Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

As phones get smarter, they are inevitably going to overcome the propensity toward being proprietary in what they deliver. In short, standards are better.

So if you have a blackberry and want to access the best variety in personalized radio on demand on your phone, it is better to choose a service that also works well on iPhones, Android, razr’s and everything else. Why? Services that are accessible to all are more like real radio in that they are more promotable by the radio industry, which leads to better support, format compliance and more.

Now, the way mobile application providers like us achieve this is to make our mobile apps web based. This makes it easy for you to obtain access to the shows over a familiar interface, whether you have an icon to click on, or whether you just type CELLECAST.COM into your phones browser and bookmark it.

Once you do this, you will be able to access and interact with over 50 programs in our network via direct dial, build a playlist, monitor what is fresh to you, and track your usage.

Give it a shot and let us know how it behaves in your Blackberry. We have ben hearing good things so far!

Relating to radio, the departure of David Rehr as CEO of the NAB will likely be a welcome change.
The industry has been under a lot of strain during his tenure, and although most of what he has faced was outside of his control, the parades he has stepped in front of to lead have been disappointments. Radio Heard Here has been castigated as a flat and lifeless appeal. Radio 2020, even with its laudable tenets which we have offered to help them achieve, were correctly interpreted in action as mostly a shill for HD Radio. The HD Radio parade itself has drifted off onto a country road to nowhere.

I like David and wish him the best, but for the sake of the radio industry, I hope we quickly get someone who will actually sit down with innovators, syndicators and stations together to create solutions that can bring the industry truly in line with the times, and defy the criticism of radio’s detractors.

Kudos to those who saw it coming 6 months ago, and let there be mercy on an industry in genuine transition.

It is likely you have never called your House or Senate representatives before. One reason I believe you haven’t is you feel the call will likely be wasted on an intern answering who just looks for a category to drop your message into. Who knows if your opinion really even gets recorded at all?

To that end I suggest a whole new way of getting your voice heard.. not only by your representative, but by anyone else who you care to share it with. CelleCast Talkbacks create a permanent, subject sortable audio petition opportunity with each and every call. Since our listeners are already on the phone enjoying their own personalized radio playlist of news, talk and information, the ease of contributing is as familiar as pressing 3.

We believe we are at the beginning of a new movement of citizen empowerment in this country, and that this tool will help put passionate audio petitioning and citizen journalism into the palm of everyone’s hand.

Where will your Talkback’s go?
- To your Twitter status. (which can then forward to your Facebook status and FriendFeed)
- To your CelleCast profile page.
- To the CelleCast program page. (pending moderation)
- To government officials for particular petition programs coming soon on CelleCast.

We have more information on how to set up your CelleCast account with Twitter for audio tweets, with an additional section taking it a step further and becoming a field reporter. Check it out and enjoy.

So give your fingers a break and give your soul some real venting release with a Talkback today.

## End of Pitch ##

That is a phrase I have been using for a while and hearing as well from others in this space. I think it is important however to clarify the statement. It is easy to say in the way a politician says everything they say.. to get a majority of people to nod their heads. The full truth however is that Social Media has come to represent a collection of changes in media of which Radio’s early contribution represents just one aspect. The three legs of the stool are: User Generated Content (UGC) publishable and in response to other posts, media sourced from the many vs elite pros, and media sources organized in a personalized manner by the consumer. Unless I am missing something, that covers it. Of course to have any viability at all, these three have to work to support a living community, or else it is just lifeless academics.

I am not sure how others would break it down into components or whether they would even see the need to do so. To me the need arises when we begin to see just about any new innovation in media, or old as demonstrated by my headline, claim to be social media. Not unlike the term “radio”, “social media” is also beginning to suffer definition fatigue from the thousands of companies seeking authorship and/or leadership in this new landscape. Having a text messaging campaign where people reply to win a prize is not social media.

