Radio InSights

The Lie Behind Live and Local

Live and Local!

It is radio’s greatest strength. It is the single most important advantage that local radio has over its digital challengers.

That’s what we’re told.

Invariably Live and Local is the battle cry of industry leaders and broadcast CEOs when they defend local radio against radio’s critics.

How can it be that these same leaders are the ones aggressively stripping radio of both?

Live local shows are disappearing with voice tracking (often with out-of-market voices) replacing them.

Untested inexperienced hosts are replacing successful experienced (but expensive) personalities.

Popular teams are broken up with (less expensive) side-kicks doing solo shows.

Various excuses are given for the cut-backs, but we all know that these are cost-cutting moves.

The sole motivation is to maintain profitability in the face of declining revenue.

How do we reconcile the rhetoric surrounding Live and Local with these actions?

As we recently noted, television seems to be weathering digital assaults better than radio.

Perhaps one reason is because television continues to invest in its people while radio is aggressively shedding people.

Randy Stine writing in Radio World recently highlighted the difference by noting that while television has steadily added jobs since the Great Recession, radio has continued to eliminate jobs. See graph at left. (Click on graph to enlarge.)

When will radio acknowledge the hypocrisy of claiming the importance of Live and Local and then taking actions that undermine it?

At this year’s NAB Show Gordon Smith declared:

There is no other industry in the world like broadcasting... ...no other industry has, at its core, such an overarching focus on bringing communities together and serving the public good.

Perhaps he was talking about local television.

 

Nielsen's O'Grady to Radio: "We Own PPM."

During Nielsen’s PPM presentation at the Radio Show Nielsen’s managing director of local media Matt O’Grady made one comment that caught our attention. He declared, “We own PPM.”

Why would he need to remind broadcasters Nielsen owns PPM?

It was reminiscent of a comment that then Arbitron CEO Steve Morris made to the Arbitron Advisory Council during a contentious meeting over the roll-out of PPM.

He declared:

I’m not going to let a bunch of radio people tell me how to run my company.

The Advisory Council was concerned about how PPM was going to be implemented but Morris was determined to impose PPM on radio his way regardless of what the council thought.

And he did.

Perhaps for a moment O’Grady was channeling Steve Morris.

As we write this no independent organization or group has signed off on enhanced encoding.

The Media Rating Council has not made a public statement. The Nielsen Audio Advisory Council has been silent. The NAB’s Committee on Local Radio Audience Measurement (COLRAM) is MIA.

No large radio group has endorsed the enhanced encoding.

Why is there only industry silence regarding Nielsen’s plans?

Is it because no one outside of Nielsen has any idea what the “enhancements” are or how they work?

All we have are assurances from Nielsen that the new and improved encoding works great and is much better than the “legacy” encoding.

How do we square these assurances against previous assurances?

As recently as Nielsen’s July webinar where the company’s chief engineer asserted that Voltair enabled stations to receive credit for unintelligible listening we were assured that the PPM ecosystem was fair, accurate, and unbiased.

In the context of these recent and past assurances, O’Grady’s reminder that,“we own PPM,” takes on a more ominous meaning.

It has been eight years since PPM rolled out and prior to Voltair there had not been a single upgrade to the encoder.

Eight years.

Why the sudden urgency to upgrade every station in a month’s time?

Radio waited eight years for an encoder upgrade, but now Nielsen insists that all stations must be upgraded by the end of November.

It took them four years to develop the eDiary–and then they killed it!

Can we really believe that in the past couple of months Nielsen dissected Voltair to figure out why it worked, developed a firmware update to emulate it, lab tested the new firmware, and completed a thorough field test?

A day does not pass without some major software/firmware upgrade failure making the news.

The stock exchanges, every major airline, AOL along with every other web business, and virtually all hardware/software dependent businesses have been disrupted when “well-tested” upgrades fail.

How often has even Apple needed to patch an iOS update?

Why should radio stations believe that Nielsen’s patch is going to work any better?

If Nielsen is correct and the legacy encoder works well for the majority of stations, why not give stations the option to wait on the upgrade?

Yes Mr. O’Grady, Nielsen does own PPM, but you should understand that without the cooperation of radio stations Nielsen wouldn't have a business.

We believe that the radio stations that allow Nielsen to encode their programming should be told more about changes to the encoder. Nielsen should come clean about why encoding had to be enhanced--and why so quickly?

Radio stations should be the ones to decide how encoding is implemented and when to upgrade.

 

Up 69%! Better Product or Voltair?

What are the chances of a station increasing share by 69% in four months? Pretty small. Right?

And what if the station has been doing the same format since 1987 and hasn’t made any huge programming changes?

Even smaller, right?

So how do we explain KTWV, The Wave, achieving a 4.4 share in May, its highest share since Los Angeles switched to PPM?

The conventional wisdom is that iHeartMedia’s switch to urban contemporary helped KTWV, but let’s be real here.

It would take nearly all of Hot 92.3's listeners coming over to The Wave to pull that off.

The format change can’t explain a 69% increase.

Even if the Program Director, Ralph Stewart, has The Wave sounding better than ever, can we believe that a twenty-eight year old radio station that has averaged no more than a three share in PPM in six years can suddenly pull a 4.4 share and go from 20^th to 5^th in four months?

Only if they’ve installed Voltair.

Smooth Jazz is a format that PPM punishes more than most other formats. The format itself does not encode well, and it is generally played at a low level, complicating decoding.

Both factors conspire to increase the likelihood that Nielsen’s PPM will underestimate the format’s audience.

So Voltair should help Smooth Jazz more than other formats, and the impact should be immediate...like we see with KTWV.

Take a look at the above trend and ask yourself whether explosive growth like this is better product or something more.

There aren’t many Voltairs in service in Los Angeles, but the big players have them. Maybe that’s the reason that market AQH is up 5%.

That’s 5% in a billion dollar market.

With more than 600 stations using the box and many more waiting their turn we continue to hear nothing from Nielsen, The NAB, The Nielsen Advisory Council, or MRC.

How many more miraculous success stories are we going to hear before somebody admits there’s a problem with PPM?

At the NAB: Processing for PPM

Radio has not done enough to make sure PPM meters properly register station listening. That was the message of Cornelius Gould speaking to a packed meeting room at the NAB’s Sunday Radio Technology Forum.

The Telos Alliance Omnia Team Leader shared test results illustrating how gaps in PPM station encoding levels can potentially cost stations quarter-hours of listening.

