Social Media: The Emperor Has No Clothes

[Holland Cooke]

Meanwhile, the only medium older than radio...

"About one-fifth of the people are against everything all of the time."
RFK

Meanwhile, the only medium older than radio, fighting-for-its-life, confronts-the-inevitable:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffber...walls-around-all-its-papers-except-usa-today/

 

[wadio]

Re: Meanwhile, the only medium older than radio...

"About one-fifth of the people are against everything all of the time."
RFK

Meanwhile, the only medium older than radio, fighting-for-its-life, confronts-the-inevitable:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffber...walls-around-all-its-papers-except-usa-today/

So, what are you trying to say ... that Gannett should Tweet the content of all it's newspapers?

The above link has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand which is ... one more time ... all together now ... drum roll please .......... SOCIAL MEDIA!!

 

[Holland Cooke]

NOT NOW!

<< the topic at hand is ... one more time ... all together now ... drum roll please .......... SOCIAL MEDIA!! >>

DON'T I KNOW THAT!
Skip back to post #1 on page #1, where this thread began by needling me.
(Elvis voice: "Thanka very much...")

But NOT NOW!
Turner Classic Movies is showing "Bridge on the River Kwai," in letterbox.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com
@HollandCooke
3/15

 

[wadio]

HC, in all seriousness, worshiping at the feet of the "Gods of All Things Digital" might be a good attention-getter in drive-by forum postings and TV appearances. Cheer leading for this kind of shotgun approach to new media makes for good blogging but it isn't necessarily smart business.

So far I haven't seen anyone articulate a good case for embracing social media vs. maintaining an up-to-the-minute website and a stream that isn't a mess of bad timing, repetitive, poorly delivered commercials, wildly mismatched audio levels, etc. If the programming is compelling, people will find it on AM, FM, Internet, smart phone, or wherever. In turn, THEY will use social media to promote it! That's how it's supposed to work, and people sense the difference between unsolicited enthusisam and some suit trying to sell his product.

If your argument is that stations should mindlessly grab at every digital straw on the premise that some of it will be beneficial, that's fine ... just say so. Personally, as I've said before, I think they would be smarter to put the time and effort into building and maintaining a single, compelling website over which they have complete control.

 

[Holland Cooke]

I wish there was a kinder way to say this.

So, what are you trying to say ... that Gannett should Tweet the content of all it's newspapers?

ANY publication would be insane NOT to.
Snack-size Tweets link to paragraph-size content pages that tease-past-a-paywall.
Do you NOT see this unfolding-before-our-eyes?

Gannett has been on this for a while. I worked on-the-other-side-of-the-building there, when I was VP of a USA Today new media unit 1991-1994. But, even back then, before anyone heard the words "dot com," the company's "News2000" initiative was already confronting the-future-that's-now. And, now, EVERY newspaper is fighting-for-its-life...and scrambling to forge a Wall Street Journal or NY Times-type paywall model. In the last year, megatrends-y'all-mock-here forced The Seattle Post-Intelligencer into Internet-only mode.

I haven't seen anyone articulate a good case for embracing social media

Tip: Reduce credit card balances immediately.

ANYONE, working ANYWHERE in media, THAT oblivious, is toast.

Nothing personal.
I wish there was a kinder way to say this.

In meetings-you're-not-invited-to, MORE cuts are being planned, including at radio's biggest station owner, the company that recently removed "radio" from its name. And when THOSE cuts are accomplished, some-of-the-people-who-accomplished-them will then THEMSELVES get canned, as stations continue to go-robotic, and single-market General Managers face extinction.

Shoot the messenger all you want.
DON'T believe me.
Just puh-LEEEEZ be careful incurring new debt.

 

[Holland Cooke]

"This just in..."

OF COURSE, radio-info.com is our "first read" among the trade press each morning.

Then, I note these two headlines from another trade y'all probably have waiting in your Email:
"Digital and social are most sought-after job skills."
"Clear Channel forms national imaging team."

 

[umfan]

I'm shocked this thread has gone on for 15 pages. Nearly any broadcaster has a social media presence. Some degree of interaction is basically mandatory. The real debate is then is to what degree it should be utilized. Ideally to a point where it enhances the product that you're offering while not detracting from it, but while easy to write that those boundries are often hard to define.

