The Infinite Dial

One of the ironies of the consumer electronics industry's attack on radio--specifically any attempt to mandate an FM in cellphones--is that it's taking place during a back-to-school shopping week. On the station I listened to for two hours the other night, I heard multiple consumer electronics retailers and wireless providers advertising PCs, notebooks, and, yes, cellphones. This week, in particular, radio is a particularly relevant technology to the electronics industry.

While I believe in the inclusion of an FM tuner in mobile phones, the notion of bartering it with Congress for a performance royalty is risky and easily attacked -- as the CEA's Gary Shapiro did -- in almost the same language with which broadcasters assailed the music industry in the first place. From the legislative approval of radio's consolidation to restrictions against LPFM, owners of an FM license have been the beneficiaries of much Congressional protectionism already. And 80% of our own talk hosts would be on the air already mocking any other industry that asked for this sort of intervention or any Congress that gave it to them.

Perhaps what radio should do instead is further demonstrate its own effectiveness. In my fantasy, broadcasters team up and create their own mobile phone. Of course, I'm still waiting for them to create a direct competitor to Pandora or take a stronger hand in designing the Infinite DIal of the future, rather than leaving the directory function of tomorrow's IP radio in the hands of people who make the CEA look like radio boosters.

But would it be crazy to suggest that the free advertising time that radio has given HD Radio for the last few years be redeployed to support those mobile devices that do contain an FM radio? There are, of course, challenges. Broadcasters are asserting that the low sales of existing devices are due to the products themselves and aren't a referendum on consumer interest. And the entire HD campaign proves that you have to pick your causes carefully. The campaign that sells an FM-compatible-smartphone will probably be focused on the phone itself, which would need many attractive features, not just FM.

And, of course, broadcasters have to be prepared to take advantage of actually being on mobile devices. But we know that radio can sell electronics. And this week is one of several each year that proves it. So why not make that industry feel the collective sting of our buggy whip?

After more than three years of our railing against the hardsell PSAs, fill music, and even occasional silences that punctuate the Web-only stopsets of streaming radio, more people are finally starting to express similar concerns, as evidenced by last Saturday's Conclave session on station streaming.

Of course, as with the problem of programmers not listening to their own radio station on its terrestrial feed, knowing there's an issue and knowing what to do about it are two different things. You would think that with the work that some major groups have done in improving the creative of their sponsors that there would be some in-house resource for the streams. But until then, may we suggest . . .

"Chickenman"!

It's still funny (to me, anyway). Creator Dick Orkin's skewed sense of humor is still all over radio, thanks to the ubiquitous Regional Help Wanted spots. And anything is better than a PSA reminding you that your kids are in mortal peril three times an hour on what was supposed to be your stress-free, refreshing at work choice.

Okay, now some equal time: At Conclave, I actually had somebody tell me that their mother had liked the ambient music that used to run as fill on KLOS Los Angeles. And a few weeks ago, I had a listener of a Gospel station in Atlanta e-mail me to ask where she could hunt down that rappin' Scruff McGruff PSA--having seemingly Googled one of my many jibes about it. But imagine how many calls the Great White-Winged Warrior would generate!

Anybody remember "The Million Dollar Homepage"? It was a neat promotion--a one-off lark that netted its creator a pretty tidy sum. These sorts of things are fun for contests, or a special one-time promotion.

Most of us see the Million Dollar Homepage as carrying the joke to its ultimate, hysterical end. Sadly, many radio sales managers see the Million Dollar Homepage not as terrible warning, but as a pretty good way to make the quarter.

Presented without comment: http://abbrv.me/bEvOqP

eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey posted his Seven Predictions For 2010 yesterday, and while I generally eschew soothsayers (say that five times fast!) these predictions make so much sense, and affect you and your stations so directly, that they are an essential precis for thinking about the next 12 months and beyond.

I won't recapitulate all of his bullet points here, because you should read his article at the source. I will, however, point out that there are two ways to read these predictions if you are a radio pro. One, of course, is pessimistic. Spending on traditional radio is going to continue to erode. It isn't going back to where it was, and it isn't going to go up again--ever. I know there have been some claims from radio executives to the contrary, but I have to side with eMarketer here. The dollars allocated to traditional, terrestrial commercial radio advertising have seen their high-water mark.

