4-8-15
Southwest Media has entered into an agreement to purchase KFSZ-FM/Munds Park, AZ, from LKCM Radio Group, LP. Roger Anderson's Southwest Media also owns five radio stations in neighboring Flagstaff. Kalil & Co. served as the exclusive broker for the transaction. The purchase price was not disclosed by either side.
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12-2-14
Just like radio, retailers are targeting consumers wherever they are and on every device possible. If you were out and about late last week you probably ran across busy retailers, full parking lots and extra traffic. Shoppers, with Friday off, are always out looking for something to do and a big bargain. If you stayed at home, for sure, your e-mail was being bombarded with online specials from early Thanksgiving Day sales to black Friday specials to Cyber Monday deals. So, how did all that translate to early holiday sales? It depends on who you ask.
The National Retail Federation projected that sales fell 11 percent to $50.9 billion over the long weekend from $57.4 billion last year. Of course it's too soon to tell how the entire holiday shopping season will end up, with three weeks still to go. MediaPost reports comScore had U.S. consumers' online spending via desktops up 32% to $1.01 billion on Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday followed with $1.51 billion in sales, up 26%. Overall, according to comScore, consumers used desktops to spend $22.7 billion online from the start of the holidays to date, up 15% compared with the same days last year. comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni tells MediaPost more consumers want to stay home on Thanksgiving Day to enjoy family and friends, forgoing crowded stores, yet capitalizing on the deals. But not all the data agrees with the comScore figures.
Monetate, which tracks nearly 40 million Web site visits on Black Friday, reports that traditional desktop and laptop sales fell 10%, while tablets rose 7.5%. Tablet traffic accounted for 21.52% of all online traffic, an increase of 6.53% year-over-year. Smartphone commerce transitions rose 38.30%. Smartphone traffic accounted for 20.97% of all online traffic, up 37.06% compared with a year ago. Smartphones and tablets accounted for 42.49% of all online traffic -- up 20.77%. But revenue inched up and smartphone sales fell 34.40%, according to Monetate. Revenue via desktops rose 16.5%, and tablets, 12.20%.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart said Thursday through Saturday represented its all-time highest three-day period in online orders. The world?s largest retailer discovered one fifth of its customers waited until after work to shop online. Visa said purchases by its U.S. account holders rose 17 percent Thursday and 18 percent Friday. The ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales report for Cyber Saturday had total online sales outpacing projections, coming in at 27%. Amazon was the number one destination at 46% market share. eBay declined from Black Friday's 26.9% to 14.87%, and mobile held steady at 47%.
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10-31-2012
We?ve had a good amount of time now to get used to the idea that there are these social media platforms (led by Facebook) that allow you access to opportunity (if you are willing to give up some of your 20th Century ways) to grab onto new ideas that will help your radio station in the seemingly new ?If it's free, it?s for me? environments like Facebook.
Now the Facebook team has essentially taken all groups and brands and moved them to the back of the connectivity bus (unless you are purchasing advertising on Facebook). Where you could post content to be seen by most or all of the people in your ?group? on Facebook in the recent past, that is now not even close to true. Now only about 10 percent of your ?fans? or ?likes? will see any content from you whatsoever. Those in radio who have not been listening as relevant social media ?types? talk about having a specific real strategy are falling farther and farther behind. Still, it?s not too late to catch up, but you better kick it in the butt because the social media train is leaving the station and it isn?t coming back for old people who don?t get it. The days of depending on Facebook to do your social media for you are gone. In fact, they never really did do it for you if all you were doing was ?phoning it in.? No game = no benefit.