One potential problem is programming material with weak mid-range content. Gould singled out older Hip-Hop played by Urban ACs as an example. High ambient interference such as highway noise can also have a negative impact on PPM decoding. Improper processing is a third source of lost quarter-hours.

The charts at the left shown during the talk illustrate the problem. The charts show encoding strength as a time line. Green bars indicate the strongest encoding, red bars indicate the weakest encoding. (Sorry for the poor quality. This is a shot taken of the projector screen.)

The upper timeline is without PPM watermark processing. The lower timeline shows encoding strength after running the audio through a Voltair processor.

The Voltair was able to boost the lowest encoding levels, potentially filling in decoding gaps and adding quarter-hour credits for the station.

Gould began his talk by reading a statement by Nielsen expressing guarded interest in learning more about what Voltair does.

We’re pleased to see that The Telos Alliance has developed a processor to fix flaws in Nielsen’s PPM encoders. We're also pleased that Nielsen is curious about the technology.The presentation makes it clear that PPM encoders need a serious upgrade.

The presentation was very persuasive for this viewer (and many others in the room if the enthusiastic applause given Gould is any indication).  

PPM is not capturing all formats equally well. It is challenged by high ambient noise. Radio stations are losing quarter-hours and rating points through no fault of their own. And it is potentially costing radio a lot of money.

We’ll have more to add after a second Voltair presentation later in the week.

NAB Radio Show 2014: Going Through the Motions

The 2014 NAB Radio Show will be remembered as one of the most glitch-free Radio Shows in memory. No major on-stage gaffs, everything was on-time, and there were some great moments.

However, those great moments can’t disguise the fact that it felt like the NAB was simply going through the motions. In that regard, radio’s trade representative was all too representative of the state of radio.

Let’s compare this year’s show to an earlier show. As the chart illustrates, 2014 was a very slim show compared to previous years. Less than half the sessions, a third of the exhibitors, a single suite compared to sixty or so in the past.

Most telling was the decline in numbers of sessions. Compared to (say) the San Francisco event in 1991, the number of management sessions was reduced by 44%, management sessions were cut in half, and programming sessions were virtually eliminated, cut by three-quarters.

Yes, radio isn’t what it used to be. Maybe a slimmed down Radio Show is just symptomatic of a slimmed down radio industry.

The Radio Show like radio itself talks a good game, yet today delivers far less than in the past.

What does every industry leader highlight as radio’s strength? What do we hear time and time again?

Content! Unique compelling content is the key to radio’s continuing success!

The declaration has evolved from a credo that radio lived by to a hackneyed clique that too many of radio’s leaders mumble as they carry on the business of systematically eliminating original content.

The attitude was evident in the Radio Show’s programming "track." Very little time was devoted to content.

Most of the programming sessions were devoted to online issues.

New platforms, social media, and related issues. Do we really need more discussions about Twitter? Do we really need to devote the little time set aside for programming issues on Facebook versus Instagram?

Growing Your Mobile Audience was an hour devoted to "engaging the mobile device listener."

The session consisted of two vendors selling their online platforms. One platform allows listeners to engage directly with each other and the station in real-time, on a platform you own and control.

The other enables listeners to connect with news, sports and their favorite artists and bands using real-time keyword/ song/ artist search, (to) connect with their friends and make new ones from all around the world.

Both are probably fine products, but is either one going to save radio?

If the key to radio’s continued success (and some would argue the key to its survival) is content, maybe the Radio Show ought to make content THE programming topic.

Yes, there were a couple of personality oriented sessions. Kudos to the participants because they were the only people who talked about content and meant it.

But content includes much more.

Any new formats worth discussing? Is EDM really a format? Is Talk Radio really on the ropes? How is the oldies format evolving? Anyone at NAB notice WCBS-FM’s success in a format theoretically well past its use-by date?

The only time mellennials come up is in the context of social media and their obsession with smartphones. OK, we’ve got that. To reach them we need to be on phones and use social media. Got that too.

Now, what formats do we need to offer to get them to listen? Will the next generation want news on the radio? How do formats need to evolve for the next generation of radio listeners?

After all, if your product sucks, who’s going to want to hang out with you, no matter the platform?

The Radio Show is the last surviving national forum to discuss these critically important difficult questions. And instead it offers discussions about Pinterest.

It may seem unfair to pick on the NAB, but these are challenging times. The industry has to make a great many difficult decisions to defend itself against digital competitors. The NAB Radio Show is the perfect (and last) forum in which to explore and debate the many critical issues.

Maybe the direction radio is headed is the right one. Or maybe we’re headed down a dead-end road. The NAB can help show us the way, but it has to take the Radio Show seriously.

Today everyone in this business is expected to do more. Why should the NAB be the exception?

Radio Sleeps While Digital Fraudsters Steal Billions

Online video ad sales will probably be over $3 Billion this year. And according to the New York Times the majority of that money will be wasted on ads that few people see.

It’s a story that every radio sales person should carry and share with clients thinking of switching radio dollars to digital.

According to The Times:

By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57% of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be "unviewable."

So advertisers are essentially flushing $1.7 Billion down the drain rather than spending their money on media that people actually see or hear.

The article goes on to show the numerous ways that advertisers get screwed when they buy video ads. There’s the legal ways that buyers get screwed:

The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory....When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate.

Then there’s out and out fraud.

An agency working for a “mom-related” product placed an order paying for premium placement on premium websites. Here’s how the story described the schedule they ended up with:

Many of the ads were running in tiny players, 3 inches by 2 inches, on the sites. Some were auto-playing...(and) the list of domain names where the ads were running included pornographic websites.

The agency that placed the business claimed they were shocked, but should they have been?

No. The truth is that years of research has shown that many if not the majority of online ads are never seen.

As eMarketer reports:

Study after study shows that viewability makes for significant ad spending waste. In a survey from Integral Ad Science, roughly half of US banner impressions served on advertising networks and exchanges went unseen....The majority of ads bought never even reached a pair of eyeballs.

Half of banner impressions are illusionary and 57% of video ads unviewable. You’d think that buyers would wise-up to the scam and take their money elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the hype surrounding digital is just too great. Spending is expected to rise again this year. Mobile video ads are the hot new way to waste advertiser dollars, diverting money from effective traditional media like radio and television to digital ads no one sees.

Radio Insights recently noted three new studies highlighting radio’s strengths and its advertising effectiveness.

