Before I begin let me commend Kathy Kiely, President of the Ad Club; Pierre Bouvard, President of Sales and Marketing for Arbitron; Mike Sheehan, CEO of Hill Holiday; Peter Smyth, Chairman and CEO of Greater Media; David Field, President and CEO of Entercom; Julie Kahn, Vice President of Entercom and everyone else involved behind the scenes, in putting together what could have been and should have been a fabulous afternoon.
Here we are (a few hundred people in attendance, including radio reps, management, advertising agencies, and clients alike) at the Ritz-Carlton from 2:30 in the afternoon to 6:00 in the evening listening to the leaders in our industry speak to us about the power, the future and the opportunities available to us in radio. The excitement and anticipation of what lied ahead was truly inspiring.
As Kathy introduced the guest speakers from all over the country, and having them gathered all in one place and at one time was no easy task to accomplish. Beginning with Pierre’s keynote introduction and his speech about PPM and the opportunities that lie ahead in radio-to Mike’s passion for the creativity that radio, like no other media affords us-to Peter Smyth’s excitement and inspiring talk about reinventing ourselves in the radio space with our clients; to David’s Power Point presentation that included the stability of the radio audience across the country as compared to the deterioration in newspaper readership and TV viewership, you had all our hearts pumped up, and our mind’s craving for more.
Unfortunately, that was the beginning of the end. When the next guest speaker, the President and CEO of Clear Channel Radio, John Hogan, gave his perspective the enthusiasm changed. Listening to him talk about the demise of the radio world, the deterioration of the quality of programming, the less than quality sales people in the industry was enough to make me angry!! How dare you, Mr. Hogan, come into our home, of which you are a family member, and totally change the entire sentiment in the room to “shit.” Yes, Mr. Hogan, these are challenging times, not limited to the radio world, but to “ALL” businesses!
This country has been losing jobs to the tune of over 500,000 plus per month! We all know that… we’re living it. With that said, there are opportunities out there for all of us. Those of us who want it will get it. If they are creative and show the value that radio brings to the table, clients will achieve their goals. The days of selling radio are over!! The days of getting our clients to buy into radio is just beginning (read Stop Selling Radio!!) All media must embrace new technology! Radio websites, banners, streaming audio, streaming video, podcasting, email blasts and SMS text messaging must be promoted and integrated into the strategy, the creativity and the execution of our client’s campaign.
I found your perspective on the future of radio, Mr. Hogan, humiliating to my brothers and sisters in the audience. You are a leader in our industry, and with that title comes responsibility to lead our respective “tribes” with ideas for improvement and reinventing ourselves in order to gain market share. I know that’s what the audience was anticipating. I know that’s what I was expecting.
Anyone can be negative these days, it’s the responsibility of our leaders like you, Mr. Hogan, and leaders like myself, to encourage our young people, as well as our seasoned people to grab the bull by its horns. We should be the evangelists and ambassadors of radio and the new products that each of the stations brings to the table.
That’s what our job is Mr. Hogan, with all due respect! You failed us yesterday, MISERABLY. You failed me as the CEO of Neal Advertising, and you failed the entire radio world in the audience who were looking for direction and hope for their future. The landscape for “RADIO DAY 2009” was designed to bring all the radio stations together in a by-partisan fashion. We are all in this together and we will all get through this together. At the end, those standing will be stronger than ever before.
Lastly, there are opportunities out there for radio. The demise and deterioration of newspaper readership and circulation is the potential growth dollars for radio. The automotive category, including Tier 1 and 2 have both cut newspaper and TV expenditure. Don’t you see the potential dollars that are going to be available in that one category alone?? Take the audience, the reach, the frequency and the new products that radio has on the interactive front, and you have an integrated game plan!
On top of which, you can measure the effectiveness of a campaign, CTA, while it is going on!! Your loyal audience is now interacting with your client’s engaging message–how good is that Mr. Hogan?
Respectfully, Mr. Hogan, you owe the entire audience an apology.
With all this said, I just wanted to commend the Ad Club once again and the rest of the radio managers and staff for their perseverance and hard work through these challenging times. My hat is off to each and every one of you!!!
Greeting,
This was a great forum. I needed to find something for my Homework and This site helped me out so much! Thanx alot!!!!
I was not there to hear anyone speak. I was working hard in Portland, Oregon. Getting excited and creating passion in my marketplace for the Power of Radio. There is nothing wrong with the medium. This medium is magnificently positioned to dominate in the years to come. I see it. I know it. I can feel it and I am creating a buzz in Portland. Opportunity for growth is our future.