What can you do to really start winning in social media now? Elevate your game and get off of the old ?post a little bit and forget it? philosophy. Don?t see Facebook as the center lane of your social media strategy for 2013 and going forward. See Facebook as one part of a larger puzzle. Really engage and commit to local relationships that matter to your brand and your listeners. Here are some basics that you must begin working on now unless you want to be left in the past:
1. Seriously develop a social media strategy that involves your goals (what you want to achieve and how you will judge your efforts). Make sure you have a plan that includes why you use Facebook, why you use Twitter, and why you use other social media platforms (and for what). Put real effort into developing the actual ?plan? before executing anything. This plan should deal with individual ?high-profile? personalities on your radio brands and their content in different social media environments, along with very specific content strategy so that you have a balanced approach to creating high-quality social media content that engages the passion of your target listeners (those you most want to attract to your brands). You should have a strategy set where everyone on your team knows what kind of content they are to post by percentage and when they will be responsible to post daily.
2. Challenge your team to engage listeners on their content and encourage them to have back and forth conversations as well as sharing with others they influence. This might seem difficult at first, but it won?t be as difficult if your focus is truly on building actual relationships from social media and bringing listeners to your actual online and on-air world. If the newest changes on Facebook indicate anything, it is that investing in Facebook for the purpose of ?living on Facebook? is the wrong philosophy. Sure, your goals should involve high-engagement on Facebook, but you must include drawing them to your owned-media (online and on-air). Attracting and drawing listeners should be the strategy; not attract and play with listeners on Facebook.
3. A picture says a thousand words. Nope. It?s more like a million in social media and specifically on Facebook. Listeners (Facebook consumers) are drawn to photographs and our lives are filled with them (listeners? lives and the lives of your radio brands). Your station staff not taking photos of events, concerts, and ?happenings"? Shame on you. Invest in a digital camera. They?re cheap. Think about what your radio station stands for, how listeners you most want to attract use radio and why. Then, give them the visuals on Facebook (and other platforms) that tease and by purpose draw them back to your brand.
4. Have your on-air personalities blog on your website. Talk about those blogs on-air (and sponsor them, please). Give personalities purpose in content. This means make sure your personalities stand for something that reflects well on the on-air brand and draws specific types of listeners to your brand. Work to link these personality blogs with bloggers in your market and entertainment-based sites so that they draft listeners toward on-air content. Encourage them to ?get sticky? and engage listeners to share, participate and educate others about their blog and causes they share with the personality. Your personalities can?t write? That?s so 2008. Today is about engagement; that starts with having something to say that reflects interests of the listeners you most want to attract on-air and off.
5. Use YouTube and other resources to explode sharing. Of course, nothing will happen to any of your content unless it is rich and targeted to the listeners you want to attract. Get creative and share things listeners will want to share with friends, family and others. Do this and your social media influence will explode.
6. Go back to the school of hard knocks. Invest in knowledge and learning new tricks. Great radio always reinvents itself. Learn how to use new knowledge to bring what is fun, hip, cool, valuable, and relevant to your attractable audience every day in social media. And always focus on luring listeners back to the website and on-air that you own because that is the true measure of success in putting social media to work for your brand.
Times are changing. They really are. If you bend, you won?t break. If you are rigid and refuse to adjust with the changing times, you will be run over and left behind.
Now is your time. Embrace the future because it is here today with social media and digital solutions that can be used by radio to grow our future.
Loyd Ford is the direct marketing, ratings and social media strategist for Americalist and programmed very successful radio brands in markets of all sizes for years, including KRMD AM & FM in Shreveport, WSSL and WMYI in Greenville, WKKT in Charlotte and WBEE in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Loyd here: http://about.me/loydford. Reach out to Loyd via e-mail HERE Visit his Facebook radio social media page HERE
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7-10-2012
This week Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman sent a note out to the company's employees. The theme throughout the note was change is happening and will continue to happen. "At Clear Channel, we are being proactive in taking our vision and turning it into an operating plan -- and now our goal is to execute on that plan with more urgency than anyone else." A lot has also been said, and written, about the Clear Channel debt. Pittman says Clear Channel has "a solid financial foundation we need to keep driving change. Despite the slow economic recovery, we have been able to deliver solid revenue growth across our operations while stepping up our investments in digital platforms and new organizational expertise to drive future growth."
