Aside from the tragedy itself, one of the most interesting aspects of the ensuing investigation revolved around how video and pictures broke the case open.  In fact, law enforcement agencies made their way through 10 terabytes of data from consumer cell phones, retail store cameras, and other video sources in order to better understand what happened and who did it.

And from a sharing standpoint, social media becomes more powerful when there are pictures and visuals within the content.  An ROI Research study from last year shows that people most enjoy posts that contain photos.  Videos will rapidly rise up the list, too, as more and more people use their smartphone as cameras and camcorders.

We know that the Holy Grail of social media for radio is when our audience loves our content so much that they share it with their communities.  As we learned in Techsurvey9, more and more people are frequently sharing things socially, opening up the doors to radio brands that seize the opportunity.  The beauty of our research is that it clearly identifies who these “serial sharers” are and how to reach them.

But this process requires a deeper understanding of the consumer mindset and how they use their smartphones in everyday life.  We provided owners of iPhones, Android handsets, and BlackBerry devices the opportunity to tell us how they use their smartphones most often.  The results are telling.

While just about every smartphone function shows greater usage year to year, it is the sharing of pictures and video that has shown some of the most impressive increases:

And wouldn’t you know it – “frequent sharers” are considerably more likely to take and pass along pictures and video, as are those with an Apple or Android phone.

So it lines up really nicely – more viral sharing takes place when consumers utilize pictures and video.  And because so many great radio brands have a solid, loyal audience, focusing on-air, promotion and marketing activity that is visual just makes sense.

Yet, it is simply not a common topic of conversation in programing and promotions meetings.  Thinking about the notion that everyone has a camera (or camcorder) should change the way that stations approach concerts, events, and other local activities where people gather.

And because the essence of radio is about people – DJs, personalities, and their audiences – the potential for broadcasters to do so much more in this space is an opportunity waiting to happen.  It’s something that satellite radio and pure-plays just aren’t going to be able to mobilize.  And for both programming and sales, putting the audience to work at events and promotions just makes so much sense.

It all comes down to rethinking the audience.  They are no longer passive players waiting to hear what we’re going to do next.  They are active, social, and engaged.  Shine the spotlight on them, provide them something worth sharing, be open to their content, and give them a seat at the table.

It’s time to start thinking visual.

You don’t know about Rodriguez?

If you didn’t see Searching For Sugarman, you missed something special – an Oscar-winning documentary film about a Detroit born musician who tried and failed to make his mark back in the early ‘70s.  After two disappointing albums, his career of writing and performing powerful songs about life and protest essentially came  to an end.

Except in South Africa where with a little luck and a lot of serendipity, he became a star in the ’70s, inspiring people of that country to rise up and really question their country, their politics, and their apartheid society.  His song, “I Wonder,” became an anthem for introspection, realization, and protest.  Sadly for Rodriguez, he had no idea he was selling hundreds of thousands of albums across the globe as he worked as a laborer in Southwest Detroit having thrown in the towel on his music career.

>EMAIL RECIPIENTS: CLICK HERE TO WATCH “I WONDER” VIDEO<

So rent the film.  And perhaps you’ll have a chance to see the enigmatic Rodriguez on an upcoming tour over the next year or so.  His voice isn’t what it was, but there is something even deeper and more authentic in his recent performances as “an overnight sensation.”

But the radio industry’s failure to discover the album Cold Fact four decades ago made me wonder just how many great stars we miss.  As I watched the film, I racked my brain to recall if I’d ever heard of Rodriguez during that time.  I wasn’t working in radio yet, but was deep into the music of that era.  I just cannot remember any inkling that I’d ever heard him on WABX, the progressive rock station of that time.

So for radio programmers, this movie may have an even deeper impact, because it’s a reminder of the ones we missed, the ones we overlooked, and the ones that got away.

Back in my PD days, I actually kept two lists in my top right hand drawer – the songs I didn’t play that went on to become hits and those I took a a chance on that never made it.  Programmers in that era had more control over what went out over the airwaves, but that didn’t make the job any easier.  Picking songs and artists the audience would embrace, while taking enough chances on new bands to make it interesting, is an art.  Judging the public taste is always precarious and very hit and miss.