There is no pat answer. The next generation of success stories will be written by those that master the interaction between traditional media and social media.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The real debate is then is to what degree it should be utilized. Ideally to a point where it enhances the product that you're offering while not detracting from it, but while easy to write that those boundries are often hard to define.

There is no pat answer. The next generation of success stories will be written by those that master the interaction between traditional media and social media.

The language you have used telegraphs your biases very clearly. And I share with you the dream, the hope that a TRADITIONAL media (radio) could maybe interact with success with the upstart interloper (my words) called Socail Media.

Over in other geographies of Radio-Info, Valerie Geller has an interesting column in the News Talk Edge section.

http://www.radio-info.com/programming/newstalksports/dont-look-back-from-radio-to-internet?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=2a3ce52efe-News_Talk_Edge_02_23_2011&utm_medium=email

The cold, harsh reality really hammered on me as I read Valerie's column. How many months will it be before ON-LINE is "The Traditional Media" and how many months or years will it be before radio is commonly thought of as "that quaint little pastime of the previous generation"

Today we ask: "Does your radio station have a website?" I think I am about reconciled to the view that sometime soon the OCCASIONAL question will be: "Does your website have a radio station?

 

[Holland Cooke]

How SMART stations are selling?

Today we ask: "Does your radio station have a website?" I think I am about reconciled to the view that sometime soon the OCCASIONAL question will be: "Does your website have a radio station?

YAH-mon.
Sadly, radio's biggest owners are pushing-things-in-that-direction.
What's "...an iHeart Radio station?"

That-aside: How SMART stations are selling?
Just-what-you-said, above.

Exercise that's borne fruit at client stations:
1. Set up interns to go through the Yellow Pages ("The Dead Sea Scrolls" of advertising).
2. Build a database of local direct retailers who display domain names prominently in ads.
3. Delete those whose web sites suck, target those DOING e-commerce of some sort.
Or with engaging pitch apps, i.e., upload-your-living-room-photo-and-see-how-this-carpet-will-look.
4. Call on THEM, because their pain is low server stats.
5. Here's the pitch: "GREAT web site. Who knows it's there?"
Whip-out research available from arbitron.com or edisonresearch.com.
It demonstrates that NO -- repeat, NO -- other companion medium drives Internet traffic better than radio.
(Assuming GREAT copy.)
6. Tell 'em: If we haven't dramatically impacted your server stats in a month, don't give us another dimd.

Or, in the words of a-guy-I-work-for who runs a-group-of-stations: "Every radio station has a web site. How many web sites have a radio station?"

HC
www.HollandCooke.com

 

[landtuna]

Personally, the only value for me, the listener, is to tap into the station's online stream. Other than that the web sites have, for me, no value nor do I ever visit them. Social media has even less since it is largely the same as the talk radio callers I despise so much.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Most of 'em suck.

Personally, the only value for me, the listener, is to tap into the station's online stream. Other than that the web sites have, for me, no value nor do I ever visit them.

Most of 'em suck.
They're brochures-about-the-station.
If the station's owned by a big company that crammed-down a template, everything looks crammed-in.
They look the same today as they looked yesterday.

Step-in-the-right-direction: Several years ago, the NBC TV station group re-did their web sites, moving-in-the-direction-of making-it-a-site-about-the-city by-the-station, i.e., http://nbcchicago.com, http://nbcwashington.com, http://nbcphiladelphia.com, et al. As you'll see they're still, sort of, station-looking web sites...but much-less sites-about-a-station than most station web sites.

 

[landtuna]

Re: Most of 'em suck.

Most of 'em suck.

Most are nothing more than adverts with a link to the on-air staff and maybe a playlist.

 

[wadio]

Most of 'em suck.
They're brochures-about-the-station.
If the station's owned by a big company that crammed-down a template, everything looks crammed-in.
They look the same today as they looked yesterday.

Bingo! Well, that's not impossible to fix. But NO! Instead let's hop onto Facebook's freakin' template and see if we can attract attention there by looking just like everybody else in the world. Yeah, THAT'S it!

 

[Holland Cooke]

RE most radio station web sites suck

Well, that's not impossible to fix.

Based on what-stations-seem-capable-of, it appears you're wrong.

And even-THE-best-station-site-possible is still just...a web site by a radio station.

Facebook is closing-on its BILLIONTH member.
Be there or be invisible, since few local Facebook members will ever visit a radio station web site.