Here is the entire note to employees:
The last year has been a time of rapid change ? both in the world, which has seen the emergence of a number of important new players in the media and technology space, and here at Clear Channel. Whether driven by emerging technologies, shifting consumer demand, or some other new business reality, change provides great opportunity to those who are quick to recognize its potential and smart enough to capitalize on it. And as a company with change as part of our DNA and a history of taking advantage of the opportunities that change engenders, we welcome it as a constant in our culture.
As you?ve seen, big changes are taking place at every level and in every division of Clear Channel. Working together, we are transforming our company to better meet the needs of our customers and partners in bold and innovative new ways, working hard to harness transformative technologies that will extend our industry-leading brands across even more platforms, and creating new businesses to make the company bigger, better and more profitable.
At Clear Channel, we are being proactive in taking our vision and turning it into an operating plan -- and now our goal is to execute on that plan with more urgency than anyone else. Under the leadership of John Hogan at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment and William Eccleshare at Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, we?re geared to thinking and acting more and more like an innovative, creative, fast-moving entrepreneurial start-up in a media marketplace that?s becoming increasingly competitive every day. If we don?t seize the opportunities, somebody else will.
The New iHeartRadio is a perfect example of how we are enhancing and growing an existing business. iHeartRadio offers both our broadcast brands and a ?custom stations? feature in one fully integrated product. And in just eight months, iHeartRadio added 10 million registered users ? reaching that milestone faster than all other popular Internet entertainment and social platforms, including Facebook, Pandora, Zynga, andSpotify. Today, terrestrial broadcast radio represents 98% of our total listening and digital radio only 2%, but that 2% represents incremental listening to Clear Channel stations -- and we will continue to grow that digital incremental listening significantly over time.
At Outdoor, new technologies are also creating more opportunities for us. We continue to lead the industry in bringing exciting and captivating digital out of home advertising experiences to consumers and advertising partners around the world. We have nearly 1,000 digital billboards in the U.S. and 2,200 digital displays outside of the U.S. and continue to invest in them, and we?re aggressively pursuing opportunities in transit and street furniture internationally and airports domestically. We also are in a leadership role in developing completely new ideas for outdoor ? like our wi-fi buses in Hong Kong.
But change is not just about technology ? it also encompasses innovative ways of doing business. Here?s a great example: in an industry first, Clear Channel Media and Entertainment reached a breakthrough agreement in June with Big Machine Label Group, which includes Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts and Tim McGraw among its recording artists, to align our business interests and accelerate growth and innovation in digital radio. We think it?s critical to try to break the logjam of performance rights and develop a holistic approach to all rights that will allow radio to economically pursue aggressive digital growth and be an even more valuable partner to the music industry.
At Clear Channel, we have an unmatched ability to connect artists and hosts with their fans, and brands with their consumers, through the most culturally relevant brands and products in the world. We are actively pursuing integrated, multi-platform partnerships that leverage all of our powerful properties and talent to deliver exceptional results for our marketing partners.
It is worth keeping in mind that Clear Channel is unique as a national platform that can activate people locally. We have the largest reach of any radio or television outlet in America with 237 million monthly listeners to our broadcast radio alone; 50 million digital users; and almost 90 million downloads and upgrades of our mobile products. Our reach for Outdoor is equally as impressive: 141 million every month for Outdoor Americas and over 374 million for Outdoor International.
Importantly, we also have the solid financial foundation we need to keep driving change. Despite the slow economic recovery, we have been able to deliver solid revenue growth across our operations while stepping up our investments in digital platforms and new organizational expertise to drive future growth.
I want to close this note by speaking directly to the major competitive advantage that Clear Channel enjoys -- the people who work for our company. Clear Channel has had a long history of success, and as I outlined in the preceding paragraphs, we continue to lean forward to positively impact the world around us. Our towers and transmitters, our digital platforms, our billboards and our street furniture are not the reason we have been successful ? you are. The people of Clear Channel have worked very hard to help us get where we are today, and while I am relatively new to this company I have seen first-hand the contributions you make and the dedication you have to this company, our customers and each other.
Speaking on behalf of the senior management team, we deeply appreciate all you do to contribute to the continued success of our company.