Geoff also predicts that the traditional interruption model of advertising is going to erode further, and he's clearly on the mark there. Commercial TV has already reacted to this by adapting their content to Hulu and other online services. The channel is different, the expectations are different and consumers are less and less willing to make the trade-off of attention for "free" programming when the average Internet user now has not only the means but the will to circumvent irrelevant messaging. This means that for radio, as for other mass media channels, selling spots alone is not going to monetize your content sufficiently. Stations that do not adapt to this (the time to take proactive steps is long past) will simply go dark. There is no "rule" that says your market is supposed to support 50 stations, or even 20 terrestrial stations. In the coming few years, these markets are simply going to contract. That's the writing on the wall.

I said there were two ways to read these predictions. The second way--the way I prefer to read them--is optimistic. Geoff notes that while dollars allocated to media ad buys are imploding, content consumption is exploding. This is truly a golden age for content consumers, who now have more ways to filter and aggregate relevant content than ever before. In past years, only those of us on the geeky edge of the stick programmed our own Internet content experiences to seek out relevant content chunks and skip past irrelevant, valueless messaging (like uncontextualized advertising). Today, the tools the average online consumer has access to are doing that filtering for them. This is going to continue to dramatically increase, not decrease, the amount of online content consumed, and also increase consumers' satisfaction with that content. Geoff notes that technology is driving content to become more distributed, personalized, and contextualized. Consumers can no longer be expected to come to the mountain (that's you); they now expect the content to be distributed across multiple channels and sources to come to them. Content producers that create relevant content, tailor it to various interests and preferences, and distribute it in a platform-independent way, will gain the valuable time and attention of consumers, and they in turn will develop deeper and deeper relationships with content producers that can be monetized well beyond a screaming :60.

For the radio industry, those that concentrate on the atomic units of online content and work to make those units targeted, well-distributed, and relevant will claim their share of the ever-increasing spend for online marketing. That, for a radio industry prepared to rethink its core offering, is the optimistic part of Geoff's predictions. Consider this: ten or fifteen years ago, my "network" was NBC--Seinfeld, Fraser, Friends--you remember. Today, my network is my friends--those I've met, and those I follow online--and I trust that network to filter my content for me. That means all the content I receive in a given day has already passed some kind of bar for engagement, trust and relevance. That's table stakes today. Making your content sharable and personalized isn't the future--it's the current cost of doing business.

I think the hardest thing for radio to wrap its head around, however, will be the decreasing importance (though it's silly to say death) of reach. Reach was king when media was inefficient--when the only way we could reach 1,000 was to blast to 100,000. The Internet changed that game irrevocably. Discrete, targeted chunks of relevant platform-independent content now reach 1,000 when 1,000 of the right people filter that content in--and they are much more satisfied with that content, as it becomes less and less cluttered with irrelevancies. For radio, the economics of "wasting" 99,000 impressions with every message are catching up. The Internet punishes waste. Measuring reach is becoming less and less relevant, and (despite media's current infatuation with the term) even engagement's star will wane as it's held to the stronger light of providing tangible value for advertisers.

What is radio's value? Same as it has always been--its ability to put butts in seats, showrooms and restaurants. As the power of the tower fades, Radio's ability to move consumers has never been stronger. You've only got to heed the call.

Today I came across the most awesomely craptastic car commercials ever, which sucked me in for about 30 minutes early this morning (when I should have been sleeping.) There are a dozen of these presented on the site, but my favorite by far was this one right....heeeeeere:

Now, car dealers and radio broadcasters go WAY back, so I know some of you all must have some great audio spots to share. What are your favorite, most cringeworthy car dealer spots? Send them my way (twebster at edisonresearch.com) and I'll post your top picks here--either with credit, or anonymously--on the Infinite Dial. And tell 'em crazy Tom sent you.

Judging an industry award is, at best, a labor of love -- emphasis on the word labor. You find yourself slogging through a lot of mediocre material. You deal with an overwhelming amount of politics for something that was supposed to be a fun add-on to your real job. And, without intending to diminish the actual winners here, you certainly never feel that you have such an embarassment of riches that you could fill each category several times over.

