Jim & Margery To Broadcast Last Show Today

1-1-13

Morning personalities Jim & Margery will get a chance to say goodbye to their WTKK audience Wednesday morning. As Greater Media gets ready to close down the talk station WTKK and flip to music, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan will do one final show. The company has not announced what the new music format will be. There's been a lot of speculation that it's an urban format. Greater Media says, "The change comes after much careful consideration of the direction of the station's format and overall ratings over the past several years.

Jim & Margery will take calls from listeners and past on-air contributors from 7a.m.-10a.m. during the final day of broadcast for the News/Talk format on 96.9 WTKK-FM in Boston on Wednesday, January 2, 2013. The station launched back in 1999. Greater Media Boston Market Manager Rob Williams said, ?We would like to thank Jim Braude, Margery Eagan, Michael Graham, and the entire News Talk 96.9 WTKK-FM staff for their many contributions to the station and Talk Radio format over the years in Boston. They are true professionals and we are very grateful to them.?

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Holiday Shopping More Mobile Than Ever

1-1-13

This is good news for radio, if radio uses the information it certainly already collects from listeners and crafts promotions and ideas for local clients. eMarketer reports that consumers are big fans of in-store offers they receive on their cell phones. Holiday shoppers were more likely than ever this year to whip out their smartphones for some mobile assistance, according to the research.

More than eight in 10 smartphone owners researched and browsed for products on their phone, up 15 percentage points from 2011, and nearly three-quarters bought something via mobile, up 19 percentage points.

These increases also come as smartphone ownership overall has increased. eMarketer estimates that nearly 116 million U.S. consumers had a smartphone in 2012, vs. 93.1 million in 2011. So higher percentages of smartphone owners doing any given activity are amplified by the fact that the overall base of smartphone owners is larger as well.

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Consolidation is Killing the Radio Business

1-2-12

Ed Levine once worked for Mel Karmazin at WJFK in Washington DC. He says he learned more working for Mel at Infinity in two years than anyone else at any time during his radio career. While employed by Infinity Levine was assembling a plan to make his dream of ownership come true back in upstate, New York. In 1992, Levine would give back his Infinity stock and launch his first station in Utica.

Levine, now with clusters in Syracuse and Utica, is the Radio Ink cover interview on January 21st which focuses on small market radio. Levine says there's a battle brewing between small market radio and the big guns. "Consolidation has caused radio revenue to go backwards. These are not McDonald's. These are not one-system fits all. Every radio station is it's own living, breathing organism."I think that's going to be a very interesting competitive battle over the next five or ten years. It?s really a battle for the soul of radio." Here's more from our interview with Galaxy Communications CEO Ed Levine.

On why the radio industry is not growing its revenue...
"It gets back to blocking and tackling and taking care of the local communities with local personalities, local promotions and local events. You will reap the rewards of that. We've spent the better part of the last 15 years, since consolidation really took hold, coming up with easy answers. At the end of the day, there are no easy answers. The more that we continue to eliminate staff, the more that we continue to broadcast nationally into small markets, the more vulnerable we are going to be. 

What has made radio great locally, is serving the community. It?s an old fashioned concept but it works. That doesn't mean you can't use technology to your advantage. I?m not suggesting you need a full-time news department 24 hours a day. I?m talking about putting some sanity back into the process. If you look at what's happened over the last 15 years, first it was cutting the fat, then you cut the muscle, then the bone. Now they are splitting tissues apart. A lot of the people that have done this are no longer in the industry but they did a lot of damage.

On Pandora...
They found a niche. If you want to have a product that competes with Pandora, and iHeartRadio, God bless. I don't have an issue with that. But to turn your radio stations into nothing more than local versions of Pandora is insane. We are so hung up right now on Pandora and how that's going to destroy radio. Our answer is we make our stations sound more like Pandora. That's crazy logic.  

On how to treat people...
Show them some respect. I think that's one item that has vanished from the radio business these days.

Do you agree with Ed? Leave your comments below or reach out to Ed directly at galaxyceo1@gmail.com

To read more from Ed Levine in our January 21st cover story, order an 1-year subscription to our digital issue HERE. To get a print subscription, go HERE or call 561-655-8778.

(1/2/2013 7:41:37 AM)
All radio, like politics, is local.

Only with radio, people vote with their dials and advertisers with their dollars.

(1/2/2013 7:08:00 AM)
Only corporate management and other delusional individuals would argue against Mr. Levine's position on the damage done by the consolidators and their minion clones.

However, sticking "live", warm buns back behind the microphones at the local level still won't do the trick.

For radio to re-engage audiences and advertisers will require a great deal more skills from those "live" communicators and the writer/producers of the advertising content.

