GORDON HASTINGS

There is flood of articles being written regarding the radio industry’s long fought battle over performance rights. The outcome is pending.

In the midst of this all-consuming issue, there is a reasonable question bubbling below the radar. Should the radio industry form a consortium or individual companies move directly into the business of publishing and distributing music?

If you are a believer in crowdsourcing, the basis of a business model is already established. Combine the radio industry’s web presence with the power of over-the-air promotion to encourage the production and uploading of new music. Allow the crowd to prioritize artists through an online voting system, pick the potential hits and then the radio consortium or company in collaboration with the artists enter a business arrangement to produce and distribute the final product. Let the crowd separate the hits from the duds.

Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine in his book Crowdsourcing, Why The Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Businessadds an additional crowd concept called crowdfunding. Crowdfunding would directly offer those that have chosen a particular band or artist in the crowdsourcing process the opportunity to take a small financial stake in the careers of the musicians. If 100,000 Web followers of the band invested $50 each that is $50,000 toward recording and producing what could be a new hit record, artist or group. Outlandish idea? Not at all, it is already being done in the fledgling crowdfunding film business.

Radio of course brings an additional dynamic promotional element to the table in its nationwide distribution and promotion system through over the air broadcast stations.  HD Radio stations, all in need of programming concepts, allows for even more specialized exposure of a wide range of crowdsourced specialty music genres.

 Gordon Hastings

ghhMANAGEMENT

November 12, 2009

New research reported this week by StreamSerf indicates that Internet radio audiences are choosing dramatically different tunes that are programmed on broadcast radio. The StreamSerf research was first reported in the Saturday edition of Radio Business Report “Internet Radio Stations Play More Artists than Broadcast Stations.”

“The number of unique artists played on Internet radio stations is more than 32 times the number of unique artists played on broadcast/terrestrial radio. According to data supplied by streamSerf, a company that monitors and reports on music played on terrestrial, Internet and satellite radio stations, last month broadcast radio stations played 25,399 unique artists (US, including public radio stations) while Internet radio stations played 829,971 unique artists in the same time period!

“There is room for a more diverse, less centralized music scene in the world today - and this is being created and facilitated by technology and Internet radio.” says Paul Mockenhaupt, Founder of streamSerf.

“It’s not shocking to learn that Internet radio is more diverse. There are more choices for the listener, and more determination by the stations themselves to provide alternative music to the basic cookie-cutter formats and playlists provided on broadcast radio. It is stunning to learn that Internet radio’s list of unique artists is greater than broadcast radio’s by 3600%. (It should be noted that these stats do not even include stations that stream individualized channels, such as Pandora.)”

“Also interesting is the list of artists that get the most plays on broadcast stations versus Internet radio stations. While some of the top ten artists are the same on either list, others are very different:”

“According to Mockenhaupt, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He says the real story isn’t in the top 10, or even the top 1000…” it’s the new, fresh, undiscovered, local, home grown music that’s filling the Internet airwaves!” Internet radio gives voice to the long tail of music, providing entry for many musicians that have never had a platform before. That, he says, is the “magic” of Internet radio.”

A model by which listeners can tune into highly customized, if not individualized stations, can be the key for a terrestrial radio come-back. We must not forget that the FM radio is more widely distributed than PC’s with high-speed internet connections. According the Nielson Media Research, 73% of U.S. homes have a PC, whereas almost all homes have a radio device whether it be in the car, on an alarm clock or on a cell phone. Why not provide listeners with the most convenient way to play an active role in their music selection?

Hearst Corporation’s Innovation group will partner with the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Adobe Systems to launch a student design competition to develop interactive projects that will ultimately be used by Hearst.  This was reported on October 23 in Radio/TV Business Report THis concept is not unlike our blog post TAPPING THE INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES OF THE NEXT GENERATION AT THE NAB.  Congratulations to Hearst!

