You Wanna Sell HD Radio Receivers?

Yes, it's an awful pun...but guinea pigs do "wheek".

Sales of HD Radio receivers are perennially weak in the USA.  There's a simple reason: nobody knows about it.  Consumers aren't aware, because nobody is telling them about it.  Because they're not aware, they're not asking for HD Radio receivers.  And because they're not asking for HD Radio receivers, nobody has any incentive to make them available to buy in the first place.
This is a vicious cycle and it's especially true in cars...where the bulk of high-value radio listening takes place.  Auto manufacturers (OEM's) don't care because their dealers aren't reporting any consumer demand for HD Radio.  And OEM's do care about companies like Microsoft and XM/Sirius who're paying those OEM's a lot of money to add products like Sync and satellite radio to the dashboard.

Radio doesn't have a single, unifying organization that can afford to step up and pay auto OEM's the big bucks to demand HD Radio's be offered as standard equipment in cars, as opposed to seldom-offered "options" (and only on the high-end models at that).

So instead, the onus falls on the individual stations/clusters to do that.  But how?  By taking a page out of the guerrilla marketing textbook: if you can't afford to market your product, have your customers market it for you.

More after the jump!

It's Not Selling Out - It's Buying In: Underwriting for College Radio

I've mentioned before that I'm a big believer in that the only way a "college radio" station can be sure to prevent a sale of its FCC license (by its parent institution) is to be fiscally self-sufficient.   It's hard for an administration to claim they're saving money via a sale when you're not costing them any money in the first place.  And, by definition, if you're bringing money in the door, it means you've got support and ties to both the campus and local communities; things no administration discards lightly.

So, how does a station become fiscally self-sufficient?

There are two main, traditional avenues:  fundraising and underwriting.   Fundraising is about asking listeners to simply donate money to the station because they want to support it.   Underwriting is about asking businesses (and other organizations) to donate money in exchange for something of benefit to the business - usually an on-air mention.

I won't get into fundraising here, except to say that David Caban has put together a fabulous on-line guide for how to do on-line fundraising for WRUW in Cleveland.   It's specifically for WRUW but can easily be adapted.  In fact, it's definitely worth shamelessly copying it for your station.   I'll also mention that if you've never done it at your station, make sure you get buy-in from your campus' Alumni Relation Office, since they are also responsible for fundraising and usually take that responsibility very seriously.

Instead, I'll focus on underwriting, because while fundraising typically has so-so effectiveness for small stations in small markets...underwriting can actually work for almost any station.  Why the difference?  Read on to take a new look at "selling out"...

Protecting Your College Radio Station from a Sale

The past 18 months have not been kind to college radio. Their budgets battered by the Great Recession, we've seen colleges and universities experiencing a sea change in their attitudes towards their radio licenses.  Instead of being viewed as something that would never be sold, some are electing to sell with little to no public warning to the students or station staff, and sometimes even when a station was in good fiscal health and was a source of prestige for the college.

As of this writing, we've seen:  KUSF (University of San Francisco), KTRU (Rice University), WRVU (Vanderbilt Student Communications, at Vanderbilt University), WNAZ (Trevecca Nazarene University), WDUQ (Duquesne University), WLIU (Long Island University), and KCMP (St. Olaf College) just to name a few.   And that doesn't include several colleges who LMA'd (Local Management Agreement) their college station to another entity, effectively removing students or local involvement from the station in the process.

For years, many colleges have long looked at their student radio stations as, generally, something they'd simply rather not deal with: out of sight, out of mind.  That's understandable; it costs a lot to have a station, and it benefits a relatively small (if not tiny) percentage of the student body.  Compared to other student activities, college radio tends to be fiendishly expensive.  And unlike most other activities, a licensed station has the potential to incur substantial fiscal penalty (i.e. FCC fines) and the ability to potentially embarrass the college on a very public stage.

Regardless, for decades, most colleges kept their radio stations.  Now they're selling them.  What's changed?

A Damn Good Fundraising Video

"Here & Now" host Robin Young
busking in Harvard Square T Stop

Public radio is, by and large, considered to be a "very serious" media outlet.  It's an image that most public radio outlets, and NPR et al, work hard to maintain.  It works very well for them; means people trust the content they hear.

But it ALSO means that when public radio decides to poke fun at itself, it can work really, really well.