I was a judge in the radio station category of the RAB's Radio Mercury Awards for several years in the early '00s when I was editor of Billboard's Airplay Monitor. Typically, the judging was a morning's work. Over the course of that morning, I would hear a lot of very cliched work -- nobody should ever be allowed to do a game show parody again, although Netflix can be grandfathered. I would encounter at least a spot or two that was so offensively stereotypical I was surprised it hadn't been protested off the air. Then there were those spots that were agency quality work in terms of polish, but not otherwise remarkable.

That said, I never felt the pickings were so slim that nothing should win -- the decision made by the Radio Mercury Awards judges this year. I do, however, agree with Eric Rhoads that the best local spots are not necessarily being submitted; even seven or eight years ago that was the case. A lot of radio's production directors are too busy grinding out work for four stations these days to solicit national attention, for one thing.

At a time when nothing in radio feels like it's getting better, production at the local level has held its own. For one thing, the national spots have gotten worse, just because so much of the business is now for patent medicines and other sponsors of dubious repute. And, for better or worse, the screaming car dealership spots are in shorter supply. Admittedly, I hear New York and Philly radio. But I also hear Allentown, Pa., Monmouth/Ocean, N.J., and Trenton, N.J. And I hear a lot less of this type of spot these days:

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Gee, I wonder why Sally won't go out with me?

Second Wooden Sounding DJ: Maybe it's because you use the wrong caulking supplies?

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Really? Caulking?

Second Wooden Sounding DJ: You'd be surprised how much difference it makes. The folks at Robinson's U-Caulk, 2155 Industrial Highway, can help with caulking, weather-stripping and so much more. Sally will definitely go out with you once your windows look better and are more energy efficient.

Wooden Sounding Traffic Manager: Hey, Steve! Nice windows!

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Thanks, Sally! Say, would you ...?

Wooden Sounding Traffic Manager: You bet!

First Wooden Sounding DJ, (doing his own tag because there's obviously nobody else left to drag into the production room): Robinson's U-Caulk, 2155 Industrial Highway, or call 278-253-CAULK ... that's 278-253-CAULK.

With so many radio people looking for a job these days, give Country WGKX Memphis PD Tim Jones some credit for creativity for listing himself here.

Most radio station websites sell the Home Page as prime real estate. However, unlike shore property, apparently when you run out of radio station home page real estate you can simply make more. Most station sites that I have seen continue to grow south at an alarming rate, becoming vertical monstrosities of old content and banner ad-after-banner ad. Now, I am not a scroll-bar fascist--there are lots of great sites that I will gladly scroll down several screens for, but not to see more banner ads!

The value of sites like Facebook and MySpace are not in the 'home page,' but in the vast depth of these sites--millions of pages, each of which may only be seen by a few people, but in aggregate is an inventory machine. I haven't even been to Facebook's home page in over a month (though I update Facebook regularly) and Facebook knows that, of course!

The more radio stations continue to pile 'broadcast' ads on an interactive medium, the more they devalue that medium. Both search engines AND contextual advertising depend on lots of single-topic, focused pages--depth, not 'length.' Radio stations have a tremendous opportunity to build that depth using both the talents of everyone under their roof and the skills of their listeners.

The below-mentioned WeatherUnderground weather site isn't the only one that took on some unwelcome topicality recently. Yesterday afternoon, I heard a spot on All-News WINS New York for website design firm American Eagle. The ad reeled off a few of their client names and I wondered why anybody would be bragging about having designed this Website. But this was the one they were really talking about. (A much better-looking site, too.) Maybe some rewritten copy to specify which Fannie was being discussed would have been appropriate.

Many of our radio clients have "heritage" brands--brands that have been around for years, and stand for something, which is increasingly rare in this business. In radio, the traditional strategy for heritage stations is to make that heritage the foundation of the brand by reminding listeners how many years you have been rocking Philadelphia/Des Moines/Minot etc. Trouble is, that number, by itself, is meaningless. It offers no tangible benefit to remind listeners how long you have been in a market, save to remind listeners how old they themselves are!

Revitalizing heritage brands is more than just reminding people how many years of continuous service you have in a market. It's reminding them why they should care. In short, it's making your listeners feel something about that heritage: pride, love and a sense of community.