Three tweaks to the Radio groupthink:
1.) Let go of old organizational and entertainment edifices. They don’t serve the fiscal health of radio in the new consumer-driven market place.
2.) Reinvest, rebuild and reinvent locally – if leaders and investors would stop thinking that profit came from cutting, Radio would find itself well-positioned when to recession breaks.
3.) Radio needs to start playing to “Win” the “Whitepaper/Conference/Webinar” battle. We are losing market share because we have our “own conferences” but we seldom, if ever, are at the events that our customers attend. Advertiser’s and Marketer’s make choices based on what they learn and what is repeated to them as “the” most effective best-in-class solution.
I see mind-blowing opportunity. I see the path. I see money coming out our ears. I invite everyone who leads Radio erase what they “think” is the solution and imagine that they are creating a new solution that reaches many locally and nationally, speaks to individuals, and works like a dream with social, digital and mobile media. There is a lot of opportunity for revenue when you seamlessly combine an emotional/personal mass media with digital relationship/capture long-tail assets. I bet “new” investors and marketer’s would be all over that solution!
In reading over my recent comments, I was startled by own anger. I’ve been a proud broadcaster for 25 years. Over most of those years, I’ve seen radio taken from private ownership to corporate. I actually recall being excited when my first station was purchased by a large company. We all thought we’d have new tools, promotions, new gear and better stations. Jesus, I sound like an old man, I’m only 42. In those days, the Program Director had the final say on what did and did not go on the air and they were bold, relevant assets. It is simply not that way today. In the rush to embrace new technology, the quality of what we broadcast “on air” has suffered. We’ve taken the bricks out of the foundation, yet can’t seem to understand why our structures are weakened by our actions. We don’t even respect our own airstaffs anymore, we tolerate them just as we would an unpleasant liability. The first opportunity to replace them with someone cheaper or even better, a computer program, the happier we are.
I believe that radio’s best days can still be ahead. That’s not blind faith, I really know it can happen. I also believe that we have amazing opportunities online and through wireless devices. That said, I also believe that sales managers create sales, DJ’s create audiences and smart managers know how to balance and exploit both, all the while showing respect to them both. This is our foundation.
John Hogan did not set out to do anything wrong. Perhaps he simply wanted to start an intervention and begin a new dialog on the state of the industry. I do know that saying only the things that make us feel good about ourselves and ignoring what is clearly right under our noses does us no good. Just because we all work hard does not mean we are making fundamental mistakes. Can anyone deny that radio is in a crisis? We seek short term solutions to long term problems. The most common response to problems is to fire more people, take more bricks from the foundation. Since this has become our business model, it will be the same attitude we carry into every product we produce.
Until we realize that “good enough” is not good enough radio may not die, but it won’t live either.
Read the comments here from those who understand that content is always going to be the key. The best digital delivery system in the universe won’t be around for long if all it delivers is crap. A web presence that exists only to create new things to sell won’t work if what we’re selling has no meaning.
We spend millions of dollars each year to train our sales forces, they “ain’t” the problem. The answer to radio’s problems won’t be solved by better General Sales Managers, Market Managers, Local Sales Managers and Account Executives. It will be solved by an unprecedented and never ending effort to create a product the potential audience wants. Then and only then, do we give our GMS’s and CFO’s something worth selling and our clients something worth buying into.
Beyond that, AE’s have to stop using tactics meant to CONVINCE clients they care and understand their unique needs in order to make the sale and start REALLY caring and understanding.
This industry has faced many challenges over the years and I think for myself it has made us look at new and more creative ways of doing business for our clients. I was very excited for Radio Day this year to hear from the CEO’s their perspective on where the industry is and what they feel lies ahead. As I sat in that room I was disgusted and saddened by the remarks made by John Hogan….how can you discredit the hard work of some great employees and say that with no remorse in a public forum….I guess that is his form of leadership. We have not just started intergrating…we have been doing that for a number of years. We have been putting the radio industry to the test for our client for …expecting creative ideas and the local talent we use to deliver them. We look at the parternship we create between the sales force at the stations and the agency…this is what benefits our clients. We know this is a tough economy and times are difficult but with a negative leader I see nothing but negative results coming his way. We all have a difficult road ahead and need to take a leap of faith to survive.
