Getting Out While The Getting Is Good

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It has been eleven months since this blog has addressed a political topic. The accuracy of that previous observation is yet to be determined, but certainly appears to have gained credibility following some of the recent comments by President Obama.

Now, we see a number of prominent Democrat politicians opting to retire or resign from the House and Senate in a trend that is threatening to become an exodus. The apparent reasoning is the electorate tide has turned and many of these long-serving incumbents cannot be re-elected. Anger over out of control spending, loss of jobs, and a depressed economy are all good reasons for this trend.

But could it be there is something more?

In my experience, most politicians are not afraid of fighting for re-election. No matter the poll numbers, seasoned candidates — especially incumbents — are more than willing to battle to keep the position and perks of public office. Also, a number of Republican members of Congress have also decided to “pull the pin” and retire…even though the 2010 elections are trending strongly in the Republicans’ favor (at least, this month).

So why would so many of the “senior” political class choose now to abandon their careers?

One possible answer: the fragile economy is about to suffer a major body blow — such as bankruptcy — and none of these pols want to be in office when the earthquake hits.

We’ve heard warnings from Radio pundits such as Glenn Beck and Neal Boortz that the country cannot sustain our insane spending and borrowing. What if the top-level Congressional insiders have been briefed on a coming financial meltdown and want to be as far away as possible from ground zero when the disaster hits? If you were in office, would you want to face the voter’s wrath if our currency becomes worthless?

I hope and pray this nightmare scenario does not come to pass. But a financial Armageddon is certainly one possible additional reason why so many politicians have decided to head for the lifeboats.

What do they know they’re not telling us?

Tyrannosaurus Rex: The End is Near

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Tyrannosaurus RexIt had to happen eventually.

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.

Media: 365-Day Error

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It was a difficult decision.

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.

Looking Ahead

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Most Radio broadcasters are happy to see the last of 2009. With a number of major Radio companies at or near bankruptcy, most operators are struggling to keep their heads above water in an increasingly oppressive economy.

But in the middle of the doom and gloom, there are glimmers of hope.

In a few markets, some stations have avoided double-digit declines; a very few have managed to actually increase profits. In virtually every case, these exceptional stations owe their success to…exceptionalism.

Unlike their competitors, these stations have integrated themselves with their community to the point that they are an indispensable part of that community. In many cases, the station’s call letters have become synonymous with the word “Radio”. This level of integration enables these stations to survive when virtually all others falter.

Such a status is not achieved in a few months or a year. It is acquired over decades of service to the community. It is also more than a few superficial promotions or sponsoring a fundraiser here or there. No, this level of achievement requires complete and absolute dedication to the community; providing a superior level of service in all facets of Radio without the expectation of a reward.

So here’s a salute to those rare stations that have come out on top when so many others have suffered. The coming year will hopefully be brighter. But regardless of the ups and downs of the economy in 2010 and beyond, the exceptional Radio stations will continue to enjoy greater success.

Underselling Radio

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In an earlier post, we talked about the fact that your Radio clients don’t require everyone to respond to their ad message; it is necessary only for enough people to react to the ad to produce a return on investment for the advertiser.

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.

Recueing Radio

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If your stations are like mine, sales are horrible. We’re down for the year and it’s getting worse, with the average sale WAY down.

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.

A Fallen Hero

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I had lunch with a very good friend of mine just last week. She’s sold radio in a top 50 market for over 20 years. She’s busted her rear drumming up new business, good economy and bad. She drives 30 miles out of her way to pick up checks from her local small direct clients–just so their ads will clear traffic by Monday morning. She sweet-talks the production department so they’ll push her clients’ spots to the top of their to-do lists. She doesn’t have time to fill in her weekly planner (due by Friday COB to the DOS), and even if she did, she’d need a few extra sheets. She rags ad agencies so they pay on time to meet commission deadlines. She’s a Radio Girl at heart, and she’s exactly what every sales manager always wants in a rep.

My friend hates her job. She’s also resigning on Monday.