In the case of Rodriguez, a listen to his only two albums is a trip back to another time and place when musicians from Dylan to the Beatles to Cat Stevens to Simon & Garfunkel did more than entertain.  Rodriguez should have been on that team, or at least a few seats down the bench.  To my ears, the music holds up well.  And a mark of any great concert (or Broadway production) is whether you walk out of the show with at least a couple of those songs in your head.  Rodriguez more than passed that test last weekend.

Amazingly, he’s not bitter – or doesn’t seem to be.  Rodriguez is enjoying his new-found success, jokes with the audience, and offers some sage and wizened advice in between songs.  And decades of obscurity never eradicated his rock star sensibilities.  He belongs on stage.  Better put, he’s always belonged on stage.

So why didn’t this guy make it the first time around?  And how many artists are in the same boat as Rodriguez, flailing away in the shadows, selling a few CDs on the streets and in small clubs, but failing to crack through and rise to their potential?

I wonder.

Photo: Detroit Free Press. To read Free Press writer Brian McCollum’s review of the Rodriguez Masonic show, click here.

For Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, there’s a realization that in web circles, her brand is graying – rapidly.  While Yahoo was a hot, exciting search brand that we all remember from our early days on the “worldwide web,” today it is struggling for relevance, especially among younger Internet users.

As The New York Times notes, Yahoo has systematically missed the boat on social and mobile, and with those omissions, so goes teens.  The acquisition of Tumblr provides a path to social media, and an avenue to the Gen Z mindset.

Now segue over to radio, where teens continue to be systematically ignored because they essentially aren’t even players in the 18-34 or 18-49 year-old sales sweepstakes.

Yet, as we learned in Techsurvey9, they provide the digital breadcrumbs that reveal to marketers what we’ll all be doing in just a few years.  If you have a teenager in your home – or you’ve raised teens within the past decade or two – you know exactly what I’m talking about.

From social to mobile to texting to gaming, yesterday’s teenagers provided great teachings – if we chose to listen to them.  And when radio loses generations of listeners, its relevance in the world of media options is going to be called into question.

There’s a lot to be said for Gen Z.  While they only represented 4% of the overall sample in TS9, these 3,000+ respondents spoke volumes about the power of mobile, social, and relationships.  As Marissa Mayer knows only too well, there are many reasons why teens are a key conduit to moving brands forward – about 1.1 billion reasons.

One interesting morsel for you is Snapchat, a social network you may not have heard of.  With essentially our entire sample, this new platform barely made a ripple.

But among our Gen Z respondents, Snapchat is emerging as a fast-growing platform that is worth watching and understanding.  It allows users to take and share photos that disintegrate in just a few seconds after they’re viewed by the recipient.  I’ll leave Snapchat photo content to your imagination.

Now if you’re thinking, “Why would I ever want to do that?” remember that you probably said the same thing about Facebook.  Or perhaps you questioned why anyone would want to retrieve email on their phones.  Or at one time you thought that texting was stupid because people could just pick up the phone if they wanted to talk to you.

If you want to know what you’ll be doing in a couple of years or so, study teens.  Because if you don’t do the research and take the time to listen and learn from Gen Z, you lose powerful insights into what may be right around the corner – your corner.

Assuming, of course, that you really want to see what’s next.

Not to be outdone, I heard from a reader across the pond who told me about UKRD Group Ltd., named by The Sunday Times as one of the 100 Best Companies to work for.  Except they’ve been listed as #1 for three consecutive years.  This honor comes from employee reviews, making it all that more impressive.

So I wondered how so-called best-practices might differ in the UK, and reached out to UKRD’s CEO William Rogers for some insight.  Perhaps not surprisingly, these so-called “best practices” are universal.  It’s about being intensely local, people-focused, fair – and also profitable.   Here’s Rogers’ “take” on how UKRD has pulled this off:

“As a radio group we have unapologetically driven our business in the opposite direction to the main bulk of the UK sector. No networking, locally focused brands, local management authority and autonomy, real and meaningful team engagement and a values-based culture which percolates through every element of what we do from recruitment through to community and advertiser engagement.

UKRD not only outperforms the sector but has transformed itself from a loss making group five to six years ago, with a troubled portfolio, into a group now making profits, paying healthy dividends to its shareholders and growing its workforce on the back of rising audiences and improved commercial success.