These studies represent the first serious efforts in decades to illustrate radio’s effectiveness, and neither the National Association of Broadcasters nor the Radio Advertising Bureau participated.

Remember NAB’s Radio 2020 campaign from 2008? Neither does anyone else.

Still use the RAB’s Radio Ad Lab 2008 study on radio spots and emotion in your sales pitches? Didn’t think so.

Radio 2010 and Radio Ad Lab are poster children for leadership's ineffectual efforts to counter digital's propaganda. In the battle to grow radio’s piece of the advertising pie the NAB and RAB are MIA.

Digital is going to continue to eat radio’s lunch until the industry pushes back against the fraud and hucksterism of digital. Is either organization up to the task?

Did Radio Get Its Mojo Back?

Last week’s RAB/NAB Radio Show could well be remembered as the moment that radio got it’s mojo back.

The mood at this year's convention was several notches above the apocalyptic doom of the last few years. Determination and steely resolve have replaced fear and anxiety of the recent past.

RAB President Jeff Haley's upbeat keynote address set the tone, and that tone echoed throughout the meetings that followed.

The previous fatalistic attitude regarding the threat of new-media was replaced with an upbeat assessment of broadcast’s ability to match and even better the digital initiatives of digital pure-plays.

Broadcasters seem to have found a mental sweet spot rejecting both a nostalgic hope that the happy days of the past will return, and the belief that radio’s digital evolution will be pain-free.

Discussions focused less on the threat of digital, and more on practical ways to exploit digital.

The zealous new-media true-believer panelists of previous conventions were replaced by more practical realists willing to acknowledge new-media’s challenges and limitations.

In past broadcast gatherings, any talk about radio’s ability to survive digital's onslaught was met with skepticism and derision. This Radio Show showed more balance, without either pollyannasim or chicken-littleism regarding broadcast radio’s future.

It was refreshing to see the industry emerge from the bunker.  Looks like broadcast radio has its mojo back.

A Market Based FM Chip Solution

The overwhelming push-back after the NAB tried to force through a mobile phone FM chip requirement suggests that the proverbial snowball in hell has a better chance of success.

Amateurishly handled, the effort not only failed at its goal, it created a backlash in the form of the Congressional Creativity and Innovation Resolution.

Now with the NAB having to play defense, it unleashes Radio Rocks my Phone, a campaign just as terribly misguided as every other NAB effort on behalf of radio beginning with the unforgettable Radio 2020 effort.

The purpose of Radio Rocks my Phone is to get listeners to demand an FM chip in mobile phones. The NAB wants people to write their representatives.

The notion that listeners will write their Congressional representatives on behalf of radio to force a legislated FM chip solution is the height of radio egocentrism. If people are going to write their Congressmen, it isn’t going to be to demand an FM chip.

As the NAB’s own website illustrates, there are already 34 FM equipped mobile phones.

If radio really wants to get an FM chip on every new phone, it is going to have to find a market-based solution.

Cell phone manufacturers are extremely competitive. If they believe a feature is going to give them a marketing advantage over their competitors, they will jump at the chance.

Microsoft has had a couple of false starts with mobile phones. However, their latest operating system, Windows Phone 7, is getting good reviews.

At the system’s roll-out Engadget noted:

Part of what makes Windows Phone 7 a departure for Microsoft is that the company is taking a much bigger role in dictating what hardware is allowed to run the OS. Microsoft has a very clear picture of what they want these units to be built like.

One of Microsoft’s requirements is an FM chip.

If radio wants an FM chip in every mobile phone, the solution is to make Windows Phone 7 a huge hit. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint all sell Windows 7 phones.

Make Windows Phone 7 broadcast radio’s official phone. Use radio's power to help make Windows Phone 7 the new standard mobile feature package.

If the NAB partnered with Microsoft, there would be no need for RIAA back-room deals and contentious legislation.

The truth is Microsoft has a history of supporting broadcast while radio squandered the opportunity.

The company’s Zune was the only audio player to make HD Radio standard. Microsoft got no support from radio, no endorsement, and now the Zune is no more.

Radio has a mobile OS company that makes FM standard on its phones, and radio ought to step up to the plate and help make Windows Phone 7 a success.

Now TuneIn is making a Mobile 7 app that integrates FM control into the application. As reported by Gigaom:

The TuneIn software streams Internet radio from more than 50,000 AM and FM radio stations over Wi-Fi or a mobile broadband connection. The Windows Phone 7 version integrates with the handset’s internal FM radio to save battery life or listen to local radio programs.

We have the phone. We have the app. Now all we need is to get radio's persuasive powers behind it.

Partnering with Microsoft and supporting Windows Mobile 7 is far more likely to achieve the goal of putting FM chips in mobile phones than the NAB’s recent quixotic efforts.

Is This Why NAB Threw Radio Under the Bus?

After years of opposition, why did the NAB and its President and CEO Gordon Smith seem so anxious last Fall to cut a deal requiring radio stations to pay millions of dollars in royalties to record labels?

Think back to October when the NAB Radio Board tried to quickly push through a deal committing radio to pay a 1% royalty with musicFirst, the labels’ front organization.

Coming out of radio’s worst recession that saw $5 billion dollars of revenue evaporate, the last thing radio needed was a new multi-million dollar expense item.

Polls at the time showed overwhelming opposition to the deal by broadcasters, yet the NAB pushed hard for the deal.

The people behind the NAB’s Terms Sheet warned that radio needed to complete a deal before Congress forced a more onerous one on radio.

But was that true? Or was there something more behind the NAB’s interest in giving away millions of radio’s dollars?

Smith’s recent key-note address at the Las Vegas convention suggests it had little to do with radio, and a lot to do with the NAB’s priorities.

Here’s what Gordon Smith now says about the royalty fight:

Last year we stopped the legislation that would impose a performance tax on local radio stations. This was a freight train headed for passage.

The White House was for it. Congressional leadership supported it. Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees had passed it.

We brought the freight train under control by seeking a good faith, workable agreement with the music industry, while at the same time aggressively opposing the bill as written.

It is an interesting re-interpretation of the events of last Fall.

In truth, 260 House members and 27 Senate members were already on record opposing the radio “performance tax” by March of last year. The bill hadn’t advanced since the Summer of 2009 when the proposal was voted out of committee.

The NAB had already proudly announced the tax proposal dead months before. The royalty deal had no chance of passage.

