From the Corner Office
This
Month's Topic:
Quality - Quantity: How to Strike A Balance
Hello everyone. I hope you are having a good
summer!
This month, I would like to address the quality - quantity balance issue in the radio industry.
American business thrives on the fallacy of size. Bigger is better, right? No matter how large a retailer or manufacturer is, they're always on the lookout for another acquisition or merger to grow their business. Someone asked me how the principle of scale worked in the radio industry and I have to admit that radio's one of the few businesses I can think of where bigger may not be better.
As the American car companies have found, scale works against quality. They and many other domestic manufacturers have been fighting the quality battle for decades. They've employed workgroups, six sigma, demming quality systems, and many other attempts to close the quality gap.
What has turned out to be quite significant in the hard good businesses is design. From the ground up, companies have worked to delight the target customer with a design that is innovative, new or sexy. Just look at the evolution of cell phones and iPods.
Radio is almost totally dependent on our ability to wow our customers... our listeners, and to produce results for our advertisers. I, for one, don't believe that you can do that on a massive scale. Radio is local, not nationwide. Radio is live, spontaneous and immediate. To get that connection - that wow - to our listeners, we have to be organized to be just that. The designers of radio are the people who walk into the station each workday on both the programming and sales side of the station. The wow doesn't come from corporate headquarters.
In order to be effective, everyone has to understand the strategic vision for the station. They have to be empowered to execute that vision, with their own contributions and in their own style. Managers have to be empowered to react to changing marketplaces, to seize the offensive and to do what it takes to wow their advertisers and listeners.
That, in a nutshell, is how a station or market cluster makes a difference in its home city. If we don't have that as a goal for each of our clusters, then we're reduced to a service utility, and we've fallen short. The relationship between a listener and a station has to be ongoing, human, emotional and entertaining. Anyone, including phone companies and cable companies, can (and will) play music for listeners or run spots for advertisers. But without the relationship, how important can they be in someone's life? Americans spend 19 hours a week listening to radio; slightly less than 4 hours a week on the internet, and 13 hours a week with the TV networks. I wonder why?
At Greater Media, our goal is to maintain and build on that emotional, compelling bond with our listeners. Every single station in our clusters has the goal of making a difference in their city. Many of our stations hit that goal every day; some are still working to reach that goal.
As we consider whether to expand Greater Media, those same principles will be applied to any new acquisitions. They have to stand out and make a difference. In my book, that's the proper balance of quality vs. quantity.
Please feel free to e-mail me by clicking on the "Ask Peter" icon posted below. I would love to hear your feedback or answer any questions you may have.
Have a great month!
Best regards,
Peter July 2006