NAB Keeps Working The Hill

12-12-13

Thanks to the efforts of your hardworking lobbying organization in Washington, three more members of the House of Representatives from Florida have signed on as co-sponsors of a resolution that opposes "any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge" on local broadcast radio stations. The National Association of Broadcasters says the Local Radio Freedom Act now has almost 200 total co-sponsors in the House and Senate.

The members of the bipartisan group adding their support to the Local Radio Freedom Act are Reps. Gus Bilirakis (FL-12), Dennis Ross (FL-15), and Steve Southerland (FL-2). The resolution is now currently co-sponsored by 184 Members of the House and 12 Senators.

Reps. Michael Conaway (R-TX) and Gene Green (D-TX) introduced the Local Radio Freedom Act (H. Con. Res. 16) in the House of Representatives on February 15 along with 71 additional co-sponsors. An identical resolution (S. Con. Res. 6) was introduced in the Senate on March 6 by Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND).

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(SALES) Working With Independent Insurance Agencies

7-19-2013

Here?s a five-year marketing and advertising plan worth a million dollars for a local insurance agency.

Family-owned independent insurance agencies make great local direct customers. Their money comes from commissions paid by the insurance companies. Gross margin of profit after the cost of labor is 30 percent. Average sale for auto insurance for a two-car family is just under $1,000 per year. Most family-owned local insurance agencies depend on sales of automobile coverage because auto premiums give the agency the chance to up-sell and also get the customer?s home, life, health, business, and other policies.

The local independent agent?s biggest problem is the plague of national discount companies competing for his auto insurance business.

Consumers are concerned about escalating insurance premiums. But an even deeper concern is that the insurance company will fight the customer on claims. Most people are under-insured. It is in the client?s best interest to educate the people on how best to use his services. But first the client must convince consumers that he is trustworthy and will assist the customer when it?s time to pay claims.

Get the owner to come to the station and share his stories about what happens to people who are underinsured or have no insurance at all when a crisis hits. He probably has hundreds of good stories. Let him tell them without reading from a script. Record them and edit them, leading with the most provocative thing he says. Again, no scripts. Let him tell his stories in his own conversational way, the same way he?d speak to the people if they were sitting across the desk from him.

Agency owners usually become very animated when they?re telling their stories. Here?s what one independent agent told me. ?When it?s time to get the claim paid I?m right here to represent my people. The folks in this town know I?ll help them when they have a claim. In fact, I love filling out claim forms. It?s like a hobby. And, I?ll stand by my customers when the claims adjuster comes to make sure my customers get exactly what they deserve. When you go with one of those national discount companies with a claim good luck. I mean, who are you going to talk to? A lizard??  Wow. So, working with him is like having an insurance policy inside an insurance policy.

He also had this to offer. ?Hey, I?ve got news for you. You?re the bread-winner and you?re going to die. That?s a fact, my friend. You?re going to die and what is going to happen to your dependents when that happens? Have you thought about that? Getting over your death is bad enough. Are you going to send them the poorhouse too? Ninety percent of the people in this town are UNDER insured. Do the right thing and cover your assets.? He put emphasis on the first syllable of assets.

And this. ?If you?re a renter, I?m telling you, get renters insurance. Do it. I see people every week who come to me after they?ve already lost everything to a thief or a fire or a flood and it just breaks my heart.?

Or this regarding disability insurance. ?I call it ?paycheck insurance,? because that?s exactly what it is. If you?re disabled this policy pays you up to 75 percent of what you were making before you were disabled. I sold a policy to a man in his 40s. All he had to do was sign the form and write me a check. He kept putting me off. For his birthday he bought himself a motorcycle. He was hit by a truck within the first week and was paralyzed from the waist down. The first thing he told his wife was that he had never signed the disability insurance policy I left him.?

He also mentioned that, ?Whether you want to see me or not, I make it a point to visit our customers at least once per year and photograph all of their valuable property. We put those photos on a thumb drive and keep it in a bank safe deposit box so that if you ever have a claim, we?ve got evidence for the insurance adjuster.?  That?s another important service difference that deserves to be mentioned.

These stories bring to life intangible products like insurance policies. And they deserve to be told and heard.