What do you do if you are not just a brand with decades of heritage, but are also a "commodity" like sliced bread? You work, and you work harder to get to the essence of your brand and how your longevity connects on an emotional level with your customers. That is exactly what the Hovis bread company did with this ad, which is epic, stunning and the very epitome of what an "older" brand can really do to remain vibrant and connected.

If that didn't bring a little tear to your eye, you are made of stone, my friend. So the next time you even think about running a TV spot trumpeting your position as "Oaktown's Country Favorite for over 20 years" or the like, consider this Hovis ad as an absolute clinic on reminding listeners why they should even care.

That's the question Edison and Arbitron set out to answer with their landmark study using PPM encoding on television advertising. Edison's Larry Rosin and Arbitron's Pierre Bouvard first presented this study last week at the NAB Radio Show, and our email software has been ringing off the hook with requests to make the data publicly available. If you are wondering how television advertising really impacts radio listening, here's your chance to view Tracking Encoded Television Ads With PPM now. Comments welcome!

The sign of bad economic times isn't just a further proliferation of the "we buy ugly houses" or "we pay cash for your car" billboards that you now see around the country. You can hear them in radio spots, too. And in some unlikely places.

The one that almost rated a mention about a month ago was on Business News WBBR (Bloomberg Radio 1130) New York. That was the one encouraging corporations and individuals to pick up some extra cash by selling their unused U.S. Open tickets to a ticket broker.

But this weekend, I was listening to a Canadian station and heard an ad which encouraged listeners to "take advantage of the current weak U.S. economy" by buying foreclosed vacation homes. (That sort of real estate advertising, rare on U.S. radio since the early '70s, is more common there overall.)

It's hard to believe, but it has been two years since I wrote a response to Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail : Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More", and particularly to respond to Anderson's assertion that the the "hit" was dead in the era of long-tail economics. Back then, I maintained that the hit was far from dead--it was just different. Surely in the past two years we have seen not only the Indiana Jones's of the world continue to be hits, but the Halos and the Guitar Heroes become new ones as well.

Now, two years later, we are beginning to see some challenges to Anderson's model. The Washington Post featured an article yesterday entitled "Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web," which details a Harvard Business School professor's attempt to verify or refute the impact of the "long tail." Professor Anita Elberse discovered that not only are the hits still the hits, but her research suggests that the Internet actually makes them bigger.

To his credit, Anderson praises Elberse's work, and I think the real answer is not that one or the other is right, but that surely the game has changed. The hit is far from dead--but I think the smartest thing we can say is that we have entered the "Post-Hit" era (and not the Anti-Hit era).

The real story of the Long Tail, to steal from Fareed Zakaria's excellent new book, The Post-American World, is not the "fall of the west," but the "rise of the rest." It's not that the hit is dead--far from it. But the non-hit, the long tail propositions, have as much claim to page one of your Google Search results as anything else. The hits now have some increased competition from aggregations of niches and customized, on-demand entertainment like podcasts, but what doesn't kill the hit will only make it stronger. In a post-hit world, would-be blockbusters cannot assume that a mass-media ad blitz will carry the day. As social media tools proliferate, word-of-mouth becomes more important than ever.

All of this means that if you create media that is truly worthy of being a hit, you have more ways than ever to get the word out. But increasingly in the "Post-Hit" world, a Super Bowl ad won't save a piece of crap. As the Internet provides long-tail players the ability to market and distribute content on a wider stage, the "hit" has to work just a little bit harder, and be a little bit better. In a content meritocracy, the consumer wins.

It is perhaps a sign of the times, but the station I've seen advertised most since I arrived here on Thursday is KCMP (the Current), the non-commercial indie rock/Triple-A outlet, which has advertising in a lot of downtown buildings/walkways. Then I saw Christian AC KTIS' transit advertising. Finally, from my hotel window I saw billboards for Country KEEY (K102) and Oldies KQQL (Kool 108), the latter of which advised that it was "kool to listen again" (in keeping with its back-to-oldies stance of the last year).