This is all, without question, on the back of a fully engaged, trusted and energised team of people who are encouraged to challenge, initiate, innovate and ‘try new stuff’ within their markets as well as have fun whilst doing so. Our values drive our approach from every level of the company and rest upon six words: open, honest, fair, fun, professional and unconventional.

Do we get it right all the time? Of course not. But our success speaks volumes for the way in which our own teams see us, as this is a research driven result and not a self-composed narrative which judges then rate. This is our own team saying this about their own company.

People are the single most important asset any business has and if they feel that they have a stake, can make a difference and have a grander ‘noble cause’ – ours is to change peoples’ lives – then over the medium to long term, they will transform any business into a place great people want to be. Quality improves, engagement goes up and educated risk results in more innovation.”

I’m sure that many of you reading Rogers’ quotes are nodding your heads because it’s so simple.  And yet, so few companies truly operate in this spirit.

As we have discussed in this space this year, there is a “hole in the market” for companies that operate differently from what has become the radio norm.  As we see, hear, and feel palpable anger and frustration from radio employees, the opportunity to get it right grows with each passing quarter.  There are a lot of great people out there who have the yearn to work for an organization like URKD – or your company, if you operate it with this type of spirit and style.

Congrats to UKRD Group, Ltd. and here’s to learning a few lessons from our friends in the United Kingdom.

It was an off quarter for Saga, and while Ed talked about specific issues facing Saga, he went out of his way to praise television.

In fact, he said TV is “kick a__.”

According to Ed, they’re simply doing better in revenue generation, the buying and selling of stations, and confidence.  That last attribute is something that is often lacking on the radio side when 1% growth is equated to winning the Super Bowl.  It’s easy to blame politics, the loss of personalities, the acquisition of new stations, or
anything else that’s within sight for radio’s failure to amp-up revenue and grow its value.

But maybe it’s as simple as content excitement.  Or swagger.

I recently had dinner with a group of radio executives and after we were done discussing that day’s events, a 45 minute conversation ensued about…television.  NPR’s On The Media hosts Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield call this phenomenon about the quality of TV programming “The Golden Age of Content.”  Based on this mealtime discussion, they’re right on the money.

The conversation revolved around what programs we were all watching, and the series we are addicted to.  And whether Homeland has “lived up to the hype.”  Whether Mad Men has lost it this season.  Why no one at the table is really into Breaking Bad.   Whether Netflix is really onto something with House of Cards.  And why more people aren’t watching the incredible Justified series on FX.

And on it went…for 45 minutes.

From Good Wife to 24 to House of Cards to Game of Thrones, the conversation enthusiastically moved from show to show, series to series.  And everyone at the table was engaged, enthusiastic, and well informed by what they’ve been watching on TV over the past several years.

Conversely, we weren’t talking about Nash-FM, low power FMs, or anybody’s collective contesting.   Truth be told, it is radio’s personalities that elicit water cooler talk, but so much of what radio programs and creates musically is well below radar and rarely compels or enchants.

Now some might say that I’m mixing apples and oranges here – that it’s unfair to compare content between two very different media industries.  Or that you can’t A:B a TV series with a radio station’s music format.  But content is content, compellingness is our goal, and the ability to create habit-forming, conversation starting programming is what it’s all about.

If radio is to grow its revenue and its value, it needs to expand its footprint.

It needs to become a part of the conversation.

It needs to be brought up at the dinner table by consumers and radio executives alike.

It needs to engage, delight, and be remarkable.

Radio’s future has less to do with the economic winds, political advertising cycles, and Obamacare.

It has everything to do with innovation, invention, personality development, new formats, and risk.

That’s a big reason why television has weathered the storm, has survived the tsunami of gadgets, second screens, and DVRs.

It has great content that people care about.

That’s what it means to kick a__.

For all those request line calls that blinked away and went unanswered, for those letters and emails that waited for a response, and for brush-offs that occurred at station events by egotistical DJs, the chickens are coming home to roost.  On Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networks where consumers are demanding respect, attention, and acknowledgment, there’s now a price to be paid for ignoring engaged listeners.