Paul Weyland is a local direct sales trainer. He works with station groups and broadcast associations to bring more long-term local direct business to broadcasters. You can reach Paul at 512 347 9883 or paul@paulweyland.com . Paul?s new book ?Think like an Adman, Sell like a Madman" is available at amazon.com.

For more articles by Paul Weyland, go HERE.

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NY Times CEO Says Pay Model is Working

5-21-13

In a commencement address to business students at Columbia University, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson (pictured) told graduating students companies like the New York Times can be reinvented. The Times uses a metered paywall for online content to try to make up lost advertising dollars that has plagued the newspaper industry for years. Thompson says, "The launch of the pay model is the most important and most successful business decision made by The New York Times in many years. We have around 700,000 paid digital subscribers across the company?s products so far and a new nine-figure revenue-stream which is still growing."

Thompson said taking risks is part of being successful. "We will not secure the future of The Times without the kind of bold innovation ? in products and services, in business-model ? which is intrinsically and necessarily risky. The consensus among the experts was that it wouldn?t work, was foolhardy in fact and not needed. People just weren?t prepared to pay for high quality content on the internet and, besides, wasn?t digital advertising enough ? wouldn?t it grow until, just as with print advertising in the golden age of physical newspapers, it alone was enough to support America?s newsrooms? Much of the rest of the US newspaper industry is now following suit. And developing this pay model, launching a suite of new subscription products to attract additional new subscribers, is central to our plans for the future."

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(AUDIO) Working At WLS Was My Dream Job

4-30-13

Jim Johnson has worked at WLS in Chicago for 45 years. He grew up listening to Larry Lujak, Steve Dahl, and John "Records" Landecker, and says it was a dream come true when he landed the job covering news at the station. As a reporter and anchor for WLS, Johnson has covered it all, from plane crashes to gangsters to corrupt politicians. He calls it a ringside seat to history. Now, at the age of 69, and in good health, Johnson has decided to call it quits. He says he woke up this week and decided it was time to move on.

Listen to our short interview with Johnson about his retirement HERE

Cumulus Chicago Market Manager Donna Baker said, "Fourty-four years as a broadcaster in Chicago, the city that he loves, at WLS, the station that he loves, having fun and doing what he loves every day of this adventure. That's an inspiring legacy. Jim, we wish you joy. You are forever a part of the greatest station in the world, WLS."

Former WLS General Manager Michael Damsky says, "I've been a fan of Jim's since he was a part of the Steve Dahl show in the early '80s, so he was another of the radio heroes I got to work with at WLS. Besides the fact that he is an absolute gentleman, his dry witticisms were the spice of the Roe and Roeper show. And he is that way all the time. If I had known the contract deal we did in 2011 was going to be his last one, I would have made it for five years."

Congratulate Johnson on a great career in radio jim.johnson@cumulus.com

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Reduce Time Working Social Media

1-2-2013

I hear it all the time: How can I take shortcuts? I work so much and wear so many hats. Tell me the easy way out. Before you read further, I must say that the easy way out or shortcuts just for the sake of shortcuts rarely add up to more success. The best in any business work smarter, but they don?t take shortcuts just to perform less work. As always, there are a variety of tools you can use in social media. All of them won?t be right for you. The below tools are presented only to jump-start your own thought process that you can source a variety of tools that can work for you.

1. Be your listeners. What are people seeing? How do you keep up? How do you source the hottest topics? Maybe using Storify can be helpful to you. They promise you can use them to find the voices online that matter: "See the best of what people are posting."

2.  ArgyleSocial. Ever wish you could manage everything easier? This is a social media management dashboard built to help you keep moving. Their promise is ?publish, engage and measure.? You can check it out here. http://argylesocial.com/

3.  If you want to be free to submit your blog or other information to a wide variety of social media and use analytics, history, a scheduler, and more, maybe OnlyWire is for you @ https://www.onlywire.com. They promise you can broadcast and manage your content to the ?top 47? social and professional networks. ?One button, publish everywhere.?

