The Infinite Dial

Interesting on-line ad on one of the industry sites for Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" this week that tells an interesting tale about how songs break these days. Instead of call letters or most added, these are the stories cited on the song's behalf:

* No. 1 selling album (and over 1 million scanned);

* No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single;

* No. 1 Clear Channel on Demand;

* No. 1 Sneak Peak of all time for Clear Channel online;

* No. 1 largest AT&T Blueroom response ever at CBS Radio;

* No. 1 biggest iTunes campaign in history;

* No. 1 largest audience audience in the history of the Today Show's concert series.

And yet, there wouldn't be an ad on AllAccess.com if the intent weren't to keep the song going at radio (it's 28 - 26 today at Mainstream Top 40, but up nicely in spins in a clogged part of the chart). More proof that even when a record creates a story outside radio that radio is the ultimate goal.

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.

Much has been made about the new "retro look" of the Radio Heard Here campaign. The kerfuffle over the logo reminded me of this video we saw about John McCain's age:

Check out the first thing they list: John McCain is older than FM Radio!

Like a lot of people, I hated those aggressive Mitsubishi radio spots with the sardonic gadfly spokesperson. Then, like the GEICO ads, I started to come around on them. And when I began hearing them a few weeks ago, for what seemed like the first time in a few years, I actually briefly found them refreshing again.

The operative word here is "briefly." After a few days, I became weary of the campaign again, to the point where I'm now willing to dismiss having enjoyed it as Stockholm Syndrome. And now comes word from Ad Age that Mitsubishi is breaking with its present ad agency.

...Is from Kevin Kelly.

Do read the rest, especially his thoughts on what can't be copied. Those are the things that everyone reading (and writing!) this blog have to think about, each and every day.

If that Star Registry thing isn't going over as well on Valentine's Day anymore for you, Triple-A WMVY Cape Cod, Mass., is offering the chance to give a personalized music channel. "Music fans design the playlist from our special love songs collection, we customize the player with their names, give it its own URL, show them how to access the player on blogs, sites or e-mail, and make it available to the world for a month," writes the station's Gary Guthrie. The player is available for a minimum donation of $50 to the station's Friends of MVY organization.

I was listening to Public Radio the other day and there was an interview with one of the many engineers in this country who is trying to build a car that doesn't run on gasoline.

The questioner said: "Do you think Americans are ready to give up their gasoline-run cars?" His answer: "I've never heard anyone say that they are loyal to gasoline. People love their cars, and they love the freedom and mobility and experience they provide. No one loves gasoline." He said the last word with something of a snort.

And while I suppose people at Exxon or Shell might disagree, of course he is right.

Which made me consider: "Are people loyal to radio?" Well, not really. I would guess that very, very few people are loyal to the actual piece of hardware in their dashboard or on their nightstand. Similarly, no one is loyal to the frequencies. You won't hear anyone say: "No matter where I am and no matter what I do, I'm a 102.7FM guy through and through."

In many cases, radio is simply a channel through which a different loyalty is expressed...we certainly know the intense loyalty that many people feel towards individual musical artists. There's a reason we so often put the artists on the billboards or in the television commercials -- THEY are the true source of the loyalty.

Of course many people are loyal to specific morning shows, talk hosts, or myriad other elements of radio programming. But of course that is the point. It is the content, the programming that is the car. How you consume that programming, the device, the frequency -- they are simply gasoline.

Courtesy of Techcrunch comes this video produced by the Singapore Media Development Authority to bring attention to their tech and media industries. It features top executives pulling a Karl Rove and doing some rapping to prove their hotness:

OK, it was too long by about 3 minutes, but after I had a good laugh or two it struck me that these middle-aged executives were actually passionate about their jobs--you couldn't not be and do this video. And passion is a remarkable thing--it's usually contagious. Even if all you do is communicate that passion to potential listeners, buyers and advertisers, you've done your job with a viral piece like this. Laugh at the bad lyrics--you are supposed to--but admire that passion.

So, get creative, y'all--can do, rock on and you don't stop.

I was listening to some Seattle radio recently and came across two of my long-time favorite promotions, both of them dating back to when I was still in college and following the business through the trades and airchecking.

The first was "Thanksgiving On The Mayflower," which I first encountered on WBZZ (B94) Pittsburgh in the early '80s, and which became a staple attention-getter for many years. In its original incarnation, it usually consisted of giving a local family a Thanksgiving diner on a Mayflower moving van. The new one on KBKS (Kiss 106.1) has morphed into a variant on "Stuff a Bus," with members of the morning team camping out until listeners fill up the moving van with food donations. WOLX Madison, Wis., and the Cumulus/Montgomery, Ala., stations are also doing similar versions of the promotion, with no apparent catering involved.

The other old favorite was hearing KCMS (Spirit 105.3) Seattle's "Family Name Game," which has made its way through a number of Christian ACs lately. I first encountered it as "Family Fortune" on Mike Joseph's Hot Hits WCAU-FM Philadelphia around the time of their sign-on in fall '81. The WCAU version was to give the surname that was going to get a cash call later in the hour. The KCMS version is a call-in and uses first names--announced in advance on the Website. Listeners are eligible if anybody in their family has that first name. (KCMS, by the way, sounded great, and it was clear why they had become a major ratings success story for Christian AC.)

I'm always happy to see promotions directors and program directors come up with great new promotions, of course, but it was good to hear these two again. "Name Game," which was sort of a forerunner to the monstrously effective "Birthday Game," has always been a favorite and I'm surprised it's not used more.

The short answer--nothing. In fact, I am pleased to see that radio is beginning to embrace qualitative research again, a trend that I hope continues. Still, I come across many GMs, consultants and PDs that are hesitant--even dismissive--of focus group research. Some of this, I believe, is confusion with the generally DIY Listener Panels that have become popular post-consolidation, which can be a useful marketing tool, but are not so great for insight. And it is insight that is needed in the radio industry. A strategic survey can tell you the "what," but only good qualitative can tell you the "why.'

I wrote about this issue a couple of years ago (before we started The Infinite Dial), and upon re-reading it today thought it deserved dusting off. I hope you find it valuable:

At the NAB in San Diego this year, I had the opportunity to attend a panel entitled: “Research – Luxury or Necessity.” I went for a variety of reasons, but mostly to get a sense of the kinds of questions programmers had about research and its uses. That, and the title of the panel itself—I doubt that Procter and Gamble’s $150 million dollar consumer research budget is viewed as a “luxury item.”

