Interesting day in the ever-changing landscape with Yahoo announcing original comedies and a partnership with Live Nation to stream concerts, the Times going in hard and Microsoft announcing some cool sounding shows.
Author: John McDermott @mcdradio
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The New York Times Wants to Make Digital Video for Brands | Special Report: TV Upfront – Advertising Age
Great piece in AdAge this morning. that’s definitely worth your time. Looks like a nice aggressive forward-thinking play. I don’t want to just rip off and recap the AdAge article, so give them the page views – but I did laugh at the idea of the Upright Citizens Brigade reading legalese.
Set-top devices like Roku and Apple TV are next, according to Ms. Howard. She said a New York Times channel will likely appear on one of these devices by the fourth quarter.
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The Hallway Ratings
I’m a big believer in what I call The Hallway Ratings.
The Hallway Ratings are an unofficial metric of internal buzz as judged by what your coworkers mention to you on their own. Often this would happen by the elevator, on a stairwell or even in the men’s room.
When I was with SiriusXM, Howard Stern had huge Hallway Ratings. You would walk down the halls and many people had Howard on at their desk. Folks would talk about the show around the proverbial water cooler. Other shows like (be nice John), not so much.
Bad Hallway Ratings would come when someone said something like “I didn’t even know he had a show.”
The Hallway Ratings were invented by me in the 1990’s when I would work with Bob Grant.
As Bob aged he had days where he would coast a while, and I had picked up on it. I pointed out to him that when he was at his best he would lean forward into the mike, like a tiger waiting to attack. At other points he would lean way back in the chair, intro the next caller and just let the caller ramble.
From my side of the glass I tried to keep Bob engaged. Whoever would piss him off would go next. Some days I would screen the show to be about “nothing” to keep Bob sharp. For example….
Yeah sure we could have done another half hour of bashing Bill Clinton, but man that’s so predictable.
I learned a heck of a lot working with Grant. The difference between handing in the show you’re “supposed to” and handing in entertainment.
Start with the people in the room. Are they interested in the show or is the board-op reading the newspaper (or I guess now that it’s 2014, playing with his phone?) Has any coworker even acknowledged the show to you or are we just filling a timeslot because we have to?
Grant would have great hallway ratings on those silly days. I hope your show does too.
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Your car, the next mobile ad platform | Digiday
One way to leverage that data is from an advertiser or marketing standpoint. Pandora has interesting opportunities on the horizon because they can tell if someone is listening to Pandora from the app within their car versus the app on their phone. And they can tell not only are they currently in the car but what type of car are they driving; so from that level of data you can make some really interesting inferences regarding demographics and psychographics that could allow you to serve up the perfect ad to this person at the perfect time.
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Here’s what CarPlay actually looks like
It looks pretty cool to me. I know I would want to make sure my audio delivery system had a button on there. The Verge has more if you’d like to see what it looks like on the dashboard
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Gmail is scanning your emails. So?
I am not too freaked about this. Maybe the TOS has changed. Maybe this is a different way of approaching things, but this sort of thing has been going on for years.
My email-cahin buddies and I once conducted an experiment. We started an email thread about fruit. We wrote each other silly emails about how much we liked pineapples and how oranges are better than bananas. Rather quickly our sidebar ads filled with advertisements from Dole.
So Google has said…
“Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”
GOOGLE TERMS OF SERVICE (TOS)
via Google’s new terms of service: all Gmail scanned for ad targeting | Circa News.
So yes you can freak out about privacy. You might as well throw your cellphone away, stop using cars (license plate readers), your ATM card (I see you were on Broadway and 44th yesterday at 2:13pm), your EZ Pass and the internet (that’s a nice IP address you have there). If I’m going to be bombarded with ads I’d rather them be relevant ads anyway.
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Does radio have something to fear from the connected dash?
Some stuff I have covered here, but nice to hear someone else say it.
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The first thing I do when I get in the car now is connect my phone to my dashboard
One of the nice things about not having a radio gig is the complete freedom to listen to what I want. Now don’t get me wrong, when I have my hands on a radio station I can’t get enough of it – but I’m a human and there would be days where I would want to listen to Springsteen but instead “had to” check out Laugh USA.