Unfortunately Jim, there is no out-of-the-box solution. The radio industry business model is dying, not dead just yet but dying never the less. What we are seeing presently is the incredibly fast revenue decline that will be followed by incredibly fast user decline (sorry David Fields) and radio’s last breath. Remember, sticks and licenses have no value in the digital world. Current users of radio will continue to peel off due to unlimited choice of distribution platforms, technology and content. By the way, content “is” king and it doesn’t have to be “local” to chew down time spent with local radio.
Newspaper and TV websites already have the local content, news, weather, entertainment and hundreds of thousands of unique monthly users to prove my position. Compared to what, 10, 15, 30 thousand max users of radio websites, spread out over an entire metro? Tell me where the value is to the local advertiser? But here is what everyone seems to miss. Say Entercom creates the ultimate web driven user concept. It delivers 400,000 users per month. Was it tied to their local radio brand? Does it even have to be? If it doesn’t then why just employ in their existing radio markets? My point is this, if the very best happened, then in fact, Entercom would no longer be in the radio business!
Hogan and CC didn’t destroy the radio industry and no one is bring it back (Hogan’s observation)
Radio is a “buggy whip”
Content is King
What’s funny is that everyone seems to want someone to tell them it’s okay to continue to slash your airstaff, or hire less than stellar ones who know nothing about local markets. It’s okay for a station to have the same morning show as 75 other stations and call it local and original. It’s okay to have 2 hourly airstaff members and 25 sales reps who are trained to “make the sale, no matter what”. It’s okay to continue to stip away everything that made radio viable in the first place. The “ride the horse till it’s dead” perspective had ruled this medium far too long. Radio people don’t kill radio. Organizations that exist soley to lower cost, put on a cheap product and pretend people love it and sell anything a client will buy…that’s what is killing radio. Only when, and it, radio is given back it’s ability to connect with an audience, to be a pesonal friend to listeners, only then can it ever hope to regain what has been taken away from it.
Hey folks, here’s some out of the box thinking. What will help you draw traffic to your super cool website? What will lead you, faster than anything, to revenue success beyond your wildest dreams? What will save radio? Good radio stations! Run by good radio programmers and talented staff. In short, a radio station that answers to it’s listeners and it’s community, not its Market Manager and CFO.
Anyone willing to try that? If so, let me know and we’ll get started.
Or, just keep convincing yourselves that you are just one cost cutting move, one air staff reduction, from greatness. Or, keep giving away IPODS as contest prizes. One more thing for those who may be confused about something. The product is the radio station, not the cool sounding imaging and commercials.
Clear Channel, Citadel and the rest of the idiot clone club had no intentions of running radio stations. They had intentions of buying and selling, making big bucks. Now that radio is free falling and need leaders, the guys at the helm are clueless. John Hogan is burnt out, he’s like the car guys and banks who are fearful during this time and afraid they’ll lose their lavish lifestyle.
Radio has fired everybody! and has stopped grooming new talent for it’s future.. Like the newspapers, the Internet is grabbing & holding young listeners. HD the supposed future for radio has been a complete flop, because of the lack of quality programming. John Hogan and his kind created cheapened FM jukebox radio and it’s like listening to your friends ipod with heavy commercial stop sets.
neil – absolutely right on john hogan, whose recent accomplishments include timing massive company debt weeks before the market collapse, pushing a plan of short-duration spots that defies the phrase “theater of the mind,” and firing the first salvo in driving one of the industry’s all-time titans off the air to satellite.
my disagreement with your posting is that you commended peter smyth and david field.
the industry is in freefall, and they gave ra-ra cheerleading speeches. while they’ve both made recent cuts in staff and benefits, they were all peaches and cream. ok, i get it that radio is doing better than newspaper. and home depot is doing better than linens n things. but spare me the statistics comparing radio’s audience to google’s; there are few better examples of the facts not speaking the truth.
both fanned out an array of sexy new technologies – excuse me, “distrubution points” – for content, half of which are certain to go the route of the 8-track tape. more importantly, not a single one has a compelling ROI story today (i saw one glitzy interactive sales show recently with the only case study boasting a 7-to-1 return on investment. SEVEN to one! 7-to-1 is a failure in my company. times must be good if their advertisers are spending 14% or more of their revenues on advertising. try half that.
i’ve been pitched every flavor from streaming to preroll to banner rotations to content sponsorships, and dabbled with all of them. NONE OF THEM can deliver results the way they’re priced, and not one of them is worth my buying dollar this month, this quarter, or this year, when nobody has an “experimental” ad budget left and every dollar has to perform.
i came to this event because i wanted to know what these radio visionaries saw in the near future of the radio industry. acqusitions of simulcast stations around new england to create ubernetworks? programming changes in anticipation of PPM? changes in commercial loading in consideration of lighter loads? overdelivering for loyal customers?
i was disappointed they did not appear on a panel to face questions from their peers, employees, and customers, and instead only delivered glorified sales pitches and hit the bar during the talent panel – which was lively and entertaining despite the moderator.
so, yes, hogan didn’t cover himself in glory. but neither did field or smyth.