4. Hubspot promises you can use their software to ?create marketing people love? and nurture people through and after engagement.  http://www.hubspot.com/

5. Kurrently allows you to monitor your brand, follow live events, find interesting content and generally find out what is hot in social media so your own content is top flight. http://www.kurrently.com/

Social media can be fun, entertaining, useful, and powerful, but you have to choose wisely what your radio station and company want to get out of your social media engagement. I urge you to spend time to focus on what you want and your actual strategic plan to develop the kind of social media that helps you reach actual real goals for your radio station(s). Without a plan, you are largely ?winging it.?  Once you have a plan, you can begin to look at tools like those in this article and many more. Again, you should determine the tools that are best for you. This article is only a ?starter? to get you and your team thinking about how seeking the tools that will work for you to make social media easier, so you can accomplish more of your goals easier in 2013.

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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(SOCIAL) Reduce Time Working Social Media

1-2-2013

I hear it all the time: How can I take shortcuts? I work so much and wear so many hats. Tell me the easy way out. Before you read further, I must say that the easy way out or shortcuts just for the sake of shortcuts rarely add up to more success. The best in any business work smarter, but they don?t take shortcuts just to perform less work. As always, there are a variety of tools you can use in social media. All of them won?t be right for you. The below tools are presented only to jump-start your own thought process that you can source a variety of tools that can work for you.

1. Be your listeners. What are people seeing? How do you keep up? How do you source the hottest topics? Maybe using Storify can be helpful to you. They promise you can use them to find the voices online that matter: "See the best of what people are posting."

2.  ArgyleSocial. Ever wish you could manage everything easier? This is a social media management dashboard built to help you keep moving. Their promise is ?publish, engage and measure.? You can check it out here. http://argylesocial.com/

3.  If you want to be free to submit your blog or other information to a wide variety of social media and use analytics, history, a scheduler, and more, maybe OnlyWire is for you @ https://www.onlywire.com. They promise you can broadcast and manage your content to the ?top 47? social and professional networks. ?One button, publish everywhere.?

4. Hubspot promises you can use their software to ?create marketing people love? and nurture people through and after engagement.  http://www.hubspot.com/

5. Kurrently allows you to monitor your brand, follow live events, find interesting content and generally find out what is hot in social media so your own content is top flight. http://www.kurrently.com/

Social media can be fun, entertaining, useful, and powerful, but you have to choose wisely what your radio station and company want to get out of your social media engagement. I urge you to spend time to focus on what you want and your actual strategic plan to develop the kind of social media that helps you reach actual real goals for your radio station(s). Without a plan, you are largely ?winging it.?  Once you have a plan, you can begin to look at tools like those in this article and many more. Again, you should determine the tools that are best for you. This article is only a ?starter? to get you and your team thinking about how seeking the tools that will work for you to make social media easier, so you can accomplish more of your goals easier in 2013.

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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Is Your Morning Show Working Too Hard?

by Randy Lane

?Those morning show guys get paid twice as much money as anyone in the Sales Dept. and they?re only working 25 hours a week!!!? We frequently run across managers in radio who are frustrated by the apparent lack of commitment on the part of their morning shows to work a ?full 8 hour day? or anything even close to that. Sales people, business managers, marketing directors, human resource directors and managers all live in a world of 8am to 5pm (if not 6am to 7pm).

In their minds their jobs are done better when they put in more hours making spreadsheets balance, writing impressive proposals and attending even more meetings planning the future. Morning shows that stay in the office from 5am to 3pm may appear to be working harder, but are they doing what morning shows should be doing? Is spending time in meetings, surfing the web, writing parodies more productive than living a life? Or are you better off with a host that lives for the moment and experiences all that life has to offer to tell about it the next morning?

Listeners overwhelmingly find ?good stories about life? their favorite, most memorable and relatable parts of a morning radio show. Many of these same listeners are the managers, comptrollers, lawyers, resource directors, etc. working 10 hours a day in our crazy ?we have to be the most productive country on the planet? world. For many of us, a large part of the enjoyment and awareness of life comes from the stories of others who experience things we don?t have the time to experience.

If you have a morning show host that shows up at 5:55 for a 6am show and leaves at 10:05, you may be luckier than you think. If your morning show host comes in with great stories of how she took her family out for a night on the town, or a host that saw the latest movie your target audience is talking about, or a show that spent the afternoon behind the scenes at opening day, you may have the best show you could and not realize it.

Great morning show stories rarely develop on a computer screen or in a planning meeting. Great stories develop more in the backroom of a casino, in a backyard, or backstage than in an office.