Many thanks,
Bob
(7/11/2012 6:24:34 AM)
P.S. Please collect your belongings and thank you for your service.
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3-2-2012
Right now over 850,000,000 people are using Facebook globally. Targeting in individual U.S. markets for active users of Facebook is exploding. The temptation is always there to go big, be big and chase Facebook and other social media platforms for the purpose of participating alone. They tell you how to do it. Everyone pretty much does the same thing. At the same time, radio shouldn?t just follow something like Facebook. We shouldn?t just have a Facebook page or simply post content about a contest on our air. We are creators. Consideration should be given to what makes radio special and unique ways we can use social media to help boost brand loyalty and generate ratings and revenue for radio.
1. The first thing that must be said about social media is that social media provides a perfect outreach opportunity for our need as humans to be recognized, appreciated, stroked and validated. Most posts on Facebook are created from this worldview. Unfortunately, most businesses and radio stations are creating content that seeks this validation, too. Instead, we should be focusing on listeners for our purposes. What smart broadcasters should now do is reverse this thinking to attract listeners they want to target by validating them and encouraging them and their need being expressed on social media (like Facebook).
2. Radio has become so focused on traditional revenue paths we may be missing additional business opportunities and revenue growth. Just as national or global social media platforms allow for instant sharing to take place among people, these large social media platforms allow you to share what you are doing locally with other locals and self-generate interest in high-quality content that helps propel business. That has value. As you already know, advertisers will pay for that opportunity. Is radio creating these ?content models? on a local level so that more local communities within their radio market can be served and more revenue can be generated for local broadcast clusters? Not really.
We have largely taken the easy path as an industry and are doing nothing original. We are copying. The actual business model of social media platforms (especially Facebook) allow you to cheaply develop local web content that can help business for non-radio clients (if you want to build this additional revenue) and share this content from YOUR source with others easily. And sharing is largely free. That?s opportunity if you create smart content that generates actual connectivity between these businesses and their customers. If you focus on creating content on your own and using that content on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to continue to build a fan base for it, you can create actual revenue you can keep. And this isn?t swapping radio dollars for social media dollars. This is creating new business that never rang your cash register at radio.
3. Radio is already social. Listeners expect more from us and they still trust us. If our concentrated efforts focused on creating loyalty-based opportunities for our on-air brands (instead of focusing on how many people like our radio stations), we could create individual content opportunities that involve causes, passions for listeners and unique selling features only available on our individual radio brands in-market. This is why I preach developing a specific strategic plan for social media in general and Facebook specifically.
4. What radio companies are thinking about developing additional business models to serve industries that don?t buy radio but might (and do) support on-line or web-based revenue opportunities? With a little investment and focused effort on creating content that recognizes local businesses that serve communities within our markets, radio could create revenue growth beyond turning the non-traditional revenue hose on and off for limited revenue generation. There are steps almost any broadcaster ? big or small ? could take beginning today to generate entirely new levels of local business without disrupting traditional radio revenue dollars.
These opportunities can exist with content created by current and even additional programming staff and entirely different non-traditional sales teams unattached to your traditional radio business today. That?s right. New business opportunities that use your current resources and that generate additional non-radio dollars.
A real conversation about social media for the benefit of radio must move beyond wondering how to make social media matter on its own terms. People are using social media in alarming numbers. Ask yourself why and ask how we can take advantage of it as a radio industry. We must stake our claim to be able to do what radio has always done: Be creative, invest in local communities and develop actionable ways to help new clients by reaching further than we have in the past.
Loyd Ford programmed very successful radio brands in markets of all sizes for years, including KRMD AM & FM in Shreveport, WSSL and WMYI in Greenville, WKKT in Charlotte and WBEE in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Loyd here: http://about.me/loydford.
Reach out to Loyd via e-mail HERE
Visit his Facebook radio social media page www.facebook.com/socialnetworking4radio
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In our continuing series on Arbitron's Portable People Meter, we spoke with Randy Kabrich. Randy Kabrich has been a broadcasting consultant for over 20 years. An early critic of the PPM, Kabrich says the device has come a long way over the past 5 years and that is due to the people now in charge at Arbitron.
