Posted by: Steve Passwaiter
Vice President, Business Development

If there was ever an industry that could use an army of missionaries, it’s commercial radio. According to news reports this past week, a new group of PR and communications professionals have formed the Radio Communicators Group. This new group has two goals: 1) to effectively communicate radio initiatives to the industry, trade groups and media, and 2) to reach out to the advertising marketplace to promote the usage of the medium. This group effort is the idea of two innovative women: Beasley’s Denyse Mednik and Greater Media’s Heidi Raphael. I just pray (going on the missionary theme here) that they don’t prove to be gluttons for punishment.

It’s been a difficult road for radio to promote itself as a viable medium. The responsibilities for that effort have been passed about like a hot potato among several of the medium’s trade groups. The end result is that the radio business has found itself wanting for an organized and well coordinated effort dedicated to promoting the industry.

At the same time, the industry is on the road to a ratings system that will give tools, similar to those currently in use by the Internet firms, to measure ROI on radio investments. Radio is nearly a completely accountable medium to those who depend on the ratings to determine buys. It’s in everyone’s best interest if those who oppose PPM and Arbitron find a way out of this current struggle that has found state governments getting into the debate on the damage that PPM is doing to minority formats.

Radio has found itself lacking one voice historically and that didn’t help combat the constant drumbeat of negativity coming from XM and Sirius. Prior to their merger, both satellite firms did an excellent job of repositioning terrestrial radio as something that was both old and boring. This can only continue. Some of radio’s top executives like Ed Christian of Saga and Jeff Smulyan of Emmis did come out forcefully against that marketing effort but their voices were drowned out. At a critical time, the business couldn’t coordinate a response and the results of that campaign along with other secular factors put radio on the defensive.

Enough of history. Perhaps these difficult times have convinced enough radio owners to pull together in an attempt to save the business they love from the fate currently being experienced by newspaper companies. We have to hope. So, how does the Radio Communicators Group pull off what has been impossible thus far?

In my opinion, it starts by stopping something that’s been a standard industry practice. Radio stations/clusters need to realize quickly that they’re not only competing with other radio stations and focus a concerted effort in the broader advertising market. Selling against other radio stations/clusters has been/is/remains a foolish and deadly action and limits your upside to the damage you can do to the other radio competitors. The effort to undercut and bad mouth competitors has done nothing but diminish the value proposition of radio to agencies and clients. As a result, other media have prospered at its expense. I know a lot of companies have moved beyond these prehistoric tactics but not as many as we’d like to think. Our reps need to be better and repeatedly schooled in the new retail marketplace. We might actually have to think about ways for operators to come together to promote radio in their own marketplaces. I applaud Radio Ink’s Eric Rhoads’ e-mail this past week promoting the idea of a summit of experts sponsored by local radio operators discussing with local businesses the strategies they’ll need to survive when times are tough. These kinds of efforts, done locally and in cooperation with your competition, will begin to rebuild or reinforce radio at the Main Street level. This is what Joe Schwartz recently referred to as a part of the “new normal.” Corporate owners need to actively support these types of cooperative ventures and to assure local market managers that these type of medium building events are encouraged.

On the large national advertiser front, radio owners would benefit from similar efforts to band together to give this new organization a chance. It’s time to start building the value of your medium and that doesn’t get accomplished by allowing your national reps and NSM’s to bring the market in below someone’s stated metrics. Those dollars get shifted into other places and become nearly impossible to regain in subsequent years/quarters. The temporary gains by the offender costs the industry at large. It’s time to learn to say no and to contemplate the long term costs of today’s poor decisions! What about going after the budgets of other media? It’s past time to let radio be once again understood as a dynamite product mover (as it is) deserving of a larger share of a CMO’s budget than to be merely thought of as a place to look for funds to support larger efforts in other platforms. You might be surprised to learn that these large national advertisers might want to establish a relationship directly with your firm. There’s news from the ANA meeting that Clients aren’t particularly pleased with the ad agencies and their slowness to adapt to the digital age. There’s some real work to be done here. What can you do to support the nascent efforts underway by some of the rep firms to take radio’s story to the uninitiated?

It will complicate the RCG’s mission if the industry doesn’t respond by displaying some respect for itself. Some of the forward thinking efforts now underway across the country in local and national markets will be greatly enhanced by a long term, committed effort to promote radio as more relevant than ever. The good news is that there’s evidence to support that. In order to be successful in the “new normal”, the industry is going to have to go it together and try to move beyond old, intra radio rivalries. As Ben Franklin once said, “If we don’t all hang together than we shall all hang separately.”

It seems that “new” radio has much to offer and the number of marketing opportunities presented by radio stations on the interactive side are starting to take off and are really more in tune with the goals of an ever increasing number of advertisers. We’re not just audio anymore; at least not in the interactive world.

Your interactive elements allow advertisers to engage in conversations with your listeners. The desire to dispense with linear advertising and to go “transmedia” is gaining currency with advertisers. What can radio do to help propel that effort? Help RCG make the right impact at a critical tipping point for the business. Missionaries without a credible message make for few converts and fewer dollars. Think about it.

Tags: Arbitron, BIA, commercial radio, Denyse Mednik, Ed Christian, Emmis, Heidi Raphael, Jeff Smulyan, PPM, Radio Communicators Group, RCG, Saga, Sirius, Steve Passwaiter, XM