John Silliman Dodge
by John Silliman Dodge
I’m just back from Hollywood and the annual convention of the Public Radio Program Directors Association. PRPD is to public radio what the NAB Radio Show is to commercial radio — three days of major sessions, small breakouts and workshops, hallway networking and hopefully, some light bulb moments. At the closing benediction (that’s what they call it), a voice you may know — Robert Siegel, anchor of All Things Considered — sent the assembly home with two words of sage advice: be necessary. Like most important concepts, it’s fundamentally simple. Don’t be the icing, be the cake. Be necessary.
The two sides of radio — commercial and noncommercial — resemble one another more each year. As the first generation of public radio leadership and management gives way to the next, as both commercial and public radio compete for share of mind and heart in the 21st century, our issues and concerns become more similar. Programmers still have to draw a crowd, marketers still have to creatively spark awareness, development and sales still have to monetize, and top execs still have to peer over the horizon and make smart strategic bets on what lies ahead.
Some recurring themes at this conference: the changing audience (younger, more diverse); the power shift in the relationship (they’re demanding more, we’re giving it to them); accomplishing more with less; the drive for increased relevancy; and the importance of developing what Mark Ramsey calls smart entertainment. Other big themes — localism and broadcasting a sense of place, increased access (Bruce Theriault, Senior VP at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting repeatedly urged us to “throw open the doors”), the integration of web and air into one swirling, interactive audience recycling system, the changing role of the PD as radio morphs into radio plus, creative announcing workshops, and the shift away from diary measurement toward PPM and everything that entails. And we held all these stimulating conversations in a very interesting place…
Out my hotel window is the iconic Hollywood sign, each letter tall as a four-story-building and 30-feet-wide at the base. Built in the 1920’s to promote a real estate development called Hollywoodland, it wasn’t until 1949 that the last four letters came down — or fell down depending on whose account you read. Below in the street I see Superman walking with Wonder Woman and nobody pays them the slightest bit of attention. Around the corner of Highland and Hollywood right next door to Grauman’s Chinese Theater is where the hands and feet of the stars are enshrined in cement. Judy Garland’s feet are tiny in inverse proportion to her legend. John Wayne’s feet are not as big as Mitch Praver’s (COO of NPR) and we have the photo to prove it. And as ever, the biggest crowd comes to visit sweet Marilyn. Back inside to the conference…
Public Radio is not NPR, though in the minds of many the two are synonymous. NPR-driven news and information stations have proliferated in the past decade but the music formats are quite strong — Triple A, Jazz, and the format I program in Portland, Classical. Or Neo-Classical as we call it — NextGen classical that bears scant resemblance to the station your dad used to listen to. We presented the results of a National Classical Music Test at the PRPD conference and guess what we discovered? People love the hits in our format, too. Go figure.
Speaking of people, a quick hello to my smart, clever and good looking industry friends such as the President of PRPD, Arthur Cohen who warmly dispenses Solomon-strength wisdom while managing to even look a touch like Solomon; Bill Leuth of KDFC San Francisco, one of the brightest Classical radio minds in the business; Sarah Lutman, Gayle Ober, John Birge, Julie Amacher, Silvester Vicic and the ultra-talented team at Minnesota Public Radio, my soulful compadres, the Puerto Ricans from WIPR in San Juan, Ginny Berson, Vice Grand Pooh Bah of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, award winners Chuck Singleton of WFUV New York and Scott Williams of KBAQ Phoenix, and many more. Honestly, I’m in complete awe at the talent of my colleagues.
Then there was Brian Grazer, who knows a thing or two about show biz. He’s Ron Howard’s partner in Imagine Entertainment as well as a multiple Academy Award and Emmy winning producer, and he told us his intuition drives his creative process more than any other source. He has an interesting method of informing that intuition by escaping the Hollywood Bubble and restocking his brain this way: every two weeks Brian does an in-depth interview with an accomplished and/or famous person from the arts, science, technology, politics, medicine, religion, somebody not from the movie business. From those intense and differing points-of-view, he feeds his imagination, which continually reshapes his world view. He doesn’t make movies based on trends because, among other reasons, the concept-to-distribution timeline of a film averages three years. By then whatever trend you’re chasing is long gone. Instead he makes movies based on human interest, which hasn’t changed much in 10,000 years.
Sidebar: Grazer once interviewed Fidel Castro who delivered a monolog for 90 minutes without taking a breath, then stopped and asked Brian, “How do you get your hair to do that?”
I don’t know what Mark Ramsey of Mercury Media Research calls himself, but I call him a futurist, a fellow with a pretty clear vision of what’s ahead. My favorite line: “You’re not a radio station with a web site, you’re a digital media company with a loudspeaker.” Channel integration — radio plus web (which increasingly includes video) plus email plus surface mail — this coordinated mash up is what smart radio companies do today. Leveraging the “power of the tower” to drive traffic to the web. But nothing is achieved if the listener arrives and says, Yeah, so what?
To attract and maintain attention we still have to answer three important questions: what is the audience interested in that they’re not getting now? What problem does the audience have that we can solve? And what do we do better than anyone else? These questions transcend format or which end of the dial we’re on.
Robert Siegel’s closing cavalry call to “be necessary” is fundamental to our future success. He referred mainly to news but his question is universal: “Does this segment work for every minute of our listener’s attention?” Is what we offer “must have” material in the listener’s mind? Because a fate worse than death — irrelevance — could be in the cards if we continue to trade on being ubiquitous, convenient and free. When high speed wireless Internet becomes the norm (in five years?), gadget makers will flood the market with low cost, high quality, web-enabled receivers for our cars, kitchens, belts and bedside tables. They’ll look just like radios because they ARE radios. At that point our geographical monopoly goes up in smoke and we duke it out with New York, London, Beijing, and every kid in a cool basement with a hot idea. It’s very exciting, and just a little scary. Just like Hollywood. Meanwhile, do good work, okay? Then call and tell me all about it.
John Silliman Dodge has a 25+ year career that integrates music, media, and management. He has been a Program Director for radio stations and networks from coast to coast. Today, John is the VP of Programming for the Stations of All Classical FM based in Portland, Oregon. Contact him at 425-681-9935, by email at john@allclassical.org or on the web at www.sillimandodge.com
