Monthly Archives: August 2007

Loners?

August 31, 2007
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Loners?

One of the more interesting findings from the Arbitron/Jacobs "Bedroom Study" was the realization that video gamers aren’t just kids sitting in their basements by themselves.  Like TV viewing, gaming is becoming a social activity.  A recent Advertising Age article points out that marketers are beginning to figure this out. Whether it’s Wii parties or "Guitar Hero" fests, gamers enjoy hanging out and competing with each other.  And as we’ve pointed out in past advisories and blogs, radio should be at the center of this activity.  The "Guitar Hero"...

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Radio Schmadio

August 30, 2007
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Radio Schmadio

Many of you probably saw the story recently about how a new MediaVest report no longer groups "radio" as a discrete medium.  Instead, it’s now a part of a larger category known as "audio."  Included under this new umbrella label are satellite radio, online radio, mobile content, iPods, mp3 players, and even television. The good news for radio, according to the report, is that AM/FM radio still is a favorite audio-based medium for four in ten consumers, and that there continues to be wide gender appeal.  As TNS Media...

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Doc Of Rock

August 29, 2007
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Doc Of Rock

With apologies to Doug Podell, it is gratifying to see that Brian May will finally be awarded his doctorate in astrophysics – 30 years after he formed Queen.  We’ve all heard the cliché about radio or Rock N’ Roll, "It’s not rocket science."  Seeing that May’s thesis is entitled, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," maybe we’ll have to do some rethinking. When in London a few weeks back, we saw the Queen show, "We Will Rock You," an entertaining couple of hours of Queen hits built around...

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A Cautionary Tale Chapter 2

August 28, 2007
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A Cautionary Tale Chapter 2

Paul Jacobs offers a follow up to his piece earlier this month about marketing mistakes: A while back I wrote a posting about how Diet Coke’s market share has fallen and pointed out several lessons that broadcasters could learn from their experience.  Here’s another example from outside of our business that points out the cost of poor decisions. Unilever has announced they were putting their laundry detergent business up for sale (remember Wisk?).  This is noteworthy because a few decades ago, Unilever was locked in a pitched battle against...

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Say What?

August 27, 2007
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Say What?

This must be "Bite The Hand That Feeds You Month."  Recently, the musicFirst coalition used that inane "study" by a university professor in Texas to make the claim that radio airplay hurts record sales.  Then, Cox’s Bob Neil was attacked for claiming that many Oldies artists’ careers were made by radio airplay.  And if that wasn’t enough, Deep Purple front man Ian Gillan now insists that Classic Rock radio stations are a "death sentence" for older bands because they just play vintage material rather than new music. He has...

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Get It “Write”

August 24, 2007
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Get It “Write”

Jacobs Media’s Tim Davis points to some great resources for doing "write" by your Web audience: Now that everyone’s firmly focused on Internet revenue, and specifically, station websites, I wanted to give you some of my perspective.  As we know, radio station Web sites are often a work in progress, and redesigns are ongoing. We have conducted a number of "usability studies" over the past few years, so when a new Poynter Institute Eye Track study was released – or at least a few bite-size chunks – it caught...

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Get It "Write"

August 24, 2007
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Get It "Write"

Jacobs Media’s Tim Davis points to some great resources for doing "write" by your Web audience: Now that everyone’s firmly focused on Internet revenue, and specifically, station websites, I wanted to give you some of my perspective.  As we know, radio station Web sites are often a work in progress, and redesigns are ongoing. We have conducted a number of "usability studies" over the past few years, so when a new Poynter Institute Eye Track study was released – or at least a few bite-size chunks – it caught...

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Head-To-Head

August 23, 2007
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Head-To-Head

Investors Business Daily recently set up a comparative analysis between satellite and HD radio in a recent web article.  While subjective, it sheds light on the dilemmas that each of these new technologies faces moving forward. Satellite received big points for its content, but the reviewers noted that in and around the New York metro area (where the test occurred), there is some drop out where line-of-sight is difficult to come by. For HD Radio, the author notes that the sound quality is very solid, and of course, the...

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Stop Calling Them Listeners

August 22, 2007
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Stop Calling Them Listeners

In one of those recent marketing/media posts, there was an interesting essay imploring tech professionals to stop calling people "users" (which has been the official/unofficial jargon for many years) and start thinking about them as "consumers."  Even though the latter is a rather generic term, the idea of "users" seems to connote a special, narrow group of people.  Yet, these days, the stats show that almost 80% of the American population is on a computer. In radio, we have always referred to our audience as "listeners." And we’ve made...

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What are they afraid of?

August 21, 2007
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What are they afraid of?

Jacobs Media’s Dave Beasing chimes in on GOP candidates missing a huge opportunity to campaign like it’s the 21st Century. According to the Washington Post, the Republican version of The CNN-YouTube Debates may have to be postponed from the original September 17th date until sometime later.  There are plenty of home video questions being submitted, but there may not be any candidates to answer them.  Seems several – including two of the frontrunners for the nomination, Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney – still haven’t consented to appear, as of...

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