Mary Beth Garber had been President of the Southern California Broadcasters Association since May 1998 before Thursday’s (3/24) announcement that she would be joining Katz Radio Group as Executive Vice President for Radio Analysis and Insights. FMQB had caught up with Garber prior to this announcement after she recently created a stir by daring to speak on the behalf of radio in the radio vs. Pandora debate and reached out for some insight as to why she feels radio’s place in the future will be just fine as long as it sticks to what it does best.
Mary Beth Garber
By Michael Parrish
Mary Beth Garber had been President of the Southern California Broadcasters Association since May 1998 before Thursday’s (3/24) announcement that she would be joining Katz Radio Group as Executive Vice President for Radio Analysis and Insights. In this new role, Garber will collect and generate research and other materials that educate a variety of constituencies – from major advertisers to media, sales forces and market analysts – on the continuing power and value of radio, as well as implement partnerships that provide accurate research and measurement metrics across a variety of platforms and enhance the industry’s ability to communicate those results. The new role echoes her time at SCBA, where Garber developed and preached the concept of radio as virtual neighborhoods to advertising and marketing groups, as well as radio stations, all over the country.
Her radio experience includes local sales and management for CBS and ABC radio stations and at Interep Radio. She worked on the client side of the advertising business for two years as VP/Broadcast Media for Buena Vista Pictures Marketing serving the Walt Disney Studios. Garber also taught Media Planning courses at UCLA Extension, and over 600 radio sales people have been trained through her ongoing Southern California Broadcasters University courses since 1994. She was the recipient of the 2000 Southern California Chapter of American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) Genii Award for Excellence in Radio and has been a keynote speaker at business conferences and events around the country. To simply say “she knows radio” is not doing justice to her deep résumé.
Garber recently created a stir by daring to speak on the behalf of radio in the radio vs. Pandora debate. Her view that Pandora is fine as a musical background but can’t compete with the unique entertainment experience that local radio offers was derided by many within the industry as out of touch with the future. FMQB took note of the spark created by Mary Beth’s comments and reached out for some insight as to why she feels radio’s place in the future will be just fine as long as it sticks to what it does best. [Ed Note: This interview was conducted prior to the announcement that MBG would be joining Katz]
Why does it seem like radio is under attack from so many different sources of entertainment, and even technology as well?
One is, in order to succeed a lot of people or technologies have to step on something else. In order to become great they have to make you believe that something else is not great and they’re going to take away the share of audience that particular technology has. So the iPad had to convince you that it was much better than just owning an iPod. The iPhone had to convince you that it was a whole lot better than owning a stupid phone. And so on and so forth since one of the best ways to position anything is on top of something else or at the expense of another. But mostly, they’re trying to get the point across that it’s just not cool to listen to radio, and the fact that this has gotten any traction at all is really radio’s fault. We’ve let other people do this to us and we keep letting people do this to us.
Do ad agencies still value radio’s reach or are they turning to new media?
There are a number of ad agencies that are still champions of radio. In a recent survey of media planners, radio was one of the things they felt was going to be growing the most. What’s happening is that the young people on Madison Avenue who don’t have cars and don’t drive any place are using iPods, iPhones and iPads, and they’re even too cool for a desktop computer, let alone admitting they use the radio.
What is your message when you discuss the future of radio?
The bright thing in the future is that we have so much technology we can use to turn things into radio. And as long as the content we have is relevant, compelling, hot, and we still provide a personal attraction that people crave; then we’ll be fine. We’ll actually grow as the delivery platforms grow in scope and number. It’s really too bad we didn’t trademark the name radio someplace along the line. Anything can call itself radio. It’s unfortunately a word owned by the world and can be used by anyone, but they’re just not what broadcast radio is. Or it’s unfortunate that we can’t come up with something else to call ourselves. There’s a reason all of them picked the word “radio,” even though they’re not. Musak would be much closer to what they are. They should have picked that, but of course they wouldn’t because it’s not a good connotation.
Why do you say companies like Pandora are not “radio,” per se? Is it because of the delivery system and “radio” is a piece of equipment you can hold on to?
Pandora isn’t “radio” because it’s not curated. There are no personalities to bond with listeners and the content doesn’t change dynamically. It’s more like a playlist, similar to what you build on your iPod. “Radio” is actually the full experience – all the content that we put out. And it’s not a piece of equipment – our delivery system has evolved with every platform that’s emerged into the marketplace. So you can’t carry your desktop computer around with you, but you can listen to almost any radio station in the country through it. Your cell phone wasn’t sold to you as a radio, but you can download apps and listen to almost anything. Your iPod wasn’t sold to you as a radio, but Apple wound up having to put FM receivers in it, and you can download apps so you can listen to anything on your iPods. But you didn’t buy a computer so you’d have a radio, and you didn’t really even think of it that way. It was one of the things you discovered you could get out of it. Just like newspapers have to think about what their business really is. Their business isn’t printing and distributing paper, it is disseminating news that’s compelling and credible. That’s what their brand is all about. But they forgot that when all of these new technologies presented different ways to disseminate their info, and that’s when you get into trouble.
