Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

Quick note. The fun thing about traveling for CelleCast is talking to cab drivers (always fairly recent immigrants) about the concept of hearing news and entertainment from their home country while driving around town. I get 100% enthusiasm about it. Now it is just a matter of gathering the long tail of shows into our system.

It will still take a few more months for all of us to once again get in the habit of reading these reports, but we will all be the better for it. Take a few minutes to read the Bridge Ratings 2010 Radio Predictions. You’ll thank me later!

If you have never seen a Bridge Ratings Report before, you are in for a treat.

When we started CelleCast in 2007 we knew right from the beginning that there were two essentials to making mobile phone radio work for the industry. Not that these two stood alone, but we felt, and have been thoroughly vindicated, that without these there isn’t a rats chance in a beauty contest of success in bringing a significant radio audience over to new mobile devices. Once I cover these two self-evident points for reference sake, I’ll get into how the train got derailed for all of us by those who ignored them.

Behold:

1. Universal Simplicity

Radio works because it is easy, and will remain ubiquitous until it gets complicated (hence, the unintended consequences with satellite and HD). You turn it on, you scan through stations, you find what you want to listen to, and make presets of your favorites so you can avoid commercials, etc. Not only is it second nature for you, you also expect it to be easy for everyone else around you. The universality of people who are comfortable with it makes the simplicity means something. Even complex things are made simple on an individual basis with acclimation and repetition, but the list of things in media life that everyone ‘gets’ is still limited to the things that have been around a while. Without this, the media is not sharable. There is no community without sharing. Hearing radio over a mobile phone is sharable only to a very small niche community when an iPhone app is required. Hearing it only when an sms text message is received also creates limitations that violates the Universal Simplicity standard. This is something radio people get that cloistered new media geeks tend to dismiss.

2. On Demand, Personalized Delivery

This is an essential because frankly there is no reason for anyone (producers and listeners alike) to break from the status quo unless, in addition to the simplicity standard above, other compelling benefits cannot be ignored. What new media brings to the table for radio going mobile is portability and personalization. These are the same qualities mobile breakthroughs also bring to apps and the mobile web, BTW. When listeners can truly just push a button and hear a personalized playlist of programs auto-queued to play only the most recent unheard episodes, then the listener is in control in a similar manner that they are also getting accustomed to with DVR’s for TV.

Falling Short

Now, hopefully you are aware of the essential value of each of the above as pre-requisites toward a wonderful revolution in mobile radio. So why are we not much closer to seeing this transformation toward personalized radio come to pass? If you think it is the technology, you would be incorrect. I submit to you that it is actually the misstep of technology misapplied. Other ‘features’ (aka shiny objects) were regarded more highly than the core essentials of simplicity and personalization. Because too few have sought to hold to these as standards, what has suffered unfairly is the perceived viability of mobile radio personalization itself. Now, I am tired of that. Not just as a believer/innovator seeking to equip the industry for positive change, but also personally after seeing inferior tools dressed up with confusing rhetoric misguide people. Because of this, the promise of radio personalization has been broken, and the reality of it, postponed.

Cases in point: Foneshow.com and lexy.com. I am not in the habit of calling out competitors like this, and I have been able to resist the temptation up to this point. What breaks my silence now is the dread that the ideas behind what all three of us and others have been promising would be passed by due to poor representation. To see these venture funded companies, who have clearly undermined both the simplicity and on-demand standards they falsely claimed to champion, fade in listenership while claiming to represent mobile radio on-demand, is a tragedy to me. To be funded and not to have transformed the industry is an abject failure. I’ll give them credit for getting funded while we have yet to be in that club, but from my perspective today, I’m glad the failed examples are clearing out to make space. As long as the credibility of personalized radio can avoid too much damage now, we’ll be able to make our case while waiting for the right investor to emerge.

How have they violated the core essentials? To put it simply, they claim too much control over the experience, destroying simplicity. (I’ll give lexy more credit for putting their call-in number back on their pages, but for a while it was gone.) The approach they and others have taken is that the user would be enamored with text messaging to the point of accepting it as a gateway to access the audio. When we saw that as the core of Foneshow’s model in 2007, we didn’t even want to list them as a competitor on a product level. If you are making demands of the listener where they don’t get the audio without waiting for a text, then how is that on-demand? Who is making the demands? Imagine if your AM radio was similarly anal. You turn on the power and before any sound comes out, you have to enter your mobile phone number and wait for a screen to come up where you have to tap on a blue 10 digit number. Would you consider that consumer friendly or even good engineering?

One deal-breaking major fallout from this approach is that the content they are aggregating and delivering comes from radio shows that have no decent way to easily promote their content via the call-in based medium. We give each program partner a unique direct dial access number and program page. They can link to us from their site and get more SEO value. They can promote their cellecast number on the air and get direct call ins to THEIR show with ZERO barriers. Now, this is not a competitive pitch here although it sounds like it. To me, it is just bottom line common sense to make it easy for your partners to promote themselves in the context of universal simplicity in personalized mobile radio.

