Think Radio needs to crank up it’s Web strategy ?
Entries from August 2007
Radio’s ‘Tipping Point’ is at hand
August 29, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Radio · Traditional media
Dirty Little Secret. Little Profit in Web Buying?
August 28, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Love that new show on AMC called Madmen. ( short for Madison Ave men ). The story of a 1960’s advertising agency pushing Lucky Strikes, Department stores, etc. Great snapshot of that time in advertising history. It’s especially interesting from the viewpoint of where advertising is headed today. Placing big buys on Broadcast and in Newspapers garners a big juicy commission for the agency. Yet in the new world of Web, not so much.
Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 highlights this dirty little secret, that some think might be true, but won’t be caught dead discussing in public.
Madison Avenue still hasn’t figured out the how to make buying new media as profitable as as buying traditional media, so they are going to continue to push traditional media on their clients, come hell or high water.
But sooner or later big corporate advertisers are going to wake up and wonder why they are only allocating single or low double digit percentages of their ad budgets to a medium that commands more than half of most people’s media time.
Read his take on the matter here.
Categories: Newspapers · Online Video · Radio · Revenue · Television · Traditional media
Radio accelerates its adoption of video
August 23, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Dan Mason of CBS is pushing it. So are some other smart Radio operators. Online video is an excellent tool to build listener and advertiser relationships. Click here to see how THE PEAK in Phoenix is taking part in the online video space. NOTE: while the production needs a bit of polish, you will certainly see the many benefits of how your Radio station can take advantage of cheap video cameras, low cost/free video-serving, etc.
As a Radio seller, think you could go after some TV budgets ?
Categories: Online Video · Philadelphia · Radio · Staffing · Traditional media · Training
Casale of Devo @ Borgata in Atlantic City / Viral Marketing
August 19, 2007 · 1 Comment
Another amazing weekend at the Jersey shore. Great weather on Saturday, followed by another surprise appearance at the Gypsy Bar, inside the Borgata Casino, Atlantic City. Wow. One of the founding members of DEVO; Gerry Casale, did a few tunes with the band playing that night. ( Philly’s own; LeCompt )
While chatting with Casale (now a commercial film producer, in addition to his music work), he spoke of his recent commercial work for Dell Computer. Read the Ad Age article here. I shot some video of Gerry performing on stage that night. Also, watch the new Devo/Dell commercial below. NOTE: the Dell/Devo commercial is gettting alot of play via viral marketing; where fans of the band share and link to the commercial. How much did it cost Dell to distribute this commercial via online? Zero. Fans of DEVO did it.
Would visitors to your site do the same for your content ?
The New Battlefield
August 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment
The silos are crumbling. The scarcity of bandwidth is turning to abundance. Publishing is no longer for those with a printing press. Broadcasting, not just for those with a tower and transmitter. It’s no secret that the new battlefield in media is online, with Broadcast and Print being re-purposed to play a somewhat smaller, different, yet still very important role. The role is one of ’support & co-platform mechanism’, one that provides awareness and support to the deeper multi-media content that can only be found online.
To be sure, traditional media (broadcast and print) will not go away in our lifetime, but it will certainly be changed, and re-aligned in this new world order of digital consumerism.
If just 10 years ago, I had told someone that the record companies would be on the verge of total collapse, and that Tower records is no longer in business in 2007, you would be wondering what the hell I was smoking.
Think of how fast the celebrity online gossip category has grown over the past year. PerezHilton, TMZ, and WWTDD to name a few. They now own that space. Not People, not Entertainment Weekly, nor any other supermarket tabloid you can think of.
As for the news business, getting a paper at 6am on your doorstep, or tuning in to your local TV news at 11pm seems so quaint. Is news being commoditized? If so, it’s critical that local media outlets re-invent themselves, and fast.
Terry Heaton writes: “commoditization is impacting all forms of media in the current marketplace. This is especially significant as it relates to news, for the economics of the market are quickly reducing its value to near zero. If you want to know why you’re having trouble growing your market share, it might be because news is being commodified.”
Click to read Terry’s essay about the Commodization of News.