Case in point: today a buddy of mine at WBUR posted this hilarious fundraising video to Youtube:
A WBUR Film - A Cautionary Tale.

In it, WBUR GM Charles Kravetz finds the numbers aren't adding up, so he dispatches Bob Oakes, David Boeri, Robin Young and Meghna Chakrabarti...all are well-known reporters or hosts...out to the streets to scrounge up some cash.  Oakes takes a "will report news for change" on the sidewalk approach, Chakrabarti runs the WBUR parking lot, Boeri sells some "quality merchandise" out of his coat, and poor Robin Young busks guitar...intentionally badly...in the middle of the Harvard Square subway stop (one of the busiest in the system). And some random listener recognized her, came over with a grin, and said "Robin, don't quit your day job," while dropping a dollar in the guitar case.   Ouch.

The whole thing is sheer genius!  It highlights some of their strongest local talent (well, Robin's national but she's certainly well-known locally, too) and does so in a way that takes well-known voices and makes them more accessible as people.   All while poking fun at the system in a way that both makes you laugh and makes you feel just a little sorry for them.

Even if nobody actually donates directly because of this video.  I feel pretty confident that this video is part of an overall amalgamation of reasons while someone...probably a lot of someones...will end up donating.

If your station hasn't done a video like this...why not?  You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The Power of FM over AM

Wow. This article from the Boston Globe really brings it home.

We've all known for a few years now that AM Radio, as a medium, was slipping badly. Traditional cornerstones of AM formats...sports and talk...were losing market share, and several major AM signals were electing to simulcast on an FM station and seeing positive results. At the same time, we're also seeing a lot of traditional AM formats bypassing AM altogether and starting on FM, also with positive results.

One place near and dear to my heart where this has been playing out is Boston, where many, many years of market dominance by WEEI 850AM (sports) and WBZ 1030AM (news) are radically shifting. WBZ still has a killer signal; one of the best AM signals in the USA, actually...famous for being heard in 38 states...and able to hurl almost 100,000 watts across an AM-friendly saltwater path right into Boston. Even so, WBZ has seen increasing competition from local (and national) NPR powerhouse WBUR and, more recently, WGBH's flip to mostly-NPR-news, too.

But it's WEEI that's the most eye-opening. After two years of losing substantial market share to upstart SportsHub 98.5 (aka WBZ-FM) despite WEEI having the Red Sox games...Entercom finally killed off Mike 93.7FM and simulcast WEEI on the 93.7 signal.

World Cafe Live...Austin?

Upon seeing this news about the Cactus Club potentially being taken over by KUT, I find myself wondering how could it possibly NOT be an awesome idea to "franchise" the World Cafe Live venue that operates adjacent to, and in conjunction with, WXPN in Philadelphia.

I've long hoped that the first "franchise" of WCL would be in Ithaca, NY...even though extensive discussions with WCL manager Hal Real have convinced me that it would be a VERY dicey proposition to make something like that work as a viable business. (mostly b/c Ithaca's too small a market)

But Austin, with it's vibrant music scene (not to mention SXSW), would seem a natural fit for WCL, all the moreso given KUT's strong music background.

I Must Promise To Use this Power Only for Good

Off and on, I've been trying to find the blog post where I first suggested that Boston University ought to buy the Boston Globe, and turn it into a giant mentorship/curriculum. Let the pros stay and do their jobs, but they're all required to take on one or two journalism students as mentors for the semester...maybe for a year (or longer if the student desires).

The Globe gets an owner that won't pimp it out like a cheap whore, and BU gets enormous prestige and a fabulous real-world learning environment for its students. Everyone wins.

Of course, despite the same hit to its endowment that all colleges are feeling, I think that BU could afford to drop the dime and buy the Globe, especially if we're talking $200 million...or even just the oft-quoted but hard-to-substaniate $20 million. However, I agree that if the Globe is losing $85 million a year, then even BU can't afford to float that boat.

Still, drastic changes are necessary at the Globe, no matter who owns it or when. I would argue that despite BU's, ehem, "checkered past" with unions, I'd still trust it to "do right" by journalism than I would The New York Times Co. at this point...or most other owners.

