It Always Starts With Content

Digital marketing agency Avenue A/Razorfish takes a short but very good look at 4 digital media trends and as always it starts with CONTENT. Take a peek.

2 Things...

First...I want to share with you an interview I watched last night on Charlie Rose. It's with Peter Chernin, COO of News Corp. He is a very bright person and has some very engaging and interesting things to say. He talks about the value of content and how important it is to have the creative people in important positions within a company. He goes on to say if the creative is right the money portion of the business will ultimately be good. He talks about the most expensive studio green-lighted movie of all time--Titanic and how it cost double by the time they were done. He talks about the TV shows the Simpsons and 24. He talks about technology platforms and distribution channels including My Space and hulu.com. Let me boil it down to this: beware of the accountants and content content content. Highly recommended.

Now, #2: In past posts in which I was recommending a piece of video I would have gone to Red Lasso and edited a clip of what I thought was the most important part of the piece. Then I would have simply linked to the entire piece for those who were interested and wanted more. As of a couple of weeks ago Red Lasso ceased their video clipping service for the blogs and the web. Oddly enough it was News Corp that was one of the companies behind the C&D. The disagreement comes down to who's going to control content--the originators or an aggregator like Red Lasso. This is a tricky situation. According to Red Lasso they are trying to come to some agreement with the providers so they can resume their service. Time will tell.

EZ Widget-making

Got good content on your website? Share it. Have your listeners include your station widget on their My Space, Twitter, or Facebook page. It's easy. I set up an account at Widgetbox, designed my widget, and the software produced the code in short order. There also a ton of already-created widgets that can be customized and placed on your website.



Here's a promotion idea:

Have a listener widget page on your site. Creativity counts. The more creative the better. Maybe encourage listeners to share their favorite songs, favorite club, new movie, or summer activity. Whatever. Put your listeners front and center and make them a part of your community. You could even run a contest to see who can create the best and most creative widget.

Do you already do this? Share it with me and I will feature your website here on this blog. Got a better idea? I will be glad to give you props in this space too.

Topic A?

It's not oil prices.
It's not the presidential election
It's not the Midwest floods

Nope....

From TV Newser:

Friday Jun 20, 2008

Pregnancy Pact: The Friday Focus Group

If the cable news channels want to know what stories test well, they need look no further than the mediabistro lunch table. The talk among the 20-something, mostly female group today was not flooding, or congressional testimony or the presidential race. On this Friday, it was the Mass pregnancy pact. As lunch wound down, the group stopped by the world HQ of TVNewser (two desks and three monitors) and watched with interest as FNC and MSNBC simultaneously reported the news (CNN aired a segment about 10 minutes later.) It's one of those stories that generates discussion, even debate as it did today at mediabistro.com. And on a day like today, it's a story that fuels the cable news networks too.

In my opinion this is not just a talk radio and cable news topic. Any content driven personality could have taken this story (unbelievable really) and had a segment or two worth of compelling content. As TVNEWER pointed out it was top of mind with 20somethings at the lunch table.

What are your listeners talking about?

In case you missed it read the full story here.

Do We Have A Winner?

By now you've read the headlines:

Exciting new plan to SAVE radio... HD Radio on the move... Radio 2020... Radio Heard Here...

All "designed" to rejuvenate radio's images, perceptions, and realities. Sorry folks, no winners here.

Here's the scorecard as I see it.

Logo = 0
New Content = 0
HD Radio = 0

What's with me? I'm being so negative. It's not my normal style. I'm a positive "glass half full" person.

It's hard to be to remain positive when one sees his beloved industry make questionable turn after questionable turn. I feel kinda sick aside from the miserable spring cold that's permeated my head.

I wish I could be positive about that retro (read: horrible) logo released last week. Aside from the weak visual what does it communicate? The intended recipients already know that radio exists; they are choosing to use it less or not at all. How does this address their issues?
It's been said in this space before. It's a content issue, not a hearing issue. We need to be developing new content that REALLY entices under 30's to switch off their self directed choices and discover unique and one of a kind entertainment coming out of that old fashioned radio.

It's not likely to come in the form of music. The hits are the hits are the hits. iTunes proves that every day when one simply takes a look at the top downloads. It looks remarkably similar to the top 40 charts.

There's always been a segment of the music audience that has broader and more eclectic tastes than the general public and the on-line world demonstrates little change from that. Remember the days of the original Alternative format? Once a song "crossed over" and became popular the Alt audience shunned that song and had already moved on to the next hip thing. That is not to say there aren't genres and specific styles of music bubbling under the mainstream that could become the next big thing.

The one of a kind entertainment I am talking about is the kind that is conceived, written, and performed by humans. Content that is interactive, fun, funny, challenging, enticing, titillating, controversial, endearing, informative, helpful, caring, tells a story, unique and different. Insert your own descriptors and now you have a "support radio" campaign that might strike a chord with its intended listeners.

Ho Hum....here goes HD Radio again...

Aside from the Alliances own self-serving research every other study says the same thing--stillborn.

After this amount of time the chance of HD Radio catching fire with consumers seems pretty dim. There's no shortage of folks saying the same thing.

I said it when IBOC was being readied for deployment and I want to say it again now. Using the dash-1, 2, and 3 system was a huge mistake. HDTV did it for their over the air digital signals and aside from a few geeks (myself included) NO ONE knows those additional channels are even there (cable and satellite do not carry them and few watch over the air). HD Radio should have been called DM for digital modulation--AM, FM, DM. Everyone would have understood it--instantly. Even though the signals would use the same spectrum space as they currently use, they should have received their own "band" and been assigned their own channel number. Pick a range...it doesn't matter.

Would this have spelled success for HD Radio? I don't know. But I believe it would have reduced some of the confusion and allowed the digital channels to have unique identities and not be tied to the main signal. Even if this system had been adopted there was no guarantee of success.

All of the same programming issues would remain. Especially that pesky one that music machines are not the future. Real content created by humans (radio pros and listeners alike) is the future.

Disintermediation

From Webster's Dictionary:

"the elimination of an intermediary in a transaction between two parties"

Will our radio stations hold their value with listeners? Or will we, "the middlemen of content delivery," be left out in the cold barren tundra? The answer to these questions has already begun to be answered.

Our content has always been the vehicle to deliver listeners to our commercials. Without valuable content our commercials will be without value.

I remember many a conversation that went something like this:

"Listeners understand that we are giving them free music or information and they also understand that they need to put up with the commercials because that's how we continue to give them what they want for free".

Our model of spots for songs, or spots for news/information can continue to work as long as our content continues to entice listeners to our space. [more on commercials-length, content, volume, and interactivity in a later post] If listeners give us the privilege of choosing what they will hear we better not let them down or they can very easily go back to listening to what they want when they want.

For more check out this video-it illustrates exactly what took place to get us where we are today.

Meet the RadioCube

From gizmodo.com

"It's simple—and it all depends on how you stand the dice-like gizmo. The Radiocube's creator, Cambridge Consultants, reckons that we only listen to four stations at a time. So, four of its six sides correspond to the stations, the fifth is a speaker, and the sixth the equivalent of an Off
button".

Is your web stream compelling enough to be a preset on this internet radio?

Read the entire story here.