The evolution of Internet Radio has taken many twists and turns since our last Blog entry.  All in all, there’s a positive trajectory on the horizon.   Your help is still needed.

The Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060) is before congress, but it still has a ways to go.  With the press and Internet blogging that’s been going on, we may well have a shot at sensible performance fees and a grand future in cyber and WiFi space.

It was a close call.  How close?

Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples.  I’ve been involved with “Beach Music” radio in one form or another since 1976.  It’s been a roller coaster ride of the first order:  fabulous highs and demoralizing lows.
There were a couple of eras in which we produced five minute shows called “Beach Music News” that ran on more than 75 radio stations in the Southeast.  There were other radio syndicators with various flavors of Beach programming who were on up to 3 dozen radio stations and we had three shows on 55 stations.

The number of radio stations that are full-time Beach stations can be counted on one hand.  The number of stations with weekend Beach shows are a fraction of what they used to be. 

Not coincidentally, the number of jobs available to Beach bands are miniscule in comparison to 20 years ago, as well.

In a pitch, this is the point where the listener often starts to freeze up, thinking, ohmigod, is he going to ask me to support Beach Music? 

The good news is that I’ve never been a big believer in asking for “support.”  I believe that people participate with whatever they care about and they let the rest die.

I have seen many many Beach Music stations die in the last 2 ½ decades.  There has been only one that I know of that was resurrected from the dead. 

It generally happens the same way.  After the station changes format people begin to lament, “we didn’t know what we had,” “will there ever be another,” “I thought there were a lot of listeners,” etc.

This brings up the question again, “Do listeners need to support the station?”  The answer of course is, “No.”  It’s not the listeners’ job to support the station.

Radio airplay has been touted for a hundred years (beginning twenty years before it was available) as “public broadcasting” and “free”.  Those are the facts. 

And when radio is treated in this way, the programming that folks like often disappears—then it isn’t free anymore.  Nor is it public.  It’s non-existent.

  
Whose job is it to recover lost entertainment and information that is attractive to an audience?  It’s not anyone’s job.   Radio stations exist in a “free market” and they can change their programming whenever they want within a few guidelines provided by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

What’s the crux of all this?  What is the challenge?

Simple.  Radio stations are not always competent at generating the level of advertising revenue they need to justify what they do (this isn’t limited to Beach Music formats, it applies to all of them).

Those of you in sales understand this the best.  Contrary to common mythology, sales don’t happen because the “price” is right, or the price is “competitive,” or because (in this case) the radio station has the highest “ratings.” 
Sales come from one thing only—relationships.

 
The truth is, it takes quite a while to develop relationships.  Imagine.  A typical small radio station has four salespersons.

 
Imagine the station is located in a metropolis with 30,000 businesses.  How long do you imagine it will take for those four salespeople to develop meaningful relationships with enough businesses to generate adequate advertising revenue?

Again, a fairly simple answer here.  One you can corroborate easily by paying attention to the ads on a station. 
The big stations in the market run lots of ads they get through ad agencies.  Their strategy is to develop relationships with the agencies based on their ratings—their listenerships.  Thus, they can make ‘friends’ with one ad agency representative and have access to potential advertising with a number of different companies. 

The small stations (like the one we propose here) don’t have relationships with ad agencies because they don’t have high ratings.  They have to develop their relationships one business at a time.  Research on marketing shows it takes 5 calls for a salesperson to develop enough of a relationship to generate an advertising contract with a business.

This doesn’t describe the dozens and dozens of businesses in which 5 calls didn’t do the job!  Or 10 calls.  Or 15.  It just claims that the successful relationships take five calls.

 
Nor does this statistic describe everything else that has to go into those calls, the number of salespeople who fail to generate enough ads to survive, and the dozen or so other influences that can make or break their advertising outcome.

Is any of this the job of the listener?  Absolutely not!   Listeners can simply be passive and let the station sink or swim.  If the desired format (in this case, Beach Music) should disappear forever from a city, they would simply be Beach-less.

With a couple of exceptions.

1-Remember the station I mentioned earlier that came back from the dead?  Listeners in that city asked questions similar to those posited earlier.  What happened?   Weren’t there enough listeners, there were a lot of us who loved the station?  Wasn’t there enough advertising? Etc.

Eventually, the administration, in concert with many concerned listeners, reconsidered its position on Beach Music.  Of course they did!  The idea of a community of listeners who are concerned about the financial viability of the station is …. Unthinkable.  Especially when considering that every listener either works in a business or owns one.  Almost all businesses need new clients to make up for the attrition of clients who slowly disappear.
When listeners become concerned with the commercial health of a radio station, the station has a network of friends.  Unbelievable.  Radio stations usually have to do it by themselves.  Live or die. 

Let me assure you.  A salesperson who is aware that the community-at-large is concerned on how well he/she is doing in relation to the station’s revenues is a salesperson who is going to be pumped every time he or she hits the street.

2-We did say a ‘couple’ of exceptions.  The other is Internet radio.  The salvation of many cities and listeners who have little or no access to Beach Music programming.  (And to the many who do have ‘some’ Beach Music programming but it’s extremely limited to one narrow perspective or another).

Internet streamers of Beach Music count in the dozens and dozens.  Most of them make little or no money.  A lot of them will disappear even without changes in the cyberscape.  Others will persevere if there’s a level playing field where hard work and commitment have a clear shot at success.

There are quite a few of those folks.

They will survive, if.

If enough people get active now and contact their congresspersons to support the Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060), and if enough people become active directly, or indirectly, in terms of advertising.  (If you think it’s tough for four sales people to develop relationships with 30,000 businesses in the city where they live, how tough do you think it is to develop relationships in cities that you’ve never seen?  E.g. The Endless Summer Network is in countless communities, hamlets, and cities in the Southeast with thousands upon thousands of listeners—far more than most local radio stations.  But developing relationships with local and regional businesses is even more daunting).

Time to get involved if you want to put your personal commitment to work for the possibility of permanent access to the music you love on the Internet.

Links to your congresspersons and some documents that will make that a quick and easy process are below.
Regards,

John Hook

http://www.savenetradio.org