The more I think about it, to have pure social media, you need all three legs. Radio, as a step beyond newspapers’ letters to the editor, provided the first realtime feedback mechanism (UGC). With the aid of the ubiquitous and familiar telephone, talk radio hosts could pipe in the voices of select audience members and channel that back to the audience through the broadcast. These call in participants represented the whole audience to a degree, turning the monologue into a conversation. The second component where the audience voices self-published in their own right was not tenable. The third component of personalized organization of participant media — not applicable.

With the web came the ability and the need to have all three. Forums, Blogs, Facebook, You Tube and Twitter all have the open feedback mechanisms as a core components, and should pay tribute to some degree to radio for pioneering that into our media lifestyle. The second social media leg of sourcing from everyone is what is coming into more focus these days with Blogs, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook, and for radio, BlogTalk Radio. Now everyone can be a publisher. Whether we should be or not helps explain to some degree why Twitter is a rising star right now… Who has time to publish more than a quick snippet of information at a time anymore? And thirdly, since information is being produced on such adn expanded many-to-many scale, social media can’t exist sustainably without tools like RSS, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendfeed and others to help each of us on the consumer end of it all to organize the information from the people we want to hear from.

Now, with all that mostly self-evident stuff said, that doesn’t mean that I am a purist measuring all new social media innovations with a three part litmus test. There is a lot to be said for the majority of our media consumption to be entrusted to the professionals. My friends are good sources for where to meet for dinner and “what are you doing?” Lou Dobbs and other talk hosts are a better source for information on what I need to hold my elected officials accountable on. The local station is the best source for local news traffic and weather.

So the thing that really interests me and motivates me to write this post is.. where is the sweet spot between the social and professional sourcing of media? This second leg and the role of todays talk radio host is the big issue for us and our readers here. I believe this is where it is time not to follow but to lead. Take the 1-2 weeks to accept the 1st and 3rd components as a critical part of the future of all media, and spend the next few months actually getting strategic about it. As a show host, the second leg issue requires a personal grappling with the way you lead conversation, and the kind of brand your show will have. I decided a long time ago that our network would showcase the professionals vs the DIY crowd, but that our hosts in order to remain viable would need to encourage even more audience participation. If you are ignoring social media because you already have a big audience, that will only last a few more glorious years. What you need to do is to give your audience a voice, but still be the conversation leader. These are not just my ideas, but the convictions on which I have built CelleCast, making it program oriented, but also interactive and participatory for the audience with Talkbacks, CelleGrams and Audio Tweets. I look forward to combining these ideas with yours as we work with more stations this year.

Smart strategies for how to not only survive in this controversial recession but thrive are the focus of more and more people these days. When things are going relatively well in an industry, there is a natural resistance to trying anything new. This is self-evident. Why do things differently when we are profitable? When things get tougher, especially ahead of the curve in an economic downturn like they have for radio in 2008, the pressure grows. In radio’s case, against the advice of just about every radio consultant I have talked to, the industry got even more resistant to innovation as profit margins shrank and radio stocks lost 85% of their value. The reasoning was that all remaining resources had to be spent on core operations.

Now that the recession is fully upon us, and there is no bailout in sight for radio, it is coming down to a simple choice: Innovate or Die. This blog has been focused on the premise that radio must innovate by going mobile since its inception (of course CelleCast has a stake in this). Our message has been respectful, and will remain so, but now that the heat of circumstance is turned up so high, it is not enough for radio executives to simply act like they are listening, and it is not enough to just engage in a few initiatives that repackage the exact same product. The gauntlet to innovate WELL lies before us, and there is no excuse for having delegated this burden to the ‘digital guy’ or following the path of least resistance.

The good news is that the recession and even a good portion of the supplemental uncertainty that accompanies President Obama’s redefinition of the economy opens the door for innovation that didn’t even make sense a year ago. I wouldn’t say this if there was no historical precedent. When we look back at the great depression, we find that a host of enduring innovations emerged. Of course many also failed. What I want to do in this article is point out a few characteristics where we see a sweet intersection of opportunity between the recession, radio and new mobile media trends. Draw your own conclusions, and reach out to those that can help you adopt recession friendly innovations.