You’ve probably seen and felt it – consumers have a new sense of empowerment.  They know they can go elsewhere for everything – personality, music, and entertainment.  If they don’t like a move a brand makes, they can get very vocal about it.

They don’t have to choose between just NBC, CBS, and ABC.  Nor do they have to pick from your market’s Country, AC, Top 40, Rock, and News stations.  There are alternatives, and consumers have learned how to find and use them.

Today’s radio stations need to rethink the ways in which they interface with the people who carry meters and diaries, as well as those who walk into local auto showrooms, restaurants, and hardware stores.

As we learned in yesterday’s post, most people don’t even expect a reply when they interact with their favorite station on Facebook or Twitter.  Yet, about a third expect a response within a day.

Among both of these groups, radio can do much better.

This is the time to surprise and delight radio listeners in ways that only few stations have made it a policy to do so.  An attitude where every person counts and where the individual matters is radio’s challenge and necessary mindset shift.

Here’s the good news: When you think about radio’s new competition, social media interaction is typically absent or irrelevant.  You don’t really connect with Pandora or Sirius/XM in a social way.  On the one, there are no people, and on the other, their social media presence is often worse than what most radio stations provide.

Social media was made for a personality-based, local medium like radio.  For all of those who continue to claim that “radio was the original social medium,” I ask you why it’s now so hard for stations to be truly social with its listeners?

I have sat in meetings where Lori Lewis has implored stations to institute a policy that incorporates this ”one listener at a time” philosophy.  This means asking a question and actually staying “in the room” to engage and respond with consumers who answer it.  Or providing explanations to questions that come in via social channels.  Or adding a comment to a listener’s post.  Or at worst, responding with a simple “like” – even if that means clicking 20 of them in a row.

But for too many stations, everyone’s too busy to respond or there are too many van hits or remotes to cover – events that often attract handfuls of indifferent people.  Yet on social media sites and pages, there are infinite numbers of listeners, all of whom have their own networks, tribes, and communities.  They are worth your time and attention.

If radio is looking for a scalable way to connect with today’s listeners, look no further than your Facebook or Twitter account.  The opportunity to serve, enchant, inform, and impress is there 24/7 – not just in emergencies or crises – but every day.

To be truly effective in this space, social media channels at the station level require a “captain” – someone who’s in charge and responsible for the messaging and how and when it is delivered.

When upwards of 80% of your audience are on social channels from Facebook to Twitter to Pinterest, the opportunities and challenges to have a smart, engaged presence there becomes paramount.

In an age when marketing dollars are at a premium or nonexistent, the chance to be able to connect with audiences in a casual, open forum is something radio has never had before.  Stations need more than Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The need for a strategy in this space is becoming as important as the content that’s coming through the transmitter.  In a world that is becoming more personal and more about the average person, radio has the opportunity to step up and connect.

Every person counts.  And if you still think that interfacing with individual listeners is a waste of your time, ask your friendly Arbitron rep about the impact that just a single meter or diary holder can have.

Your brand needs a policy of social response and validation.  Now we have empirical data for radio’s most loyal listeners that says so.

Acknowledge them.

One of the beauties of our Techsurveys is that they allow you to ask questions you just don’t have time for during the course of researching and managing your brand.

That’s where Techsurvey9 comes into play – especially when it comes to critical areas from mobile to social – where getting it right has become so much more important in just the past couple years.

The paradox with social is that it’s deceiving.  Because it’s free, many think it’s easy.  I’m channeling Lori Lewis a lot in this post, but so much of what she’s been preaching about (OK, cajoling and begging, too) have been born out in Techsurvey9.

We first isolated respondents who actively engage on social media platforms with their preferred stations, and we asked them how soon after they click “like,” post a comment, or tweet a station or a personality do they expect a response of some kind?

The sad reality is that the majority of these frequent and occasional “social engagers” with radio have come to expect nothing – no response, nada, zilch.

Now we know the basic mindset that social media users have when they engage – because we all use social media ourselves.  When you post something or engage with a friend, you feel better when you’re acknowledged.  We all know the feeling we get when a post or a tweet elicits “likes,” comments, retweets, and “favorited” tweets.

We feel validated.

It gets even better when we hear back from a celebrity, a personality, and/or a major brand.  It tells us that we matter, that we had an impact, and that we’ve been heard – especially on a preferred platform where we’re comfortable.