Anyways, I originally wrote down the idea as a comment to a May 2006 blog post at Dan Kennedy's Media Nation. If BU does end up buying the Globe, I will expect a modest finder's fee. 5% would do nicely. :-) Hey, at least it'd be going to an alum! (BU College of Arts & Sciences, Class of 1998)

For what it's worth, I said it again in September 2006, and have been mentioning it off and on...including in an e-mail to BU's Dean of the College of Communication, Tom Fiedler, in December 2008. At the time, it was a side note to Mr. Fiedler's quote in the Daily Free Press about the old COM Tower being taken down. But, interestingly, that was right before I noticed the New England Center for Investigative Reporting...which seems to have been launched on January 16, 2009. Coincidence? I think NOT! :-)

I wish I could've had the foresight in 2006 to see the stock market crash of 2008. Oh well.

Extremely Bad Timing

Bruce Theriault writes an excellent commentary today (Feb.18, 2009) about how public radio needs, more than ever, to "fix the problem" of its audience being overwhelming white (82%).

Unfortunately, the first solution he cites is Vocalo, the experimental radio project run by WBEZ in Chicago. The same Vocalo that ChicagoBusiness.com wrote an article about on Feb.16th regarding how a lot of WBEZ donors are furious at how WBEZ routed their donations to fund Vocalo despite major cuts at WBEZ, overall low ratings at Vocalo, and analysis that Vocalo is failing badly at appealing to a non-white audience. (only 29% of its listeners are non-white according to ChicagoBusiness)

Oops.

Bad timing there, Bruce. Doesn't mean you're not right, and I know that Vocalo has been badly hampered by delays in its long-planned signal upgrade that will let it cover more of the target market...but I'd still hustle up a quick re-write to downplay Vocalo as a shining example of how public radio needs to break out of it's "lily white" reputation.

An Epiphany for the Weak Minded

It's late so I don't have time to really flesh this out properly, but I was reading the esteemed Dan Kennedy's MediaNation media-criticism blog, specifically a post about how the town of Nantucket in Massachusetts somewhat inexplicably wanted to suppress details about a severance package a court granted a terminated employee. I'd already commented over there and someone else responded as well, and I had an epiphany of sorts.

I don't think this is really an epiphany, though. I suspect media veterans have been grousing about this for at least five or ten years, probably more like twenty. But hey, I'm not a real journalist - I just play one at my job. :-)

So here it is: it used to be that the media was the fourth estate. Newspapers especially, but radio and TV, too. It was to be feared, and respected. You could use the media to your advantage, but you had to be deferential and you had to treat the media right, or it'd utterly destroy you. But anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to this sort of thing knows that those days are long, long gone.

Why?

I mean, we've never lived in a more media-soaked landscape. Where anyone can bring a scandal to the limelight within minutes. We learned a right-wing Christian conservative governor was actually quite forgiving of unwed motherhood and premarital sex...solely because a hateful (and overall pretty stupid) rumor swept the series of tubes within hours of Palin being named McCain's Veep pick.

And yet, the press has never been more whipped and useless than during the eight years of the Bush administration. Used to be if a president stonewalled, lied and bullshitted the press as blatantly as Bush & company have...every newspaper in America would've turned on them so hard, there would've been impeachment hearings back in 2003. Obviously this isn't the case.

I have to think the obvious answer is that the press is so whipped precisely because we live in such a media-soaked landscape. When every yahoo and bonehead can have a blog and reach a national audience...like myself...then the meaning of "media" is diluted to virtually nothing. Can you imagine a President saying "If I've lost Cronkite" about anyone in the media anymore?

Couple that with the other side, that the "big media" have been so thoroughly bought and paid for. How can we truly expect anyone at the New York Times, the big three networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, or any radio news source...yes, even NPR...to keep the big & powerful honest? To do that, you must be willing to attack and destroy them. Assuming you even could destroy one of these mega-billion-dollar corporations (or the government) these days...in virtually every case, the big & powerful are the same people signing your paychecks. As a journalist, you can only get fired so many times before you stop biting the hand that feeds you.

I still consider NPR to be one of the most objective sources of news out there. That's part of the reason why I can manage an NPR station and sleep soundly at night. But it is rather dismaying how NPR so often steadfastly refuses to ever really smack around a news source. To insist on taking the high road at all costs. Nobody's really afraid of NPR...and with 20+ million listeners, if some corporate fatcat isn't afraid of NPR, then who? Who's going to keep them honest?