?    If you have a morning show host that is in at 5:55 and out at 10:05 who leaves for home, smokes pot, watches porn and sleeps, get rid of them tomorrow. 
?    If you have morning show hosts that are in at 4am and never leave before 5pm you have a show that needs to be redirected.  Try giving them this clich?d advice, ?get a life? and learn how to share that life with listeners. 
?    If you have a morning show host that lives life to the fullest and always has a story about that life to share, consider yourself very lucky even if they aren?t really ?working? as hard as you or your C.O.O.

Get Out And Have Some Fun as a Group!
The principle players on a show need to get out of the office two or three times a month and do something fun. Go play golf, tennis or anything that is fun and not radio related.  There are a few reasons for this:
1.    It?s a chance to stay connected on a level other than work. It?s easy to forget why you like each other during the pressure of putting together a show.  Getting away from work makes you see each other in a different light.  This is especially good for shows where there is tension among some of the players.
2.    Some of the best radio ideas come when you are not trying.  When you have to create a bit, it sometimes feels like pulling teeth. When you are not in the station you think differently.  It is inevitable that as radio people you are going to talk shop and that is good because it?s under a different context.  You will think of ideas that you would not have thought of sitting in your office.

3.     There is a third added benefit of doing things together.  A show outing in and of itself can be show prep.  Funny or dysfunctional things happen whenever radio people get together. Living life leads to experiences that can be used on the air.  If the show as a whole has a common experience there can be a good discussion about the odd or interesting things that happened, plus there will always be different versions of the story. That can lead to humor or conflict, which is always good.

Email randy@randylane.net Read more at his website
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Alabama Sports Talker Sues Citadel, The Company He's Working For.

This is a strange one folks. And it's a big enough issue for Citadel that COO Judy Ellis made a trip to Alabama to address the matter so you can bet Lew Dickey and company keeping at least one eye on this one. Popular sports talker Paul Finebaum has filed a lawsuit against Citadel, the company he is currently working for. The Paul Finebaum Show airs from 2-9 p.m. weekdays on WJOX-FM. People in the market tell Radio Ink Finebaum is claiming Citadel is not paying him according to the contract both sides signed. The Birmingham Business Journal is reporting the dollar amount in question is $75,000. Finebaum's contract takes him through 2013, however, there's also word he does not have a non-compete. It makes you wonder if there's a possibility he may want to jump to another station and if he can proved he's not getting paid he can declare the contract invalid.

But what makes this issue even more wacky is that the details of the case were sealed by a judge and that move is highly unusual. Atlanta employment law litigator for Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice Bill Long told Radio Ink "I know the federal judges here are loathe to have cases filed under seal, have set up Draconian procedures that have to be met to allow sealing, and usually, in civil cases, only allow it when trade secret type information is involved." Thursday afternoon, a federal judge ordered the case be made public, but the contents of the court filing remain under seal. Attorneys have until noon Friday to redact portions of the filing before the public can get a look. We contacted Finebaum's attorney Russ Campbell who said "Although the Judge has lifted the seal, we are not likely to have a comment in the near future. We will do our talking in the context of the litigation."

Another weird element in this story is that Finebaum and the WJOX-FM General Manager Bill Thomas are fiends, which may explain the lack of  non-compete. Thomas sent us a statement last night. ?Citadel has a positive and productive relationship with Paul. Our relationship will not change because of his legal filings. I personally have considered him a friend since the 1980?s, bringing him to WERC in the 1990?s, advising him during his negotiations with Citadel in 2007, and then joining him at Citadel in 2010 on his recommendation. I feel very confident that the actions of Citadel and its employees with respect to Paul have been appropriate, and I expect that to be demonstrated if his lawsuit continues. Paul is an important part of the best sports talk line-up in the South and we look forward to him fulfilling his contract with Citadel through January 2013. ?We are very mindful of the fact that radio is a locally focused business, and we remain committed to serving our local listeners and advertisers by bringing them the most popular radio personalities in the area, including Paul. The last two football seasons in Alabama have brought WJOX-FM a lot of national attention, and the season that starts next week should  be no exception. We look forward to continuing our long and mutually beneficial relationship with Paul and expanding the Paul Finebaum Radio  Network.?

Citadel Corporate directed us to their attorney James Mitchell who did not return an e-mail last night.

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