I was there for all the speeches. The keynote speaker, Mike Sheehan, also said that radio needed to innovate, but he was very well prepared and presented his case with humility, humor, and class. Peter Smythe and David Field followed in the same vein. John Hogan, on the other hand, was like a bull in a china shop. He easily could have made the same points without denigrating those who used to work for him. It was simply unbecoming of a leader.
[...] about the speech given by John Hogan, leader of Clear Channel. Here’s a brief quote from that article: I found your perspective on the future of radio, Mr. Hogan, humiliating to my brothers and sisters [...]
Is there a transcript or vid of Hogan’s speech somewhere? I’d like to make up my own mind about what he said within the full context of the speech, rather than depending upon another perspective distilled from an obvious bias against Clear Channel.
As most of the comments here show, there are plenty of people who are more than willing to blame Clear Channel for the industry’s myriad problems. I suspect it’s a lot easier to point fingers at Clear Channel than those of us who resisted new technologies, who viewed websites and streaming as competition to their on-air signal, and who sold airtime by slagging the competitors, rather than selling radio as a unique medium against the other media.
There is a reason that radio is losing reach among the younger generations, and it’s not Clear Channel’s fault.
Radio, as most of us grew up, with ceased to exist when the FCC relaxed their ownership rules. Then the old timers got greedy and sold out and counted “winnings” like a drunk on a Vegas bender. Maybe the biggies will offload their stations and local ownership will return.
I have the pleasure of competing against Mr. Hogan’s Cast of Characters every day. What a treat. We live by a simple saying….”Parry a useful attack and encourage a useless one”. Well, Mr. Hogan leaves us in a quandary. From a selfish operating standpoint we can’t cheer for his team to stay in the game any harder. It is simply not a fair fight. Since the visionless regime took over around 2001 we have taken millions of dollars in market share from them. These same stations, when previously owned by real operators, stood toe-to-toe with our staff. Don’t get me wrong, I do not blame the local employees one bit. Quite the contrary, I have complete sympathy for the lack of vision, direction, encouragement, consistency, resources, etc. with which they are provided. I call many of them “friend” and truly feel sorry for them as their passion for this industry is siphoned from their beings. Many have just foregone the inevitable lobotomy and left the industry. Hence our quandary. You see, Mr. Hogan’s attack is in fact useful. Useful against our own industry. An industry like all others, managing great challenges during ALL times and more so during these times. His attack against great radio needs to be parried by great operators like Bonneville, Emmis, Greater Media, Journal, Lincoln Financial, etc. It is unfortunate that the largest group in our industry is so incompetent that the small need to lead, but so be it. We live by one other mantra in our hallways….”Don’t follow the Village Idiot and if you can’t spot the idiot, you’re it.” Don’t worry Mr. Hogan, we’ve got him in our sights.
Steve,
I agree with you, but why do most folks waste time holding up and/or comparing CC and other companies on some kind of pedestal (good or bad). If radio wants to grow, we should learn this important growth lesson and don’t keep looking back on CC or focusing on them. It’s kind of like programming, find their faults and do a better job.
You sound like a guy who wants to do radio right, let’s just do it, take the revenue away from CC, continue to force their fire sale and
re-innovate the wheel. With today’s new technology, it just can’t be that difficult.
The other lesson that we should all learn is getting back to honest, compassionate, passionate communication. Radio and the new technologies should continue to be community partners, that’s a lesson that we should ALREADY know!
Bruce it didnt happen because it would have been the wrong “forum” to express how we all felt. It was bad enough, I didnt want to make matters worse. Coming from Brooklyn, similar to South Boston, I thought the best way to express my anger and disgust was here, as opposed to the universal language we are both all too familar with!
