In the 1970’s and 80’s radio stations believed that to do well with in-car tuning they would have to occupy a preset button on the listeners’ car radios. This technology involved 5 push buttons on the car’s radio; each one mechanically tuned the receiver to a listener’s preselected station.
The common belief for Radio Managers at the time was that their station should be programmed to one of those buttons and that the first button on the left (the one closest to the driver) was the most important position to own as that was the listeners favorite station – the one they would listen to most – and more importantly, the one they would write down in their rating’s diary.
So important was this strategy to some stations that they massive amounts of time and money to “get a button” in a listener’s car. They frequently ran special liners suggesting listeners program their station to one of their car’s preset buttons. They ran commercials explaining how to program a button to their station for those who were mechanically challenged. Programmers also offered contests and cash incentives to have listeners calibrate their station to a preset button on their car radio. Some even went so far as to pay auto dealers to program their station’s frequency to one of their customer’s radio’s preset buttons while their cars were in for service.
Today, the social media is the new technological rage. There is seldom a day when the marketing press isn’t presenting another ground-breaking idea on how to generate more social networking for someone’s product or service. The common belief among radio stations today seems to be that if you have a lot of sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Email it follows that you will have lots of listeners and do well in the ratings.
So what do the social media and push button technologies have in common? Both are examples of reverse logic. By which I mean, taking a logically corroborated statement “because of X, therefore Y” and interpreting it backward, as if it said “because of Y, therefore X”. For example, if all boys in the first grade (X) have blue eyes (Y), then all first graders with blue eyes (Y) must be boys (X). That would seem to be a pretty obvious mistake that no one would make, but in fact it shows up in very subtle guises, in regard to deep questions about what our programming, technology and marketing theories are really telling us.
Our company runs Groupon style revenue sharing programs for radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. Our experience has shown us that, among other things, daily deals with the highest incidence of social network and email sharing have a higher proclivity to sell the most products or services. Because of this, you would think that we spend a lot of time advising stations how to generate more social media sharing. But you would be wrong; to us that would be reverse logic.
We actually spend the most time guiding stations to research and present geographically and demographically well-targeted deals of high value to their listeners. If we do our job right, the result is we get a high incidence of sharing on Email, Facebook and Twitter and we sell a lot of deals.
It seems obvious to us now that, in retrospect, stations in the 70s and 80s should have spent more time providing great programming in order to inspire people to set a preset button to their station; not the other way around. But managers in those days fell in love with the technology in spite of the fact that radio listeners may have had all 5 buttons programmed to different stations but really only listen to 2 of them. How well did it serve the other 3 stations by “having a button”?
In the same way, stations today should focus on improving their offerings (their programming) to have listeners share their stations content on social media. Not the other way around. Jim Collins writes in one of the bestselling business books of all time Good to Great, “The good-to-great companies used technology as an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it.”
I have witnessed companies (even large ones) spend small fortunes on social media activities because it is de rigueur rather than investing in producing products and services people actually want – or provide value – before they determine which technological tools will accelerate them towards their goals.
Following consolidation and the recession, radio stations made huge cuts in their personnel and research budgets and/or began using cheaper internet based research with all its inherent bias and other lethal warts to meet their profit requirements in stagnant revenue markets. That has proven to be merely a short term solution to radio’s woes. It shrunk staff and other resources to the point where, in the long term, there will be insufficient assets left to grow the company.
The reality is stations need new sources of revenue!
Competent observation indicates that stations should go back to properly understanding their audience’s needs, fulfilling them, and only then launching their social network and other promotional and revenue generating strategies. Doing it the other way around will end them up the way of the mechanical push button on the car radio.
–Neil Gallagher specializes in developing and operating Groupon Style Revenue Sharing Programs for Radio. Neil’s background includes being a successful Divisional Vice President, major market General Manager, Program Director, and Account Executive. He can be reached through his website www.neilgallagher.com.