So why does Gordon now declare the bill a freight train headed for passage? Perhaps in part to gloss over the NAB’s bumbled efforts to ram through the musicFirst deal.

But also perhaps because Gordon had a much bigger legislative problem on his hands, and he needed all the Congressional support he could drum up.

In his key-note address he explained the problem:

Less than two years ago, broadcasters gave up more than 25 percent of TV spectrum and spent $15 billion transitioning from analog to digital television.

Now, less than two years later, wireless companies want ANOTHER 40 percent of TV spectrum.

So we are in full battle mode to protect broadcasters from being forced to give up spectrum involuntarily.

Gordon Smith, a former Senator, is a deal maker. He knows that in Washington you give up something to get something.

The NAB’s influence is fading. The much more powerful Internet and telecom industries want the idle television spectrum space, and Smith needs all the friends in Congress he can find.

Radio is pretty small potatoes for the NAB. A business that generates $17 billion in revenue isn’t going to get the help that a $65 billion industry like television gets.

So perhaps Smith decided that throwing radio under the bus by making a deal with the RIAA could win a few Congressional votes opposing the spectrum give-back.

It is a lot easier for Congress to protect television after it can claim it secured millions of dollars for poor starving musicians.

The performance tax might cost radio a few hundred million dollars, but the television spectrum is worth billions.

Of course now that the scheme has imploded, everyone involved will say that their only concern was getting the best deal possible for radio. Read the links and draw your own conclusion.

Just keep the NAB’s priorities in mind when those membership dues come due.

Soaring Rhetoric. Sordid Reality.

The reporting coming out of the Las Vegas NAB convention was of a radio renaissance, a mobilized broadcast industry ready to do what it takes to prepare for a digital future.

There was talk of a re-energized industry. There was talk of wondrous wealth for radio stations that embrace digital. And there was talk about the necessary investments to monetize those efforts.

"Video can help you compete in a lot of areas that you couldn't compete in before. Tapping into video-pre-rolls and other online video ad units will be one of the keys to future revenue growth."

"You need a graphic designer in order for the client to see the value you're producing. You may not have the right people in place to succeed. The van driver can't be the person who's in charge of the website."

All very exciting stuff.

But a recent reader’s poll by Inside Radio paints a somewhat different image of radio, that of an industry that is barely prepared for the present, let alone mobilizing for the future.

The recession may be technically over and radio revenue is growing again, but a majority of Inside Radio readers say their station isn't doing any external marketing. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they rely exclusively on their own properties for marketing.

The recession is over, revenues are trending up, but fattening the bottom line seems to be the focus of too many groups, not preparing for the future.

As one participant observed, “I doubt ownership will ever restore our budget to pre-recession levels.”

It isn’t just marketing budgets that have been cut at many stations. As anyone in radio knows, the cuts have been across the board.

Radio's new normal is GMs managing markets hundreds of miles apart, program directors over-seeing three or more stations, and voice-tracked robo-radio even in key dayparts.

Does this sound like an industry preparing for a challenging future?

Consider the difference between how radio and television are preparing for the future. We recently noted the investment Viacom is making to strengthen their brands. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman believes the company's commitment to research has helped resuscitate networks such as MTV:

"We've increase our investment in research-market research on our viewers, brand research. In turn, study insight has hopefully led to smarter content investments-focusing the programming around what the research tells us."

Viacom is not alone. The networks realize that creating compelling programming is the key to continued success. They are investing heavily in research and marketing, creating new shows (twenty this year alone) and retooling the old ones.

And it is paying off.

Despite mobile and internet video, television viewing continues to grow, nearly 159 hours a month.

Television spot revenues grew by 24% in 2010 compared to radio’s 7%. This year’s network upfront is expected to surpass $10 billion, with double digit CPM rate hikes.

Television understands that nothing else matters if the content isn’t there.

Compelling content is also the key to radio’s survival in the digital age.

Not video prerolls. Not in-house graphics designers. Not fancy web sites. Not a brilliant social media strategy. Not “the ability to engage audience in all locations where they have a mobile device.”

Content. None of this matters if the content sucks.

But how many groups are investing in content? How many groups are recruiting and grooming the next generation of local air personalities?

Which companies are creating the formats of tomorrow?

Does it make sense for so many broadcast groups to gut their products while expanding the platforms on which people can listen to their gutted products?

As we wrote just the other day, radio remains relevant and strong. However, short-sighted financial decisions can still hobble radio's digital transition. At this critical point, failure to invest in content will have long lasting negative implications.

In the midst of the soaring rhetoric about a fantasy world where radio's investments in the future are limitless, one lone voice at NAB tried to remind radio about content.

John Gehron, perhaps one of the few people in new-media that understands content warned that local radio has to mean more than music.

If it's only for music, that's only going to help you for five years. The challenge is how do you reattach yourself to the community in a way that's good for the community and sets you apart from everybody.

It is a good question, and one that too few radio groups are asking.

Robo-radio delivered on a new platform is still robo-radio. And it sucks.

Bob Pittman's Rational Digital Strategy

Bob Pittman has done a better job shining a light on broadcast’s continued strength and relevance than the NAB, RAB, pundits, and leaders of all the large groups combined.

We noted his quick start last month asking Does Radio Finally Have a Leader? The answer appears to be yes.

After scoring interviews with the Wall Street Journal, Variety, Bloomberg, and others he quickly made his first digital acquisition, Thumbplay. The acquisition again put broadcast radio in coast to coast headlines from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times.

Ad Age, a magazine that has had some pretty unkind words to say regarding radio the last few years, interviewed Pittman last week on the Thumbplay purchase with the title Bob Pittman’s Old-School Approach to New Radio Success.

Once again he comes off as a confident believer in radio, spelling out Clear Channel’s rational approach to digital, all the while emphasizing radio’s strengths. He notes that:

Clear Channel is a company of radio stations that have very powerful local brands, 850 stations in 150 cities. Everybody who's doing national is trying to figure out how to do local. We already have that kind of scope by having national and local reach.

Regarding the purchase of Thumbplay:

Thumbplay is really not radio, it's a playlist maker like a Pandora. It finds a bunch of songs and puts those on perpetual shuffle. We know people like (dynamic curation) so we want to deliver that as well. Thumbplay has already developed a great product, so we wanted to quickly add it to what we're doing with iHeartRadio.