Gather in one place the brightest young minds in radio and TV to interface with their counterparts and envision the future of broadcasting. The time is due for broadcasting’s young talent to be provided with a platform to develop new ideas.  Bring them together with their peers across all media in an environment where no concept is out of bounds. The annual NAB Convention is the natural place for this industry brainstorm.

Broadcasting’s future leadership must be united with colleagues from the worlds of emerging technology such as online media, open source software, crowdsourcing modfels and social networking platforms. Such an idea and information exchange would be enormously rewarding to a generation of broadcasters that understand and currently participate in the new world order of communications technology. Participants would return to their respective radio & television stations with renewed enthusiasm for our industry and empowerment to take the lead in driving a renaissance in broadcasting.

The radio and television industries have many common challenges and it is important that everyone in broadcasting gather in one place to participate in a productive dialogue with those in communications who are advancing concepts, content and technology at lightning speed. A combined radio and television convention would have greater resources to bring these individuals and organizations together.

Selected participants could engage separately by industry and in group forums to hear and meet the most progressive minds to focus on change, direction and strategic planning. Prior to the event, participants in teams could be challenged with developing new business plans and pitching their ideas live, in front of an audience of their peers and mentors at the convention. The team with the best business plan would be provided $25,000 in seed money by the NAB to begin that game-changing venture.

The program should be organized with the help of outside planning resources to provide the structure for meaningful progress. MBA programs such as those at Wharton, Harvard, NYU and Northwestern in addition to the nation’s top communications schools could be an important source in structuring such a program. The aforementioned would all participate in the judging of contests. This would also require reaching outside the broadcasting industry to the young achievers working in all other communications platforms.

The benefits of a next generation conclave would result in far reaching and permanent solutions to current challenges and provide a roadmap for those who in fact will be entrusted with the future of broadcasting.

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Amidst the economic doom and gloom enveloping radio and television, the generosity of the industry shined brightly at the eleventh annual Broadcasters Foundation of America Celebrity Golf Tournament on Monday, September 14 at the Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York. It was a day filled with optimism and good will toward fellow-broadcasters in need of help, and for the broadcasting profession.

For the past eleven years it has been my pleasure to work with Scott Knight in the creation and execution of this annual tournament for the BFOA. Over the years, this event has raised several million dollars for the foundation’s mission of helping broadcasters who are in acute need. However, this year in light of the economic challenges facing broadcasting ,it was particularly poignant to once again see broadcasters turn out in mass in support of helping others. Then again, isn’t that what broadcasters always do?

Joe Bilotta of Buckley Broadcasting and Tom O’Brien of WNBC-TV co-chaired the tournament. Evercore Wealth Management came forward as the 2009 signature sponsor. Year after year Scott Knight and the Norman Knight family have been major sponsors joining Arbitron, ESPN Radio, Heineken, Atlantic Wines and Spirits, CAO International Cigar, and Triton Radio Networks. The Knight’s, Arbitron, Atlantic Wines and Spirits and ESPN-Radio have supported the tournament since its inception in 1998!

In addition to the aforementioned sponsors, a wide cross section of the industry participated: Hearst Television, WCBS-TV, Katz Media Corporation, WNBC-TV, BMI, US Trust, CoxReps, Buckley Radio, Mario Gabelli, NAB, CBS Radio, Media Monitors, Nielsen, Buckley Radio, WNBC-TV and  all of the individuals that made up the 127 men and women in the player field! 

The celebrity support for this tournament has been incredible: Ahmad Rashad ,Gail Goodrich, Maurice Dubois, Mike Breen, Dana Tyler, Rachel Grant, Craig Carton, Otis Livingston, Chris Wragge, Scott Shannon, Gino Toretta, Joe Connolly, Max Gomez, John Gambling all gave of their time and talent because they care about their colleagues who are being helped by the foundation.