 

[wadio]

Facebook is closing-on its BILLIONTH member.

Great, so we can blend in and look just like a billion other walls. We're one in a billion! ;D

You're right ... radio is doomed.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Great, so we can blend in and look just like a billion other walls.

You think companies-that-own-lots-of-stations are worried about web sites looking-alike?

They don't seem to care that their robo-stations all-sound-alike...and sound oblivious when Whitney Houston dies (http://getonthenet.com/12March-Page1.pdf).

Fish where the fish swim, which comparing-station-site-server-stats-to local Facebook use is pretty simple math...even for your consultant, the only senior in Freshman Math.

radio is doomed.

If so, it was suicide, and EERILY predicted by one of my clients...in 1995.
Tell me THIS doesn't give you chills:
http://getonthenet.com/GleiserFritts.pdf

 

[Tom Wells]

I'll always look down on internet delivered content if only because the content is not delivered
by the technology so perfected for the seamless delivery of live-audio media.
ASCII packets on a dial up 300 baud modem to a bulletin board system is fine for what it is and I've been
OK with that since the early 80's. This board is nothing more than on outgrowth of that and I'm
quite accepting of this "media" as packaged, updated content or even in a live chat box.
But there is something else going on I see others trying to describe parts of.

My perspective is from technolgy and engineerring first.
It's not that packets cannot be audio or any kind of data. They surely can.
But they can never be truly live or delivered themselves just by one point starting the process.

When somebody eventually gets my corner of the city fiber-optic-d, I may be able to enjoy delivery of
desired data by internet in a manner that reasonably approximates reception by radio.
Until then, anything much past Web 1.0 is too busy for DSL service.
It takes as long for the radar data to load on the local paper's weather page as it does to wait for the
weather to come around on the 8's on WBBM on the radio, and I don't have to stare at the radio to get the weather.
Etc, etc.

Right now, for me, the internet experience is quite hobbled by gaps and pauses regardless of delivery method.
Keeping 24/7 equipment running 24/7 is what I do, so I already have a certain mindset on "dead air" that
causes me to disprespect a service that cannot provide seamless delivery.

This is purely from a technical/engineering standpoint, where I tend to use whatever works best and what I can
afford and afford to keep running, regardless of the age of the technology.
I'm also real keen on the notion of shared wide area spectrum usage (AM mediumwave) being a perpetually
"always on" information highway.
I also have lots of respect for things humans didn't make and can't break.

Hence my transmitter has tubes but the playout computer runs Breakaway Broadcast audio.
I put up podcasts of airchecks, but don't do "shows" as podcasts and then put those on the air.
That's just so.....unradio to me.
The radioness IS the RF thing and the content thing as one together that makes it appealing to me.
The choice between paying for data delivery via slow eventual bulk versus flying "for free" is no contest
for me at this time.

The business of radio certainly doesn't need rf at all, and should abandon all means of rf propogation.
The business of radio is to sell ear exposure to advertisers, and not to make RF.
We must burn the village to save it.
Carry on.

 

[wadio]

Great, so we can blend in and look just like a billion other walls.

You think companies-that-own-lots-of-stations are worried about web sites looking-alike?

They don't seem to care that their robo-stations all-sound-alike...and sound oblivious when Whitney Houston dies (http://getonthenet.com/12March-Page1.pdf).

Fish where the fish swim, which comparing-station-site-server-stats-to local Facebook use is pretty simple math...even for your consultant, the only senior in Freshman Math.

radio is doomed.

If so, it was suicide, and EERILY predicted by one of my clients...in 1995.
Tell me THIS doesn't give you chills:
http://getonthenet.com/GleiserFritts.pdf

Holland, you're an interesting guy! On one hand you seem to be saying that social media is the Holy Grail that will be radio's salvation. On the other hand you're implying that radio has one foot in the grave and that it's only a matter of time before the bean counters destroy it, regardless of programming, social media or anything else. Elvis has left the building, so to speak. I'm not divining a clear message here. ???

I'll give you one example of how radio has succeeded pre-social-media. Rush Limbaugh went on the air in a major market with an untested message in an untested time period -- conservative political talk in "housewife time." He didn't "reach out" to the listeners individually, taking relatively few phone calls but relying on his oratorical ability and lots of bits and parodies. The show went national and grew and grew and grew to over 600 stations.