One thing I noted was a continuing lack of regard for that most humble of research tools, the focus group. In the early 90’s, I spent almost half of my time as a researcher conducting focus groups, interviews, and other strictly qualitative research projects. Many of the old Pyramid Broadcasting stations, for example, not only conducted regular, scheduled focus groups, but also budgeted for 2-3 days of individual interviews each year that added an additional layer of insight to our understanding of each station’s brand and resonance. In the previous decade, I probably moderated 500 focus groups and interviews. This decade—not so much. There has been a marked shift in our industry away from professionally moderated focus groups (and qualitative research in general) and towards adding qualitative questions into quantitative projects such as strategic studies (and, to a lesser extent, music tests). This may save a little money (and in the grand scheme of things, let me emphasize a little) but is wholly inappropriate for identifying the kinds of issues that focus groups excel at unearthing.

There are many in the industry who claim that focus groups are misleading, not actionable or flat out unreliable. It is true that focus groups are completely useless to answer questions like “what,” “when” or “how many.” Only a statistically reliable quantitative survey can provide that kind of decision support. Yet strategic studies are categorically incapable by themselves of answering the most crucial question—why. Now wait a minute, you might argue, of course a strategic can answer why—all I have to do is ask a “why” question, provide a number of multiple choice answers, and the “winner” is the right answer. But where did you come up with the choices? Most of the potential responses in such questions are provided by “brainstorming” sessions with programmers, consultants and yes, researchers. Rarely does the voice of the customer drive this process. Without the insight that only a qualitative project can provide, it is entirely possible that your team might identify an issue, devise a possible explanation, and confirm this explanation in a perceptual study—and be wrong.

Let me give you an example from the consumer products industry—which, by the way, spends 70% of its research budget on qualitative research. There is an apocryphal tale still told in the hallways of Betty Crocker (well, now General Mills) about the launch of their one-step cake mix in the 1950’s. The mix was launched with great fanfare…and promptly flopped. How might they (and you!) have discovered the reason why? One way might be to brainstorm with your staff, consultants and others to come up with a list of potential reasons. I came up with these four:

You might come up with others. If you were to then field a survey and ask homemakers of the 50’s why they didn’t repurchase the cake mix after an initial trial, you would probably see a lot of answers 1, 2 and 4. Answer 3 might, in fact, be correct, but that would be exactly the sort of thing that only additional qualitative research could really determine. Answer 4 might be a popular choice—though considering the fact that our sample had already bought the product once, it might be a trifle dishonest and more aspirational/idealistic than real. These 1950’s housewives with their new Cuisinarts and Prefab homes were interested in timesaving convenience products; after all, this was the decade that gave birth to fast food. That leaves 1 and 2 as easy alternatives—if you can’t really be specific about what troubled you with this cake mix, it is all too easy to reply “it tasted wrong”, or “it didn’t taste as good as my homemade cake,” etc. If you were the marketing executive or consultant who suspected that the cake didn’t taste “homemade” enough, and you saw this hypothesis confirmed in a quantitative survey, you would assume that you had a handle on the problem and go back to the drawing board with different recipes, more expensive ingredients or different flavors.

Luckily for Betty Crocker, they did not follow this course. Instead, they conducted a series of focus groups (some of which involved observing women as they baked the cakes) before they did any quantitative research, just to make sure that the consideration set for the “why” questions were customer-driven, and not internally generated. What they learned was fascinating: women felt that the mix was too easy—by simply combining the mix with water and throwing the lot in the oven, consumers took no pride in the results—and even felt a twinge of guilt when they presented the cakes to their doting families. Betty Crocker tested this hypothesis in subsequent research, of course, but they wouldn’t have known the right questions to ask without the focus groups. It is important to reiterate here that focus groups do not produce answers—at least, not the quantitatively definitive kind that programmers need. They do, however, ensure that we ask the right questions, and provide critical insight into quantifiable results. Based upon this crucial psychological insight into their customers’ attitudes and behaviors, Betty Crocker altered the cake mix by removing the dried egg product and “requiring” the cook to crack an egg and beat it into the mix. This subtle change increased the “workload” of the cake mix, but made it feel more like baking.

Focus groups, when done correctly, absolutely work as advertised. They are also extremely cost-effective. So why have they fallen into disfavor in the radio industry? I can assure you that the consumer products industry still conducts thousands of group interview projects every year. Even companies that have decreased their budgets for traditional focus groups (P&G and General Electric, for example) have done so only to transfer that budget to online qualitative studies; in other words, they are still doing plenty of “groups,” they are simply doing them on the Internet instead of in shopping malls and office parks. Radio stations, however, are doing fewer groups than ever—which is ironic, because the focus group was originally developed by Robert Merton in 1941 at Columbia University’s Office of Radio Research—to test radio programming.

What has changed? For one thing, I think a misunderstanding of qualitative research has gradually led to unrealistic expectations. For instance, on more than one occasion, I have heard GM’s and PD’s comment after a particularly lively group that the results contradict what they have seen in their perceptual studies or in the questions they tack onto their weekly callout. This is hardly a valid indictment of the methodology. As I mentioned earlier, focus groups are for “why,” while perceptual studies are best for the other “w’s”. The same questions should rarely be asked in both; rather, the insights of one should shape the questions of the other. Also, the reason we do focus groups is because most consumer perceptions are far more complex than we can possibly capture with a necessarily reductive quantitative survey. In 1994, Daniel Wight, a Senior Researcher at the University of Glasgow, studied the opinions of adolescent boys as they relate to the opposite sex. In individual interviews, the boys expressed sensitive, sympathetic portraits of their opinions on girls, while in subsequent focus groups their opinions exhibited considerably more “machismo.” In contrast, a second group began with focus groups first, again expressing fairly chauvinistic views, and ended with individual interviews, in which they maintained the macho views expressed in the focus groups. In a purely quantitative world, both cannot be right: if one study says adolescent boys are sensitive to women while another says they are not, one study must be wrong. There is, however, a bit of a Heisenberg principle at work with this data. Wight’s study went on to show that both conclusions were right—the issues being grappled with were far too dynamic and complex to be reduced in this fashion.

Now, you might read the study quoted above and conclude that we should simply be doing more individual interviews, not focus groups—again, however, the observations of both methodologies are valid in this context, and understanding one without the other can lead to tragic results. I have also heard some in this industry (and even, more specifically, in the research industry) express a preference for individual interviews. The differences between the two are not inconsequential—and neither is superior to the other. Individual interviews are best when the goal of the research is to understand the particular individual in question—for instance, in Frederick Taylor’s early studies in the (then) nascent field of management science, it was crucial for him to thoroughly understand each individual worker involved with the manufacturing process, so that he could establish relevant benchmarks and optimize workflow.