So when we see so many radio fans – and that’s a large part of the sample makeup of our Techsurveys – expect absolutely nothing from stations, it is sad.

Perhaps this is an expectation that has been subtly nurtured and reinforced by years of unanswered phones, busy signals, and simply being treated poorly or ignored by radio stations.  In a multitude of ways, radio acts out in the same manner on social media sites as it historically has over the phones and in other interactions with well-meaning fans.

But despite all this, about a third say that within a day, their expectation is some type of response from their favorite station.

And so what does this say about the social interactivity performance of most stations?  Are they actively acknowledging fans on their favorite social sites or do they think this doesn’t really matter?

Devotees of some of radio’s biggest formats are the most likely to want to hear back from their favorite stations within a day: Country, CHR, AC, and Sports Radio fans lead the pack.  By the way, our Generation Y respondents – or Millennials – are more apt to want to be acknowledged the same day.  Same with Canadians, and maybe this says a little something about some of the true differences between their audiences and our listeners here in the States.

This is a key finding in this year’s Techsurvey9 because it speaks to some of the inherent strategic and tactical mistakes that many stations continue to make socially.

That’s why we conduct research – to learn, to strategize, and to see around corners.  For programmers, marketers, and sales managers, it the statistical radar we need to make better decisions.

Our Techsurvey9 format webinars are scheduled over the next few weeks.  To learn even more about how your format’s listeners are changing – and how you can adapt with them – sign up for the webinar(s) that are most near and dear to you here.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at why acknowledgment and social media interaction are often so challenging for radio teams, and how to solve these problems at your brand.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Another Steve – Steve Case former head of AOL – sees the world of business as either attackers or defenders.  In his mind, it is essential for companies – especially smaller entrepreneurial businesses – to think proactively and innovatively:

“…I realized the world of business really separates into these two groups.  The attackers are the entrepreneurs who are disrupting the status quo, trying to change the world, take the hill, anything is possible, and have nothing to lose in most cases.  They’re driven by passion and the idea and intensity.  Large organizations — and it’s true of Fortune 500s and it’s also true of governments and other large organizations — are defenders.  These guys aren’t trying to pursue the art of the possible, how to maximize opportunity.  They actually are trying to minimize the downside, and hedge risk.  They’re trying to de-risk situations.  Entrepreneurs can’t even think this way.  It’s not even a concept they understand.”

Enter John Fullam, Greater Media Philadelphia’s market manager.  For him, it coalesced with a piece on 60 Minutes featuring IDEO’s David Kelley.  If you watch just the first few minutes of the piece, you’ll get a better sense for what the goal of Fullam’s innovation initiative was all about.  Kelley is the guy who worked closely with Steve Jobs back in the day when the Apple that we all know first came together.

>Email Recipients: Click here to watch 60 Minutes/David Kelley Interview<

It’s about “design thinking” – working as teams to create bigger, better, and more meaningful innovations.  Small and nimble groups made up of  people with different backgrounds who work together to brainstorm ideas.  That’s what IDEO does, and Fullam attempted to replicate this structure within a radio cluster.

It worked.  I was fortunate enough to be on hand as the teams representing WMMR, WMGK, BEN-FM, and The Fanatic rolled out their three best innovative ideas.  And my question was whether this IDEO process using small, creative Ninja-like teams could actually translate to radio.

Guess what – it does.

There’s as much creativity inside radio stations as there is within any company.  And teams were encouraged to reach outside the building for help if they felt it would be additive to the process.

The goal?  Come up with three NEW innovative ideas per brand that drive engagement, ratings, and/or revenue.

To incentivize the brand teams, Fullam offered cash prizes, but the winner receives a trip on the company plane to have lunch with CEO Peter Smyth.

While I’m sure these incentives were helpful, I saw a competitive spirit from each team that went beyond prizes.  They worked hard to come up with strong, clever, and breakthrough ideas; and they each used solid presentational tools to convey them to the judges.

And these weren’t pie in the sky concepts.  Each brand was required to actually implement one idea during the first quarter of this year, so there were results to be measured along the way, too.

