Does that sound stupid to you?

How do you think it sounds to Radio listeners who hear that drivel in an unacceptable number of ads. Every hour. Of every day.

Over and over again.

We’ve covered this topic before, but perhaps a repetition of three or more is required to get the message across.

Ad copywriters need to give serious thought to obtaining a thesaurus and browsing its pages instead of watching American Idol or Dancing With The Stars.

As someone who is no longer involved with Radio on a day-to-day basis, I find I’m listening to Radio as an average listener and not a Radio guy. It makes a world of difference. Suddenly, you’re tuning out the trite phrases and meaningless words that populate far too many ads.

Which means your clients’ messages are not getting through.

Writing with an ear for what the listener actually hears can revolutionize ads on your stations. For example, the next time you’re taking 40 seconds to bang out 30 seconds worth of copy, you might try these substitutions, just for starters:

Exceptional instead of “incredible”. (“Incredible” means “lacking credibility”).

Extraordinary instead of “unbelievable”.

Unusual instead of “fantastic”.

Of course, these words and the sentences that contain them should be delivered in a realistic, adult manner. No screaming or loud music, thank you.

Clients might actually find they get extraordinary results from ads that are written to be listened to and not just to fill space with cliches.

And maybe that just might improve their bottom line.

Yours, too.

Those of us in Radio could see it begin back in the late ’70′s. In the early ’90′s, the trend was obvious. Now, as we enter the last year of the 21st Century’s first decade, the monsters are visibly in pain, trying to hold off the inevitable.

So it is that the daily local newspaper prepares to go the way of the dinosaur.

As an enthusiastic Radio sales rep in the ’70′s, I was shocked one day when a client had to cut our meeting short. He said: “I have to get my ad down to the newspaper before two or it won’t get into tomorrow morning’s paper.”

That’s right: the newspaper sales rep was too lazy to come by the advertiser’s business to pick up his ad–the advertiser was forced to deliver it to the paper!

Those days are long gone.

However, it has been the internet, not Radio or television, that has dealt the death blow to the printed page. Back in the day when our stations were battling with the local paper, we ran a promo line at the end of each newscast: “When you hear it, it’s news. When you read it, it’s history.” Now, people Google the news and get what they want when they want it. Newspaper could never keep up with the immediacy of broadcast news. Today the world wide web offers the virtually instant coverage of broadcast but with infinitely more choices. No longer are consumers limited to one newspaper or a handful of Radio or TV stations.

Generations of consumers were trained to depend on newspapers for their information. With the advent of the internet, the generations of the ’90′s have switched to the instant gratification of the web. By the time the local paper is printed and is on the street, it is “old news”. That “newspaper only” generation is dwindling, and with it the legions of readers that once made that media king.

While Radio and TV will survive, it appears newspaper–in printed form–is quickly going the way of T-Rex. Some newspapers may remain on the ‘net, but the mega-bucks of local revenue the printed page once demanded will soon join the hula hoop and 45-RPM record as little more than a fading memory.

I hate starting off a new year with a complaint. But I hate ignorance in media even more.

Headlines in a number of internet media–including FoxNews.com–proclaimed that revelers were celebrating the beginning of a “new decade” on January 1, 2010.

Not so fast.

The “new decade” will begin with 2011. The year 2010 is the last year of the first decade of the 21st century. This is due to the elementary fact that there was no year “zero”. The first decade of our Common Era (C.E.) comprised years 1 – 10. The second decade consisted of years 11 – 20. Do the math and you’ll see where we’re going.

Perhaps it’s just another example of declining journalism skills. First the words, then the math.

Accuracy? That was a casualty that succumbed long, long ago.

Happy New Year.

Unfortunately, most Radio sales reps can’t or won’t convince the advertiser to air a large enough schedule to obtain truly remarkable results. This underselling of Radio hurts the advertiser, your station, and Radio as an industry.

Many years ago, a very sharp sales rep I worked with — we’ll call him “Jerry” — taught me how to turn down an order.

Turn down an order?!?

The client wanted to air a schedule of 25 ads for the week on our station. While the schedule would have added around a thousand dollars to Jerry’s sales total for the month, Jerry just shook his head.

“I can’t accept this,” he told the client. “Because when it doesn’t work, you’ll blame me.”

Jerry then proceeded to explain to the advertiser how Radio really works, and how in order to be truly successful, the client should be airing 25 ads a day. When the advertiser replied he had never heard of such a thing, Jerry said: “It’s because they’re afraid to tell you.”

For Radio to work–to truly blow the doors off–three things are required:

1. A good product or service at a good price (customers aren’t stupid);
2. A compelling message that breaks through the ad clutter (notice, I did not say a louder message — screaming only insults the customer), and;
3. Sufficient frequency to ensure the audience hears the message.

We’re not talking a “frequency of three”…we’re talking a frequency of 20, 30, 40 impressions in a week.

We’re talking using the power of Radio to dominate a station or group of stations. This requires what used to be called a “newspaper-sized” budget. A full-page ad in the newspaper doesn’t dominate anything. But take the budget for that full-sized ad and place it on one station for the week and the advertiser will own that station.

Jerry’s client was convinced — he ended up buying two ads per hour every hour for a week — and had the best week in his history. All because one Radio professional was willing to tell a client the truth.

