No, Thank YOU

At the end of this week’s E.O.M. column in the Small Market Radio Newsletter, Bob Doll thanks me for allowing him access to these pages. We all know that the reality is just the opposite: we owe Bob a great debt for the wisdom he shares with us periodically in this periodical.

I use Bob as a litmus test to determine whether a person is a real radio person, or a phony poser. Not that this business has any of those. (Again, I’m kidding.) Real radio people look past Bob’s facade of a slightly befuddled, long-winded older gentleman and see the real guy—a steel-trap-minded walking Wikipedia of radio facts and lore.

I was first introduced to Bob at some convention somewhere—I’m sure Bob remembers exactly—by another of radio’s true originals, Mr. Drop Turkeys from a Plane himself, the one, the only Steve Bellinger. I may not remember where or when, but I remember vividly Mr. B’s words of introduction: “If you’re smart, you’ll listen to every word this man says.” Perhaps because any relationship would look easy compared to the one I had with Steve, I heeded his words about Bob, and I’ve never regretted it.

Are We There Yet?

Last week in our newsletter we ran an article from Time magazine extolling the virtues of Internet radio and, along the way, sounding the death knell for local radio. 

It is an article of true faith with me that radio is infinitely resilient. While I do not know what our responses will be to future assaults, our history is rife with examples of clever responses to past threats. Whether movies, television, 8-track tapes, CB radio, 3D movies, Walkmans, iPods, home entertainment systems, cable radio, and now the Internet, radio has proved time and time again its ability to reinvent itself.

There are those who bemoan our rather paltry share of total advertising revenue—always hovering in the 6-7% range, more or less. I agree that given the power of our medium to produce results, that number should be much higher. On the other hand, in the face of the ongoing, accelerating fragmentation of media, maintaining a relatively stable market share is no mean feat.

Besides, what does a percentage of total advertising revenues really do for us, anyway? The wonderful thing about small market radio is that the macro metrics are meaningless. We get up every day and go out and sell radio advertising and serve our customers. It’s really a very simple process.

“But wait,” you may argue, “I have a publicly-traded company and the health of our industry matters very much to our lenders, thank you very much.”

I’m not so sure. From what I’m hearing, the people who are still—or once again—loaning us money have a much better, albeit hard-won, understanding of how our business works.

As I said up front, the solutions to our current challenges are as yet out of sight; but without doubt the challenges will be met—probably with another radical rethinking of our business model, it must be said, during which not all will survive—and radio will continue to hold its own.

Oh, and one more thing: for the first time in the history of our medium, we have the opportunity to become what threatens us. Yes, the Internet is more pervasive and fundamental … but it is also a level playing field that veritably invites our participation. Individually and collectively, we ignore that invitation at our peril.

Waiting for the Future

I can’t wait for my vacation this year. The missus and I will use our jet-packs to hop over to the airport, where our personal helicopter will whisk us to the space center, where we’ll board the Southwest shuttle (weightless peanuts!) to the Moon. (The Dark Side Hilton has an incredible fly/stay deal right now on travelpriceobitz.com.)

Oh, wait. No can do … even though these are all things that were to have been commonplace by now, according to predictions made 15 or 20 years ago.

Well, never mind. I’ll spend my vacation listening to my voice-activated Internet radio in my car, and my Internet TV all over the house.

Oh, wait. Those prognostications, made five or ten years ago, have yet to occur as well.

It seems that we’re always five years away, but it takes us 15-20 years to get there—assuming the idea was a good and practical one in the first place. (Jet packs? Personal choppers? Not so much.)

So, in the tradition of deferred predictive gratification, allow me to look ahead …

• Radio and television stations will abandon their over-the-air signals by 2050. All television will be received via cable or the Internet; radio, mostly the Internet.
  
• Satellite radio, seeing itself as a content provider rather than a delivery medium, will morph into another set of Internet-delivered, advertiser-supported channels, with no more chance of succeeding than you or I have.
  
• HD Radio, which has no content in and of itself, will become irrelevant.

If you’ve gone to the trouble and expense to install HD, don’t despair. When the vinyl (well, glass, originally) record was invented, nobody foresaw the CD. In fact, our modern age is probably the first in which we know beyond doubt that every advance will very soon become outmoded. (Have you bought a computer lately?) Most of the time, we even have a pretty good idea of what will outmode it.

So, HD operators—and indeed all of us, who are surrounded by technology with soon-to-expire freshness dates—be of good cheer: the future always takes longer to get here than we think it will.

A Letter to the Speaker

Dear Ms. Pelosi,

I note with no little chagrin that the perpetual pander-fest that is Congress has once again spoken through you when you—you choir-preacher you—told the RIAA that “the rights of performers are not forgotten.”

Your confusion is understandable. Many people brighter and more knowledgeable than you, even, believe “the rights of performers” and “the concerns of the record industry” are one and the same.