Last November we suggested that:

Pandora may have a tremendous lead over its competition, but it remains to be seen whether the service can sustain its lead. As countless Internet companies have discovered, there is no “first-mover” advantage when it comes to new-media.

Nothing that Pandora does is proprietary. Every aspect of Pandora can be replicated, and ultimately improved upon.

The title of the post was Thanks Pandora, We’ll Take it From Here. It could well have been the title of the Ad Age interview.

Does Radio Finally Have a Leader?

Does radio finally have a leader?

In the past we’ve lamented radio’s lack of visible leadership. Two years ago we wrote:

Where is the leadership? Who speaks for radio? We need someone willing to defend radio and put it back on the radar screen.

Leadership for us is showing a sincere belief in radio and its future. Leadership is understanding radio’s strengths. Leadership is defending radio against baseless self-serving attacks from new-media stakeholders and radio critics.

Leadership is understanding that the Internet is an opportunity for radio, not a threat.

In the brief time since joining Clear Channel Pittman has demonstrated those skills, managing to appear in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Variety, and Yahoo finance with an upbeat and positive outlook for radio.

Pittman has the credibility to say that radio has a future and back it up, having come full circle from radio to new media, and back to radio.

Pittman’s message is that broadcast radio listenership continues to be strong, but it has an image problem, a belief held by many people that radio is in decline:

Half the story is telling the story. We’ve got the consumer base. We just have to offer them the features.

In barely a month Bob Pittman has accomplished more than the NAB, RAB, and CEO’s of the major groups have done in the past three years in pushing back against the digital cabal and their attempt to misrepresent broadcast radio’s continued strength.

Maybe radio finally does have a leader.

Thanks Pandora, We'll Take it From Here.

Pandora is the face of Internet radio. By every measure it has achieved far more than any other Internet audio service. The company has over 65 million registered users, generates one-quarter billion listening sessions every week, and even generates a modest profit.

For most consumers, Pandora defines the entire category of Internet radio. There’s Pandora and the rest. You can listen to Pandora on your computer, your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Tivo, and soon probably most Internet connected toasters.

Tim Westergren is an icon in Internet media circles. As the creator and face of Pandora he has scored interviews in mainstream media including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

And none of this will ultimately matter.

Pandora may have a tremendous lead over its competition, but it remains to be seen whether the service can sustain its lead. As countless Internet companies have discovered, there is no “first-mover” advantage when it comes to new-media.

Nothing that Pandora does is proprietary. Every aspect of Pandora can be replicated, and ultimately improved upon.

We are in the first inning of Internet radio. This is why Harker Research suggested that it was better for broadcasters to watch and wait for Internet radio to mature. Better to continue to invest in the broadcast product while Internet radio evolves.

Now that an Internet radio leader has emerged, broadcasters can develop a competitive strategy to defend against Pandora, and the services that might overtake it.

Broadcasters owe Pandora their thanks. Pandora’s success is a textbook example of doing a lot of things a little better than the competition, something broadcast once knew, but seems to have forgotten.

The company's success also proves that caring about listeners still matters. A fact broadcast has also forgotten.

Fortunately, even with Pandora’s tremendous on-line lead broadcasters can close the gap by adapting key elements of the company’s success.

Lesson 1: Marketing is key.

Pandora has out-marketed everybody, broadcast and on-line competitors alike.

The company has a cool laid-back persona from its logo and website to the folksy emails it sends out. It solicits user input, and takes every opportunity to thank their users for listening.

The company’s Music Genome Project has given Pandora a unique position. It is little more than a marketing gimmick, but it has effectively created the appearance of a listener benefit not found elsewhere.

Arbitron's PPM focus on exposure rather than listening has deflected broadcast’s priorities away from marketing and positioning. The importance of differentiating a radio station will play an increasingly important role as broadcasts transits to digital.

Lesson 2: Make radio personal (again).

Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer, has been a tireless booster of Pandora. Like a general personally leading his troops into battle, Westergren has traveled the country meeting with users and promoting his product.

At every stop, in every interview he takes the opportunity to position Pandora as the future of radio, taking every shot at broadcast he can.

What is the face of broadcast? Too many listeners see broadcast as a business full of large corporations run by greedy suits who see listeners as a commodity.

Broadcast radio needs to understand that it has an image problem, one that the NAB and RAB efforts have only worsened (think Radio 2020).

Broadcast needs to rethink its image as a product catagory. Broadcast needs a positive face and image.

Lesson 3: Listeners want a sense of control.

Pandora claims the Music Genome Project (MGP) creates the perfect personalized radio experience. Type in an artist, and Pandora will start streaming songs by that artist along with similar artists.

Harker Research found that MGP had little to do with Pandora’s appeal. Listeners just want the ability to listen to an artist when they want to.

The message for broadcasters is that listeners want some control and the ability to listen to specific artists. This can easily be added to a broadcast group’s streaming package.

Lesson 4: Radio needs to be everywhere.

Pandora has been aggressive in making its service available on many devices. Users can stream the service on every mobile platform as well as Google TV, Tivo, and several Blu-ray players. NPR has pursued a similar strategy quickly developing apps for every device.

Broadcast streams must be available everywhere and on every device people use to listen to audio.

Lesson 5: Make it easy to listen.

People want easy access to their stations, not tens of thousands of stations they will never listen to.

The Pandora player is elegantly simple. Users can quickly find their custom streams with a minimum of distractions and clutter.

Broadcast has gone the other way, aggregating dozens and even hundreds of station on websites and applications that make it difficult to find particular stations.

Compare the simplicity of Pandora’s iPhone app to Clear Channel’s iheartradio. Pandora users hear music the moment the app launches. One has to go three pages deep in search of a radio station to listen on iheartradio.

Lesson 6: Radio is still a local medium.

Broadcast’s most powerful strength is its localism. Pandora understands this and is trying to develop a local sales strategy.

As broadcast migrates to the Internet, radio needs to remain a local medium. Services like iheartradio and AOL Music downplay broadcast’s most powerful tool, localism.

As the migration proceeds, large groups may have a more difficult time than small local groups making the transition. Small groups will feel no need to aggregate hundreds of stations into a single Internet service.

A small radio group with a single smartphone app will offer listeners a simple gateway to hear their local radio stations.

If broadcasters take to heart the lessons learned from Pandora’s success and apply them, broadcasting will prevail in the digital frontier. Thanks Pandora. We’ll take it from here.