The bottom line problem here is that the biggest barrier for mobile phone radio is already the mainstream perception that it is too complicated to bother with. It doesn’t help that many of the companies trying to solve the perception problem are actually contributing to it. They just make it harder for those of us trying to help.

In the next installment, I will deal with some of the many promising possibilities for on-demand, personalized mobile radio. The standards above are not constraining, but in the long run, the key to radio liberalization and audio-based social media.

Personalization of media programming lies at the heart of the new media revolution. If it was only about the explosion of variety in content and format choices, the net result of all this change would just be about how overwhelmed we are with all the new choices in content and formats. Ok, so we are largely overwhelmed, so what does that mean? It means we are still in the beginning of the revolution. We are just beginning to consider how much control we as individuals need over our media consumption, versus how much we are happy to continue to hand over to media producers.

I am finally starting a new series of posts about media personalization as it relates to Talk radio. It’s about time. What finally got me started on this after I have threatened to start on the topic for a while now, was the kind invitation from Al Peterson to publish my thoughts first for his newsletter. So my first installment here on the Fourth Speaker is a reprint of Al’s weekly Newsletter, which you should subscribe to.
 
 

Radio Personalization - Possible with Mobile, but in demand?

With the incredibly fast pace of change occurring in the world of technology and media today, it is necessary to take a look not only at cumulative data on where today’s radio audience is and is going, but also to reflect on some of the ‘what ifs’, and ‘why nots’ and ’why not yets’ surrounding the changes. The level of intrigue surrounding new media is equaled only by the claims many on my side of the table have made. As far as those claims go, and speaking for the sane faction on “my side of the table” (although the fact that a ‘table’ even exists is a hindrance for the radio industry), I want to apologize for those who have predicted the demise of radio by 2010. They don’t speak for even a quarter of us who have been approaching the industry with ideas and products we believe will help radio’s staying power through the personal media revolution.

Today I want to speak specifically about the one item of change I have been pushing for and am willing to admit I have been partially wrong about. That is, the listeners personal quest for programming personalization. In short, my conclusion is that it is not as big a deal to them (yet) as I had hoped. It is easy for technology innovators to make the leap from possibility to market demand, and we should be encouraged to continue making these leaps in that that is our strength — to see a possible future and place bets on it coming to pass. The pay-off is worth the risk. One key facet of my calculated bet with CelleCast is that some listeners, if given the chance, would prefer to be able to queue up their favorite talk radio programs into a playlist and always have the freshest episodes from each ready to auto-play when convenient. I never meant for this bet on an emerging demand for convenience to call into question the value of program directors, stations and streams, but in this age of media disruption, new technologies are often seen more as a challenge to the way things have always been done, versus by the merits they bring to the marketplace. I submit to you that we can only win by looking at both sides of the equation, or to put it in political strategic terms: Contribute to both campaigns, just in case the other guy wins. Therefore, with all that said so you know my heart is for the industry is in the right place, allow me to share my observations to date in my quest to promote my own vision for disruption.

One of the ways I have explained the idea of cellecasting to both customers and producers is that the listener becomes their own program director, deciding for themselves exactly what mix of programming they want to consume, even whether they want to tolerate commercial interruption or not. The idea that they would want to do this has a solid basis. DVR’s (TiVO) have become mainstream practice for television consumption, giving people near total control of how they consume TV. We all know what MP3 players, file sharing and Pandora are doing to music side of radio, allowing listeners to personalize consumption, eliminate commercials and tap into the new inventory called the long tail. I have believed and still believe that talk radio listeners will at some point do the same, whether we like it or not. However, radio in its broadcast form, now having to exist among alternatives not previously available, is finding resiliency and learning to articulate its staying power in a changing environment. Paraphrasing Dave Van Dyke, who watches listener trends like no other: “Listenership in some segments of younger demographics is still strong, as more people are using radio as a way to discover new artists, ideas, etc.”. What I am seeing here is a welcome sign. Radio is declaring its particular strengths and demonstrating its staying power against a host of unproven radio alternatives/derivatives declaring themselves the new reality. The broader observation I have come away with at this juncture is that although self-service, personalized media alternatives still deserve ongoing attention, investment and market testing, there is a growing awareness that consumers are happy to let others (PD’s) program their media consumption for them, even with an alternatives in the palm of their hand.

The other important observation I have made in this tumultuous year, is where radio sits on the personalization landscape versus other forms of media. What we are finding is that radio, possibly through no fault of its own, is likely to be near or at the bottom of the list in demand for personalization. In terms of talk, one of my key advisors always reminds me that the Rush Limbaugh you turn on at midday is not all that different in content from the Hannity that follows immediately. No need to personalize if roughly the same content is ubiquitous. But the bigger reason for radio falling behind video and print is that radio is most naturally today’s background media. Personalization requires attention. Radio is perfect for when you are driving or otherwise multi-tasking. Video and print on the other hand, demand visual focus and thus foster a thirst for personalization. Plus, they are more conducive to hyperlinks.

Conclusion: When the demand for personalization in radio comes, let’s be ready.

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.