I thought I was going to get to hear Ron Gerber's eclectic Friday night oldies show "Crap From The Past" on the radio in real time this week with WCNR Charlottesville, Va., PD Brad Savage as a special guest. Instead, community outlet KFAI's block was hit by a freak power failure that lasted until the last five minutes of the show. And, as Gerber notes, in the digital age, it takes a lot longer to reboot a radio station once you get the power back. So I had to make due with going to the archive.

We've been following radio's attempts to replace the traditional spot sales model with a sponsorship model for several years. This morning, the Dallas Business Journal reports that Clear Channel's Classic Rock/Americana hybrid KZPS (Lone Star 92.5) Dallas has added some traditional pre-recorded spots to the all-sponsorship approach it launched in April.

Depending on when you listen to KZPS, you can still hear a sponsored hour, in which case the "commercials" are still likely to be the live DJ testimonials for that given sponsor that typified the station a few months ago. But you can also hear unsponsored segments where the live breaks feature various shorter live spots or client promo mentions. And there are also :30s for Verizon Wireless, DirecTV, and Wrangler, according to the Business Journal and our monitoring.

The pre-recorded spots are still few and far between on the air. GM J.D. Freeman tells the Business Journal that some clients found the live spot approach "restrictive." While the station remains committed to sponsorships, he says, the station is no longer "not going to consider [pre-recorded ads] because we don't think it's compatible with the station."

There have also been some tweaks to KZPS' music, bringing the station just a little bit closer to the Classic Rocker it once was. There are still songs from Americana acts like Wilco that you wouldn't hear on a Classic Rock station, and a handful of Country titles per hour (e.g., Waylon & Willie and the Bellamy Brothers' "Old Hippie" in the hour I monitored this morning). But it's also possible to go from "Are You Experienced" to "Sympathy for the Devil," two songs that don't have much of a Country/Rock or roots rock connection.

We'll look at the KZPS experiment in greater detail in a forthcoming Ross on Radio column.

We've reported from time to time on the various attempts by broadcasters to replace the spot sales model with sponsorships. That quest exists on the TV side, too. Advertising Age reports that AMC's well-received Madison Avenue/early '60s period drama "Mad Men" will finish the season with a commercial-free episode sponsored by DirecTV, with an eye toward eventually being able to move to a sponsorship-only model.

The story also notes that one alternative to spots -- product placement -- hasn't proven to be a bonanza for the show, often because of its edgy content. Creator Matt Weiner says that Jack Daniels, which has one of the few product placement deals with the show, has "this whole list of how it can be used . . .They don't want to see people fighting. They do not want to see people having sex immediately after drinking. You're sort of like, 'What is the purpose of Jack Daniels if there's no sex after it and no fighting after it.'"

There's an article in today's Advertising Age about Head-On, the "apply directly to forehead" remedy whose ads are, by consensus, awful, and, as it turns out, awfully effective. "Not since 'I've fallen and I can't get up' has such a cheesy spot captured the public imagination," AdAge writes in, "This Ad Will Give You A Headache, But It Sells."

It's hard to remember now, but when GEICO became a saturation advertiser a few years ago, a lot of its early advertising wasn't much less obnoxious than the Head-On spots--redeemed only by what was then more an attempt at humor than actual humor, I thought. Now GEICO is one of broadcasting's most ubiquitous succcess stories.

There is a great article from the Wall St. Journal's Sarah McBride about the changes PPM is bringing about in Philadelphia. One of the 'shake-ups' reported is that Men listen to a lot more radio than reported in the diary methodology, and that rock is more popular than heretofore thought in Philadelphia, something our telephone surveys have shown there for years. And those men switch around a bit more than they might have otherwise indicated on the diary--for instance, while many Rush Limbaugh fans might just block out 12-3 on a diary, a PPM review may show a far different pattern.

There has been some grousing about PPM, some of it legitimate, some of it not. One thing PPM definitely does represent is change, and change isn't change if it doesn't break a few eggs on its way to an omelet. We should all be cheering passive measurement on, however, for one very important reason. Increasingly, advertisers and marketers don't care about how many 'points' they are buying, they want to buy results. Anything radio can do to drive the sales needle for our advertising clients, we can and must do in order to show the value and power of radio as a platform. Consider the diarykeeper who might block out 3 hours of listening to Rush, but actually switches around to WMGK, WMMR or WJJZ. It is entirely possible that someone who reports an uninterrupted block of listening to Rush never hears one of the show's key sponsors, because they actually spent almost as much time with another station. And when that happens, Rush's ratings (and rates) may go up, but their sponsors aren't getting value, because you can't drive traffic and sales if no one hears the spot. That is an unsustainable (and deadly) situation.