This exercise tells me that radio can do this – that there’s more brain power inside stations than many companies think, especially those that take the top-down approach where employee contributions are minimized, staffers aren’t allowed to attend conferences, and there’s virtually no personal growth.   This initiative was not only a breath of fresh air for yours truly, but also was an indicator that many of the problems facing the industry can be tackled from the bottom up.

Smaller companies have advantages, and Greater Media Philly’s innovation initiative is proof positive that it can work.  You may also remember that the cluster was also honored for being one of the top workplaces in town.

Coincidence?  I think not.

“Americans Fed Up With Bad Ads”

That’s the hook from a recent “Research Brief” from the Center for Media Research.  The study, conducted by InsightsOne with Harris Interactive, finds that 87% of Americans 18+are fed up with the number of irrelevant ads they’re exposed to before they start to ignore a company.

Apparently, annoying ads are everywhere.  But the biggest culprits are on TV (60%), followed by websites and email/sidebar ads (both above 50%).

Somehow, radio managed to avoid this nasty ranker.

Not surprisingly, men get more pissed off by bad ads, motivating them to boycott companies and even stop using products.

As Waqar Hasan, the CEO of InsightsOne, points out, “…consumers have a real limit on what they’re willing to put up with…”

Apparently so.

While radio may have dodged a bullet by its lack of inclusion in the survey, we all know that commercials are an issue for listeners.  In Techsurvey9, we asked the 13% of respondents who told us they’ve been listening to less AM/FM why that is.  Once we get beyond lifestyle changes (I moved, I changed jobs, etc.), it comes down to dissatisfaction with radio programming and the perception there are too many commercials on the radio.  All the other “digital drains” like iPods and Pandora are smaller factors in listening erosion.

And it’s not just broadcast radio’s problem.  When we asked Pandora listeners about that the main barriers to listening to the popular pure-play, guess what rose to the top?  Commercials.

Last year, Pandora users cited a lack of DJs and the inability to skip more songs.  This year, the #1 culprit is advertising.  Particularly at a service that was built on commercial-free benefits, the addition of commercials is especially noticeable – and irksome:

There’s a story here, and perhaps it is the universal truth that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – or free music.  Eventually, even the most enjoyable Internet services have to find a way to make money.  (Will one of next year’s negatives turn out to be Pandora limiting how much you can listen each week?)

Since commercials are what usually ends up being the price of most entertainment, the need for more creative, effective, and yes, entertaining commercials has never been higher.

Not just for listeners, but for the companies that pay for them.

A couple weeks back, her topic was A.J. Clemente, that infamous North Dakota TV anchorman who unwittingly dropped a line of profanity during his first moments on the air.  Of course he was fired, and then made the rounds of every talk and entertainment show imaginable.  I’m sure that many radio stations had him on, too.

Lori’s “Merge” singled out Clemente’s appearance on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.  They brought in legendary anchorman Tom Brokaw who offered Clemente some heartfelt advice.  Lori pointed out that Joe and Mika’s sympathetic coverage of this event was a departure from the way these things are usually handled by the media.  In this case, they treated Clemente with respect rather than ridicule.

While I enjoyed Lori’s point of view on this story, I thought about it differently.  To me, the brilliant aspect of how Morning Joe covered it speaks to treatment.

 >EMAIL RECIPIENTS: CLICK HERE TO WATCH MORNING JOE VIDEO<

Too often when stories break or an artist walks into the studio or a comedian’s in town, talent reverts to the tried and true questions and conventional angles.  Problem is, on a big story that everyone’s covering, it all ends up sounding pretty much the same.

But a little thought, brainstorming, and planning can turn a cliché moment into a memorable one – just as Morning Joe’s producer did that day.  Too often, shows are so busy high-fiving each other over a “great get” that they fail to take the extra steps to make that moment special, memorable, and yes, remarkable.

Getting Clemente on Morning Joe was cool.  Having him sit on the set with grizzled veteran Tom Brokaw and get advice and counsel from the master was magic.  It’s what elevated this appearance from more of the same to something special.  The interview became emotional, genuine, and very real – even for an instant celebrity who was already making the rounds.

Treatment is what separates the good shows from the great ones.

It’s what gives us something to talk about when we get to work.

It’s what creates unforgettable moments.

It’s what builds personality brands.

And it’s what gets ratings.