Radio: Happy belated Birthday, Telecommunications Bill

A happy belated birthday to the 1996 Telecommunications Bill.

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It turned 12 on February 8th.

There were many good reasons for not throwing a party this year.

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Number one – we didn’t want the radio industry to set itself on fire while blowing out the candles.

Face it. You’ve already burned your listeners, your clients, and your once loyal employees.

And what have we learned over the past twelve years?

Commercial radio still believes its own hype when it comes to having compelling content.

At least that’s what most of those attending the 2008 RAB convention believe.

There are those that preach the need for radio to be portable again.

Portable?

Again?

It’s not about making radio portable – it’s about giving consumers reasons to listen to it.

Radio isn’t dead.

Sunday’s New York Times mentioned the 30 million-plus daily listeners of National Public Radio's Morning Edition news program. In 1980 they had an audience of just 2 million. It also pointed out that Morning Edition and its afternoon news counterpart, All Things Considered, are the second and fourth most listened to radio programs in the country.

Radio? Dead? Hardly.

Don’t try to pass off the NPR shows as national. They break for local news and information – and cover their markets better than the commercial news- talks in most markets.

Provide inimitable and compelling content– even in the twenty-first century - and you will get people to listen to radio.

RAB CEO Jeff Haley has good intentions when he said, “the goal is to have an FM radio in every PDA and cell phone” - and to do so over the next five years.

But he missed a few vital points.

Here’s one: With exception to NPR and a few still-popular morning shows, most of radio’s destination content is on AM - news, sports, talk, and information.

I hate to say it. Most I know aren’t listening to radio – other than NPR and sports. They get everything else on-line.

Those I know that Podcast use it to time-shift NPR programming that may not be on at a time when one can or wants to listen.

It’s safe to say that no one’s interested in a podcast of a midday voice-tracker.

How can anyone take the radio industry seriously when it’s incessantly contradicting itself?

Spare me the excuses about radio being challenged by iPods, Internet radio, satellite radio, and video games.

The best content will always win – regardless of medium.

The average household has four radios. Almost all cars have a radio. That doesn’t mean they’re being listen to. If radio underperforms, listeners go elsewhere.

Let’s create the perfect world scenario where every man, woman, and child in the U.S. had portable access to terrestrial radio.

Add access to those HD Radio side channels, too.

I’ll even take it one step further – let’s say all of those HD Radio side channels had – don’t laugh - compelling programming, too.

The result? It would kill commercial radio. The audience would be spread too thin among too many stations.

Don’t worry. It’s not going to happen. HD Radio is a non-product, a non-entity. You know it and I know it and Peter “Sgt. Bilk-o” Ferrara knows it.

Bilk-o’s not going anywhere and neither are you as long as you fall for his shams.

I believe Sgt. Bilk-o’s lies about HD Radio as much as I believed Roger Clemens’ testimony to Congress.

The real dilemma facing the industry is that there are too many radio stations.

Here’s why the NAB’s Radio 2020 is David “Fumbles” Rehr’s dumbest campaign to date.

Three words: Reignite the passion. Let me had a fourth: How?

You will not reignite anything by gutting established morning shows. You will not do it with voice-tracking in dayparts when most people listen – and interact.

You will not reignite passion by having managers and programmers accountable for multiple stations and, in some cases, multiple markets.

Reignite the passion? Here’s the problem. Only losers say that.

New media gets a chuckle out of our predicament, because radio’s a laughingstock, more so now than ever after the combination of the HD Radio Alliance and the NAB’s bungling Radio 2020 campaign, which will do absolutely nothing for no one.

We used to have programmers and managers that were hired for their specific knowledge of certain formats. Today, the business calls for a – pardon the name – Jack of all formats and master of none.

I’ll give you three more words: Attention to detail.

A few weeks back Advertising Age did a story on Andy Berndt, who left Ogilvy & Mather to join Google’s Creative Lab. Here’s what he said, “Google’s a giant lab. It doesn’t have fundamentally scientific structure. Sometimes the thinking happens after the doing.”

Remember when successful radio stations operated like that?

Remember when radio was the acquisition tool for clients to get customers to their stores?

All of that seems so twelve years ago now.

Then there’s production. Most station production departments are so overloaded and understaffed that there is no time – in fact it’s frowned upon – to create cinematic-style production for local clients.

And when you lose local, you’ve lost it all.

Happy Birthday, Telecom Bill.