I guess her DOS and the “smart people upstairs” just made one change too many. They took away just one client too many. They dropped the commission rates (again) just one percentage too many. They made it so incredibly difficult to be successful in media sales, not to mention, they’re absolute monsters in the many, many, many sales meetings they have every week. Who can thrive in an environment like this? Forget about thriving. Who can survive?

I myself am a radio sales veteran. I grew up in the business, literally. My father had me voicing spots at age three, cleaning the toilets at age twelve, running the boards for NASCAR races at age sixteen, and full-time sales at age twenty-two. I’ve seen the best of radio, and I now see the worst. And what I see is another industry in the final throes of a drowning death.

Creativity is gone. Ingenuity is gone. Ambition is gone.

Radio has become a job you have for three months until you get your real job. And the long-term sales reps that may still be hanging on to their jobs? Good luck. I suggest updating your resume.

So I guess my mooning here is for my friend. For my past, and for every other career radio salesperson out there who might read this. It’s not worth it. Your skills are VERY transferable, and what’s more, many employers out there love to hire media sales reps because it’s such a difficult industry. Stop trying to make things bearable, and stop telling yourself it’ll get better when you’re sold to a smaller group.

It’s not going to get better any time soon. Take my friend’s lead and just let it go. Even if you brought in twenty new local direct clients next month, it won’t be enough to resurrect your entire team, and change the course your stations’ owners have chosen.

Get out there and sell the most profitable thing you’ve ever sold: yourself. There are many people waiting to buy YOU. And they’re not in radio.

Clustering Toward Oblivion

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Back in the 1970’s — almost medieval times — several studies took place to discover the optimum number of commercial announcements that could be aired in a “break” or “cluster” without causing listener fatigue.  Depending on the study you believe, I recall the number was between three and five…let’s call it four.

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.

The Dumbing Down of The Media

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Over the weekend, my wife was watching a program on television — the History Channel or Discovery, I’m not sure which — on the topic of the Dragon’s Triangle. This so-called “mysterious” area is allegedly the Pacific Ocean’s counterpart of the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

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.

Earn An Extra $1,000 A Week in Your Spare Time

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An extra $52,000 a year in revenue would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

Well, it could be just the beginning — you could turn that $52,000 into $104,000 a year, or even $208,000 — if you start thinking creatively.

I’m a big believer in yield management, mostly because it helped rocket our stations to an unanticipated, and delightful, level of profit when it was applied correctly. What was amazing to me was that the managers of other markets in our group were reluctant to embrace a method that was obviously producing results. Don’t close your mind to new ways of generating more revenue.

Most stations have an abundance of unsold air time. The percentage of unsold time might range from as low as 10% to 50% or more, depending on your market and station. Right now, you’re getting zero dollars for that unsold time. Unlike a retail merchant, you can’t warehouse time. Each day, you receive a full allotment of 24 hours of which so many minutes each hour are reserved for commercial announcements. At the end of the day, any unsold minutes are lost.

But what if you could sell all your commercial minutes? What would that do to your cash flow?

Let’s assume you air 12 minutes of ads each hour. Friday afternoon at 3 o’clock, the traffic department tells you that 40% of your ad time from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday is unsold. That’s approximately 345 30-second ads that are producing no revenue.

Your salespeople man the phones and contact your best customers first and work their way down their account lists. The offer: every fourth unsold 30-second ad on the station from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday for $250. Secure four clients and suddenly your unsold time producing zero dollars has been transformed into a profit center. Do this once a week for 52 weeks and add $52,000 to your bottom line.

For stations in larger markets or with higher rates, divide the unsold time and sell it to four (or more!) clients in rotation for $1,000 each (or whatever your market will bear), and multiply your return.

Once you’ve started selling out weekends, look at other time blocks, such as early week, or Monday-Thursday 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Wherever you have a large percentage of unsold time, figure out creative ways to package it to produce revenue without impacting your regular advertisers.

Everybody loves a bargain, and you would certainly love to bring in cash for the air time that is otherwise unsold. It’s a win-win situation that can add significantly to your profitability. And you’ve got nothing to lose but your spare time.