Giving Aid & Comfort to Radio's Enemies

It is a sign of broadcast radio’s self-loathing that a session at the NAB Radio Show was devoted to statistical flagellation. 

In a masochistic mood, the Radio Show program committee decided to highlight research purporting to show plunging usage of radio among young listeners.

The research results were duly reported by the trades with little comment and even less analysis. The dramatic decline was accepted as fact.

The study claims that in the past decade daily radio listenership among 12-24 year olds has fallen from two hours forty-three minutes to one hour twenty four minutes today. So according to the study daily TSL has fallen 49%.

Has young listening really dropped 49%? And if it hasn’t, can we trust the rest of the study findings?

The biggest problem with this study is that it is comparing apples and oranges. In fact, virtually every listening trend analysis published today is comparing apples and oranges.

To assess listening changes over time, we have to use a sound consistent research strategy. We have to be sure that listenership is measured the same way each time.

The 49% decline compares self-estimated listenership in a 2000 telephone-based study to the responses of a 2010 online panel of participants.

There are two problems with this approach.

Trending telephone study responses to online responses exaggerates radio listenership declines.

Research has confirmed what should be obvious: The apparent strength and popularity of digital media is higher in online research, while traditional media like radio tend to look comparatively worse.

There is nothing wrong with using an online panel to understand media usage today, but we can’t trend the information unless the prior study was also done online. 

The second well understood problem with the study is that it asks the online panelists to estimate the amount of time they use each medium.

As we reported some time ago, research shows that people tend to over-estimate their digital consumption, while at the same time under-estimating their traditional media consumption.

For example, Nielsen puts teen television viewership at nearly four hours a day while the study’s self-reported viewership is less than three hours, a major difference. Nielsen puts young radio listening at nearly three hours a day, twice the study’s claim.

So we have two factors that both exaggerate radio listening declines while overstating digital usage.

Then there’s the sniff test. Is the estimate consistent with directly measured listening estimates?

We have a decade of Arbitron trends along with two years of Nielsen estimates to judge the reasonableness of the study’s 49% drop in listening.

In a methodological sound analysis of Arbitron and Nielsen listening trends, Harker Research found that 12+ TSL had declined just 1% in the past year. 

Using a similar approach, our analysis suggests that 12-24 TSL in diary markets declined less than 20% in the first eight years of the decade before most large markets had made the transition to PPM.

Arbitron’s yearly Radio Today has become an odd amalgam of diary and PPM based estimates, which compromises its value. However, despite the addition of lower PPM estimates, even Arbitron shows a much smaller decline in young listening.

Isolating PPM trends as we did in our earlier analysis raises further questions about the purported 49% decline. Some established PPM markets actually show 12-24 TSL increases coinciding with new CHR stations in large markets!

UPDATE: The Southern California Broadcasters Association just released an analysis of PPM showing 12-34 TSL up slightly in the past two years to 10:09. See the analysis here.

Many people in and outside of radio want to believe the 49% loss. They want to believe that broadcast has become irrelevant to young listeners.

Research that exaggerates radio’s decline is red meat for new-media bloggers and pundits. Studies like this give aid and comfort to broadcast’s enemies, those who delight in finding any factoid or tidbit that shows radio on the ropes. 

We do not deny that radio faces challenges. We are not attempting to conceal the truth in an effort to gloss over radio’s challenges. Radio listening has declined over the past decade, but at a much smaller rate than new-media stakeholders want you to believe.

We believe misguided research that portrays radio far worse-off than it really is does a disservice to radio. We wonder why the NAB would give its blessing to research that distorts radio health.

We believe that both radio’s supporters as well as detractors should know the real story-–even when many don’t want to believe it.

Getting Real: Digital Revenue Reality Check

You probably saw the headlines coming out of the NAB Digital Radio Show: Digital is the future! Most growth will come from digital! Digital dollars growing six times as fast as traditional dollars! Our survival depends on digital!

According to one report:

Investing in exclusive digital content and ramping up sales efforts could increase the percentage of industry revenue derived from digital assets to 10-15% within five years.

You better stop making payments on the Benz.

The truth is that a lack of vision and sales integrity has cost radio far more than it will earn from digital for the foreseeable future.

The graph shows the latest BIA/Kelsey radio revenue projections for broadcast and digital. The company expects radio to come in at a little over $14 billion. Of that total, the company expects that nearly 97% will come from broadcast.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Digital revenue for radio this year may be over five times what Pandora bills, yet only 3% of radio’s revenue will come from digital. Five years from now BIA/Kelsey expects digital to reach 5%. Imagine!

The only way digital will reach 10-15% is if broadcast revenues absolutely crater.

If broadcast revenues plummet to (say) $8 billion then boosters can celebrate digital’s victory of double digit growth while broadcast groups figure out how to cover a decline of $6 billion of revenue.

The disparity between broadcast and digital revenue is so great that for digital to make up for a broadcast decline of just 1%, digital has to grow 33%.

Growing broadcast revenue by less than 4% generates more revenue than all the money radio makes on digital.

Unfortunately, The Digital Radio Show didn’t have any sessions devoted to the evils of pricing for share, the destructive impact of PPM, or radio’s absence of sales leadership and vision.

Far more lucrative for NAB to sell Info Sessions to those who want to peddle a digital dream.

If Steve Jobs Ran Radio

Apple is the second most valuable company on the planet.

Every product it produces is a technical marvel, yet at the same time simple and elegant. It gets more positive coverage from the media than any other technology company.

Apple now is on top of the world, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the company was struggling. The mid 1980s through much of the 1990s were a dark period for the company. Unprofitable with an aging product line, Apple seemed doomed.

It took a reinvigorated returning Steve Jobs to make Apple profitable again.

Watch a video of Steve Jobs rolling out the company’s newest products. He’s dramatic, he’s enthusiastic, and he deeply believes in Apple’s superiority.

He’s an evangelical partisan. He pokes fun at the competition. He’s willing to stretch a point or two to exaggerate Apple’s strength.

He seems to sincerely believe that every Apple product is born perfect in every way. When talking about his products he uses words like remarkable, awesome, and amazing a lot.

Steve Jobs is obsessed about changing the world, in little ways, and in big ways. He thinks big, and he encourages his people to think big.

His goal is to create products with a big oh wow factor.

Which begs the question, what would Steve Jobs do if he ran radio?

If you want to make something really great, you have to believe in it. He would be just as enthusiastic about radio as he is about Apple.

