How High Is Your Email Tower?

In a recent conversation with Hyman Childs {Owner of KKDA in Dallas} on the future of radio, I told him that in the very near future, a lonely email address (and a bunch of cousins) will be worth far more than the BLOW TORCH signal he or anybody else owns!

Try telling that to an owner who has the #1 station in a $400 million radio market. Better yet, tell that to First Boston or any other investment banker whose underwritten multiple's for radio properties are somewhere over Venus right now.

If I were financing radio stations, INTERNET STRATEGY would be the first thing on my 'why you' list. A lack of one shouldn't get an owner a seven-up! Thus, there would be fewer radio groups. Hyman is a very wise man -- he didn't disagree.

The Logic of Force

The Logic of Force in radio today is; gun a tall tower for coverage purposes, acquire 3-5 more like it. Cover both end zones in all formats while sprinkling some outdoor -- AND treat the Internet like the homely cousin you HAD to take to the prom. Invest heavily in a limo, tux, flowers and dinner -- and be totally unfulfilled at midnight.

The scattershot approach of traditional advertising is changing to a more creative, personal and direct form of execution. An email message, that affects changes in the behavioral buying habits of the listener, is potentially more powerful than any cluster in any city. The permission that is granted by the user is far more powerful than any tower at 2000 feet! Yet radio, whose head is at least out of the sand and looking around, continues to underestimate, overlook and often times just NOT SEE the urgency of this exercise.

The Internet for radio must be a direct medium as opposed to the popular theory of a broadcast medium. Radio has been sucked into the broadcast model. The streaming aspect IS important as the promise of Internet Radio unfolds. However, well meaning content providers, whose financial/creative lives depend on it, have made the broadcast model a believable strategy with takers abound.

With all due respect to the creative genius of KIISFMi.com, they're revenue model is unclear and they're cost per email is significantly higher than radio expenditures allow. Anybody's web site is a paper-thin needle in a gigantic haystack. So the viewable audience numbers make content development cost prohibitive almost all of the time.

Someone should have clued Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg -- whose high flying POP.com model never left the hangar. You'd think three big time movie moguls could put up a web site! They MISREAD the market and employed a broadcast strategy that had NO revenue model. Many big radio companies have poured unfocused millions into an Internet strategy that includes every bell and whistle -- yet mostly seems to take it's eye off the ball.

The Force of Logic

The Force of Logic says that any radio Internet strategy that doesn't make collecting email addresses and targeting them directly ** PRIORITY ONE** -- is DOOMED to fail. Permission God, Seth Godin says, "The Internet is the greatest direct marketing medium ever invented." And he's made believers out of us at Frequentlisteneri.com.

We've built, we think, a fabulous email/TSL revenue model. But there are some very good companies out there who know how to BRING permission eyeballs. You have to do the diligence and decide who/what's best for you. Forefront thinking must turn the LISTENER into a constant USER. The user must mirror the habits of the listener. Someone tunes into your station 3 times per day -- strategy must have them log on to your website at least once per day.

Radio stations have made listeners come back and back to their dial for years. Like thinking should be employed when adopting an Internet strategy. We have the power to keep reminding listeners on air to come back to the website. USE IT! Get a big head start on all the competition that will surround us in the next 5 years.

Space Invaders

The airspace we have owned forever will soon be invaded by creatures from another planet. We know the Martians are coming. DARS will bow next year and MAY YET become an 8 TRACK in light of the ultimate threat -- Wireless Broadband Radio.

However, Satellite's content will be an easy access quality alternative that will pose a near term threat to our world of radio. The greater threat of Broadband Internet Radio, the "final step in the evolution of audio," says Vinton Cerf, is 3-5 years away.

These new players WILL BE doing what we have the power to do everyday -- COLLECT EMAILs and build valuable permission relationships with consumers that react almost instantly to a message. It is the difference between aiming with a Shotgun and targeting with a Rifle. Shotgun's WOUND -- Rifle's KILL!

Brand Trust is radio's greatest asset. It is expensive to create and takes a long time to develop. NO OTHER MEDIUM CAN QUANTIFY BRAND TRUST LIKE RADIO! XM, Sirius and any coming Internet component have a long road to hoe in creating identifiable trust in their brand.

Terrestrial radio has a 10 lap head start on all the competition right now and must do everything in it's power to maintain that distance. Sitting on the lead is not the optimum strategy here.

The charmed life is over my friends. Technology crashed our party. Somewhere in your house a clock is ticking. Everyday day spent without an effective Internet strategy is to feel more like Satchel Paige who once quipped, "Don't look back -- something might be gaining on you."

If you feel like talkin' 'bout it, reach out to me at jimmy@loyalears.com.