New Year’s Greetings from BIA/Kelsey.

So, the good news.

2009 is over. Thank God.

We head into the New Year severely chastened by the historic revenue declines of the current one. The numbers for 2009 don’t bear repeating. They were several shades of awful.

There are signs of a modest ad economy recovery as we enter January 2010. The broadcast networks are reporting an active scatter market. This makes the network execs that decided to hold back inventory at the upfront look like good market callers. Some of the larger radio groups are reporting a decent December assuming that flat is the new up! Online ad activity is regaining its health as well after a down year on the display side.

With all the attention being paid to creating new forms of revenue in the New Radio Model, this question can’t be overlooked: How do the roles of existing station personnel change under the new model? Specifically, how does the role of station on-air talent change? Is talent still considered an important piece …

Highlighting the dynamic nature of local markets and building off the research and themes they have echoed throughout the year (see the ILM Conference podcasts with Peter Krasilovsky and Michael Boland), The Kelsey Group has just released more than two-dozen key trends to watch for in 2009 in interactive local media, global Yellow Pages and …

Posted by: Rick Ducey
Chief Strategy Officer, BIA Financial Network
Eric Rhoads held his Convergence ’08 conference this week in San Jose (Mar 10-11) with about 175 attendees. The conference theme was how radio both faces increasing competition but could benefit from developments in streaming, podcasting, blogging, social networking, Internet, WiFi, multicasting and video among …