Interviews, however, have a few drawbacks (as well as significant strengths). I have heard others tell me that “you get more” out of individual interviews. It may be true that you hear more data from each individual respondent, but “quantity” in this case may not produce as much relevant data as a focus group—particularly with “low involvement” products. I am sure that Johnson & Johnson once tried to conduct individual interviews about hand soap, but there is only so much any one person can say about hand soap. By the third repeated probe of “other reasons why you bought Dial” I can guarantee you that the respondent is just making things up in the hopes of pleasing the interviewer (call it a research version of the Stockholm Syndrome.) Interviews are also dramatically more dependent upon the guidance of the interviewer—opportunities to directly or indirectly bias the results are rife—while focus groups are best when the moderator asserts himself or herself as little as possible into what should be an organic discovery process. It is this process that generates 90 minutes of discussion on hand soap—or your afternoon drive jock.

Focus groups have weaknesses, like all forms of research, but as a tool to generate qualitative content on a specified topic of interest, they are without question a sound means of exploring complicated issues of consumer behavior. It is this latter point that I would like to end on. The issues raised in focus groups are complex. Sure, the points of view expressed about your station may be simple—even monosyllabic—but any focus group worth its salt can quickly move beyond the surface and get to the reason behind the reason. Too many groups stop at the first road sign—“variety,” for instance—without continuing to put the pieces together to get at the basic human need that drives the particular attitude or belief that your listeners have constructed about your station. I can assure you that the housewives in those 1950’s Betty Crocker focus groups didn’t tell the moderator that their self-esteem was damaged by serving those cakes to their families—but that is exactly what a skilled team of researchers was correctly able to conclude by mapping the linguistic and paralinguistic cues discerned from the focus groups with subsequent quantitative studies.

Radio focus groups vary wildly in quality, with many running the gamut from merely unhelpful to dangerously misleading. There is a certain “DIY” quality to focus groups (“I moderated the last one, why don’t you do this one?”) that springs from confusion with what I consider to be an entirely separate tool, the “listener panel.” (I think the latter are a great way for station personnel—particularly those who do not touch the product every day, or rarely interface with the listeners—to truly capture the zeitgeist of the “product” that we as broadcasters sell everyday. Listener panels, however, should be conducted in addition to, not in lieu of, rigorously sampled, methodologically sound focus groups.) Now, moderating a focus group is certainly not brain surgery, but I will tell you as a former (and current) student of consumer behavior that there is an extensive toolkit of techniques (e.g. experiential analysis, metaphorical analysis, laddering and even hypnosis—) that a trained and experienced moderator can choose from, depending on the specifics of the job at hand. Putting the respondents at ease so that they find themselves in a comfortable situation to express themselves is only the beginning—often, the “no bad answers” atmosphere can lower respondents’ common sense barriers, compelling them to agree with opinions they do not actually share, in the hopes that others in the group will extend them the same courtesy. The trained professional is able to recognize this phenomenon—and naturally orient the group to produce more genuine responses.

In short, a proper focus group has as many—if not more—moving parts than does a strategic study. For your next focus group, you should insist that your moderator do more than simply provide a “list of topics,” or discussion guide—you should really grill him or her on how they plan to crack the complicated nut that is the radio listener. I am certainly happy to speak with anyone about how you can get the most out of your focus groups. If you have had poor experiences with focus groups in the past, I hope you will reconsider before you reject the methodology outright. Radio can expect many challenges in the months and years ahead. Ignoring the voice of the customer is no way to meet them.

A few days ago we commented on this site about the first Jack-FM in the UK, and how its stream comes up immediately when one launches the site. [Alas, the Jack stream won't work for Americans -- the stream is blocked from American IP addresses].

This has led to a lively discussion among many of our radio friends -- why do we support this practice?

First -- let me discuss the most common reasons I hear about why it should NOT be done:

1) People tell us they get annoyed when unasked-for audio pops up on a web site:

This may be true in certain situations. When you go to the site of a hotel and a string quartet starts playing to show you how elegant the place is, that is annoying. But our research has shown that by far the biggest reason people go to a radio station is to listen to your station. Why are we making that act any more difficult on the Internet than it is on a radio? It seems hard to believe that many people who venture to your site would be surprised or angered by hearing audio. They are going to the site of an "audio entertainment" company!

2) It is expensive:

Fair enough. You have to pay to serve each of those streams. But otherwise you are sacrificing potential listenership? Which is more "expensive" in the long run?

3) Your stream should not be served unless people sign up for your "frequent listener club":

We've dealt with this earlier, here. The stream should be one thing, the benefits of joining a "VIP Club" another. I should not have to give you my social security number or have to submit other information for the privelege of listening to the stream. The stream should be perceived as no different from the over-the-air signal. Isn't the goal of radio to get people to listen to it?

Finally -- as electronic measurement proliferates, we will want to get every last instance of listening recorded. Why take a chance on someone coming to your site and failing to listen to your station?

Seth Godin notes an interesting exchange between a college student and his professor on the supposed existence of Viral Marketing, and notes that (despite the professor's position) that Viral Marketing is NOT the same thing as Word of Mouth. I certainly agree with that, but I am not sure that I am willing to settle for Godin's distinction that Viral Marketing is a compounding function, and word of mouth a decaying function. I think it really depends on what your position is on the function of "Marketing" in the firm. It is true that an ideavirus, as Godin puts it, spreads through a population logarithmically, not linearly, and does so with little post-launch effort on the part of the marketer. I also agree 100% that "constant harassment of the population" does not make something 'viral;' you cannot will an ideavirus into propagating.

Where I disagree with Godin is in his implication that Word of Mouth is ephemeral (he notes that it "amplifies the marketing action then fades, usually quickly") or somehow inferior to unleashing a true ideavirus (which he equates to "Winning the Lottery.") If your vision of the Marketing Function is to increase awareness, then perhaps I could get behind these characterizations. But if your definition of Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to a "sale," then I am not so sure.

Missing from Godin's equation is the means of transmission. With viral marketing, it's easy come, easy go. Someone passes a meme, link or funny video to me, and I pass it along to my distribution list. Maybe I have been moved to action, maybe not--but I have transmitted the message. The message is meant to be independent of the messenger, and is propagated on its own merits.

Word of Mouth, on the other hand, relies much more on the ethos of the messenger. If a friend tells me to try a certain restaurant or product, I probably will. But I can be a complete teetotaler and spread a funny video from Budweiser. In the first case, though my friend may have only influenced a handful of people, those people may be closer to the sale, which is the point of marketing in the first place. The Internets are loaded with 'ideaviruses' that became the hot pass-around links of the summer--but can anyone remember the products or services they were marketing, or more importantly, did anyone buy them?

This is not to suggest that Viral Marketing is somehow inferior to Word of Mouth marketing--merely that they address the consumer at different points along the customers' decision-making continuum. And in that, I agree with Godin--they are different.