Neal:
Thanks for your reply. I understand and I respect your point, but frankly, this is a guy who thinks his s*** don’t stink, like an arsonist who torches the house and then tells the inhabitants they shouldn’t be living in such a poorly constructed dwelling. Make things worse, be damned; I’ll bet the entire room would’ve tipped like dominos if someone had stood up and said, “You’ve got a helluva lotta nerve.” The Innocent Bystander has a point: A transcript and/or video of his remarks would be nice, but complaining that someone (yourself) has a bias is a lame defense for a company that has none; if there’s a bias against them, they have only themselves to blame. Clear Channel is Mr. Potter, the evil banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” leaving in its wake radio clusters that are the equivalent of little Pottersvilles. I’d have no problem taking off the gloves after 12 years of their scorched Earth bungling. (I’m from Brooklyn, too. Let me know if you get a second chance to confront the irrational arrogance of Mr. Hogan. I have no bones about telling him what an incompetent disgrace he and his company represents.)
We can all agree the present world economy is causing angst across the board. However, radio’s dwindling expectations began long before October 2008. Most of radio’s decline can be traced to the horrors of consolidation and the unbridled greed that resulted. It would have been more useful to hear Mr. Hogan share his employer’s strategy for the transfer of broadcast properties back to people who know how to operate them profitably without massive layoffs and cookie cutter voicetracked programming.
Amen brother
I’d like to know if anyone challenged Mr. Hogan after he was finished with his remarks –publicly at the forum itself. I would’ve stood out and called him out as a clueless hypocritical purveyor of bovine excrement. Sharing the thoughts with us is nice and its appreciated but this is too antiseptic for it to rattle a robotic parasite like Mr. Hogan. Sharing your thoughts with him may have been more useful and what I would like to have read in this post is that a mutinous crowd called him to tasked as he spoke and metaphorically hoisted him on the yard arm while telling him in the most colorful of South Boston lingo to do the anatomically impossible. Did that happen? Why not?
Has it occured to you, Mr. Hogan, that perhaps your comments are actually true – but only as they regard what you have built/dismantled.
You are out of touch and in the way Mr. Hogan. That’s why your competition is handing you your ass.
Get out of the way and give those precious frequecies to a visionary who understands what it really means when he/she says “more is not less.”
Here is the dream of all Clear Channel employees……that folks at the true corporate home, Bain and Lee in Boston, were in the audience to hear this dour, uninspiring idiot (and the word idiot is probably too kind) and maybe come to the head slapping conclusion that he IS the chicken that came before the egg. Folks mistakenly point to consolidation for radio’s problems. Consolidation is only a bad thing when the consolidator has no vision and no smart leadership. Take a look at who was running Clear Channel Radio in January 2002, the last time this industry had a great year. It wasn’t John Hogan. Take a look at the Senior Management team we had back then…….none of the current people were there. Take a look at the folks running the Top 20 revenue markets. There’s been nearly a 100% turn. John Hogan has presided over the biggest downturn in this company’s history, the biggest brain drain too, and replaced these wonderfully smart people with drones who take his orders and don’t think. CC has earned everything its getting, all the pain, because of the refusal to recognize that the emporer has no clothes. An industry cannot succeed, cannot recover, when the 3000 pound guerilla is doing stupid things……like Less Is More to name one. Note to Bain and Lee, fire this mo^%$# fu#$%#r, and everyone else on his senior staff and see if you can get some smart people back in the door. I would assume that the unwritten rule for success in your little how to manual (available on Amazon What Public Companies can learn from Private Equity) would be get rid of the idiots and start with smart people. All of us in this company go to bed with one dream, we wake up to a bulletin that says “John Hogan has left the building!” And our only thoughts will be, and with the radio industry in mind, “Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead!”
There’s also the proverbial head-in-the-sand Neal. What’s the problem with hearing different perspectives? All the cheer leading in the world won’t change “consumer (user) behavior” and what really controls the destiny of radio broadcasters (just ask the cheer leader Randy Michaels of the Tribune) The nails have been positioned in the analog coffin for some time. Broadcast towers and finite licenses have no value in the digital world. That world is here now, just waiting to be filled in with additional distribution channels, a little more technology and unlimited CONTENT.
