So – Jerry D does think that it’s the consolidators that have the weak radio product…

In an earlier post, I disagreed with Jerry Del Colliano on the subject of great content being created in radio. Here’s something he wrote a few days ago that makes the point about independent operators:

A Radio Station That Signs Jocks To Contracts: “In Phoenix there is a station that actually does well — how’s number one 18-34 sound — with a sub-par tower location and it competes with all the usual suspects like CBS and Clear Channel.”

(Via INSIDE MUSIC MEDIA™.)

Nothing about great content on this station, but if you’re #1 18-34 with no signal, something’s being done right on the air!

Twitter Feed for Dallas’s 97.9 The Beat

Showing “Now Playing” metadata. Imagine what you could do with messages tied to the other audio on the station!

HDTV and HDRadio – maybe they are alike

During my “industry update” time this morning, I read this article in RBR about the experience of a TV general manager. Gary McNair of WECT-TV in Wilmington, NC, during their recent turn to 100% digital TV.

It’s hard not to think about the challenges facing stations that have switched to HDRadio when reading it. Most of the lessons that Gary enumerates are lessons that radio station management can learn from, too. Here’s a list – interpreted for HDRadio; read the full article for details:

* Educate yourself. Experience the product. Become a consumer of free over-the-air digital radio. It is different in more ways than one.

* Prepare a station or market specific, easy to understand, “digital viewing guide” – complete with maps and pictures.

* Offer a digital help line for questions or problems.

* Be prepared – you will insult your P1s with the digital messages. These are the people responsible for the bulk of your ratings and you really don’t want to offend them or chase them off.

* Work with your fellow broadcasters if they are willing.

* Communicate with radio retailers and auto dealers. They are talking with customers every day.

* Educate your staff – especially your news and sales staffs who are constantly out representing the station.

* If you are not replicating your coverage area, be prepared for a lot of calls. Add temps to field or return calls.

* Don’t let listeners procrastinate – create real reasons for them to make the switch to HDRadio.

Arbitron vs Nielsen Part Deux

So – there’s another, contradictory, study out there about the preference of Arbitron over Nielsen. It’s from Media Life, an online publication for media buyers, planners and researchers. Here’s a verbatim response from a participant:

“Nielsen would seem to have made a horrendously expensive, monopolistic mess of TV measurement. Now radio? Nielsen’s entry into radio measurement may illustrate what journalist Naomi Klein has called the ‘The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.’ In short, for media buyers Nielsen’s entry could mean chaos and confusion at the worst possible time. It could become a perfect example of ‘disaster capitalism.'”

This survey suffers from the same lack of methodological documentation as the Harker survey; as such, both can only be construed as interesting, yet inconsequential expressions of opinion. Here’s a link to the Media Life survey.

Arbitron vs Nielsen

Many of you know that Cumulus has announced that their partner for ratings in the non-PPM markets will be Nielsen. On Friday, a research firm called Harker Research, in Raleigh, published some research on their blog about the acceptability of Arbitron vs Nielsen to media buyers. Here’s a link.

The basic conclusion is that Nielsen is preferred by media buyers over Arbitron. I find this to be contrary to real-world experience, so it would be interesting to see some detail on the composition of the sample. Like, were these buyers who currently buy radio? Are they in NY, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Raleigh? Stuff like that. How large was the sample?

This is the sort of business research that is very useful to the industry. I hope that Harker contributes more detail about their methodology and sample so that we can understand its true implications.