I DID WHAT?

True, there are many performers—overwhelmingly the successful ones, the fortunate albeit forgetful few who have been able to redeem their souls from the company store—who side with their foreign-owned masters in advocating the Performance Rights Act. But any performer, however successful, who is truly concerned for the music industry as opposed to the record industry, will tell you what a colossally bad idea it is to penalize the one medium above all others that sells records and builds careers.

Madam Speaker, may I refer you to a list of quotes—published in the 3/25/10 issue of The Small Market Radio Newsletter—from dozens of performers who have consistently, publically stood by radio and who are eternally grateful to our medium. A recurring theme in those quotes is, “I owe my career to radio.” (Have your people contact my people and we’ll give them access to our back issues online.)

That said, Nancy—may I call you Nancy? I respect your office and your service, but I don’t call any of my other employees by their last names—you have every right to your opinion, however politically calculated. Of course, if you and your brethren truly represented your constituents, you might think twice about backing an outfit that sued hapless mothers and children for hundreds of thousands of dollars—each!—for what they packed on their iPods.

But please recognize that you are in the minority—even within your own party. Healthy majorities in both the House and Senate have cosponsored the Radio Freedom Act, which prohibits the imposition of a tax for performance on local radio. Yes, it’s a non-binding resolution, but how can a legislator cosponsor our measure and then vote Yes on its polar opposite?

Oh, wait, this is Congress we’re taking about here—members of which have selective memories, to put it benignly. (I vaguely recall that one of your colleagues, the senior senator from Arizona, ran for high office as a “maverick.” But either he suffered a senior senator moment or my memory is playing tricks, because John—he works for me, too—recently denied that he’d ever said he was a maverick. Rewriting history would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?, if we had an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. Come to think of it, maybe we do.)

But I digress. The real purpose of this epistle is to remind you—you universal health care champion you—that there is nothing healthy about the Performance Rights Act. In fact, it could be downright toxic to the very performers whose rights you’ve vowed to uphold.

No, that’s not a threat. Unlike other industries you’ve tried to reign in recently, radio is too busy serving our communities to cook up vengeful, retaliatory strategies to prove the law of unintended consequences. But there is a reality of which you—you limousine-riding, perk-enjoying you—are unaware: in the world of non-deficit spending, if a new cost is imposed, another cost must be cut. And fiscally-conservative operators—yes, Nancy, they do exist, albeit far from the Beltway—will act on the realization that we can neutralize a tax on playing music simply by not playing music.

Are you ready for Rush 2.0?

If nothing else will, that should scare you straight.

The Missing Discourse

As I was pondering my reaction to a sales piece by Jim (Taz) Taszarek in this week’s newsletter—wherein he posits that rate integrity is a Bad Thing and rate flexibility is a Good Thing—I recalled the many conversations I’ve had over the years with our industry leaders about things like rate integrity, finding new salespeople, selling against cable—you know, all the stuff that preoccupies us and probably always will.

Then I got to thinking, what would such a conversation with Gordon Smith be like? With Jeff Haley?

Putting aside for a moment the unlikely scenario that any of us would be kicking back with Mr. Smith or Mr. Haley and BS-ing about radio, if such a conversation were to occur, I suspect there would be a lot of blank stares coming back our way.

And suddenly I felt very lonely.

Up or Down

It seems like we’ve been at this performance tax legislation business for about 100 years. I am probably the most politically naive person on the planet, but I can’t help but wondering whether we shouldn’t just vote on the darn thing already.

As I write this, late at night, past deadline, much too late to call my friend Dennis Wharton at the NAB for a reality check, I’m guessing that bringing the matter to a vote right now might not be in our best interests—even though our own Radio Freedom Act has such strong support.

And that’s what I don’t understand: How can a legislator who has signed on to our (admittedly non-binding) resolution turn around and vote for the very measure that our resolution opposes?

Talk about naive. . .

Bust a Rate

I suspect that Taz’s point of view on the subject of rate integrity—he’s not a fan, urging flexibility—will touch a nerve in many small market and local-direct broadcasters, as it has in me.

We all live in small communities; regardless of the population of our trading area, there is a handful of people with whom we deal—and they all talk to each other. If in my local market I were to adopt the freewheeling approach advocated by Taz in his column, I don’t know if I would go out of business, but my standing in the community would certainly go down the drain.

Sure, there were times when I would accept a lowball rate from an ad agency or large regional advertiser, and I’m not proud of the fact that I did so knowing it was unlikely that word would get back to my local florist or banker.

I’ve always operated on the philosophy that if one day all our rates and all our deals with individual advertisers appeared in the local paper, I could justify each and every one of them based on frequency, class of service, and so on.

So, I have to wonder whether observing rate integrity in our local markets is a product of hubris or practicality?

Remind me to ask Gordon or Jeff the next time we’re kicking back.