We’re not in the business of broadcasting our content to little radios. We’re in the business of providing a unique form of entertainment that’s very personalized, immediate, and is intended to entertain on a continuing and recurring basis through known figures you relate to and develop an emotional connection with. That’s what radio is to the overwhelming majority of people who use it. It’s not a music delivery system. It’s not just a radio. It’s actually a connection, and it’s a connection to unique content.
As long as we understand that and we keep our content fresh, compelling, personal, and local; then we can put it out over any number of platforms as long as it can carry the content – and that’s radio!
Considering radio’s place in the competitive multi-media landscape, how important is the immediacy you can have with people on a day-to-day basis, which you don’t get with Pandora or satellite radio where their music channels aren’t providing anything locally personalized between the songs?
They aren’t talking to you. They’re entertaining you, but they’re not talking to you. They’re not dealing with you as an individual. Even though the content of Pandora can be individualized to some degree, and if you pay enough you can program your own Pandora channel, more or less, if you want to put in that kind of time. But your iPod can do exactly what Pandora does. The difference with Pandora is you don’t have to buy all of the things off of iTunes to put in a device in order to program it. Radio has never charged anyone to listen to music.
What are your thoughts on the record industry seeking performance rights royalties from terrestrial radio?
Radio ought to say to them, “Look, we are willing to pay you exactly the same amount of money that the Black Eyed Peas were paid to perform at the Super Bowl, which, by the way, is nothing. All Super Bowl entertainers perform for free in exchange for the publicity. There’s a group standing there with Best Album of The Year Award (Arcade Fire) that probably wouldn’t be standing there with that award if they hadn’t been played on KROQ and accepted by similar stations around the country. Radio lets these artists create their own brands, and then the artists monetize their brands. The problem, of course, is that the record companies aren’t getting their size of the cut that they used to be able to make off of those artist brands.
You have been quoted as saying, “The Internet is radio’s lifeblood.” Can you expand on why you feel that is the case?
Up until the Internet came along, the only way you could actually interface with and wrap your arms around your favorite radio personality or station was by calling them or showing up at an event. You could write letters, and then eventually you could fax them, and then you could e-mail and that’s when the Internet connection began. Once the Internet was there, you could reach out to that station and become much more a part of it if you chose to. You could send in the “My Five At Five” and have your songs on-the-air, let alone your name. You could see the personalities most of them in addition to streaming will also do live feeds and you can watch them, which we discovered most people don’t actually want to do. And that’s fine because radio has its role, and it isn’t necessarily to be television.
The Internet lets you listen to radio anyplace you are, which you could never do before, so when you leave the market you don’t leave your favorite personalities behind. All of that lets us connect and create even stronger emotional connections with radio stations, and it gives radio stations more and more ways to monetize that connection. But it works on a positive basis in both directions. You can Tweet to people that you are having an event at Joe’s Tire Store, and have more and more people show up.
You’re giving people a way to say they’re part of the radio station without having to wear a t-shirt or a hat. The more you give people the opportunity to belong to something that they feel good about, the more you’re feeding one of the three basic needs of the human being. No. 1 is to be able to eat. No. 2 is to be safe. No. 3 is to love, be loved and to be accepted as a part of a group that you want to be accepted by. What radio stations do is provide that third thing.
When you talk about radio being a unique entertainment experience, where does social networking fall in to the equation?
I was in a room full of business people recently, and one of the social networking sales guys was standing there talking about how there are 200-million people on Twitter. According to Pew in December, only seven-percent of the people out there are on Twitter, only eight-percent of the online people are on Twitter, only 14% of teenagers are on Twitter. I don’t know how that gets to 200-million. He said, “Well, it’s 200-million worldwide, and not obviously all at once.”
What you’re looking at is something that’s new, that’s hot, and that can go away. But the relationship between a radio station and its listeners is compelling and local and has been around for 70+ years. That’s what people fail to remember. They’re kicking television around now. Hey guys, you’re talking mass media that’s free, where people can sit down and be entertained and not have to think about it, not interact if they don’t want to, interact if they do want to, and it’s fresh, local and entertaining. They’re going to keep going back for it, because that’s how we live life. As long as the need for that entertainment is there, they’re going to be coming back for it. But the less of that third basic human need you can offer, the less likely they are going to keep coming back to it.
Do you think younger generations will just know the little pieces of equipment in front of them and not really care whether the content is coming from a local source or not?
If Pandora were to hire deejays, maybe, but they’d still have to have local references. If the deejay on KROQ here in Los Angeles was only talking about what was going on in Chicago instead of in Los Angeles, it wouldn’t be as compelling to someone in L.A. because it has nothing to do with their immediate, personal world, or very little to do with their world. Radio talks to YOU. If the conversation isn’t about you and what matters or relates the most to you, then the conversation is quickly over, no matter what the device.
[eQB Content by Michael Parrish]