First of all, during a recession, you have to position yourself as the ‘value leader’. We see many companies already doing this. A recent frozen pizza commercial compares their product to delivered pizza as equivalent in quality for a fraction of the cost. It is not just a pricing war tactic, it is an appeal to the consumer to rethink the value equation in their pizza habits in a world where everyone is re-examining their overall buying habits. Brands that succeed during this time have to become part of this re-evaluation process today’s consumer is undertaking. Radio, since it already free, has to create value for its audience in terms other than cost. For talk radio specifically, value is found in helping people find new ways for their voice to be heard politically, socially, etc. Having them take turns calling in for a chance to get past a call screener to be on the air is not a good value proposition. Of course there are other ways to establish the value position for radio, the key is that in this space you need to stand out as a value leader, not just be one of many responding to the need. Look at what Ed Shultz is doing is doing in this space for new advertisers as an example.

Secondly, you have to stand out as a relevant voice who understands current trends, how to set trends, and how the recession is forcing people to re-evaluate their adoption of new trends. This recession in particular intersects a particular set of new media trends relevant to radio, namely: Portability; Personalization; User generated content (UGC); Shareable content; Social Media; 3G Mobile Services; Advanced interaction; On-demand time-shifting; and Free telephony. I believe the recession is already starting to affect the trend equation here in two key ways:

1. Watch for gadget hype to sharply decline. People will prefer to find ways for their existing gadgets to do the job. (yes, their cell phones and VoIP lines, and web browsers)
2. The value of time. Frivolity is already becoming less a result of happenstance, and more a product of deliberate choice. It would be easier of course to just say that people have less time to waste, but that isn’t exactly true. It is more polarized. Some people have less, some people have more (like while unemployed), but everyone has less time tolerance for waste in being pitched to. I think the new radio winners will be ones that position themselves as the best in content and ad targeting, giving the consumer higher control in what is heard.
3. Commonality of Access. Recessions, as evidenced by the reports in online relationship sites registration spikes, have an effect on our value of connectedness. Families generally pull together, and social circles of higher trust are the ones we shift back into. I believe this will cause people who can’t convince their high trust friends and family to get on Facebook to connect in new ways that are more accessible. This applies to direct social media tools as well as to broadcast, etc.

Thridly, you have to be agile. Even on a company cultural level, statements like, “We’ll take that under advisement in our next meeting”, and then not getting back to the person will become less of a forgivable act. Or saying, “I am about 150 emails behind right now”, like I heard from a prominent digital radio executive, is not going to produce a pass from the shareholders. The opportunities in innovation are indeed going to be exploited with or without your participation and investment. New entrepreneurs ready to meet the needs of the public can go directly to them with podcasting, webcasting and cellecasting, but how much better will it be for radio if the industry is in the lead instead of remaining branded as innovation-resistant?

Finally, and this is a very specific value intersection of talk radio during a recession, you have to find ways to lead in rallying people politically. Whatever your politics are, there is no denying the fact that people on all sides feel less informed about the substance of today’s debated topics, and more caught up in personality wars in the media environment. In one sense people are empowered to opine in written form all over the web, and now they can post video on YouTube and elsewhere. But what is radio doing to collect contemporaneous audio commentary from the people? What is radio doing to give people access to raw audio (like Rush’s CPAC speech) that is at the center of today’s dramatic news cycle? What is radio doing to provide audio content elements for the Twitter timeline? It is not that radio shows need to polarize people into partisan entrenchments. The rallying can actually be around letting ideas be shared and aired out so we can come into a place of real national unity, government transparency, scientific debate, and long awaited accountability. There is a new market for this that radio can meet, and we look forward to partnering with it.

We leave you with a CNBC video link on innovation that features Mel Karmizan. The people in this video series have much greater wisdom to offer than I can provide here, but I hope you gained from my specific ideas on how radio can emerge as a winner during these challenging times.

Good to see this line up from eMarketer on a pretty thorough variety of sources in which people that know the internet use to get informed.

31% use talk radio and 6% use mobile media.

That may seem like a small share, but nothing even gets 70%! This is the year where it all turns toward mobile. We believe the best interfaces will be the most intuitive, personal and portable. The iPhone is bearing that out, but they are just the beginning. We’ll be building radio apps for Android and the iPhone and more as the year progresses.