A tip of the cyber hat to Nik Goodman, for his post on naming morning shows to give them an identity before they even open the mic. His client, Radio 100FM in Denmark, just launched a new morning show called Farvel seng – jeg elsker dig!, or "Goodbye Bed - I Love You!" Nik has a few other good examples in today's post on the topic. With shows and programs becoming increasingly more important to staying relevant and powerful on the Infinite Dial, giving shows a brand personality that doesn't sound like "Billy and Beanbag" or "Carlos and the Chicken" seems like a pretty good idea to me.

There is, however, a strict moratorium on The Breakfast Club.

Radiohead's new album comes out next week, and it won't be in stores. It might be on radio, but it needn't be, really. They are giving the whole thing away as 'donationware' on their web site--pay whatever you think its worth. If you want it for free--done.

The best band in the world just hit three birds with one stone:

* I don't need to go into detail on what this means to the labels.

* It challenges iTunes and their monolithic pricing model, which the labels have long railed against to little effect. This move, combined with the NBC situation, may provide enough disruption to allow other software vendors with more flexible pricing models to cut into iTunes.

* It also affects the radio business. We have already seen in at least one recent study that radio now finishes second to the Internet as the place to discover new music (and in the recent studies where this is not the case with the total, it is for persons under 30.) With no 'scarcity' in the Radiohead model, there will be no need to go to radio to hear it first--or hear it at all.

Most significantly, on Oct 10th, I have no doubt that Radiohead's web site will be the most visited music site on earth. You can't fight Radiohead (or the Master Chief). The process of music discovery is now a social mechanism--where the solitary listener used to rely on radio's "tastemakers," they now rely on like-minded individuals (either known or unknown), with these interactions facilitated by the Internet. The "Event" is also more important: just as Prince's recent giveaway of his CD in London spurred a series of sold-out concert dates (where the purple one presumably made back the money from his "loss leader") so too will the upcoming Radiohead tour be one of the biggest "events" of the coming year. Music is discovered and now increasingly transacted at 'events,' whether they are online or out-of-home or both. When I am at a party being "curated" by a DJ, and can get the song he just played beamed to my MP3 player or phone, that is the new model of music discovery.

While Apple will be damaged by this disruption to the iTunes Music Store model, they also know the importance of the "social", as evidenced by their deal with the biggest music retailer on earth, Starbucks. The new wifi functionality of the iPhone and Touch iPod will make Starbucks the curator and transactional facilitator of new music (whether it really is 'new' or just 'new to you.') and Apple will continue to get a piece of that.

And what does all of this mean to you? Here are three things you can do today:

* Build social networking into your web properties--but social networking that makes sense, not just a replica of Facebook. Social Networking around music already lives elsewhere for 12-24, but in formats like Country and Smooth Jazz, where new music is incredibly important for older adults, opportunities abound. Even in formats like Classic Rock, there are loads of opportunities to socialize around the best opening riffs, or the 10 All-Time Worst Song Lyrics.

* Find the arbiters of music taste online--and hire them. Let them talk a little, even. Let them ADD VALUE to your product.

* Become the podcast home for local, unsigned bands. Give them studio space and production facilities and send their fans to you to download podcasts of their shows, demos and singles.

Radio at the local level has little room in its budget to drive wholesale change until the group heads drastically change the model from the top down. But there is no need to wait when all of the things I just listed can be done for practically nothing today. You may not have the money to bring your website completely to 2007 standards today, but wikis are free and half-built by your listeners anyway, so why not build one this week? Or call our friends at Libsyn and start getting your podcasts online today, like WMMR's Preston and Steve have been doing for ages.

No matter what is happening to your budgets, remember that the tools to compete are all out there, and are generally either free or pretty darn close. I'm happy to pitch in, or use your own web staff. In either case, there is no need to wait, and no time like today.

Tomorrow is one of the most widely anticipated days in the lives of many a 12-35 12+ boy. Halo 3 hits the shelves, for those with enough foresight to pre-order it, anyway. Active rockers, Classic Rockers, Young Country even--this one is too big not to talk about. In PPM markets, you'll see the carnage firsthand when you get the weeklies. Since huge chunks of your male (and possibly female) audience are going to be camped in front of the tube for the foreseeable future, you may as well work with the Master Chief instead of against him. There's still plenty of time to put together a commercial-free Halo listening party to be the soundtrack to the destruction of the Covenant--or maybe the Top 20 ass-kicking songs of all time with live Halo 3 party drops. Don't underestimate this one, folks--this is as big a 'hit' as the ole' Long Tail is likely to see in some time.

Oh, and Larry--I am not feeling very well. I think I will be out sick tomorrow.

I clicked on "listen live" and was startled to see that in order to listen to KGSR one must join its frequent listener club, and give them ALL of the following information: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone Number ( ! ), Street Address, City, State, Zipcode, Date of Birth, and Gender! Yes, in order to listen one MUST give 10 pieces of personal information -- and wince through the possibility of getting phone calls at home etc.

I suppose one could lie about all these things, but at minimum you have to put in your correct email address, because in order to listen one must THEN wait to get a confirming email with a password, and then go BACK to KGSR's site, enter that information, and then FINALLY have your opportunity to listen.

Now KGSR is a truly great radio station. But who is going to give them so much information for the privelege? It is as if they are trying to inhibit listening. And perhaps that is indeed the goal.

By comparison, one can go to Kurt Hanson's Accuradio, click on your station of choice and immediately listen. Go to Pandora, type in the name of your favorite artist, and you immediately hear a song by that artist.

If 'terrestrial' radio hopes to have any chance at all to compete on the Internet, doesn't it have to be immediately available? You turn on a regular radio and hear a station INSTANTANEOUSLY. I'd love to see the stats on how many people click on "Listen Live" on the KGSR site, get asked for all that info, and then click away.

Radio -- take your stations out behind the bars of building "frequent listener clubs." Instead, let me listen to your station and then compel me to join the club through offers and benefits that can't be resisted.

"Click to continue." Those three words led to an 8.5% increase in click-throughs in email marketing campaigns, according to a MarketingSherpa in-house test. I love little optimizations like this that can move the needle, a few percentage points at a time. Their biggest take-away was to think outside the box in terms of what needs to be tested--but your take-away should be to *test*! Your databases are incredible assets--it is well worth sending a hundred emails here, a hundred there, to see what triggers and influences conversion with your audience.

Some years ago I was doing focus groups in Chicago for a radio station and discovered that we were sharing the facility that night with the marketing team for a major adult beverage company. It turns out that they were testing a new alcoholic beverage (professional courtesy prevents me from revealing more) and were gauging reactions to the taste, packaging and messaging. What impressed me at the time was the fact that they were bringing in what was, by all appearances, a completely finished product--the bottle design was fully realized, the beverage was brewed and ice cold, and the ads all printed--yet the 'product' didn't even exist outside the walls of their company or that focus group. You never would have known it, however, by looking at the bottle. They had put time and effort into a fully-realized prototype, because you can't be sure about a product by hearing a description of how it tastes--you have to taste it, see it, smell it and feel it to really know for sure.

