1-22-2014
Charlie Sislen is a partner with the consulting firm Research Director Inc., which works with numerous radio groups around the country and in Canada on enhancing ratings and revenue development. As the new year begins, I thought it would be a good idea to tap in to Charlie?s 30 years of experience and his perspective on what?s coming in 2014.
The radio industry has had several years where flat is considered good. How do you see 2014 shaping up?
All signs are that 2013 will post flat, and spot business might even be down slightly. Although the economy has picked up, overall radio billing remains well below pre-recession levels. The only sign of significant growth is our digital assets. While still small, there is great growth opportunity here. My hope is that the economy will accelerate. There are already signs that the automotive industry is going to have a strong year, possibly selling over 16 million cars in 2014.
Automotive has always been a crucial part of radio?s success. I cannot tell you how much it infuriates me to see local car ads on television. Are you telling me that it is more effective to sell me a car while I am lying on my family-room couch? How about when I am sitting in my old vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it?
The potential for a good 2014 is there, but we need to act.
If the economy is growing stronger, why is radio billing stuck in neutral?
I think there are several reasons for that. The most obvious is new competition. The audio pure-plays like Pandora and Spotify are going after our business. They are the shiny new toy that advertisers like. However, that industry has not proven itself yet, and will go through a massive transformation in 2014.
It is difficult to impact how these pure-plays position themselves to advertisers, but we as an industry must be vigilant to keep them honest. As a researcher, some of their claims to advertisers appear to be suspect.
More important, we need to do a better job of telling our story. Many of our people on the street no longer believe in what they are selling. To quote Pogo, ?We have met the enemy, and he is us.? Our people, both programming and sales, need to believe in radio and be proud of what they represent.
We all know that radio reaches 90-plus percent of the U.S. population every week. How often do our salespeople remind advertisers of this simple fact? Radio reaches just about everyone.
We also need to better tell the radio story beyond the music. What a typical station does between songs lends itself to a great environment for advertisers. Great local programming and strong relationships with the local community cannot be measured by any cost-per-point.
I am not going to underestimate the value of transactional business, but we cannot grow with the existing dollars on the table. Let?s do a better job of finding those non-radio users and converting them into users. Radio works, and we need to better document this.
Has anything on the research side of the industry impacted radio billing?
The conversion to PPM in the top 50 markets was a definite speed bump. That rollout occurred at the height of the recession. We as an industry were slow to tell the PPM story, and many did not understand that listening did not change, just the way it was reported. It also led to what many perceived as ratings compression, which allowed for a negative reaction. That?s water under the bridge now, and we must move forward.
I started as a local salesperson in 1981 and quickly became reliant on qualitative research. Local tools like Media Audit and Scarborough are more important than before. With ratings compression, qualitative can help differentiate your listeners from those who have the same rating points.
How do you see Nielsen?s purchase of Arbitron impacting the radio industry?
It?s too early to say how it will impact our industry. Nielsen has a strong presence everywhere. Now that radio is part of this tremendous organization, it should be easier to tell our story. Cross-referencing the existing radio-listening data with Nielsen?s other databases may result in better documentation that radio works for advertisers.
The possibility that sometime down the road we could see single-source research combining radio, television, and digital does exist. This would be a win for all involved.
Charlie Sislen can be reached at csislen@researchdirectorinc.com. Deborah Parenti is EVP/Radio for Streamline Publishing. E-mail: parenti@aol.com.
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