Captains Log: June 1, 2014
I get into my car for morning commute. I have previously programmed my (Pandora 4.0) dashboard. I start the car and get a 2 minute traffic update (previously customized to my specific travel route). Next up, 3 minutes of CNN headline news followed by 4 minutes of ESPN national and local sports headlines (yes, ESPN is launching local market digital platform content), followed by 5 minutes of commercial free classic rock – and that’s just my “morning commute mode” …
Might Mr. Hogan actually be the sharpest arrow in the quiver? Wake up
The nails have been poised in the coffin of analog radio for sixty years now. It was saved from that fate by creative men who were willing to do whatever it took to give the medium a unique market position and keep it viable. It cannot be saved by people who have been widely quoted as seeing it as just another advertising medium.
It’s not just Hogan–there’s been a discussion on the engineering board about a comment Dan Mason made that “AM radio is dead, I haven’t seen an AM radio in a hotel room for a year!” What kind of special stoopid must you be to lead a major broadcast group and speak like that, especially when your two 50kw NYC properties, WINS and WCBS, are highly ranked?!? WTF is wrong with these morons?????
How can radio make the necessary paradigm shift with atherosclerosis for leadership. The old corporate line “cut expenses, raise revenue.” is finally coming around to bite the industry in the posterior end. No you can’t “save your way to prosperity!” Seems like Hogan is finally realizing that “less-is-less,” he’s been a leader in the aggressive effort to cut the legs out from underneath this industry . . . now he sits on a soap box profoundly stating this business can’t move forward!
How can radio make the necessary paradigm shift with atherosclerosis for leadership. The old corporate line “cut expenses, raise revenue.” is finally coming around to to bite in the industry in the posterior end. No you can’t “save your way to prosperity!” Seems like Hogan is finally realizing that “less-is-less,” he’s been a leader in the aggressive effort to cut the legs out from underneath this industry . . . now he sits on a soap box profoundly stating this business can’t move forward!
Ken -
You left out Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd – typical dem, however, just like the “American Dream” of obtaining a mortgage on stated income, radio as an industry is on borrowed time.
Clear Channel – a once glorious company – as all current owners – should take initiatives to recall what made them great. Not the big expense accounts – but rather their programming and promotions budgets. No brand can sustain nor grow without marketing – and that – is what we have seen killed across the board.
How ludicrous and hypocritical are we? As we tell our clients this story every day, We do the opposite.
Radio’s future will hopefully soon be in the hands of people who will do two things well; embrace new tech platforms while also, embracing the “old” rules of every brand manager in any business in the country.
Broken products or broken brands cannot be sold successfully by hook or crook.
Fix your product – promte your product – and you will have a chance.
Here’s to all of us!
Radio provides something that those of us who live in marketing crave: promotional velocity.
If your product is great and you tell many about it, you will get sales even in a down economy. Conversely, if your product isn’t the greatest, that same promotional velocity will turn off countless customers. Worse, with the networking effect through both the Internet and face-to-face talk, they tell 2 friends and they tell 2 friends and so on and so on.
This is actually the time to be a creative risktaker and innovator. If the economy is as bad as everybody says it is, then you’ve got nothing to lose. Unfortunately, some of the big Warrior guys have adopted fear as their operating model, and so they fall. That’s okay, the more agile smaller Elf operators can laugh as they make treasure. (And so will their glad-to-pay customers.)
Mr. Bocian:
Your reaction to John Hogan’s remarks are strikingly similar to the response Republicans are giving President Obama’s budget plan – a disingenuous disgust on its magnitude, after eight years of leading this country down the road to ruin.
As an advertising agency CEO – and self proclaimed leader – you should have been voicing concern about the industry quite a few years ago. But you sat silently, like a sheep in the herd allowing radio to self-destruct.
I met with John Hogan and Lisa Dollinger a few years ago, on Clear Channel’s request, to outline problems the industry was facing. At the time it he didn’t agree with any of the evidence presented that Clear Channel was heading down the wrong path… not about programming, its online initiatives, or responsibility to the communities CC served.
It’s payback time. But it also looks like, for John Hogan, it’s wake up time.
Perhaps Peter Smyth, David Field, and the rest of the CEOs who have showed such lack of understanding about a changing media climate should quit trying to BS their way out of this, and start applying new media systems properly. Oh, and admit that they’ve screwed thousands of radio industry veterans out of a living while they were asleep at the wheel.
You also need to reconsider what has happened to radio’s product for both listeners and advertisers, and start waking up too.