What we want to happen is for people who are reported to have heard a spot to have actually heard the spot...and visited the dealer, made the toll-free call, or logged on to make a purchase. That puts radio "on the same level playing field as top TV stations and the Philadelphia Inquirer," according to Greater Media's John Fullam, and that is truly in the best interest of your station, and radio as a platform. Media buyers may buy ratings, but they, like the people they are buying for, are really buying results. PPM offers a way to align those results with advertising expenditures like never before, even if we break a few eggs.

We are very proud to work with Greater Media in Philadelphia, and greatly admire their unwavering commitment to doing whatever it takes to understand--and master--the new landscape of PPM. The only "trick" to PPM is to make great radio, every day, and leave deeper footprints on and off the air. Embrace change, and it'll hug you back.

The recent eMarketer report on internet advertising passing radio advertising has me wondering: what counts in which column?

By all accounts radio's traditional spot advertising is shrinking, but some of that is being replaced by ads in station streams and on station web sites.

So I ask our readers in all sincerity, does in stream and station site advertising count as "radio" advertising, "internet" advertising, or both?

Perhaps this is merely a hypothetical; what matters, after all, is company revenues, not industry revenues.

But every day one gets the increasing sense that it will almost all be 'internet' advertising someday.

I was reading the "Hotline" today -- the daily political newsletter from National Journal -- and found a banner ad for a conference saying: "Radio gets out the vote." Here is what it links to: http://www.rab.com/politics/index.cfm?pmc=14
Bravo to the RAB and NAB for this initiative. I know some radio operators have mixed feelings about taking political ads, but at least the politicos, who will have zillions for '08, should be considering putting more money into the medium.

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.

Despite the long tail, in no way is the 'hit' a thing of the past. In fact, as I wrote about earlier this year, society and our culture are simply disaggregating--and re-aggregating--around new norms. Here's one--you want a hit? This will be a 'hit':

A nice little interview with Jack on the pros and cons of Google's foray into radio ad sales. Among the quotable quotes:

So, if I am a station owner like CBS or Clear Channel and I have several hundred thousand listeners to one station in one market (not to mention the millions of listeners I have every day to my entire platform) I am probably not going to see the benefit to having Google's sales staff out there selling their ad words for a higher rate than they are paying me for my millions of listeners.

Wired News reports today that the number of monthly visitors to websites for U.S. newspapers rose by almost a third in the first half of 2006. Yes, the dead tree part of their business has fallen--substantially in some cases--but the get-our-brand-and-advertising-in-front-of-eyeballs part seems to be doing just fine. So while the newspaper itself may be in its decline, the "newspaper business" seems to be doing pretty good.

One of the most interesting components of this rise in online newspaper readership is a significant increase in 18-34 year-old readers. There is an encouraging lesson for radio here--though a market may only be able to naturally support one newspaper and a couple of dozen radio signals, there is no FCC spectrum to be bought on the web--radio stations have just as much right to it as anyone else, whether they use it to stream their station or just connect local eyeballs to local advertisers, which remains radio's strength. Winning in that business seems like a pretty good growth investment to me.

It has been almost a year since I wrote about the importance of radio station blogging, and radio has still been extremely tentative about dipping its collective toe into this vital form of communication (and its complement,consumer generated media.) For many stations, their reticence to enter the blogosphere is not only understandable, it might even be prudent. Rest assured, however, that blogging is not going away, and it has profoundly changed the landscape of "customer service," public relations and even altered the very soul of some companies (Microsoft being the most obvious example).

So, here we are in 2006, and you are thinking about it, or would at least like to know more. Where should you look? Well, we put our heads together on that very issue, and have assembled a fantastic panel at this year's NAB Radio Show in Dallas. The panel is entitled "Opening The Kimono: Harnessing the Power of Blogging" and it will definitely be lively, informative--and just might provide the impetus for you to think about your station in an entirely new (and potentially profitable) way.