That was ten years ago. Since then, I have done hundreds of radio station focus groups. Almost all of them have been to take the temperature of an existing product, and very few have been to explore a potentially new, untried format. For those that explored the latter, not one of them provided the potential audience with the same kind of fully-realized prototype that those beverage marketers came up with for their focus groups. Instead, we resort to 'descriptors,' 5-song montages and vague concepts. Of course, anything we bring into a focus group is, by definition, an inadequate proxy for what a consumer might encounter in situ in the real world. But I'd love to see this kind of prototyping done more often in radio, and I will continue to push for it more and more with my clients. You have loads of creative folks in your production departments--why not let them strut their stuff for research purposes?

And the beverage? It was a mixture of ginger ale, vodka and pure evil. It never made it to market--and that, no doubt, saved them a fortune.

It's one of the year's most interesting press releases. This morning, Vallie-Richards-Donovan consultant Greg Dunkin announced that heritage AC WBEB (B101) Philadelphia would "incorporate" the Fresh FM brand, which would now be "incorporated into the [station's] programming and marketing." In doing so, the heritage AC powerhouse becomes the second "official" user of the name, following WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York's successful January debut.

That announcement, of course, set off buzz around the industry that B101 had "gone Fresh." As of today, anyway, B101 is still called B101 and very much sounds like B101--there are still at least two '70s titles an hour (and sometimes more) on the station, which still goes as far back as 1967's "Brown-Eyed Girl." The "fresh" word appears several places on the Website. On-air, Edison's Larry Rosin reports hearing it several times in one break. But I tuned in a few minutes later and went for a half-hour without hearing it. "Most music" and "soft rock" still remain the dominant images on the station with a mix of other images also present ("five in a row," "great songs to sing along to,").

We'll revisit B101 in a future blog post. But here's B101 from 2:50-3:25 p.m. this afternoon:

Billy Joel, "She's Got A Way"
Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive"
Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"
Del Amitri, "Roll To Me"
Kelly Clarkson, "Behind These Hazel Eyes"
U2, "With Or Without You"
Mariah Carey, "Hero"
America, "Sister Golden Hair"
TLC, "Waterfalls"
Elton John, "Your Song"

I'm not usually so big on simply linking to articles found on the web, but I did find this interview with Chief Marketing Officer-types from HubMagazine.com quite fascinating. I especially find useful the comments by the Hotel guy on why he likes radio promotions because they are measurable. But the biggest reason I think I reacted to it is how it shows the perspective of this kind of 'radio customer'. They don't care about media, they care about what sells their product. And they aren't 'out to screw us' as I so often hear, they just want to be able to measure the results of their expenditures. Find the PDF of the article here.

Valleywag reports today that NBC is finally admitting they made a mistake purchasing iVillage, noting in particular this important little nugget from NBC's Beth Comstock:

"You assume in the beginning that a mention on the 'Today' show will drive tremendous traffic, but it's not that easy"

In other words, it isn't enough to just mention your radio station's website over and over on the air--it's gotta be its own dog. There will soon come a day when you are committing as many resources to your website as you are your on air signal. So, you know that money you've been putting aside for a rainy day...?

We suggested a few months ago that WCRR (Country 107.3) Rochester, N.Y.--the commercial-free market rimshotter that Clear Channel recently launched to flank format leader WBEE--would probably end up doing some sort of sponsorship deal along the lines of sister KZPS (Lone Star 92.5) Dallas.

Last week, that idea came to fruition as the station rebranded itself as Labatt Blue Country 107.3. Seems like you could have a lot of fun with that idea, but so far the Labatt mentions are minimal, both on the station's Website and on-the-air. As heard Friday and today, Labatt is getting a mention in roughly every other produced drop on the station (and in keeping with the formatics heard on many Clear Channel stations) that works out to roughly every fourth song. In most cases, the mentions are as simple as "Labatt Blue Country 107.3."

Also interesting to note that the station--at least as heard on line this morning--is not commercial free anymore. At 12:26, a spot for a local lawyer's office was heard.

It's early days, so far. But the station recalls the early days of the now-defunct WWZZ (Z104) Washington, D.C.'s McDonald's Morning Show, another concept that was never taken quite as far as it could have been--perhaps because of the negative publicity that accompanied it in the industry. One wouldn't want every station to be an advertorial, but this one is a natural--so why not do more with it?

I am pleased to see the radio industry starting to take a bit more interest in qualitative research, a subject I am particularly passionate about. That's why I am pleased that Arbitron has funded The Bedroom Project, an honest-to-gosh piece of ethnographic research from our friends at Jacobs Media. Fred wrote about it today, and I am normally not a 'rip-and-read' kind of blogger, but anytime I see radio delving into qualitative research to gain insight, I have to give some props.

Ethnographic research is nothing new--in fact, this sort of in situ consumer observation has long been de rigueur in the consumer products industry. I went to a Marketing Research Association conference a couple of years back that spotlighted some of the ethnographic work done by Tide and other household brands designed to see how people use the product, not just hear them describe it, and the amount of insight they gained into things like no-drip bottles was astounding. I love conducting focus groups (I've done 13 in the past 3 weeks alone!) but ethnographic research is a perfect tool to gain insight into products or services that people tend to take for granted, or use as a utility--products like toilet paper, detergent and--for many--radio. By observing interactions with the product we place less stress on the respondent to articulate product distinctions and to essentially do our work for us by attempting to be specific about behaviors and attitudes ofwhich they may only be partially aware. There is, of course, always a kind of Heisenberg Principle at work in ethnography, but you really can't shake that in any kind of research.

I'd love to see radio do more of this kind of work--especially now with the advent of PPM and the importance of radio in public spaces. Observing a garage, or an office, for instance, would tell us more about how and why radio gets selected and consumed in the workplace than a hundred strategic studies. Edison keeps up on the state of the art for ethnography and other qualitative techniques through our membership and participation in the Advertising Research Foundation. If you are interested in learning more about current theory and past practices of this technique, their Journal for Advertising Research is a great place to start.

Lance Venta posted a comment to my earlier post on Radio 104.5 that bears a quick revisit. He is right, of course, that viewed through the lens of PPM in Philadelphia, Radio 104.5 might not need a top-of-mind brand to be a cume magnet--by playing "one great song after another" and remaining jockless it might slip under the radar and "stealth" its way to a respectable share. Still, my points about its Internet brand are still valid.

The more sinister issue is this: if we react to passive measurement with passive branding, will we be adding further fuel to radio's relentless retreat from the passionate edges of the bell curve (as further explicated by Fred Jacobs, Mark Ramsey and other folks who care about the future of the medium) and concomitant 'ascent' to that curve's mediocre middle?

