In this week’s Programming To Win, Richard Harker asks a very interesting question: why didn’t radio invent Pandora? Why did the idea for the so-called “future of radio” come from outside the industry? And what can radio do next to ensure the next “future” concept comes from within?
Richard Harker
By Richard Harker
Are you tired of the seemingly endless debate over Pandora?
Is it Radio?
Is it the future of radio?
Is it going to kill traditional radio as we know it?
(Just for the record, the answers are: 1. Who cares, 2. Maybe, maybe not, and 3. Not if traditional radio is smart enough to prevent it.)
But while tens of thousands of words have been written about Pandora, virtually none have been on the one aspect of Pandora that radio people should really be deeply concerned about.
Tim Westergren came up with the idea for Pandora, not a radio program director, not a broadcast executive. No one in radio came up with the idea.
Think about what that means.
If anyone should have created “the future of radio” it should have been a radio person, not a musician turned entrepreneur.
That’s what radio should be discussing.
How is it that the entire broadcast industry from group head owners to weekend jocks managed to overlook the potential of personalized radio?
After all, broadcast radio stations have been streaming since 1994. That’s seventeen years.
It’s not that Internet radio is all that new, or that radio stations haven’t been streaming very long.
You’d think that over this length of time radio might have experimented with different ideas, different approaches to what radio streams.
Instead, listeners have been treated to nothing more than terrestrial audio feeds with spots replaced with filler. Radio essentially wasted a head start of well over a decade.
Radio produced no streaming innovation, nothing that might be thought of as the future of radio.
Pandora caught radio completely flat-footed. That’s the real Pandora story that radio should wrestling with. Radio missed the boat.
Now radio is playing Pandora catch up.
Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio is adding non-traditional radio channels include personalized radio. CBS and other groups have announced similar projects to create their own Pandora-like services.
Pretty soon radio groups will begin to close the gap with Pandora. We’ll ultimately also see radio’s versions of Slacker, Jelli, or anything else that seems to gain traction.
But radio will still be playing catch-up. Radio will still be recreating what’s already in the marketplace.
Radio’s scramble to close the Pandora gap begs the question: Would radio be in better shape today if these innovations had been created by broadcast radio instead of non-broadcast companies?
If radio had used its decade-long lead to innovate and reinvent radio on it’s own, where would radio be?
Of course, there’s no way to tell, but radio has to think about these what-ifs if it wants to prevent future what-ifs.
We don’t want to be caught off-guard again as some Pandora successor once again redefines radio while broadcast watches on the sidelines.
So here’s the question we have to ask ourselves: How does radio get ahead of all the innovation going on in digital radio, and stay ahead instead of playing catch up?
Harker Research believes that radio has to change its mind-set and embrace key elements of innovation to make sure it is not caught flat-footed again.
Here’s what needs to be done:
1. Radio needs to think bigger.
Radio’s idea of innovation has been things like adding hip-hop to CHR, or giving away tickets with Twitter. We need more big picture thinking in the industry, challenging the way things have been done.
2. Radio needs to embrace Creative Destruction.
Radio has to borrow a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter: Creative Destruction. Simply put, what it means is that to create something new, the old has to be destroyed.
Radio’s tendency to keep things as they are has to be replaced with a proactive attitude of changing what’s working, to break what ain’t broken.
3. Realize that radio no longer controls its future.
Radio has to recognize that it can no longer control the future of radio.
It can only determine whether it leads the way in reinventing radio, or allows other industries to reinvent radio. In old media, broadcasting was the leader. In new media, broadcasting is the challenger.
A challenger requires more nimbleness and flexibility than a leader, something radio hasn’t needed before.
4. Radio needs to focus more on external threats.
Broadcasters need to understand that competition is no longer the station down the hall or down the street. Competition is everywhere.
Historically radio has evolved by stealing each other’s ideas. Radio’s most innovative periods have been during the head to head battles of the 1960s and 1970s.
Stealing still works, but given the bigger playing field on which radio competes, the thefts have to come from a broader range of competitors.
5. Radio needs better rating metrics that better illustrate radio’s strengths.
Radio is falling woefully behind new media in audience metrics. Measuring only radio’s terrestrial audience is giving the illusion that radio is much weaker than it really is.
As long as radio’s report card is how a station does in Arbitron, there will be a tendency to focus our competitive energies against other radio stations.
Radio needs to develop better metrics that enable us to compare broadcast’s performance to Internet competitors. It will help refocus radio’s priorities, and it will provide proof that radio can successfully compete in the digital space.
6. Radio leadership needs to stop protecting the status quo.
Radio leadership has to be more focused on change rather than protecting the status quo. When radio had a near monopoly on listeners, keeping things the same made sense.
Now, with radio’s loss of monopoly, radio leadership has to think differently. The major groups have to invest in “skunk works,” laboratories devoted to creating the next radio.
7. Eliminate nay-sayers
The last element is perhaps the most painful, but radio’s survival depends on it.
Radio has to rid itself of all the people who don’t believe in radio. Consolidation, downsizing, and increasingly tight budgets have produced a large number of malcontents in radio.
Their bad experiences may be regretful, their grievances may be righteous, but unfortunately their presence is poisonous with radio facing these challenges.
Total commitment to radio’s success is a critical component of innovative success. Nay-sayers, those people who secretly root for radio’s failure, can only impede radio’s progress.
They need to go.
Radio has been asleep at the streaming switch, but momentum can be regained.
Embracing each of these seven elements will be the key to regaining radio’s leadership in the evolution of radio.
Richard Harker is President of Harker Research, a company providing a wide range of research services to radio stations in North America and Europe. Twenty-years of research experience combined with Richard’s 15 years as a programmer and general manager helps Harker Research provide practical actionable solutions to ratings problems. Visit www.harkerresearch or contact Richard at (919) 954-8300.