The title of the panel does not refer to a mid-panel wardrobe malfunction, or anything more suggestive than "social networking." Instead, "Opening the Kimono" is all about making the crucial, first decision about launching a blog: how transparent do you want to be? Blogging requires a willingness to let the listener peek behind Oz's curtain (to mix metaphors) in a way that you might not be comfortable with (yet). Salting your blog with canned marketing messages and press releases is a fast path to irrelevance--only a truly open and honest two-way discussion has any chance of building relationships (and creating traffic). Opening that kimono might be difficult, but we have assembled an excellent group of guides.

Leading off the panel is the Founder/CEO of Weblogs, Inc and current GM of AOL's Netscape site, Jason Calacanis. If you want insight on monetizing your blog, harnessing the power of consumer generated content and how AOL is tackling some of the same issues you are, Jason is the goto-guy. He will also be speaking at the Jacobs Media Summit on "The Future of Media," so if you come away from that talk with questions on how to make some of his ideas tangible and concrete with your station's website, you will want to stick around for this panel.

Also speaking will be Anil Dash, who is a Vice President at Six Apart, the leading company in the business blogging space and developer of the software behind many of the blogs and websites you probably already visit everyday. Six Apart's hosted TypePad service is used by thousands of popular blogs, and their flagship software product, Movable Type, has powered this site and the main Edison Media Research site for two years. Anil has been an "A-List" blogger for many years, has some radio in his background, and is one of the most engaging speakers on technology and trends you are likely to hear at the NAB this year.

Bryan Jay Miller, the General Manager of Internet-only WOXY will also join us. WOXY is just beginning to dip their toe into blogging, but they already have an extremely active message board community that should be the envy of any broadcast radio station. Bryan has built an impressive brand on the Internet--without the benefit of broadcast airwaves--and has done it thanks in part to fearlessly engaging with their audience and valuing their online feedback. Bryan's insight into community-building online (and where to take it next) will prove invaluable to this discussion.

Finally, if there is one thing that I would like you to remember about this panel, it is that this will not be a panel to only send your "tech guy" to. This is a panel for everyone concerned about building a brand on the Internet and monetizing your content. The issues behind deciding when, how and if to blog are big issues--50,000 footers--and should involve PD's, GM's GSM's AND Webmasters. I hope to see you all. As always, we welcome your comments here, or just pop me a note if you have any questions.

For now, YouTube is the best way to reach 18-34s with viral marketing. Period. With radio marketing budgets sliced to the bone, there may be no more efficient way for radio to create some viral buzz than with an edgy video campaign. Certainly, individual stations can take part, and harnessing the creativity of your listeners is one way to get started. But viral video marketing might also be a great way for the industry to create some buzz around HD with some really edgy and even controversial online-only spots. The biggest knock on radio amongst the 18-34 YouTube crowd isn’t the fidelity of the signal, or even the spotload--it’s their perception that radio is not creative, is too repetitive and has lost its role as the arbiter of music taste. Investing in a YouTube-distributed campaign (that listeners might Digg) is a great way to combat the “cookie-cutter” perception by pushing some boundaries.

Want some inspiration? Here are some of my favorites:

The Cog - Honda Advert

Virgin Atlantic - Sleeping Parter

Citroen C4 Transformer

Creative Keyboard

Prince of Persia (have a strong stomach!)

And my current favorite:

Happy Mornings

Can a commercial make me switch to Folgers from Starbucks? That one came pretty close.

Google radio ads are starting to air in Detroit, and I can't wait to hear how things work out. There are a lot of doubts about this venture, and believe it or not, Google doesn't walk on water. But they do experiment a lot, and aren't afraid of failure, and that makes them smart. That also makes Greater Media's John Fullam pretty smart, too, as you can see from his quotes in the article linked above. I think he asks the right questions here, but he's absolutely right about the potential if it works. We're proud to have John as a client.

As the posters say, you'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take. (Of course, this is the version hanging on my wall, but that is another story.)

I think your experiment was a success, and I hope you bring back this model -- I'll definitely be listening if you do!