Clear Channel blew up Philadelphia's 'Rumba 104.5' today in favor of Adult Alternative outlet "Radio 104.5." I won't comment here on the product, which I will leave to my programming bretheren, but in an era where co-opetition with Internet properties is demanded, this brand is distinctly success-proof on the web. There are three reasons why this brand was just not fully baked to compete on the Infinite Dial:

1. The brand is too generic--it means absolutely nothing in terms of attitude, behaviors or benefits (or if it supposed to say something in a kind of anti-branding way, I don't get it)
2. 'Radio' as the integral brand identifier is not just non-descript, it constrains the ability of the brand to leave deeper footprints
3. '104.5' is a meaningless Internet brand

A much better execution of this is DC's The Globe, which is a brand equipped to compete both on the air AND over the web, which is the right answer.

I have mixed feelings about calling Clear Channel out on this one, as I worked on that frequency for several years throughout the 90's, and it's been a tough nut to crack, from Star to The New Sound of Philadelphia, from Alice to Sunny. But there is no gettting around this fact--in a time when brands MUST resonate online as well as off, this one fails to inspire.

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.

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.

NBC recently announced that they were engaging in a bold little experiment with The Office. Basically, to try and juice up viewership for reruns, they are borrowing a little "Web 2.0" and doing a mashup of existing content by marrying two previously seen episodes plus previously unseen deleted scenes into what they are calling "newpeats." In an era where those of us with DVR's rarely miss shows we care about, it is easy to see why re-runs have lost a bit of their charm. After all, I never miss Battlestar Galactica--but I have never watched it on its new home on Sunday Nights, either.

Whether or not this works for NBC, this is a great idea for your morning shows to drive increased web traffic and also provide content for podcasts that are sponsorship-worthy. Putting yesterday's show, or even highlights from the show, up on your website is just the first step. To drive real traffic, you gotta do some work. Here are three quick ideas for "Newpeats" of your morning show:

1. Package up several weeks worth of a popular benchmark (prank calls, for instance, or the "Five O'Clock Funnies") into a monthly "Best Of" podcast ("sponsored by Cingular Wireless, Now Part of the New AT&T," of course!) Lots of listeners tune in to certain shows only to hear certain benchmarks--providing an archive of just that content, packaged up for more convenient listening, is a no-brainer way to extend your brand, increase mindshare and monetize podcasting.


2. Try "Re-Contesting" - if your morning show features a popular trivia show (e.g., "Battle of the Sexes") splice 4 of them together with sponsorship drops after each, then put a new stealth contest at the end of the content requiring listeners to list things named earlier in the podcast to win a new, podcast-only contest. Sell the whole thing to whoever sponsors your current contest feature to mine a little extra revenue, and provide some off-air lovin' to your "contest aficionados."


3. Tell a local story. Every show has its time to "leave deeper footprints" with a given local issue or important news story--why not take just the best, most relevant segments to that story and edit them together into a new piece? If your station spearheaded an effort, for example, to provide support for families of soldiers currently serving in Iraq, you might capture all the best moments of your efforts--the great interviews, the memorable phoners, etc--and memorialize them in one podcast. You could provide a donation link right next to it on your website and talk it up on the air.

..and are becoming an increasingly larger part of Country's cume, according to a great factoid recently posted by Jaye Albright. We think so too, which is why we are delighted to be presenting the results of a landmark new study on the topic at next week's Country Radio Seminar in Nashville. We're particularly proud of this study, which combines the results of a new, original national quanitative survey with one-on-one interviews, census data, and (of course) an analysis of what it means in the world of Arbitronics.

We will also be presenting some strategies for Country broadcasters to take what they have learned and do a better job in reaching this important group. How are we doing now? Well, here's a teaser--55% of the Hispanic Americans we surveyed who live in markets with at least one country outlet have no idea there is a country station in the market. Clearly, one thing we will be talking about next week is how to ask for the order.

Kudos to Chrysalis for finally taking this step and launching a major cross-promotion campaign for London news station LBC using the massive reach of their sister station Heart 106.2. Last year I spoke at the Radio Academy’s marketing and promotions conference, and got a chance to hear a whole bunch of hypothetical campaigns during a session on maximizing cross-promotion opportunities. Some of these were great, some whimsical--and at least one, clearly prophetic.

So now Heart 106.2 will be actively driving news-seekers to LBC in some very clever ways, and I urge cluster managers here in this country to grab some airchecks and do a little ‘free-thinking.’ While the stations in a typical cluster here are a bit closer together than they are in the UK, that doesn’t mean there aren’t loads of creative ways to promote each other and find new meanings for “synergy” besides reducing head counts. Television (notably ABC/ESPN and NBC/CNBC/MSNBC) has done a good job with this over the years, and I think there are loads of opportunities to do the same in radio.

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':

Jaye Albright posted a great piece on her blog a few days back called "Getting On The "Brand" Wagon" about the danger of monkeying with a successful brand (especially just because some trendy research suggested it!) Jaye's advice--"be what you are, intensively"--harkens back to what my old boss Frank Cody used to tell me--"if you can figure out what people expect you to be, and then be that thing, you will be successful."
In her article, there is a quote worth revisiting:

The concept of researching brand loyalty is based on a truism - the average person will listen to three radio stations per week. Arbitron and BBM researchers claim that 96% of all radio listening is encompassed by these three positions on the average radio listener's hierarchy of usage. PPM usage data has shown that the average listener actually visits more than twice as many radio frequencies in the average week.

The interesting bit, to me, is the last sentence, which we have certainly observed to be true in our PPM analysis work. Most of the Branding Gurus in our industry duly read their Godins, their Long Tails, their Good to Greats and Pursuits of Excellence, repackage, reexamine and revise these insights (along with their own) to glean the relevant wisdom for radio (which is not necessarily easy--I mean this with respect), and go on to help their stations win--in a diary world, that all works fine.

But what about when PPM hits your market, and the success metric is no longer what stations people recalled listening to, but what stations people actually listened to? Some people smarter than I am will correctly note that this will make strong brands even more important, to encourage listeners to choose your brand to listen to out of a crowded consideration set. But the consideration set for the average listener (in terms of terrestrial radio) is not getting more crowded--they aren't getting the PPM memo. Instead, that second choice, second favorite soft AC that usually gets buried by the market leader's big "Live In It To Win It Birthday Key In The Glove Box" extravaganza contest might turn out to not be doing so bad, after all, despite brand awareness measures that might say otherwise.

