaway, it's not a cheap prize. And it's already very clear from the on-air product that many broadcasters don't have much of a discretionary budget for their HD multicast stations. So it's worth mentioning that wiith the sale of WXGG (George 104) Washington, D.C., to Radio One, former owner Bonneville is promoting the move of George's Classic Hits/Hot AC hybrid format to WTOP's HD-2 multicast channel by giving away 103 HD radios.

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Okay, so if WLTW New York is suddenly downplaying the "Lite" word after more than 20 years, what is its "Classic Lite" HD-2 multicast channel doing?

Listened to WLTW-2 this morning and the word "Classic Lite" handle was still there. But even in HD-2, the use of the word "lite" had given way to some drops that referred to the station only as "106.7, HD-2." In 45 minutes or so of listening, the lite and non-lite identifiers were rotating roughly every other break.

The "Classic Lite" handle is still on the HD-2 station's logo as well, but has been downplayed along the lines of WLTW-1's logo as well.

And here's the station we heard this morning at 11:40 a.m.:

Andy Gibb, "Shadow Dancing"
Chris DeBurgh, "The Lady In Red"
Jim Croce, "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)"
John Lennon, "(Just Like) Starting Over"
Crosby Stills Nash & Young, "Teach Your Children"
Paul Davis, "Cool Night"
O'Jays, "Love Train"
Righteous Brothers, "Ebb Tide"
Steve Perry, "Foolish Heart"
Tony Bennett, "Who Can I Turn To"
Andrew Gold, "Thank You For Being A Friend"
Jr. Walker & All-Stars, "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)"

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Interesting news from New York where, after more than 20 years, heritage AC WLTW has started to downplay its trademark "106.7 Lite FM" handle in favor of "New York's 106.7 FM." When heard this afternoon, the "Lite" name was still making several appearances per hour, with the other slogan heard in roughly three out of four other usages. The station's Website. has also been updated to reflect the change

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