He would understand and believe that radio can be great again. Reflecting on Apple’s turnaround he said:

Apple was in very serious trouble. Apple had to remember who Apple was because they’d forgotten who Apple was.

Despite what Jobs says, Apple products are rarely perfect. Apple tries to create perfect products, but not until they are in people’s hands can Apple make them better.

There is a myth about Jobs and Apple that they don’t do research, they don’t do focus groups. It helps promote the image of a company that makes perfect things. But it is a myth.

Watch Jobs talk about his products. When describing changes, he invariably mentions user feedback. As you watch the video, count the number of times he says, “users told us....”

Jobs may hate the word research and deny that Apple does research, but he is obsessed about understanding the user’s experience.

Apple relies on a constant flow of information coming from users to modify and improve its products. Call it what you will, it is research, and Apple would be less successful without it.

How else can you explain the evolution of the iPod nano?

Jobs would talk to listeners, not about radio stations, but about the listening experience. Why do you listen to a particular station or format? Why do you tune away, and where do you go?

He would ask about online alternatives and the differences between the digital and analog experience. How do they differ?

Understanding the user is the key to making meaningful changes. Every new generation of an Apple product is incrementally better than the previous one because users told Jobs how to make it better.

Steve Jobs would surround himself with people who believed in radio, who understood the radio experience, and who believed Steve Jobs could change radio for the better.

Radio today is like Apple in 1993, battered, beleaguered, and unsure of itself. And like Apple, radio needs leadership.

Where are radio’s evangelicals? Who among radio’s leaders are unashamed believers who talk about radio as remarkable, awesome, and amazing?

Anyone at the NAB? Anyone at RAB or Arbitron? Any radio group CEO come to mind?

More than anything else, radio needs its own Steve Jobs, someone who believes in radio.

Who will be radio’s Steve Jobs?

NAB Responds to FM Chip Criticism and Proves Our Point

Say it isn’t so. Tell us the National Association of Broadcasters in a response devoid of relevancy or significance dismissed our criticisms as silly. Say it isn’t so.

Unfortunately, the response is online here, so it must be true.

NAB EVP Dennis Wharton when asked about our criticisms not only took great exception, he expressed his outrage. In the process, Mr. Wharton proved our point better than we could have.

RadioInsights the other day suggested the NAB had done little over the years to bolster consumer support for broadcast radio. We asked what the NAB had done in the past few years to draw attention to the continued relevance and popularity of radio.

We suggested that radio would be in a better position to lobby for an FM chip if it had defended against the rising tide of critics declaring radio dead. But the NAB chose to remain silent:

Now at a time when radio needs the goodwill that a sustained campaign of promoting radio could have given it, we have nothing.

In response, Mr. Wharton first notes that he has spent 14 years defending free and local radio. While it might be a source of pride for him, it is an embarrassing admission. What has happened to radio over the past 14 years that Mr. Wharton can be proud of?

What improvements to the medium did the NAB spearhead?

Consolidation throwing thousands of radio people out of work? Then the bankruptcies and near bankruptcies of some of the largest consolidated groups? The first multi-year decline in revenues? The failure of HD Radio? Can we think of anything that the NAB should be proud of?

And now we have the NAB leading the charge to redistribute millions of dollars from broadcasters to the record labels.

Mr. Wharton seems proud that he had just sent a letter to David Lieberman, Sr. Media Reporter with USA TODAY. The same e-mail went to The New York Time, The Boston Globe, etc.

It leaves one speechless.

While he might think a letter writing campaign defending the FM chip is in radio’s best interest, we are more concerned that Mr. Wharton didn’t write letters to the media as it produced story after story about the death of radio.

New-media has gotten enormous free publicity from newspapers. Radio’s imminent death has been announced in the New York Times on a nearly monthly basis for the past several years. Where were Mr. Wharton’s writing skills then?

The NAB didn’t seem the least bit concerned about radio then. Perhaps if the NAB had been more supportive of radio all along, its negotiating position now would be stronger.

Mr Wharton also brags that 60 U.S. House representatives from both sides of the aisle advocate that FM radio capability be added to all mobile phones sold in the US, citing safety and emergency warning alert concerns.

With over 400 members, having the support of 60 representatives on an issue of safety seems like a sign of weakness, not power. More importantly, what do safety and emergency warning concerns have to do with performance royalties?

Does Mr. Wharton really think this disproves our point? Is this the evidence Mr. Wharton thinks proves the NAB has supported radio through these challenging times?

We can only conclude that Mr. Wharton didn’t read our comments, or after reading them couldn’t find anything to disprove them.

We ask again: What has the NAB done in the past several years to refute the silly claims of new-media shills that radio is dead?

For example, did it create a “truth squad” to counter new-media stakeholders who publically dismissed broadcast media as obsolete?

Did this truth squad leap to radio’s defense showing its continued relevance and strength when mainstream media began to accept the “radio is dead” meme as real?

If it did, we can’t find any evidence.

Now that the FM chip is in play, I’m sure Mr. Wharton can cite any number of efforts he is making to get the deal done.

Our point is that without critical preparatory work, radio’s efforts to sell the FM chip makes radio look as weak as the new-media pundits claim:

So when the NAB and RIAA worked out a backroom deal to require an FM chip in cellphones, of course the pundits went crazy. It just looks like a couple of drowning major businesses trying to stay afloat by climbing on the backs of new-media.

Sun Tzu in the Art of War declared:

The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat. It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

The NAB has entered this battle with few calculations and fewer preparations.

 

Could NAB Botch the FM Chip Any Worse?

When’s the last time you heard Gordon Smith say anything good about radio? When’s the last time you saw the NAB out-front promoting radio, countering the endless parade of moronic musings about the death of radio?

Go on the NAB website. Does that look like an organization that represents the best interests of radio and understands radio’s challenges? At least the NAB quietly killed the embarrassing Radio Heard Here campaign.

Go to the news section and see how many press releases the NAB has issued in the past couple of years pointing out the continued relevance and popularity of radio. You won’t find any but you will find out that the NAB is supporting the US bid for FIFA’s World Cup! They sure have their priorities straight.

Then go to the RAB website, and then the Arbitron website.

The fact is that radio’s leaders have done a terrible job combating the continuing attacks by new-media stakeholders who want to convince Congress, the FCC, mainstream media, venture capital, and the public that radio is on its death bed.