Mr. Dardis, thank you for your response to “Mourning Radio”, however your remarks are not well founded. First of all, I pride myself and my company as being early adopters in new technology. We were building websites back in 1993/4. No, Mr. Dardis, we didn’t develop it it with Al Gore!! We were also integrating traditional media with interactive. Basically, we were using the head of a “longtail” to drive traffic to web sites. The tail was the links from traditional media web sites including newspapers sites, to clients sites, and an automotive portal called cablecars.com. The functionality of cablecars.com is the foundation upon which all automotive lead aggregators work today. Being early adopters doesn’t make us better, Mr. Dardis, it just makes us ahead of the curve!
As far as a self proclaimed leader, Mr. Dardis- self proclaim is NO acclaim! In Boston, the 7th largest marketplace in the country, the media outlets here including radio, TV and newspapers have been hearing me talk about the integration of developing their websites to the fullest for years. Often times, I lecture to their respective sales departments to explain how integration of interactive with their traditional media can move the needle for their clients. I have been doing this a little longer then you, since starting your audio graphics business in 1997- but that makes the two of us forerunners.
As a precursor to “rich media”, like yourself, new ideas are NOT as you said, …”quickly embraced.” Sometimes, it is like trying to turn the Titanic. But it takes people who believe and “walk the talk” to deliver the message for others to follow. That is just one of the key ingredients to the composition of a leader. You need to sometimes take that leap of faith, just as long as that leap isn’t off a building! Like President Obama has said, “YES WE CAN” , and I for one truly believe in this country, the people, and the “will” we all have to survive and make things better for our families.
As far as Peter Smyth, David Field and the rest of the CEOs you called out-the point is they do get it, Mr. Dardis- and that was exactly my point! Some people are innovators in this world and are willing to try new things, others are sometimes motivated by fear. In either case, people are changing- and media companies are in fact “reinventing themselves”, and that’s what it’s going to take to survive, and grow their business. It’s “wake up time” for every American Mr Dardis, including you!!
One of the powers radio stations must have, are the talents they bring to the local community. Yes… locally generated content. Personalities like Matt Siegel, Greg Hill(aka HILLMAN), Karlson and McKenzie, Dennis and Callahan, Michael Graham and Jay Severin to name a few are just some of the reasons why people will listen to their respective stations, and why they have loyal followers. Get rid of those personalities, and the radio stations become “vanilla,” with no personality at all!! Have cookie cutter voice-tracked programming? I think not!!
In short Mr. Dardis, I am awake!- for you, I would say sir, wake up and start smelling the coffee and get to know the people you so generously comment about.
Instead of giving Hogan a new 5 year contract, CC should have asked him to give back his last five years. He completely lost my respect with his statement that “The days of tall towers and transmitters is over.” I think Hogan has a problem with radio and has always had a problem with radio. His heart is just not in the business.
I would think Clear Channel could better use Hogan’s salary to keep some of the talented radio people it has, (had).
The problem with radio now is that stations/groups are owned by bankers not content innovators. If the people who KNOW radio were allowed to RUN radio there wouldn’t be as much gloom-and-doom.
By the way, small market radio is still finding a way to survive because it is used to “local direct” selling and having relationships/partnerships with businesses in their communities rather than waiting for the phone to ring to take orders from ratings-driven agency buyers.
Neal – Thank you for bringing Mr. Hogans comments at Radio 2009 to our attention. I am disappointed that I was not in Boston with my radio comrades to hear the comments of people like Pierre, Mike Sheehan, Peter Smyth, David Field and John Hogan. There are some in the industry who have embraced the change that has been occurring over the past few years. I know personally that Pierre and Peter Smyth have been two of the leaders of that change. Another who has been very activist in this arena is Eric Rhodes, who just conducted the second annual “Convergence” conference for radio folks. To those who commented that “broadcast radio is lost…,” I say that it’s not about the transmission vehicle – it’s about the content. And – as attractive as broadband in the car is, it’s still not ready for mass distribution. The mobile broadband technical infrastructure is not capable yet of handling 2,000,000 uniques simultaneously in a city the size of Boston. So – the “broadcast” model of transmitters and receivers is here for a while longer and hybrid solutions will be created to meet the needs of radio’s stakeholders – the listeners (or ‘users,’ as one commentator put it) and the financial supporters (advertisers). There are scores of vendors today who are scrambling to find the right mix of technologies. Let us embrace those technologies, testing them to find out which will provide the results that our stakeholders demand and moving forward with the ones that work, discarding the ones that don’t. Radio has always been a business of “creative destruction.” With people like Neal Bocian pushing us forward, it will continue to be so.