Radio is finally getting smart in regards to web. CBS Radio’s Dan Mason recently explained:
In the near future, every radio station will have the ability to become a TV station. We will see webcasts and webisodes. There’s no reason we can’t have our own webcast shows with talent [in the same way Imus was simulcast on MSNBC]. Radios will soon be developed with TV screens. The terrestrial radio medium will evolve and occupy more share of the digital space.” CBS’ 670 The Score (WSCR-AM) has partnered with Paltalk to enable listeners to participate in live, interactive video streams of the station’s popular weekday sports talk shows. Read more here.
Categories: Online Video · Traditional media
Google is targetting your clients
August 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Don’t think Google wants to take local business from you ? Take a look here…..
“As a Google Business Referral Representative, you’ll visit local businesses to collect information (such as hours of operation, types of payment accepted, etc.) for Google Maps, and tell them about Google Maps and Google AdWords. You’ll also take a few digital photos of the business that will appear on the Google Maps listing along with the business information.Asked for more information on the program and whether it is supplementing or replacing a traditional ad sales force, a Google spokeswoman offered a statement that included this comment:
“This program will help people find local information using Google and Google Maps and help businesses take advantage of the Internet even if they don’t have a website or online store. This is currently a pilot program intended to help local businesses in the U.S.”
Categories: Traditional media
Local Media Disrupted
August 7, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Recently, Borrell Associates decided to republish a certain 2003 report about the DISRUPTION OF LOCAL MEDIA, because, in their words, it offers “a poignant lesson today not only for its initial audience of newspapers, but also for local yellow pages publishers, broadcast TV stations and radio stations trying to tackle the Internet with existing management, content and sales personnel.”
The lesson is, they will fail.
This is a study that Borrell conducted with Clark Gilbert, then an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and protégé of Harvard Prof. Clay Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Read chapter one of INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA here
Despite smart management and a high degree of awareness, no company – including newspapers armed with this knowledge – has been able to achieve new net gain by tackling a disruptive technology with an integrated management approach.
Traditional managers tend to disbelieve the implications of what is happening to their own industry.
So let me get this straight…..
- If the TV GM and/or news director is responsible for the TV station website, it will fail.
- If the Radio PD, GM or Marketing director is responsible for the Radio website, it will fail.
- If the Newspaper publisher or news editor, is responsible for the Newspaper site, it will fail.
The key take-away from this report: As long as there is a traditional media manager calling the ultimate shots at the local media website, it will most certainly fail.
Solution?
Separate general management, sales, programming, editorial……separate everything. Build a business that can, and should attack the mothership. Not following this path of action will allow the pure-plays like Google and Facebook to continue it’s infringement, into what once was the wholly owned domain of mainstream media.
Click here to read the Borrell executive summary of Disruptive Technology and Local Media.
Categories: Online Video · Traditional media
Crunch time for Radio
August 6, 2007 · 2 Comments
Some great stuff to watch/hear. Jacobs Media does a real nice job of covering .
Click below to listen to Mark Ramsey interview Mike Agovino about Radio’s challenge with Web.
Also, if you missed it, you gotta watch the video of Gordon Borrell speaking to Radio folks at last year’s Jacobs Summit. Priceless.
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from “Jacoblog” ……
In Mark Ramsay’s Hear 2.0 blog, Mike Agovino has a very important quote:
“If we’re not making more money OFF the air than we are ON the air 10 years from now, we’re in trouble.”
Mike’s being generous with his timeline. Juxtapose his prediction with the announcement that Viacom is upping its revenue goals to over $500 million for this year. Clearly, “old media” feel the pressure to leverage more dollars from their digital activities.
Paul and I did one of those New York City “four-meetings-in-one-day” trips earlier in the year. We visited everthing from a magazine publisher to a cable network, and even an online game producer. While these are all different businesses, the message was the same – it’s critical for traditional media players to look to their online assets for revenue growth.
Of course, in order to accomplish these goals, the digital product has to be in-line with consumers’ tastes. It also has to be worth visiting. This is the struggle that radio companies are enduring on a daily basis: where to sink the dollars moving forward. Given the costs of HD Radio, the digital space, and of course, the core product, there are many needy sources, all crying out for personnel and capital.
While we gear up for Summit 12 – which will tackle PPM, marketing, and technology among other things – consider taking a stroll back to last year’s Summit in Dallas via our online video streaming. I believe the companion panels headed up by Gordon Borrell and Jason Calacanis are still must-see sessions. Each says a lot about where we are and where we need to be.
Categories: Traditional media