It’s time to stop underselling Radio. In the current economic conditions, including the rapid decline of newspaper, it makes more sense than ever before for Radio to step up and claim its unfair share of the ad pie.

The problem is not store closures or empty strip centers. It is confidence and spending.

I think Radio as a whole is fine. The latest RADAR study shows 92% of the population listens weekly.

We just somehow have to get clients back to previous spending levels.

I think Radio will eventually shake out okay. The few group owners that survive will be financially sound with manageable debt. There will be some public companies but mostly with large market holdings. Medium and small markets are not suitable for public ownership. Maybe no Radio is.

A business with a limited market area and limited inventory at some point has to rely only on price. You cannot do that in Radio because of market dynamics. Price cannot go up forever and the Big Radio myth is that if you raise your price advertisers will raise their investment. Most advertisers keep investment the same and run fewer ads driving down results. Then the stations have to find even more advertisers but now the advertisers have to be willing to pay higher prices. This is why Radio stations go through cycles.

So, large companies–especially public–that have a never-ending appetite for more profit will eventually hit a dead end with Radio. Many already have. Even if they grow by expansion–as all of them did in the 90′s–that road will eventually end.

We can add “products” like interactive, but that only takes you so far. It’s also a big time distraction to selling the core.

Radio is far better suited for a local owner who wants to make really good money and knows that every now and then he is going to have a down year. The competitor is going to surge. The unexpected is going to happen. And he will have to learn to live that year on $300,000 instead of $500,000.

A return to sanity can be reached if Radio sales prices are low. Six times multiple; eight times max, with a manageable debt load. The difficult eccentric local owner will replace the difficult eccentric corporate management team and it will be back to the future.

In middle and small markets there will be a return to more things like news and local coverage. Newspapers are dying. There is simply not enough local news in these smaller markets to justify an hour a day on five local TV stations. But there is plenty for a three-minute newscast on the hour via the local Radio station. Like it used to be. The Internet is a factor, but not so much for local news.

The future of the Radio business will be more like the past, albeit with a better eye towards quality. Listenership will decline some as will revenues, but as long as we remain the only really viable commercial advertising source that allows a listener to totally multitask while consuming it, we will have a place.

This fall, I complete 35 years in Radio. I think that qualifies me for an opinion liks this. I am now–officially–the old man.

Although the “experts” still never listen.

—-

“Anonymous” is a skilled Radio executive with extensive experience in sales, marketing and management in small, medium, and large markets. He started “on the street” selling Radio over 35 years ago and has trained hundreds of Radio salespeople in how to get results for their clients. He currently manages a multi-station cluster for a major broadcast company.

After the fourth commercial, most people tuned out — either figuratively or literally.  And if the tune out was literal, they often did not come back.

But this was in the day of rigid 30 and 60-second commercials.  Hardly anyone sold 15-second ads, and 10 and 5-second announcements were never sold, much less offered.

Today, we have created commercial breaks of up to 10 ads — strings of 30-second, 15-second, even 10 and 5-second ads — that coagulate into a meaningless jumble of words, sound effects, and music that is ever more easy to tune out.  Of course, the reason for this is revenue.  With the Radio Advertising Bureau’s announcement today that Radio revenues were down 22% compared to the same period last year, the revenue angle is more important than ever before.

However, those same ’70′s studies also indicated something more disturbing.

The length of commercials in a break is less of a factor than the number of ads that comprise the “cluster”.  To most listeners, a 60-second ad is no different than a 30-second ad — it’s just another interruption.  If that perception holds true among today’s listeners, then an eight-ad “cluster” of 15-second announcements is far worse than one of four 30-second ads.  Even though both consist of two minutes of commercial time, the group of 15-second ads is perceived as twice as long.

There is no easy answer to this dilemma, for revenue is king.  Without sufficient dollars coming in, no station can long remain in operation.

And, at the same time, the increasing noise level of “endless” 5, 10, and 15-second ads allows us to commit suicide slowly — driving away listeners to other media choices where commercials are more easily controlled, or ignored.  For once the listeners have departed to other outlets, it becomes increasingly likely they will not return.

As part of the “evidence” presented, the program’s narrator mentioned the loss of an air force transport aircraft — while showing video of a World War II B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber — and then covering the mysterious disappearance of an air force fighter — while showing video of a U.S. Navy Panther jet with the letters “NAVY” clearly visible on the aircraft’s fuselage. Either the producers were too lazy to find video of aircraft that matched the narrative, or they were too stupid to realize the difference.

Nor are these isolated incidents. Several months ago I watched a news report where a clueless reporter covered the movement of a navy transport ship, referring to it as a “battleship”. The contrast between a transport and a “battleship” would be obvious to a third-grade student. That some reporters cannot discern a difference speaks volumes.

And this raises the question: if the media cannot get these things right, how can we believe them on anything? In the case of the so-called “Dragon’s Triangle” program, I immediately discounted all their “facts” as ill-informed nonsense.

Once upon a time, journalists were trained to get the important, factual details of a story and report what they observed in an objective manner. Alas, those days appear to be a far-distant memory. And this does not bode well for the future of the media — or mankind.