Otherwise, all we would have accomplished is the reinstatement of higher overheads with a minimal chance of enjoying higher ROI's. Still, Ed's suggestions could be considered as an improvement... of a kind.

(1/2/2013 6:29:59 AM)
Great Message! Anyone who loves Radio is applauding...and hopefully taking action.

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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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Howie Carr Lashes Out at Greater Media

12-30-2012

Carr is anticipating the much talked about WTKK Boston switch from Talk to music and took that opportunity to, not only pat himself on the back a few times, but to take a few shots at Greater Media. Writing in the Boston Herald, Carr says if he was hired "over there back in 2007," WTKK wouldn't be turning off the lights. He adds, "Even without me, though, WTKK should have been able to survive, and thrive."

Here?s WTKK?s epitaph, according to Carr: ?If you give listeners a choice between NPR and NPR, they?ll pick NPR every time.? Carr says Greater Media missed an opportunity to pick up Rush Limbaugh, electing instead to stick with moderate Michael Smerconish. Rush wound up going to Entercom owned WRKO.

Read Carr's entire article HERE

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Coaching Reps To Make More Money

 12-3-2012

The challenge of coaching sales reps in the field has never been more important than it is today, due to increased media consolidation that has increased responsibilities of sales management. The real art lies in the difference between just riding with a rep and coaching a rep in the field to increase their sales skill sets. I often encounter sales managers that have never graduated from the ?wannabe? stage. The ?wannabe? stage is when a manager will not let go of the control reins on the reps. They want to be in charge of every aspect of the sale from the opening call to the closing presentation. A common mistake that a manager makes is taking over the call rather than strategizing, coaching, and letting the sales rep quarterback the call. Some managers feel that being hyper-involved is the justification for their existence. Being involved in the process is important, but giving the reps control of the reins is a key aspect of the selling process!

Here are five suggestions to help managers turn the reins loose, and systematically grade and evaluate sales reps on their progress in the field.

1) Ask for the sales reps? input: At the next sales meeting, ask each rep to list five selling skills that they want to improve on personally. Some examples would be closing, overcoming objections, opening the call, information gathering, and sales tool usage.

2) Coaching Guide Notebook: Now compile each rep?s list and organize the individual responses. Create an ?In-Field Sales Rep Coaching Guide.? Refer to this guide on each sales call with the individual rep. Before making the next call with the rep, pull out the guide and simply state, ?Here are the five skill areas that you listed for improvement.? Tell the rep that you will be evaluating the progress of these skills on the call.

3) Positive Feedback: Whenever coaching, always cover the positives of the call before delving into the areas for improvement. In the guide, jot down the areas where improvement occurred, and the areas the rep needs to work on for the next in-field coaching session. These skills can be covered in role-playing during upcoming sales meetings. Practice makes perfect? Wrong! Perfect practice makes perfect!

4) Coaching Calendar: I see too many managers paying lip service to in-field coaching. In-field coaching is not an optional job duty for managers. Show reps how important traveling with them is by posting the travel schedule a month in advance. Predictability is acceptable in this case. When planned in advance, the rep has no excuse for being unprepared for the in-field coaching sessions. The top sales managers spend 40-60 percent of their time coaching their reps. Be committed to the travel schedule. Never cancel an in-field coaching call unless a true emergency arises. Cancelling appointments sends the signal that something else is more important than the rep?s skills improvement. Nothing is more important unless it is an illness or a family emergency. A sales manager needs to arrange their schedule so that department meetings and the like occur before or after prime selling time.

5) Written Evaluations: Just like in school, we all love to be graded, especially when we are doing well. Complete a written evaluation every six months for each rep on their in-field performance. Managers can also reward the reps with incentives for those who have shown the most improvement. Once the evaluations are given, it is time to start the process again with five new areas for improvement. Compile the new list and repeat the process.

The largest cost to a sales department is sales rep turnover. Ensure the success of the sales department by getting out from behind the ivory desk and hitting the field with the reps!

Sean Luce is the Head International Instructor for the Luce Performance Group and can be reached at sean@luceperformancegroup.com.

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Shamrock Air Talent Dead at 42

12-30-12

42 year old Quinn Brady, who worked on the air for Shamrock Communications in Reno passed away suddenly.  Shamrock Director of Broadcast Operations Willobee Carlan says Brady died from heart failure. "Quinn was a bright light in our building. His always beaming smile and infectious laugh made him loved by everyone, and he too loved with his whole heart."

Quinn's career included KUUB Cub Country and KOZZ, KRNO Sunny 106.9, KLCA Alice 96.5, Q-102 and Station manager for Flinn Communications? KWYL  and KSON-FM/KBEST 95 in San Diego.

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