All this really means, of course, is that different measures yield different results. "Brand Awareness" and some of the other tried-and-true measures of a station's health will continue to be measured, of course, but just as PPM will change some of the answers, so too must radio stations and their research partners change up the questions. Edison currently sits on the Advertising Research Foundation's Experiential Marketing Council, which is currently in the midst of a significant study to develop a metric for events and promotions that factors in engagement, along with awareness, reach and frequency. When consumers are exposed to as many brands as we currently are, reach, frequency and awareness don't tell the whole story. What advertisers really need is a measure of emotional involvement--not just "have you ever heard of brand x" or "have you seen this spot," but are consumers engaged on a more visceral level? Are they actively "co-creating" the meaning and experience of the brand (note--this is not "consumer generated media," but engagement can certainly lead to that behavior)?

I started with a Frank Cody quote, I'll end with one--"people don't fire their friends." Or, one could add, stop listening to them. When you start to think about your strategic studies and other bits of market research next year, be sure you are thinking beyond awareness--and thinking about measuring engagement. Don't be afraid to monkey with a classic brand if universal awareness hasn't translated to emotional engagement.

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.

In just 3 days, Internet-only alternative station WOXY is going dark. I can absolutely feel their pain, having been a partner in another Internet radio play back in 2001 that also ran into the crippling paradox of 'Net radio--the more listeners you have, the faster you go out of business. As it was with Puremix, so it is with WOXY--while Internet radio usage is significantly more widespread than Satellite radio or even the iPod, making money from a pure Internet radio play is still a tough nut to crack.

WOXY had a significant presence in the Alternative community, and its site was the home of one of the most active message boards in all of radio. My wife's graduate students all listened to WOXY nonstop in lab, and I also listened to it a fair amount. So who killed it? The short answer is--I did. So did my wife's graduate students. And, statistically speaking, pretty much anyone else reading this who ever listened to WOXY. Because chances are, you didn't pay to subscribe, and neither did we.

America has seen a lot of alternative rock stations go by the wayside over the past 18 months, and prevailing wisdom has it that the 18-34 year old male has pretty much checked out of the system--ditching land lines, not filling in diaries, etc.--making them essentially invisible as far as ratings (and, thus, advertisers) are concerned. Perhaps passive measurement will bring with it a resurgence in formats that cater to this demographic. We see this when we conduct surveys in markets with underperforming alternative rockers--we know more people are listening to them than the diaries show, but if they don't play the game, they don't count.

So I am sure that there are lots of voices out there who are quick to excoriate Arbitron for their apparent failure to accurately measure the 18-34 year old male. What WOXY teaches me, however, is that the 18-34 year old male has to take some responsibility for this, as well. After all, WOXY has one of the most active user communities of any station on the web--just troll through their message boards and see--and yet hardly any of them ponied up a few bucks a month to subscribe. So for those of us who left WOXY on all day while we worked (and in the case of my wife's graduate students, even left it on overnight after they had gone home for the day) without paying for it, all we did was kill it quicker.

So we can hope that the coming dawn of passive measurement restores some balance to the force. But the "free lunch" mentality of the Internet means that even passive measurement of Internet radio doesn't mean that Internet radio has sussed out a revenue model yet. WOXY had a tremendous, loyal and passionate community--but despite all that love on their message boards, WOXY couldn't convert love into gold.

So, how do you create, sustain and monetize a rabid community of fans on the web? I hope you'll join me at the NAB Radio Show next week, when one of my panelists will be WOXY's GM, Bryan Jay Miller. Ask the man himself--and learn from his valuable perspective.

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.

Jerry Clifton will certainly find out. His flip of Fresno’s KFYE from Christian programming to a continuous loop of Porn Music will certainly rank as one of the boldest examples of “stunting” we have ever seen.

Jeff Schmidt wonders if radio station execs have jumped the shark with all the dull-sounding-male names for Adult Hits stations. I can't disagree with him there--while "Jack" has a certain edge to it (anyone else remember the hugely popular You Don't Know Jack trivia games?), Bob kinda makes me think of this, which didn't fare too well.

Names can be invested with a lot of character. My wife, Miriam, is always telling me that her name will probably go the way of the dodo soon, but it's certainly no Mildred, or Hattie! Name a station Mildred, and you can almost hear it in your head (but you won't like it). Name it "Jane," however, and you aren't quite so sure (apologies to the Janes out there, be ye Russells or Does).

Satellite Radio isn't immune, either, with its Freds and Ethels. While Ethel has a fairly pure connotation (and it isn't alternative rock, either, XM), Fred has too many potential contexts to be considered a 'great' name. (Durst? Flintstone? Schneider? MacMurray? that Basset Hound?) What is a great name? Well, it should instantly convey to its target demographic the values of the brand. I think "Jack" does that, but I am not so sure about Doug, who stole my date to the prom and now works at a hardware store.

Now, you may not be able to name your station 'Oprah,' or 'Madonna,' but I bet we can do better. So, I cracked open my baby name book, crossed out the Harolds and Beatrices, and came up with a few random suggestions--see if you can hear these in your head:

• Kylie
• Zoe
• Zack
• Brooklyn (I know--I am a Beckham fan...)
• Homer (for an edgy sports station!)
• Duff (aahhhh....my old friend, beer....)
• Charlene (who could be a Country chic, but has also been to Nice, and the Isle of Greece)

and of course, my favorite Tom Waits lyric/Beautiful Music station,


• Creampuff Casper Milquetoast

Philadelphia's WXPN (a non-commercial station operated by the University of Pennsylvania) announced a rather novel deal today with Y100rocks.com, the continuing web presence of now-defunct alternative rocker Y100, which was switched to gospel over a year ago. In the deal, XPN will devote 10 hours of on-air programming per week to alternative rock, to be hosted by former Y100 PD Jim McGuinn, and WXPN will also host "Y.Rock" on the Internet under the umbrella of WXPN's online brand.

Since WXPN is ostensibly non-commercial (though heavily sponsored) this represents a unique marriage on another level, as well. WXPN expects that donations will cover the expenses of the new venture, while Y100rocks.com will presumably benefit from increased traffic and site revenues.

There are several interesting things to note about this announcement. First, public radio is becoming increasingly aggressive with listener acquisition/aggregation, moving from "serving the needs of our listeners" to actively trying to capture "loose bodies" like the disenfranchised former Y100 listeners, who were not likely to have been listeners to WXPN's 35-54-focused format. Also, according to Roger LaMay, WXPN's GM, "It also gives [them] a station that's going to appeal to Penn students," which seems like a good idea for a station that has heretofore been geared to those students' parents more than anything.

There is a podcasting component to this venture, as well, which is an area where public radio (especially NPR) has been able to leapfrog over their commercial counterparts due to the fact that they own the rights to more of their content. We certainly know from our research that consumers want more control over their media, and public radio's natural advantages here may help them to reverse their recent (slight) downward trend after over a decade of solid growth.