Now, give me an example of that kind of success in the social media era. OK, it's early, but I don't see how commiserating with listeners one by one is going to achieve it. When the next big radio trend comes along (if it's not too late) it will be because someone takes a chance on something unique and compelling, they put it on the radio, people find it, tell their friends and it "goes viral." The concept of going viral isn't owned by YouTube, nor does YouTube "reach out" to it's viewers. (Does YouTube have a Facebook page?)

"Build It and They Will Come!"
-Field of Dreams

PS: Please don't feel I'm trying to goad you -- I find this subject really interesting because I'm so diametrically opposed to social media (for the reasons articulated by the original poster.) I think you're trying to change my mind but, from your posts, I'm nor sure you're convinced that social media will affect of the radio industry very much, one way or the other.

 

[Holland Cooke]

Holland, you're an interesting guy!

I'LL TAKE IT!
Consultants -- like dentists, divorce lawyers, and IRS auditors -- get called alotta things.
We've all chosen our career paths.
(That occurred to me as my doctor snapped-on that rubber glove.)
And, in my case, a couple previous career paths are jobs-now-facing-extinction: local disc jockey, single-station PD.

On one hand you seem to be saying that social media is the Holy Grail that will be radio's salvation...

"Seem," eh?
Without poring-over these-16-pages (so far), I'm certain I've never suggested that, here or elsewhere.
But that's the difference between "imply" and "infer."
Only a speaker can imply, only a listener can infer.
(www.SurvivalSpeech.com)

On the other hand you're implying that radio has one foot in the grave and that it's only a matter of time before the bean counters destroy it, regardless of programming, social media or anything else. Elvis has left the building, so to speak.

I'm not implying that either.
I'M STATING IT.
And that's sure not just my opinion, or an opinion at all.
If you haven't yet, DO read (and note the date of) this document:
http://getonthenet.com/GleiserFritts.pdf

AT THE SAME TIME, this moment in radio history is yet-another-case-of finding-opportunity-in-chaos.
(Like the pool guys in South Florida, making a fortune, working for banks, tending to pools at foreclosed properties.)

In radio's case, the widening gulf between the Haves and Have-nots spells REAL opportunity for the diligent Haves.

Many "Mom & Pop" owners -- many-of-whom had no intention of selling -- took-the-money-and-skee-daddled when consolidators offered to obscenely-over-pay for their stations. But not ALL Mom & Pops.

And a next-gen' crop of Mom & Pops is already emerging.
"De-consolidation," as FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put it, when I interviewed him.
(Scroll-down @ http://hollandcookemedia.wordpress.com/4jimbo/)

Often, these new indie owners:
a) are local business people, townies; not out-of-town publicly-traded corporations;
b) have "real money," not untenable debt, that's been sitting-on-the-sidelines...waiting; and
c) figure that NOW is close-enough-to-the-bottom to buy. Often they cite the Hubbard/Bonneville deal as a benchmark.

With The Big Companies burning-the-furniture, automating robo-stations, doing ZERO promotion, etc., more-nimble competitors find it easy to ROI diligence like promotion, research, adding-NEW-local on-air/online content, and, yes, a savvy consultant to-whom executing such stuff is not experimentation.

The only certainty the marketplace is showing us in these changing times is that business-as-usual guarantees attrition.

I think you're trying to change my mind.

NO.
That's something I only do for paying customers.
WHY do we presume that the goal of conversation is to convince someone-else?
Why can't we just...converse?

As I told a reporter who interviewed me yesterday: "I'm frustrating to-talk-politics with, because I may be the only person in Talk Radio who thinks his opinion DOESN'T matter. I'm a professional eavesdropper, a lurker, usually too busy listening to talk."

As for talking-shop here, there's real value in the conversation, if you can tune-out the static inevitable in the consequence-free environment that comes with anonymity.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com
@HollandCooke
3/15

 

[wrsg915fm]

Our noncom station, WRSG, is on Facebook, but no website yet. We would like our proposed site to link to our program underwriters, as well as content providers for 'on-demand' radio. We desperately need to get the message out about Facebook so folks can 'sound off' about what we provide and when we provide it, among other things. Other than playing a pre-recorded message about liking us on Facebook, plus articles in our local weekly wipe, what can we do? Facebook has been excellent at promoting radiothons for our school's band and choir. How do we maximize its potential?