I'll end this with a call to action: I would like very much to see NPR get more commentators that aren't afraid to rip some jerk a new one. Who ask questions and expect a real answer because if they don't get one, they'll make you sorry you didn't give them one. Perhaps a Daniel Schorr for the modern age. I like Dan a lot, but he's just too genteel...give him some young, fiery interns who're out for blood and train them on how to sharpen their fangs.

Granted, thanks to the FCC making it next to impossible for non-commercial radio stations (as most NPR affiliates are) to endorse/detract against politicians, this task may not be easy. But I don't pay NPR fees because I want to be handed the low-hanging fruit. I pay them because I want them to give me the real story, even if it means it's speckled with a few drops of blood.

Destroy to Create

Word from Current is that Pandora, the "Internet radio service that allows listeners to customize musical selections to their own tastes", is about to die, fiscally. The article says it's chiefly because of incredibly unreasonable licensing fee structures the music labels have set up, and refuse to back down from.

The tone of the article is that, while it'd be sad to see Pandora go away, it might be for the "greater good". In the sense that, in order for the "big, bad, archaic music labels" to ultimately die, every possible revenue source for them must be destroyed first in order to choke them into submission.

I often espouse the "creation through destruction" manifesto...the Tyler Durden Eight Rules About Life, if you will. But here I fear that while it may be the only strategy, it is still a failing one.

I say that because, if I may speak bluntly, many music labels are cockroaches. They're impossible to kill. They're run by soulless, slimy bastards who know that there will always be some wide-eyed doe of a musician willing to sign their life away for peanuts in a deal that makes the label rich and screws everyone else. The music industry seems to attract these kind of people like rats to garbage. Actually that's unfair, the media industry as a whole seems to attract those people. Lord knows I've dealt with quite a few of them in various jobs I've had working in radio, and I've been lucky to only have to deal with a few since I'm mostly on the college/non-commercial side of things. The lessor dollar amounts inherent to this side of radio tends to mitigate the sliminess somewhat.

If you're of the industry and offended by what I'm writing, I say that by no means has everyone I've worked with been a soulless slimy bastard. And I'm not going to say here who I think was one. If you can't handle the potential of accusation, you either don't know me very well or perhaps you need to re-examine your career choice. ;-)

Getting back on topic, the music labels seem determined to pursue a self-destructive model of royalties. A model that guarantees their eventual destruction through alienation of every other participant in the process. A model that maximizes what little short-term gain can be had...and it's not much...at the expense of potentially (and likely) destroying everything in the long term.

But it will be a long, slow and painful death match to that "long term", my friends. These are people who have made a living out of cheating, lying and general scumbaggery for at least forty years. They will learn how to eat their young for a long time before the inevitable finally occurs.

So don't hold your breath thinking that Pandora's death will bring change anytime soon. It will have to get much, much worse before that happens. And it's a damn shame.

Let the Pubradio Deathwatch Commence

Good grief. The number of public radio shows that either are rumored to be ending, or have confirmed their ending, is getting ridiculous! Let's do the list, shall we?

• Radio Open Source (already well gone, albeit "reborn" as a podcast-only)
  
• Justice Talking (confirmed)
• Fair Game with Faith Salie (already gone)
  
• Word for Word (confirmed)
  
• The Bryant Park Project (confirmed)
  
• The Infinite Mind (rumored at KSKA's "Off-Mic" blog)
• Chicago Public Radio's Hello Beautiful and Right Now (confirmed)
• Free Speech Radio News (I know, not gone...but in dire fiscal straits)
• The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (also not gone, but also fiscally hurting)

Guess that lousy economy is really catching up with public radio. Or is it? In some cases I think that's true, but I also suspect that some of these shows did an excellent job finding a niche and serving it when they started some ten years ago, but they never figured out how to adapt when that niche didn't really need them anymore. Others were just good ideas that weren't given the admittedly long time it would take to really get enough affiliates to be worth it...although I don't deny that it's hard to keep spending millions on a show that only has a few dozen affiliates.

I don't really know for sure, but this is a mighty disturbing trend regardless. I especially find it troublesome that several of the most "unconventional" and "experimental" shows are the ones getting killed off. Granted, "experimental" by definition means you're not sure it's going to work...but I really think that most of these "experimental" shows should have worked but either weren't given the chance or were set up to fail.

Zipcar and Competition

I spotted this article about Zipcar in today's Boston Globe. Apparently the old staid behemoths of car rental have noticed that, surprise, surprise, Zipcar is actually doing exceedingly well in the car rental market.