- What is your impression on how things have changed going from the diary to the PPM?
Clearly, the PPM roll out had a rocky start. Fortunately for Broadcasters, Arbitron was forced to change their long standing policy of simply trying to schmooze radio while cramming what they (Arbitron) wanted down Radio?s throat. Fortunately, for the most part, the schmooze only people have left the building. I give a lot of credit to Carol Hanley and her crew for trying to be more open to change and simply not operate in a certain way because that was the Arbitron way.
Considering where we were with PPM 5 years ago, PPM is light years beyond that. Quite frankly, I doubt that would have occurred without the public spectacle that happened during the early years. Do many, myself included, wish the sample was larger and more robust? Obviously, but considering where we are today, tremendous strides have been made.
- Do you think the listeners notice a change at all over the way programmers program?
Good Radio will always be good radio. The change from diary to PPM in large markets did not make bad stations all the sudden rise to the top of the rankers ? or vice versa. Arbitron has changed radio landscape (and thus programming) with their methodology for as long as I can remember. At the end of the 70s, there was a Beautiful Music station in virtually every market that, if not #1, was close to it. Surveys were 4 weeks long (instead of 12 weeks) and the screening/sampling was A LOT different. Methodology changes in 1980 literally put those stations out of business overnight.
Top 40 was in serious trouble in the early 90s. Arbitron added 50% additional sample to most markets which allowed the big cume Top 40 stations to break out of the compressed pack and again become competitive. There was a direct correlation to which markets had the added sample and how well Top 40 performed in those markets. It is no secret that ethnic focused formats and female focused formats have had a tougher time adjusting to PPM than Male focused stations. Without a doubt, that clearly goes into the equation when deciding what to air on a frequency. So 2011 is no different than 1980.
- What is your advice to programmers on how to maximize ratings for the PPM?
That?s a book unto itself, but as noted earlier, great radio will always be great radio. The short answer, make sure everything that comes out the speakers is the best it can be.
- Is the system more accurate or not?
More accurate? What is the benchmark for accuracy? Neither system is perfect. I can show you ratings from diaries where for the 15 minutes the OJ verdict was announced News/Talk stations skyrocketed to 15/20 shares during that Quarter Hour. One only has to look at 9/11/2001 and see 1010 WINS in NYC go as high as any station in the market has been in probably 30+ years, all beginning in the 8:45am Quarter Hour and building each Quarter Hour. And I remind you of how respondents were trying to find a way out of Manhattan with all transit services, bridges, tunnels etc closed down as they literally were running for their life. Yet, they seemed to fill out the diaries properly.
Does PPM record what people listen to more accurately?
-Yes and no. When it detects the encoded signal, absolutely its more accurate than the diary. However, let?s not forget the only testing we have information for showed that over 40% of the listening was not captured. One can ?assume? that all missed listening would be random and thus affecting everyone equally, however, that is just an ?assumption? which no data has ever been presented one way or the other.
The skeptic that I am, in my personal opinion, I always believed that this system was pushed by Arbitron as it is more automated and probably allowed them to reduce their back end workforce, and thus reduce their payroll expenses significantly in those areas (Not that radio has not had a reduction in body counts either). Luckily the new found semi-openness of Arbitron has allowed radio to get PPM from the quasi-disaster launch to a much better operational system today.
So again, both systems have their advantages. Both have their disadvantages.
Randy Kabrich can be reached via e-mail, randy@kabrich.com
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June 28, 2011
The markets affected by the change are: Albany, GA (Now 239/Was 262), Amarillo, TX. (Now168/Was 193), Bryan-College Station, TX. (Now 206/Was 233), Corpus Christi, TX. (Now 108/Was 137), Des Moines, IA. (Now 72/Was 91), Fayettville, AR. (Was 128/Now 127), Ft. Smith AR. (Now 159/Was 175), Jonesboro, AR. (Now 234/Was 284), New Orleans, LA. (Now 45/Was 52) and Portland, ME (Now89/Was 168)