www.movin925.fm and Seattle radio websites

[TheFrameGuy]

I'm not in radio, I am in Web development and marketing. So why:

1) isn't a new website ready when a format is switched? I've seen this before and it took Movin 92.5 three and a half months to launch www.movin925.fm.

2) do radio station websites look so tacky with the "90s" designs? That www.movin925.fm website design is terrible. At least www.965jackfm.com and www.kwjz.com are professional looking websites that lack the tackiness. Pretty much the rest of the Seattle radio websites are tacky design and too busy.

Take a look at the copyright at the bottom of the page at www.movin925.fm, ...2005. ...Uuuuuuh, the station didn't open until May 1, 2006. I hope they didn't pay much for that website.

 

[OttoM]

I'm not in radio, I am in Web development and marketing. So why:

1) isn't a new website ready when a format is switched? I've seen this before and it took Movin 92.5 three and a half months to launch www.movin925.fm.

2) do radio station websites look so tacky with the "90s" designs? That www.movin925.fm website design is terrible. At least www.965jackfm.com and www.kwjz.com are professional looking websites that lack the tackiness. Pretty much the rest of the Seattle radio websites are tacky design and too busy.

Take a look at the copyright at the bottom of the page at www.movin925.fm, ...2005. ...Uuuuuuh, the station didn't open until May 1, 2006. I hope they didn't pay much for that website.

I'll take a stab at these questions.

1. In some cases the format changes are kept secret until the day of the launch. Developing a new website isn't essential to the change, so usually the development begins after the change occurs.

2. Radio is still WAY behind the curve in effectively using the Web to market itself. One good reason is radio's inherent cheapness - not wanting to spend a lot of money on something that doesn't bring in a huge ROI. The failure of the much-ballyhooed LMiV (a JV with Entercom, Emmis, Jefferson-Pilot et. al) also scared lots of stations from investing in good web development.

3. See #2 above. But the copyright date is just a detail - and sometimes those are missed!

Hope that helps.

Rob

 

[jdweaver]

Bottom line with most radio websites - there is no bottom line. They simply are a marketing brochure, but even the most aggressive stations make little or no revenue from their sites - a fact that has long been lamented in the business and never really solved.

Most advertisers count on the stations to bonus their schedule with free web content and banner ads - and few stations have both the coveted web content and the sales moxie to argue.

Good observant point however...thanks for bringing it up.

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

I've been developing radio sites for over ten years now ... and I can summarize it with one statement:

NO ONE PUTS ANY VALUE ON THE SITE THEREFORE THEY WON'T SPEND ANY MONEY.

There are of course a ton of tangents to this ... such as:

a. No value placed on site so no value placed on anyone to staff it. Result is usually someone's job is "fill the promo van tank and update the web site" or "get a story on the air and try to update the web site"

b. No value placed on site so no good tools in place to be innovative or take leadership role. That means resorting to out-of-box solutions ... which also tend to lack in innovation and thinking because those players come at it from software engineer perspective NOT from communications/audience relationship innovation. If a station HAS dedicated talent they are more often that not TECHNICALLY-based and also not strong candidates for creative ideas for online promotion, client involvement ideas and so forth. Until he proved he "got it" .... no one was inviting Gates to the world leadership summits (he actually invited himself and THEN invited the leadership to HIS parties!!!) -- in same way stations tend not to take their "web person" on a call!!

c. No value placed on site so barebones graphic design. Even the graphic designers who get involved tend to rubberstamp --- "put the nav here ... but the header there ..." and result is never any real forward momentum where you learn from the mistakes of the past.

My very curmudgeon take these days is everyone seems so busy and eager to show what they "already know about creating a web presence" that they won't take the time to listen to those who might be able to teach a thing or two. Result is the array of sites you see now.

These comments not only observation about Station management (most responsible for the implementation side) but for the vendors (MediaSpan, RDG, et al) who won't spend any R&D time or $$ to innovate. Each category or company has its own culture that tends to get in the way of attacking the problem and being more innovative.

If anyone has interest in this stuff, I'd love to talk to you more about it. Have many ideas and toys that can be put to work if a station really WANTS to be a player in this arena....!

 

[AQH]

LBB, you gotta give some credit to Infinity here. Mel Karmazin was steadfastly against streaming, and now without him, Infinity streamies are blossming. They're starting to get it and rake in the NTR.

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

LBB, you gotta give some credit to Infinity here. Mel Karmazin was steadfastly against streaming, and now without him, Infinity streamies are blossming. They're starting to get it and rake in the NTR.

Actually I'm willing to give credit to Infinity even BEFORE Mel left. Worked with most of the major chains in various markets on their sites & strategies, and more often than not, Infinity/CBS had hired good people who were given some creative freedom to take a leadership role. The Mel streaming issues were a slight handicap ... but they had good people (LA, HOU especially) who "got it" and could make things happen. STILL, it was only successful in the markets where the top-brass also "got it" and gave these people freedom to implement, experiment, and even SPEND once in awhile!!