Ed. Note: In the interest of disclosure, my wife and I were members of Zipcar for a little over a year in 2006 and 2007. I thought it was an excellent alternative to the hassle of owning a car...especially since we lived in Brookline which is exceptionally car-UNfriendly with obnoxious and expensive overnight parking restrictions. Even so, don't kid yourself - if you need a car on a regular basis (as I often did) then Zipcar is no substitute. I was glad to have the option, but I sure wished I could've afforded to own my own car, and had I lived three blocks away in Brighton, I probably could've afforded it given what I was paying each month for Zipcar.

Okay, back to the article: if you've ever rented cars or trucks from places like Hertz, U-Haul or Enterprise (or any one of three dozen other major renters) then you know exactly why Zipcar does so much better: Zipcar's customer service is so much better than anyone else's that it's laughable. Whereas with Zipcar I have cars within a few minutes' walk of my location, and I can choose exactly which car to rent, and I can do it with about five minutes (at most) notice and effort, and no interaction with any obnoxious, unhelpful "customer service representative" whose sole purpose is to try and upsell all sorts of insurance and crap I don't need? Gee, no wonder I prefer Zipcar!

In fact, the sole reason I routinely used Enterprise for longer (weekend) trips was because of Zipcar's maximum of 125 miles per day included in the rental. If you go over that, the extra per-mile fees add up incredibly fast. I suppose Zipcar is trying to discourage renters from going far away from "home base" (and thus risking expensive solutions if the car has an accident or breaks down far away) but besides those fees, it was really no more expensive to go with Zipcar for a weekend rental. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that Enterprise had a rental location in my office's building, I probably wouldn't have used them...that was the only way they could "compete" with Zipcar in terms of convenience and that was just sheer luck.

I think Zipcar will have a problem of sorts with this, but not for quite some time. Car rental companies typically earn substantial revenue by screwing the customer...or at least I assume they must, because they never miss an opportunity to force me to come to them and then stand around waiting in their office while they try and upsell insurance and all sorts of other crap on me. The entire operation is a demonstration of how little they trust and respect me as a customer.

Not to mention a giant pet peeve of mine: you have pretty much no choice whatsoever as to what car you get. Oh sure you can choose "economy", "midsize" or "full"...the difference between each is minimal and it's really just a way to get you to pay a few bucks more per day. And really there's no promise at all you'll get even the size car you chose. Half the time there's nothing "available" in that size, so you get something else instead...usually a bigger car that sucks down more gasoline. Or the car you get isn't really a "midsize" car, despite the classification...it's really a subcompact.

With Zipcar, I get EXACTLY the car I picked. I really liked that: if I wanted the sporty Mazda 3, I got it. If I needed a minivan, I got the Mazda 5. If I needed to haul cargo, I got the Honda Element or the Toyota Tundra. Granted it sometimes meant traveling out of my way to get the exact car I wanted, but usually it wasn't too bad.

And with Zipcar, instead of nickeling-and-diming me on different "classes" of cars, I basically paid the same rate for any car I wanted, period. Man, that was nice.

The bottom line is that Zipcar works on a model of trust; the company actually respects and trusts its customers to do the right thing. All the other car rental companies are, at best, an adversarial relationship. It will take a long, long time for the culture at these other companies to change enough to truly be "competition" to Zipcar...and the article mentions this: the initial attempts by U-Haul and Hertz were pathetic blends of their existing service and halfhearted attempts to copy Zipcar, instead of a careful analysis of why Zipcar is so popular with its members and then a serious attempt to launch a service that actually competes.

DOJ Approves XM/Sirius Merger - How this will Hurt Public Radio?

It's all over the news, but Current gets the link for having a collection of links themselves. :-)

So yesterday the Dep't of Justice approved the XM/Sirius satellite radio merger. It still has to be approved by the FCC but don't expect them to deny it, not with Kevin Martin in charge. And expect Martin to ramrod it through before the election and his almost certain ouster (it's just a hunch, but I doubt McCain or Clinton/Obama will keep him around).

People can wax and wane all day about how this will or will not be good for consumers, for radio, and for media in general. I have only two specific points to make:

First, I really hope that, should this go through, it means they'll have home TEAM announcers for all the MLB baseball games, instead of just the home FIELD announcers. I'm not paying $14/month to listen to those horrid Yankees announcers when my beloved Red Sox are playing in the Bronx.