Clear Channel has been destroying radio for years, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would speak this way at the meeting. Clear Channel has taken localism out of their stations, they use cookie cutter programing across the country instead of doing local market research, they axed promotions departments across the country. They voice track and and use jocks across multiple markets. They slashed sales staffs to better serve who? Certainly not local clients. They don’t sell ideas anymore, just spots and dots and that doesn’t help radio. They are slowly killing our medium but their bankers are happy because staff levels are the lowest ever.
Check out our mention on Radio INK magazine’s website – http://tinyurl.com/b4bo28
There’s also the proverbial head-in-the-sand Neal. What’s the problem with hearing different perspectives? All the cheer leading in the world won’t change “consumer (user) behavior” and what really controls the destiny of radio broadcasters (just ask the cheer leader Randy Michaels of the Tribune) The nails have been positioned in the analog coffin for some time. Broadcast towers and finite licenses have no value in the digital world. That world is here now, just waiting to be filled in with additional distribution channels, a little more technology and unlimited CONTENT.
Captains Log: June 1, 2014
I get into my car for morning commute. I have previously programmed my (Pandora 4.0) dashboard. I start the car and get a 2 minute traffic update (previously customized to my specific travel route). Next up, 3 minutes of CNN headline news followed by 4 minutes of ESPN national and local sports headlines (yes, ESPN is launching local market digital platform content), followed by 5 minutes of commercial free classic rock – and that’s just my “morning commute mode” …
Might Mr. Hogan actually be the sharpest arrow in the quiver? Wake up
I think radio is and will be a viable medium. When TV came to life in the 1950’s most people said radio would be dead in 10 to 20 years. It is quite the opposite today. These troubled times for radio will hopefully inspire more creativity for owners and operators to engage more fully in the wide open area of mobile and digital media.
This is hard to believe. You actually see radio as taking steps in new media tht elevate its worth to advertises? In what fashion? Web sites are still promotional tools for stations that don’t understand how to create an online presence to attract audiences – and then have that audience return. Radio programs have been turned into piped-in voice overs from people in places that don’t know, and couldn’t care about the “local” community they are being fed to. Sales staffs still don’t have a clue about the purpose of advertising – they sell holes, have sold holes, and dwill sell holes in audio programming – not understanding the clients are buying response today. Then, there’s the music… no one needs to say anything about how the public percieves radio music.
Here’s the most astonding thing about your coments, wrapped up in one sentence: “Radio websites, banners, streaming audio, streaming video, podcasting, email blasts and SMS text messaging must be promoted and integrated into the strategy, the creativity and the execution of our client’s campaign.” When do you think this will happen? Or, where can you show this is happening? Actions like this should have been started a decade ago.
The radio industry is too far behind new media, and too into its own head-in-the-sand approach to anything resembling an accountable advertising system for a quick – if ever – recovery.
Radio will survive, but it’s going to serve that part of the population which doesn’t have the economic or educational background to operate in a new media environment. CPMs will continue to drop for this audio delivery platform that cannot deliver a verification of response.
Perhaps John Hogan – who’s never been the sharpest arrow in the quiver – has finally seen the real extent of damaged that he, and others like him have caused the radio industry. Maybe he just got confused and thought that he was at an AA meeting – and it was time to be honest.
Bravo Neal! I will say in Hogan’s defense hes got a right to be pissed off the bankers are the real CEO of Clear Channel now.
Everything still comes from programming. Today’s programming hardly ever provides the one service that only radio can deliver. It’s the service that makes instant messaging and Twitter-ing, the newest and fastest growing communication system in the world.
Companionship.
Neal, I could not have said it any better. The buzz kill express rolled through Boston yesterday, however, radio salespeople have a thick skin, are resourcesful, resilient and can’t worry about Mr. Hogan. There’s REAL work to be done…yesterday. All leaders in the industry from CEO, GSM, LSM and AE need to think, act an engage differently: no medium is an island unto itself, they all interconnect to form the bridge from brand to customer acquisition (selling something for the client!) which is what it’s all about.
Forming strategic partnerships to help your client reach, influence, and engage their customer with their brand/service is vital if you are going to see radio revenue grow. You want the 100th order from your client right? The big idea is the real way to grow the business. Have you taken the lead TODAY? If not make it your A1 priority tomorrow. Good growing!
Hi Neal,
My take away from Mr. Hogan’s speech was that he clearly didn’t prepare or do any research about the goals and objectives of the meeting. It’s clear to me that if he is having problems with weak sales people he could do a better job leading by example. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Paul