{"id":2476,"date":"2022-07-15T01:35:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T08:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/?page_id=2476"},"modified":"2022-07-15T01:35:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T08:35:53","slug":"2022-0722","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/2022-0722\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio Waves: July 22, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketing 101: How Radio Forgot its Own Purpose<\/strong><\/h1>\n

I didn\u2019t get one, but perhaps you did: SiriusXM sent a mass promotional email extolling the virtues of\u00a0 <\/span>its subscription satellite radio service, with the basic point being the headline: why waste your time with AM\/FM radio?<\/p>\n

Obviously directed toward listeners, the ad caused quite a reaction \u2026 on the part of radio observers. Radio Ink (radioink.com) featured a column on July 13th asking the question – \u201cAre you just going to take this?\u201d And Fred Jacobs penned a column the same day in a blog at Jacobs Media\u2019s website (jacobsmedia.com) with the headline \u201cMemo to Radio: The Gloves Are Off.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while the gloves are indeed off, they are off only at SiriusXM. The huge major players in radio today \u2014 iHeart, Cumulus, and Audacy \u2014 are definitely going to do nothing but take it. Which is precisely the problem: radio, in and of itself a marketing device if there ever was one, sucks at marketing. Sorry for the bad language.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always this way. At one time, stations would place station music charts in retail and record stores, publish newsletters and mini-magazines of interest to listeners, place ads in newspapers, on billboards and on buses and bus benches, host free or low-cost concerts, run live broadcasts at local venues, and even give station swag away as prizes. I still have my KIIS-FM (102.7) travel brush from at least 20 years ago. The idea was that station promotions would hopefully get you to sample the station. For the most part, it worked.<\/p>\n

When was the last time you saw an ad \u2014 or anything else \u2014 for any station in town? Considering the prevalence of pushbuttons on the radios working against the idea of just tuning around, how does any station expect listeners to find them?<\/p>\n

Which is a shame, as many stations, as much as even I can complain, do indeed put out a good product. KIIS-FM, as but one example, sounds better today than it has in years. Much of it has to do with an abundance of good new music, but the station itself does sound good even in the important part: between the records. Likewise, content on Alt 98.7 is superb, with the best morning show in town (The Woody Show) and a great afternoon show (Booker and Stryker).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

KROQ (106.7 FM) finally seems to be getting on the right track and sounds great right now as well, as does My FM (KBIG, 104.3 FM) and KOST (103.5 FM). Go Country (KKGO, 105.1 FM) always sounds good, and these are just a few.<\/p>\n

Not that everything is perfect. The commercial loads are still too large and commercial breaks too long. Some stations still make the mistake of running commercial-free hours, which just adds even more commercials to the load in other hours. That needs to be fixed, and owners need to realize that an ad would be more effective as one of a short break than one of many. As KHJ (930 AM) management understood in the early days of Boss Radio top-40, it is better to run fewer ads and charge more, than to run more ads and discount too much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But getting back to the point: if you didn\u2019t already listen to the stations you listen to, would you even know about them? What they play? The personalities? The hosts on talk stations? Of course not. Radio has done a terrible job of promoting itself, and it has only gotten worse under the large corporate ownership model that began years ago.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it is the small stations across the country that still do it right. The large corporate owners seem to have forgotten what marketing is all about. And having a nationwide contest with a key word of the day to enter on a website is not<\/i> going to change things. It\u2019s dull, and it doesn\u2019t bring in new listeners. For me, competing against listeners from 700 stations around the country is a turn-off.<\/p>\n

So will radio fix this? I doubt it. At least not until the big corporate clusters are broken up. It doesn\u2019t matter what content you have if no one knows it\u2019s there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reality Radio<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If you\u2019ve ever watched \u201creality TV\u201d you know that the word \u201creality\u201d is more of a joke than anything else. The same goes \u201cRyan\u2019s Roses\u201d that still runs on the KIIS-FM morning Ryan Seacrest program in spite of it being exposed as a fraud right here at least twice. Perhaps like the television reality programs, it\u2019s \u201cjust entertainment,\u201d so no one really cares. But I think on the radio, many people actually believe it’s happening.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve covered this before: it is absolutely, totally, 100% illegal to record or air a telephone conversation without the permission of all involved. So when you hear people caught in a love triangle fighting on the air, you\u2019re hearing a script read by actors. There is nothing<\/i> real about Ryan\u2019s Roses; if there was, the station would lose its license and the owner would have to pay a huge fine.<\/p>\n

There are services that provide the scripts and actors for stations across the country, if you want to run something similar on your own station. Which makes it even more surprising that Seacrest thought it a good idea to air a recent edition, in which a man supposedly cheated on his wife \u2026 after<\/i> the couple was divorced. \u201cI knew you wouldn\u2019t call him if I told the truth\u201d the actress playing the ex-wife said to Seacrest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So not only was my time wasted with a fake \u201cproblem,\u201d it wasn\u2019t even a good one. I want my five minutes back.<\/p>\n

\/\/\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marketing 101: How Radio Forgot its Own Purpose I didn\u2019t get one, but perhaps you did: SiriusXM sent a mass promotional email extolling the virtues of\u00a0 its subscription satellite radio service, with the basic point being the headline: why waste your time with AM\/FM radio? Obviously directed toward listeners, the ad caused quite a reaction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2476","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2477,"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2476\/revisions\/2477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socalradiowaves.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}