Second, I see no way this is not bad news for public radio...and in a very specific way: program licensing fees. Both XM and Sirius pay tidy sums to NPR, APM, PRI and dozen or so independent shows each year for the right to air their shows on the satellite "public radio" channels, like XMPR and NPR Now (on XM and Sirius, respectively).

A major factor in those tidy sums was each satradio operator trying to outbid the other to get the programming they deemed compelling enough to lure listeners to satellite radio.

I won't say which, but I have it on good authority (as in, from the guy who writes the budget) that a Top 10 Arbitron market NPR affiliate (i.e. one of the big ones that produces a few national shows that many other stations carry) was getting more revenue for their station from XM/Sirius programming fees than they were from NPR programming fees.

I'll say that again...XM/Sirius were paying this station MORE for the NPR programming than NPR itself was. That's a stunning statement...and indicative of perhaps how out of control the spending has been at XM & Sirius.

Discussions on best practices in business and budgeting aside, I have no doubt that many of these stations - and the networks themselves - have gotten used to those tidy sums padding their budgets. And I can almost guarantee you that at the next contract renewal, those tidy sums will be a lot less tidy. Why shouldn't they be? XM/Sirius knows damn well they overpaid for most of their content and now there's no other satradio operator to sell your wares to if one refuses to pony up.

So there it is in a nutshell - this merger actually is "bad" for public radio in a very real and tangible way.

Catholic Church Scandals - the Gift that Keeps on Giving

By way of Current.org, I learned today that KMBH down in Brownsville, TX (the very southern tip, along the Mexican border and the Gulf) canceled one of their four annual fund drives after only receiving six pledge calls over three days.

D'oh!

So far they're eight months into their fiscal year and have only raised 15% of their annual budget.

D'OH!!!

If you believe the reports in the local newspaper, The Monitor, there is a serious governance problem at KMBH, with the local Catholic Monsignor Pedro Briseño effectively having total dictatorial control over the station. Which in and of itself is not unusual...lots of stations effectively are dictatorships...but apparently he's made some questionable decisions about dismissing more station trustees than is allowed, refusing to hand over public documents and the like. And he's given zero justification for any of it, referring all queries to his lawyer.

Again, I should point out this is all coming from one newspaper. Never underestimate the power of a newspaper with an ax to grind.

But assuming for a moment that the newspaper is being reasonably objective, I have to think the lack of transparency is being severely exacerbated because it's a Roman Catholic institution doing the stonewalling.

Has the Church learned nothing from the sins of the Boston Archdioceses? Stonewalling the public, giving no information at all, sweeping things under the rug, and having an antagonistic relationship with the press should be considered cardinal sins after the long, painful and , ultimately, obscenely expensive ordeals the Church put parishioners through with the priest sex abuse scandals...and that the public turned around and put the Church through in response more recently.

I'm from Boston, and Boston was undoubtedly "ground zero" for the priest sex abuse scandals...so maybe what's obvious to me isn't as obvious to a region 3000 miles away. But apparently it's clear to the listeners and viewers in south Texas, because they're voting with their wallets when it comes to the actions of KMBH management.

Figuring out the Secrets of the Universe (WBTN-AM's demise)

By way of this week's North East Radio Watch I learned that the Bennington Banner is reporting that Southern Vermont College is looking to get rid of WBTN 1370AM. Apparently the station has cost SVC $450,000 since it was donated to them in 2002 by Robert Howe, and the trustees voted last week to "end its losses" by the end of the Spring term. That probably will mean a sale, but technically it could mean anything that ends the cash outlay from the college.

FWIW, Howe is a trustee himself, and voted against the plan. Howe originally purchased the small AM station from Vermont Public Radio in mid-2000, VPR itself had bought it in early 2000 as part of a package deal that included the more valuable WBTN-FM signal on 94.3, also in Bennington, VT. This means it's unlikely that VPR could ride in on a white horse to "save" the AM station.

I also wonder a bit about just how doomed WBTN-AM was from the start, since Howe...a radio professional...tried running it himself as a commercial enterprise from mid-2000 until the donation to SVC in 2002. Then again, the economy was in the toliet around that time. And maybe he wasn't really all that into WBTN-AM (I get the impression he owns or has owned several stations). Who knows?

