Eric Mathewson, Founder and CEO of WideOrbit, issued some commentary over Greater Media’s decision return to Marketron, its former traffic and revenue management system. Greater Media will replace its current system in its four largest markets with Marketron’s Mediascape open technology platform. Said Mathewson:
“After implementing WideOrbit’s WO Traffic early this year, Greater Media has decided to revert back to their legacy Traffic system. This is a decision by Greater Media that WideOrbit regrets and which WideOrbit takes full responsibility.
Over the past 5 years, WideOrbit has installed more than 35 North America Radio station groups representing more than 650 radio stations. WideOrbit earned this business directly at the expense of the same vendor that has reclaimed Greater Media as a client.
With over 2,100 Radio and Television stations and networks going live on WO Traffic software in the past decade, Greater Media is the only client group to ever revert back to their previous traffic system. In 2011, WideOrbit has successfully brought more than 200 stations and networks live on WO Traffic. To be clear, we think very well of the management and employees at Greater Media and think that they are smart broadcasters, which makes their decision even more challenging for WideOrbit.
WideOrbit has worked hard to develop a reputation of great customer service. In the instance of Greater Media, we failed to defend this reputation. While we worked with Greater Media to provide incremental training and support after some initial difficulties, we failed to diagnose the scale of the dissatisfaction that their users were experiencing and in turn did not respond to solve these issues in our normal, timely, manner.
We want to stress that Greater Media management has been very pleasant through this difficult process and we look forward to supporting them wherever possible in the future.”
RBR-TVBR observation: You don’t see this sort of mea culpa very often in the industry—especially directed to the entire industry, rather than the lost customer. It’s a stand-up thing to do and a lesson learned. WideOrbit and Marketron are definitely competing for big group contracts. With traffic and revenue management systems, customer service is just as important as the technology brought to the table.
Editor’s note: Be sure to check out our next Traffic and Revenue Management System Intel Brief–Dec. 6, 7, and 8.