As a result, large numbers of people believe the propaganda. They believe that radio really is irrelevant in a digital world.

Radio’s leaders have let radio slip right off the radar screen. Sure 90% of Americans listen to it every week. Sure they spend as much time with radio as they do the Internet, but somehow that doesn’t matter.

Radio doesn’t matter because radio acts like it doesn’t matter.

So when the NAB and RIAA worked out a backroom deal to require an FM chip in cellphones, of course the pundits went crazy. It just looks like a couple of drowning major businesses trying to stay afloat by climbing on the backs of new-media.

Because the NAB and radio’s leaders never built a consumer-based argument for adding an FM chip, Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association could accuse radio of being a buggy-whip business, and get away with it.  

Now at a time when radio needs the goodwill that a sustained campaign of promoting radio could have given it, we have nothing.

This episode–regardless of how it turns out, just further confirms radio’s lack of leadership and radio’s inability to adapt.

Maybe radio really is a buggy-whip business.

Traditional Media Begin Push-back. Where's Radio?

After years of touting their digital initiatives, traditional media are beginning to rethink things. The Wall Street Journal recently took note of a new magazine campaign spearheaded by Jann Wenner, creator of Rolling Stone. In a statement that might as well be referring to radio, Wenner wrote:

A lot of us sat back for way too long and listened to all this abuse and said nothing about it. Meanwhile, we sit on top of one of the greatest mediums.

The article adds:

The spark for the campaign was a "manifesto" Mr. Wenner penned last year, in which he said that just as TV didn't kill magazines, the Internet was a threat only to publications that lost focus on what makes magazines unique. "In a certain way, this campaign is aimed at the magazine business itself," Mr. Wenner wrote.

Time Warner's Time Inc., Hearst, Advance Publications' Condé Nast, Wenner Media and Meredith are coordinating a $90 million ad campaign touting the "power of print." Nearly 1,400 pages of the ads will appear in magazines including People, Vogue and Ladies' Home Journal this year. The ads were created by WPP's Young & Rubicam. (Click ad to enlarge.)

The WSJ authors note that:

Amid a decline in spending on traditional media, other industries are making similar pitches for themselves. The Newspaper Association of America has run repeated ads to publicize the number of people who read a daily newspaper. As with the magazine campaign, the newspaper trade group says its ads are designed to counter the notion print is a dead medium.

The local-TV industry's trade group is starting an on-air ad campaign this month to encourage companies to advertise on their local TV stations.

We predicted this last year. All these digital initiatives have done more harm than good. Last November we wrote:

Newspapers responded to declining revenue by drastically cutting print expenses. They fired reporters, consolidated staffs, eliminated whole sections of the newspaper, and in many ways they began producing a print product quite inferior to the newspaper they produced in the past.

They felt the future was online, and to hell with the print product. They plundered their print product to finance their digital push. Did it reverse newspaper's fortunes? No. Now newspaper finds itself with a hollowed out print product and little to show for its digital efforts.

Traditional media is beginning to understand that revenue lost from their core non-digital product cannot be made up for in their digital product. And paying for their digital efforts by diverting money from their core product inflicts damage on both.

We closed the post with this warning:

We believe that if radio continues to debase it's terrestrial product in the belief that all that matters is radio's digital future, it will suffer the same consequences that befell newspaper.

Newspaper, local television, and magazines are all pushing back. Where is radio? MIA. The HD campaign? No one listens to HD and no one cares about HD.

The Radio Heard Here campaign? Hopelessly misguided.

The magazine campaign directly targets the Internet, comparing it to print’s strengths. Radio is still selling against satellite, as if that’s the battleground.

Once again, radio demonstrates why it is not taken seriously.

Having the Guts to Confront the Lies

Traditional radio is dying. How often have we heard that? How many seemingly sincere people say that while intelligent people nod in agreement?

Of course, the factual evidence says otherwise. We’ve recounted the results of numerous studies and listening surveys here, here, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. Yet new-media true believers simply dismiss all this evidence, arguing (without any proof of their own) that no one listens to radio anymore.

When it comes to the battle between facts and beliefs, beliefs often win. Behavioral research shows that even in the face of overwhelming factual proof to the contrary, many people will continue to hold fast to their misguided beliefs.

Unfortunately, the willingness to accept radio's demise as truth is aided by those who’s financial interests line up with the lie. There’s a lot more money to be made on the radio is dead side.

Television fights a similar battle. New-media pundits dismiss over-the-air TV declaring (contrary to all evidence) that people don’t watch traditional television anymore.

The difference is that while radio seems to suffer from a lack of confidence problem and takes the abuse quietly, television more often pushes back. The latest example is the response to a Forrester forecast. Forrester is a "research" company that peddles pricey studies that often have an upbeat new-media theme.

Advertising Age reports that after Forrester analyst David Cooperstein predicted a decline in television advertising at the recent Association of National Advertisers, CBS Corp. Chief Research Officer David Poltrack (shown above) rose to challenge the prediction. According to Adage, here’s what Poltrack said:

This research says that advertisers are actually pulling money out of television. It is not true. In 2006 when you published this result, Forrester predicted, that 5% to 10% of advertising dollars would be taken out of television in 2007. Television advertising actually went up 4% in 2007. And since 2007, despite the recession, television has increased its share of advertising dollars two full percentage points. So advertisers are spending more of their money on television, not less.

Another account of the moment better conveys Poltrack’s frustration:

He was particularly set off by advertisers' claim (in the Forrester study) that only 41 percent of their media budgets went to TV last year versus 58 percent in a 2008 survey. Poltrack called those figures here "bullsh*t numbers." He added, "For that to happen, if advertising dollars during the recession went down 10 percent, TV advertising would have been down 30 percent. Everyone knows that didn't happen."

A review of Forrester predictions shows a pattern of understating radio and televisions strengths while predicting broad and rapid embracing of new media. The media dutifully print the Forrester predictions without bothering to look back to see how accurate their previous predictions were. (Not very.)

We raised questions about Forrester’s research in August of last year here. The company asserted listening levels were dropping precipitously and in 2009 were less than 7 hours per week. Arbitron’s PPM listening estimate was 12 hours, their diary based estimate was even higher, and both were at the low end of other estimates.

Why isn’t the NAB out front with a truth squad? Where’s the RAB? How about Arbitron supporting radio rather than just bleeding it?

Radio needs people like David Poltrack who are willing to call “bullsh*t” what it is.