Anyways, the point here is that I feel there's a "you figure this out and you'll have figured the world out" lesson somewhere in here. SVC took on WBTN-AM with the intention of building a communications program around it. They ran it as a commercial radio outlet...albeit with a distinctly collegiate flavor, I'm sure...and even had the Boston Red Sox games on it (usually a gold mine for advertising).

And yet the station was losing over $75k per year. That strikes me as incongruous.

I mean, I can point to any one of a dozen possible reasons why the losses were so high. The signal isn't the greatest, for example...especially with only 85 watts at night. Although I suppose it covers Bennington and that's what matters.

Maybe they just never really tried to have a successful sales program...if you don't sell ads, you won't have much revenue - doesn't matter if you're non-commercial or not. Selling on a small town AM can be done and done well, but I won't deny it takes a dedicated and skilled salesman. Someone probably paid on commission. That may be something the colleges never wanted to deal with; I know many colleges often feel uncomfortable with the idea of commercial sales in any form, and they usually hate paying on commission.

But here's the thing: let's assume for a moment that they DID at least try to have a decent sales program. Something more than purely student-run. And let's assume they had a halfway-decent physical plant and there wasn't broken equipment everywhere. And we'll also assume that enough was set up with automation to provide for a 24/7/365 service even when students were on break or otherwise not around. These are all reasonable assumptions.

If that's the case, and they still lost that much money each year...what's the reason why? I mean, small-signal/small-town commercial AM's survive every day out there. Often just barely, but they don't lose money. What is it about college-run radio stations that seems to always encourage a deficit budget? I know very, very few college-run radio stations that are fiscally self-sufficient.

Note that I say "college-run", not "college-owned". I know several "college-owned" NPR outlets that are fiscally VERY healthy...but they're not really run by the college. I'm talking about "college-run" where regular college administrators have a regular say in how things operate, and students have an active role in the operation of the station and usually have regular airshifts.

Certainly my station isn't fiscally self-sufficient. While we do our best to raise funds via listener contributions and underwriting, we rely heavily on direct funding from the college to close our budget gap. This is something both my college and I are working to change, mind you...but it doesn't happen overnight. And it's kind of expected, and not just by HWS, that any student enterprise is going to always require subsidizing from the parent college. I know of no "college radio station" that is thought of differently.

OTOH, perhaps that "not happening overnight" is the problem; WBTN couldn't deliver the level of service the student and administrative body wanted and minimize costs until a listenership was developed to the point where enough funds came in. It's not easy to have enough startup funding to get the resources to build that listenership up...not when it can take five or ten years at several hundred thousand dollars per year. Not always that much, but it can be.

I suppose the $64,000 question is whether or not the non-commercial expectations of a how a college-run station should be is just incompatible with the unwritten laws of the marketplace that govern how much revenue you can make. For my own sake I have to think that they are not, but damned if anyone really knows the answer to that.

One Fundraiser, Hold the Fundraising

So while I run a college radio station, it's still a radio station. One aspect of that is, naturally, the budget. Money goes out, so I need to find ways to bring money in.

Recently I learned that your prototypical on-air fundraiser is actually an extremely inefficient way to raise money from your supporters. It's because you have a very low number of actual donors compared to the number of people you're begging money from (your entire listening audience).

So I would think that it stands to reason that ideas that follow the reverse would be more effective. In other words, instead of one method that hits all your potential supporters in the most in-your-face method possible...you'd have multiple methods targeting supporters with specific methods that are as unnoticeable as possible.

Keeping with that train of thought, what concepts could you do to essentially get money from supporters without them even realizing it? Short of actual theft, that is. Two ideas come to mind:

1. Impulse Buy The equivalent of the candy and tabloids in the checkout aisle. It's right there, it's easy to do, you're ready to pay anyways...might as well do it. The catch here is that you really need an instant gratification to "justify" the "purchase" to the donor. Here's an idea: Convince your local supermarket to add an option to the debit card screen...donate X dollars to your station, get Y percent off your groceries that day. Supermarket also gets underwriting in barter; treats the whole thing like a challenge grant. Another idea: convince your local gas station to have a "public radio pump", where gas costs an extra dime or quarter a gallon. Don't tell the donors this, but say 80% of that extra dime/quarter goes to you, the rest goes to the gas station
   (as an incentive). Admittedly, even higher gas prices might not go over so well right now...but you get the idea.
2. Wait...I Donated to My Station? Takes the impulse buy concept to the next level - make it so people donate without even realizing it. First step is to find a means by which people pay for something every month without really thinking about it. Utilities immediately comes to mind...heat, electricity, cable, internet, cellphone, car payment, insurance, etc...but anything where people just pay it without thinking about would work. If you can convince the vendor to add a simple way...like a checkbox on their paper bill...by which a person can choose to add X dollars to their monthly bill to support their local public radio station. That way they keep donating every month and they don't even really know it.