These days, I am tied to nothing so I choose what I want. And the first thing I do is…
PLUG MY IPHONE INTO A CASSETTE ADAPTER
Yep. As much as a pain in the ass as that is, I plug my iPhone into a cassette adapter. A big old stupid wire hanging out of the cassette deck (they still had those in 2006 when I bought the car) and my phone sits in the cupholder.
Why?
It plays what I want.
12,000 songs. All perfectly curated by me.
My Springsteen is better than Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Radio. Bruce plays some songs I don’t like. John’s “Springsteen” playlist has only the best Springsteen songs.
“Buffett Car Mix 2012” is way better than Radio Margaritaville.
And I have even solved Discovery. I don’t want to become a dinosaur. I like hearing new music. I have become a fan of the iTunes Alt Top 50 or whatever it’s called. I’m a consumer, I don’t need to know what it’s called, I just know I like it and I know how to get to it and it plays songs I like. If I don’t like it I skip it. If I like it a lot I buy it so I can add it to “Alt Mix” which is a playlist of things I have bought in the last month on iTunes.
I’ll occasionally punch over to WCBS-AM if I see that we’re coming up to an 8 (when they do traffic and weather), but not at 58 because they have trained me that they always do “cheap weather” because the unnecessary transit report runs long (are subway riders really getting their updates from WCBS-AM? No, it’s an excuse for a billboard).
I like the concept of sports talk but I don’t like any of the choices offered to me, so I abstain. And my life sails along just fine. I can get my sports news from twitter or the occasional Mets-related podcast.
But back to the dash….I’m barely using that AM/FM button, occasionally the CD, but it’s CASSETTE that is getting the workout.
Why do I bring this up? Connected car, baby. What’s going to happen when you don’t have to have the cheesy wire. What happens when you get in the car and your phone and all its apps just sync to the touchscreen dash?
More disruption, that’s what will happen. And folks will seek the content. Best content + easy consumption shall win.
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We can talk about Miley or we can talk about Ukraine. Pick Miley.
Late yesterday I blogged about the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair survey which has radio “dominant” at 49%..
Deeper down in that survey was a question “Who would you most want to see with your daughter?” (Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, One Direction, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus).
In the college class I teach on Monday night we were having a lively discussion about the survey and then I got to that question. It effectively stopped the class.
THE PASSION that came out of the students. Everyone talking, talking over each other, ARGUING about how Tayolr Swift is boring and Miley Cyrus is slutty and Bieber needs to go back to Canada.
A full 15 minutes until I hooked it and took the break. Then after the break one of the students mentioned Taylor and it started up again.
Now be honest, what got you to click on this post? Was it because you are a fan of John McDermott and all his media insights? Was it your interest in Ukraine? Nope…the picture caught your eye and the headline was OK enough that you clicked.
That’s how you approach topics on the radio. Yes we’d all like to be our best selves. There are some really important ISSUES out there. The reality is that most people are busy and your job is to entertain them until they get to and from the salt mines.
I imagine the latest unemployment figures are important. I’m unemployed and I can’t even be bothered to hold a one minute conversation about them.
But the non-story of bringing your kids to see Taylor Swift of Miley Cyrus? That lit up the room. That will light up the phones.
Don’t overthink the topics. Now I’m not saying be boring and bland….but don’t overthink the topics. Sometimes they are as stupid as this one.
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Radio dominant – but don’t ignore those pesky 18-34’s who have gone digital
I follow lots of radio trades, and one thing circulation is that radio is a new 60 Minutes study detailing radio’s “dominant” position.
Now as a radio veteran I don’t want “radio” to die. Of course not. I’m not here to bury “radio.” But I think saying it is “dominant” at 49% (down from what, 98%) and ignoring the factoid below is naive.
Instead, the top choice among Americans aged 18-34 is some form of digital music service (35%) followed by iPhones, iPods, and mp3 players (29%).
Oh yeah those 18-34’s. The ones that are 28-44 in ten years. You remember ten tears ago, we called in 2004. Does ten years seem so far away now?
The keys here continues to be content and distribution. You can have awesome content but if nobody can find you it does you no good. Also, as we are seeing, you can have a fancy FM stick that is heard “everywhere” and the next generation doesn’t care. Grab a Howard Stern and folks will go out of their way to find you.
Commercial-free/commercial-lite music? There’s an app for that and the next generation has it.
Very interesting times. Check out the survey which I’ll dive in on more tomorrow.