The move is also a reminder that Internet Radio and Terrestrial Radio can work together without cannibalizing each other, though it certainly helps XPN that they don't have to play the ratings game. While you can understand the reasons why the two primary commercial rock operators in Philly didn't try this, by avoiding cannibalizing themselves now they have perhaps lost out on the chance to piggyback onto a reasonably valuable Philly-area brand and find new ways to capture the increasingly elusive 18-34 year-old male. We know from telephone studies that these listeners are out there, and they do listen to alternative/active rock--they just don't fill out diaries like they should. The coming advent of PPM may change that, and Philly's commercial operators (most notably--Radio One, who gave up the brand in the first place) may regret having passed up the chance to plant a flag with this format.

Execution, of course, will be everything. Sometimes these brand marriages work when they make sense, like the Starbucks in your Barnes and Noble, or that Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer. Other times, they end up looking like the Arthur Treacher Kenny Rogers Miami Nathans Grill and Coffee bars you see on the turnpike.

The WXPN/Y100 marriage is also an interesting way of acknowledging that Y100, for most of its life as terrestrial modern rocker WPLY, was really the next generation of Triple-A. Having evolved from an Alternative/CHR-hybrid, WPLY never fully embraced the hard rock that became an issue for so many modern rock stations. For most of its life, it had a healthy gold library and some sort of Dave Matthews Band presence, even after the softest of the softer music finally came off the station.

Five years ago, when Modern Rock was at its crunchiest and rappiest, and Triple-A's traditional base was starting to age, many Triple-A PDs hoped that they could become the new "true Alternative" format. That's why today's Triple-A chart is Gnarls Barkley at No. 1 and the new Tom Petty at No. 2. And why the Fray, Raconteurs, Keane, and Death Cab for Cutie co-exist with the new Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris song, and with Jackson Browne oldies. To some extent, Modern Rock made it harder for Triple-A when it added more gold, backed off the rap/rock, and started playing Keane and the Raconteurs itself. But in Philly, nobody has come along to replace WPLY directly. So perhaps showcasing Y100 music in this manner makes it easier to segue from the new Thom Yorke into "Fountain of Sorrow."

The WXPN announcement, by the way, does not address WXPN's HD-2 channel. (Nor could I find mention of one on the WXPN homepage.) It seems like bringing back Y100 would be a pretty good way to get a certain group of listeners to ante up for HD Radio. Of course, if you're depending on listener donations, perhaps you don't want to divert their $300, but if that's money that would otherwise go to satellite radio, it might still make sense.

I recently finished reading Wired editor Chris Anderson's new book,“The Long Tail : Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” (Chris Anderson), which sprung from his original, highly influential Wired column of the same name (and also from his widely-read blog.) There has been, of late, considerable reaction to his latest offering on The Rise and Fall of the Hit.

I'm not sure I agree with Anderson that the hit is dead, and I am not alone. Valleywag pointedly offers up a link to Gnarls Barkley's “Crazy” for its readers to use as a soundtrack to the article, and Mark Ramsey notes that lots of folks went to see that Pirate movie. The comment that makes the most sense to me, however, comes from KFOG's Jeff Schmidt, who notes on his blog the following:

The Long Tail isn’t so much about the DEATH of HITS - but about their marginalization within the larger totality - about the rise of OTHER.

The old scarcity model for content has changed, and now it is entirely possible to tap into markets heretofore constrained by geography. The fact that DL Byron can build a business like Clip-n-Seal almost entirely through the power of blogging is testament to the power and veracity of Anderson's perceptions about the long tail. Being right about the tail part, however, doesn't make him right about the head. As Jeff correctly notes, OTHER is big, and viable. But we still gravitate towards hits--we still need hits.

There is no better evidence of this than Technorati founder David Sifry's fascinating regular posts on the state of the blogosphere. My favorite: February, 2006, a brief, yet important analysis of the number of blogs in the “magic middle,” a lucrative chunk of the Long Tail. Devotees of Anderson's theory will (correctly) point out the number of blogs in the long tail of the graph at right--the blogs along the far right side have millions of readers, though no single blog has more than a few dozen. Check out, however, the left side--tell me there aren't some hits in there!

The fact is, that even in this age of blogs there are hits, and big ones, too. Most people, in fact, will have read about Anderson's Long Tail theories on one of several big hitters in the blogosphere or in mass media. While the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were the top three most linked-to news and media sites in February (from the Technorati chart at left), a few blogs also snuck in there as bonafide “hits” at the fat end of the tail (Boing Boing, Daily Kos, Engadget and PostSecret). One thing I think this shows is that the age of the “hit” is far from over.

What is happening, however, is another stage in the continual cycle of disaggregation and reaggregation espoused by folks like Francis Fukuyama in “The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order”. Society (and, its great mirror, the media) continually disaggregate from old norms, values and cultural benchmarks, but society doesn't disintegrate. Instead, it reaggregates around new norms. Is the “hit” dead? Well, maybe the blockbuster movie ain't what it used to be, but I would call MySpace and Grand Theft Auto hits, wouldn't you?

Recently I have been thinking a lot about EMail marketing (see How to Behave on a Date, and Getting Past First Base, metaphors I have promised Larry never to use again). While some companies seem to always get it right, many continue to stumble at the gate. With so many competing media channels vying for our attention, it is critical that radio stations learn from both past successes and mistakes of others.

Mistakes happen--no company, big or small, is immune to the occasional gaffe or misstep. Often, customers can learn as much, if not more, about your brand from how you recover from these mistakes as they do from the mistake itself. Here is a recent example I got in my inbox:

VIP Invitation to the EMail Insider Summit

Dear Tom

I would like you to be our guest for the 2006 Email Insider Summit. As a Summit VIP, the cost of your airfare, hotel accommodations and conference registration will be paid for by MediaPost.

The Email Insider Summit Advisory Board has identified you as a senior level marketer or agency executive decision maker within your company. You are among a select few to whom we are extending this special VIP opportunity.

Well, sign me up! After much cajoling, I convinced my wife that maybe she, too, would like a weekend at a spa in Scottsdale, and we could make a little holiday out of it. Seconds after she agreed, however, I got this:

Register Now for the EMail Insider Summit

Dear Tom:

We apologize if you received an email from MediaPost earlier today inviting you as our VIP guest to the Email Insider Summit. That email was intended to be sent to a list of 50 top brand marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event. The email below is the email that you were intended to receive. If you would like to be a part of the inaugural Email Insider Summit please read below about the summit and how to register. Again we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience that error may have caused you.

Register now for MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit so you can surround yourself with the most-thought provoking minds in the industry as they school you on the new modes of enhancing your email marketing campaigns.

Not only was I not going to Scottsdale on someone else's nickel, I wasn't a "top brand marketer" or VIP after all! Not being the most secure egg in the carton, I went into a deep funk over this,