Think my ideas are full of it? I guess we'll see over the next several months if my ideas actually work, eh? Or feel free to post a comment today. If I can bloviate here right now, why can't you? :-)

What Makes Public Radio Different?

I saw this article in the Boston Globe today: Two Seconds are All an Advertiser Needs

In a nutshell, it's about how commercial radio is starting to use more 2 second "blinks" and 5 second "adlets" instead of the usual 30 or 60 second commercials. They're cheaper and you can fit more of 'em in.

What the article didn't address was how shorter "commercials" are a hallmark of public radio.
Mostly because they're considered "less intrusive". "So what?" you say? Well, this is potentially a huge deal.

Why? Well, we all know public radio depends on fundraising to make its budget. Now, what's an very common theme in pubradio's fundraising? That's right: we're not as bad as commercial radio. To be specific, pubradio doesn't have those long, obnoxious commercials...it has quicker, less-obnoxious "underwriting".

Starting to see why this could be a problem? Experts have warned for years that public radio has relied too heavily on the message of "we're not as bad as commercial radio" and anything like an "adlet" that narrows the gap could be bad news for public radio.

What's the solution? The simple answer is that you have to get away from the old "we're not commercial radio" marketing because it means you're not defining your station...other commercial stations are defining your station...and sooner or later they're going to change to your disadvantage.

In other words, you shouldn't be telling your listeners that you're not as bad as commercial radio...that should just be self-evident from the quality of your programming.

Discover(y) the meaning of irony

I'm sorry, but I can't be the only person who sees the irony here...
(source: Current.org)

4/05/2007
Discovery plans to launch an earth-focused channel and turn its Silver Spring, Md., headquarters "green" as part of a $50 million project it's calling PlanetGreen, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The cable network will relaunch its current Home channel as the as-yet-unnamed eco-friendly channel next year. Programs will focus on eco-design, organic food and "green" architecture, among other topics.

4/09/2007
Discovery today cut approximately 200 staffers, or roughly 3 percent of its workforce, Broadcasting & Cable reports. Network management let go roughly 20 percent of the aggregate staffs of the Discovery Channel; Animal Planet; the Education group; and some Corporate Service groups.

So everyone at Discovery must've felt great about how their company was investing $50 million dollars in "going green" for four whole days...until they realized that $50 million could've been used to save their jobs. That's gotta sting.

Ed.note: Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying here...these things really have almost nothing to do with each other. I'm just commenting on the lousy timing of these two news reports. I can't believe there aren't some laid-off Discovery Staffers that aren't thinking exactly the same thing. Even the Associated Press showed a little cheek in their report.

Git-R-Done!

Lately I have seen a few examples of several companies getting so hung up on the details that they're not getting work "out the door". Some of these are small companies, others huge corporations.

The context on the reports I've seen is that this is a bad thing. The counter-argument is that it's better to not put out anything than to put out sub-standard work.

Personally I think it's usually better to put out something rather than nothing...but I can see both sides' arguments. What's your take?

How not to suck as a manager

So today on my blog trolling I spotted this article about "managerial entitlement" by Computerworld's Paul Glen and found it fascinating. Not just because I suspect it's more true than any us care to admit, but because I know it's more true than I would care to admit.

One thing that leaps out at me - being the kind of person who always shows up 10 minutes late to meetings, thus making everyone wait for them. I have known, many, many people who do this. Not always maliciously, but a lot of people. I'm glad I haven't worked under many of them!

Paul focuses on managers, but let's face it...how many of you have had a job you hated and started thinking all the horrible things "they" did to you "earned" you the right to steal office supplies, goof off on the job, knife someone (metaphorically) in the back, etc.?

Yeah, I thought so. I certainly know I'll be keeping an eye on myself so I won't become "that guy".