The shift is not just technologically based, but cultural as well. 2009 is going to be a very political year, with new voices striving to be heard and more people seeking narrow channels of on demand media to participate in. We are about to see convergence not just around what is possible, but what is practical for a people striving to survive as well as lead in this trying time in our history.

I just posted a comment on RRW’s great post on 10 changes expected in Social Media for 2009 and realized my list of 6 needs to be on our own blog.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CONTEXT OF RADIO AS FAR AS WE ARE CONCERNED…

Well… having attended more than a few conferences on social media, blogging and “what’s next”, as well as being a daily social media networker, my take is that in 2009, we’ll start to see the next group of early adopters from the mainstream and more traditional media begin to use social media.

This will produce the following:

1) Those that successfully experimented first to help extend their brand, like Hugh Hewitt’s twitter hash #hhrs, will see others flood in and withdraw somewhat, as the buzz subsides

2) Most of the newer adopters will bounce right off like they have been doing all along so far, as they are too out of touch with adapting to the new demographics of radio

3) Twitter, FF and FB will be gateways back to radio’s core audio content, rather than a distracting parallel activity.

4) Social media will be more about Mobile 2.0, and radio, if the leaders pay attention, will be able to score a win for a change!

5) The conversation leaders will again be those from other media that have finally come around and decided to really engage the listeners into the conversation. The value of UGC will max out at about 30% of the overall content, and UGC-based portals will lose a lot of their value.

6) The things talked about on Twitter and other such services will thankfully be less inward focussed, and more about the substantive contributions of the participants. Right now, it is such a freaking echo chamber of discussion about how everyone is doing social media, but really it is the few who promote media change that account for 90% of the activity.

More things come to mind now that I am posting this on our blog, and rereading the RRW post that triggered it. Namely, like we have been saying all along, talk radio as a form of media is a pioneer in interactivity and social engagement. Once the listeners were invited to call in and be part of the program, the conversational aspect of media jumped way ahead of the “letters to the editor” model. Now, radio needs to harness what is happening on Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed and realize that the audience can form a meaningful audio based community about the audio of the show.

But this is not going to happen from social media geeks pushing people in that direction. Radio programs need to work on ways to engage their audiences and nudge them into the new century as well as pick up new fans from younger demographics. Social media is radio’s strength, not weakness.. at least for a few more months.

Well, I just had to bring up this fun irony when I saw a political cartoon poking fun at Barack Obama for seeking Sanjay Gupta from CNN as Surgeon General.

So why not Lou Dobbs? Well.. because Lou is already too busy pioneering mobile radio on demand with us here at CelleCast. Sure.. that works for this Saturday post.

Lately, I have been talking to our radio partners about our plans for 09, and although I cannot expound on them in detail, let’s just say that our plans have great confluence within the emerging new mobile app-scape.

Take a look at this post about Android apps and consider yourself put on notice that the future of mobile radio is not controlled by any means within the domain of Apple. No, not only is Android emerging, but we’ll also see Blackberrys and Intel MID devices competing to do pretty much the same thing.

Watch for us to be ready with radio apps for all devices, with the already developed phone app making cellecasting a compelling solution for every last phone on the planet for accessing news, talk, sports and all spoken word radio.

I had a great time at Forecast 09 last week in New York. Most of what we all talked about was top secret.. no not really, but it was certainly a great event for radio executives. Here is a picture of Eric Rhoads and I yucking it up at the cocktail party afterward. We all had a great time here at the end after a full day seminar dealing with how terrible the economy is right now.

I am just glad to have been in the minority in attendance with a viable solution. Many people in radio are really caught up in the problems in the economy right now.

BTW, for the few radio people who don’t already know it, we are proud to have Eric on our advisory board, as we are putting together an alliance of radio leaders to help the industry succeed amidst the consumer transition to using mobile devices for radio and other media consumption. If we pull together, we can align with consumer trends and make radio bounce back in a hard V, versus a soft U.