Friday, February 13, 2009

Bill Clinton Speaks On Fairness

Politico has the story.

Clinton wants 'more balance' on airwaves

Even though no member of Congress has scheduled hearings on the Fairness Doctrine, it remains on a hot topic on both liberal and conservative shows.

Today, radio host Mario Solis Marich asked former President Bill Clinton if it was time for "some type of enforced media accountability."

"Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side," Clinton said, "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous...."

Clinton said that there needs to be either "more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer countervailing opinions." Clinton added that he didn't support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan's FCC.

In the past week, a couple Democratic Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Tom Harkin, have both spoken favorably about the Fairness Doctrine, or holding hearings on radio accountability.

Good Enough?

Every few weeks it seems there is another survey done by Pew, Arbitron/Radar, and others reporting that some 90% of Americans still use radio. Fair enough.

Use it for what and for how long? I think that 90% number is misleading--by design. That number sounds so big and impressive. Start digging down, start looking at trends and patterns, and really examine usage (and passion) trends for those 30 (even 35 or 40) and under and you might have to stop looking before it becomes too much to take.

We all know it.

Some of us are trying to do something about it, but in many cases our efforts are falling on deaf ears as more and more people continue to be sidelined in our rapidly shrinking industry. It doesn't take a full staff to operate a jukebox and collect quarters.

It's never too late to innovate. It's never to late to bring good ideas to life. It's never to late to engage in appropriate R&D to better understand how to best develop new relationships. Please note I said relationships...not hardware. Hence: why HD Radio has been a MISERABLE FAILURE.

It's never too late to inspire passion. Never.

Radio has had some truly amazing highs, but in many/most cases its simply been "good enough." That is until good enough wasn't good enough anymore. For some radio will always be good enough. There will always be an audience for good enough. I hope we,collectively, can be better than good enough. We have to...our town now has many more games.

Here's a presentation taking a look at 50 youth marketing trends for 2009. Much of what is suggested in this outline can be applied to over the air broadcast radio and its on-line digital stablemates.