Monday, April 21, 2008

Monday Monday

70° - scattered clouds at 7:08pm

Good evening from Okemos. Spring weather again today; plan on taking a bike ride with the kids right after dinner. It'll be a short ride. Long winter = very out of shape.

HD Radio.
Fred Jacobs points to his firm's (latest) Tech Poll IV that 40% of the survey respondents say they just don't know about it yet. Another 32% think the radios are too expensive. The good news: this can all be improved on.

My take: the HD Radio Alliance still needs to strike a deal with Detroit. I know there's been progress but there's a long way to go. Get that done. Radios (as standard equipment) in new cars will significantly increase awareness better than anything and provide the incentive to invest in the product (programming). And build from there.

Promote strong brands, not (just) the technology. Its all about the content.

Fred's post from this morning
here.

Tom Webster of Edison Media Research offers a video from the RAIN Summit HD Radio panel in Las Vegas last week. Here. I have not seen yet.

Added later: I've now seen. Intelligent conversation on the topic. And speaking for Ibiquity is a former Chicago programmer (with whom I share my last name with) - who oversaw an incredible FM in the market back in the 70s. I never knew him; but I well knew his name.

Thinking Small. Harve Alan posted a piece last week that caught my attention. From the eMarketing Association eMarketing Conference: "The Shrinking Brand-Marketing in a Small World".

How to make effective use use of "micro-formats" and making them central to your marketing plan. And how radio is perfectly suited to micro-formats. A great read - and slide-show - here.

AAA rocks. Triple A Radio's
Mike Lyons writes:

"I've long advocated the AAA, or the adult-rock format, as one savior for the industry. Thousands of arbitrarily unplayed but obviously worthy songs and artists are available for play. Plus, the appeal of AAA to both boomers and the college demo provides an awfully attractive audience. During the last decade and a half, it's been consistently shown that most commercial AAA stations bill higher amounts than their rated audience share would normally indicate."

"That the AAA "power-rating" (percentage of a market's radio advertising billed by a station versus the percentage of listeners that station gets in a market) has always been among the highest in the business, often between 1 and 2 times. This means AAA stations can charge more per spot because their listeners are extremely desirable and listen longer."

A great piece from "The Forest" at Triple A Radio.
Read
here. Mike ends the piece, noting:

"...after buying Radio One's Urban AC KRBV-FM in Los Angeles, Bonneville flipped it to AAA, "100.3 The Sound. World Class Rock For Southern California," bringing commercial AAA back to the second-largest market in the country. Reportedly, Bonneville President Bruce Reese's favorite station is KFOG in San Francisco so he's a man with good taste and some business acumen."

Have a good night.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan,

I've gone through your last 5 blogs and noticed there was not ONE post other than your own blog. Why do you have a place to post under your blog?
How do you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-A-T-E? Is that correct? I'm sure I'll check back and see this posted, thanks,

Robert D young Jr
33 S Main St 32B
Millbury, MA
KB1OKL

Dan Kelley said...

Hi Bob:

As you failed to leave a personal email address, I'll give you the courtesy of a reply on the blog.

Your recent comments, which I declined to post, quickly drifted from the topic at hand (the promotion of HD Radio).

A comment you posted on Saturday began with name calling of a fellow blogger for his so-called "push" of HD. I won't allow personal attacks on this blog.

For what its worth, I don't believe the blogger you mentioned is any more "pro-HD" than I am.

HD is here - its the job and obligation of broadcast industry professionals to make it work to the best of our abilities.

Our employers expect nothing less.