ANew Seminar For The Conclave

It's late at night and I can't sleep. I found myself going through old files, and I came across something I wrote immediately after the 2001 Conclave.

I'd met someone at the Conclave who asked me to jot down my thoughts on the weekend for an article. Well, I never finished it -or even focussed on it - because it became obvious to me that this wasn't what he was looking for at all.

After I read those words from nearly three years ago, I wondered if anything has changed...?

Gee I wonder.

I'm posting it below in hopes that it inspires thought.

(Written In July, 2001)

Sometimes I wonder if we're getting so lost in research and focus groups, micro-nitching formats and crossover records, multi-million dollar birthday games and national contesting with nothing but local winners' that we forget what brought us here in the first place. One should hope we all got into this business to entertain the masses, yet the masses seem to fall dead last on our priorities list.

Case in point: Conclave 2001. Yes, a good time was had by all and the most popular radio convention of the year needs no props from me - but what it does need is trip back to the basics next year. I can't even remember how many times the word 'local' came up at just about every seminar - "Gotta think local if you want to win!' 'XM and Sirrius can't win because they're not going to be local!' 'Local is radio's secret weapon!"

Boy that guy wasn't kidding. Local is becoming such a big secret that many of today's radio newbies might not ever get to experience it.

In Sociology 101 we learn that we are a product of our environment. A 28 year old female from Montana is going to have very different tastes, preferences and attitudes than a 28 year old women from L.A. A radio station also needs to be a product of its environment. No big revelation there. We all know that people in Columbus Ohio like different things than people in Columbus Georgia. Gee' I wonder if there's a Kiss station in both cities running the same contest with the same imaging and maybe even some of the same jocks. (The answer is 'no.' Or, at least, 'not yet.')

When I hear a music radio station that targets 18 to 34 year old women running countless sweepers with modem noises in them & talking about technology' well, I realize we have lost our way. It's time to go back to Radio 101 for a refresher course before our listeners leave more than just our station. We need to give them a reason not to leave the medium itself.

Come to think of it, too many of US are leaving the medium too.

It's time for a discussion about why we got in this business in the first place, and how exactly the business operates. Consider that anyone working in radio less than 6 years probably has little experience with the mom & pop shops. While veterans were trying to figure out how to bring together large numbers of stations both locally and nationwide, radio newbies were faced with chaos from all sides. I bet THAT makes for a great learning environment! 'I'll teach you everything I know once I re-learn everything I thought I knew.'

At the Conclave I was stunned by the contrast between what the conference panels were discussing and what broadcasters in attendance were asking. Most of the panels were discussing marketing strategies for station websites or creating listener rewards clubs when the audience wanted to know how to create listeners. The panels were discussing caviar while the audiences were asking how to make a ham sandwich now that bread has been dropped from the budget.

And how could one forget all of the talk about local this and local that during Conclave 2001. '"We''ve got to be local! That is radio's advantage over all of these new technologies!" ' I also heard a lot of talk about rapidly declining TSL among younger demos - especially men. I heard a lot of talk about the people meter. What I DIDN'T hear was a lot of talk about PEOPLE. Remember them? Multi-celled organisms' the ones with opposable thumbs. Local is a winning strategy, but local does NOT equate to people.

'It's The Listeners, Stupid.

Yes, this is a business, and we are under more pressure to perform than ever before as we answer to stockholders and compete with new technologies. That's why it's more important than ever before to know who you are targeting and how to hit that target.

We need to be concerned less about formats and more about listeners. If you are targeting 18-34 year old women, why not use research to find out what 18-34 year old women want to hear? I see Modern AC stations flipping format, so I assume the city must have run out of women between the ages of 25 and 35. Some kind of spaceship must have sucked them all up & taken them away, right? Because if there are still women between 25 and 35 years old, wouldn't Modern AC stations be doing well?

FACT: When The Lilith Fair went away, listeners didn't die. They moved on. Why didn't the format move with them?

As listeners tastes evolve, a station targeting those listeners needs to evolve as well. Change happens.

I know of a major market Modern/AC station that stopped testing pop titles because those songs kept dominating the research.

Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhat??

I wonder how much that had to do with them flipping format a few months later. Go figure.

Maybe, at the next Conclave, there should be a seminar called 'Radio 101' because I really think we have forgotten what it's all about. Hell - maybe it's time for an entire Conclave dedicated to Radio 101.