This golf tournament would never have risen to its current level of accomplishment without a core group of dedicated volunteers who literally donate a day and a half of their time to seamlessly manage every detail. They have also become the best possible good will ambassadors for the BFOA!  Cynthia Coppola whose brother Rod  lost his life at the World Trade Center at the Channel Thirteen transmitter on September 11, Jackie Giblin and Dominique Walker of Katz Media Corporation, Gina Gikas and Diana Wilkin of CBS Television, twenty something and brilliant young attorney Mica Jean Pierre, the best raffle ticket seller in the world, Premiere Radio Network’s Alissa Pollack, Arbitron’s Heidi Weaver, and the indefatigable Barry O’Brien. I salute and thank each and every one of you.

No, The sky was not falling at Siwanoy! Quite to the contrary, the day was filled with a very public demonstration of optimism, hope and goodwill from a dedicated group of men and women who care deeply about their industry and professional family. The ethos of this day transcended the game of golf!

I am proud to be associated with all of you.

Thank you,

ghh

“We see this on YouTube, in which budding comedians and filmmakers have been able to secure first a cult audience, then industry contacts and finally paying gigs and mainstream recognition. But more than simply identifying diamonds in the rough, crowdsourcing also cultivates and nurtures that talent.” (CROWDSOURCING, Jeff Howe)

Who said the concept of YouTube need be limited to visual media?  Crowdsourcing, upon which the YouTube model is based, (see earlier post) is the means by which the audience can participate in the creation of new generation radio content.

Pepsi-Cola North American Beverages is already on this track. It may not be crowdsourcing at this moment in the strictest sense of the word but Pepsi’s Green Label Sound is already operating in this space. In an article in this weeks Billboard,

Frank Cooper III, chief marketing officer for beverages for Pepsi-Cola North America talks about Mountain Dew’s label Green Label Sound ; Says Cooper, “We launched Green Label Sound to empower a community of artists who have a DIY ethic (does this sound like YouTube?),  who often function outside the mainstream and want to remain true to themselves. Working with the Cornerstone agency, we give these artists access to resources and tools to expand their exposure, plugging them into the Mountain Dew infrastructure to fuel their growth.  It is a singles-only label.”

Here is a most interesting twist, downloading  these new Green Label Sound artists’ songs is free!  However, hold on, as some of you know, these artists are featured on 60-second radio commercials paid for by Mountain Dew!

Here is the point. With crowdsourcing, enabled by open source software and creative ideas like Green Label Sound, why not provide a platform whereby local artists can get on the air on a market by market ( hometown talent, hometown fans) basis? By using technology to tap into the crowd, the universe of potential talent is virtually unlimited. It becomes a local social phenomenon because the community and the audience get to participate.

To quote Cooper once again, “Jukeboxes and top-forty radio were great social tools of past generations. For this generation the mechanisms have changed but the ideal, if not the song, remains the same.” The mechanism (broadcast radio) has not really changed and is ready and able to grab the YouTube formula and get this type of audience-based creative uploaded and on the air for mass exposure. MyRadio!

Cooper is  correct, music is a social experience and  top-forty radio was a great social tool of past generations. Radio remains a free social medium. That has not changed  and the industry is hungrier for new ideas than ever.

IRadio, MyRadio, OurRadio. You bet!

Frank Cooper III and Pepsi-Cola North American Beverages have  an eye-opening concept.

ghh

Tom Friedman is among our best twenty first century futurists. His works  The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Longitudes and Latitudes (2002), The World is Flat (2005) and his current book Hot Flat and Crowded (2009) bring into focus a multitude of problems, challenges and possible solutions, all on a global scale. One of the most powerful elements in Friedman’s research and writing is his ability to reduce big issues to their lowest common denominator so that a sense of direction and concurrent solutions become visible and manageable.

His latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) focuses on the critical issues of environment and global warming and the impact today as well as an alarming warning for the immediate future. Throughout his writing are remarkable summations by Friedman and qutations from experts which apply to all businesses facing challenges. 

Friedman discusses the opportunities that lie ahead for American businesses that are capable of understanding and seizing the initiative to be on the leading edge of solving the enormus problems surrounding global warming. He sees these solutions not only as a benefit to humanity (they may in fact save humanity) but as America’s new industrial revolution allowing the United States to continue to be the world’s preeminent industrial and economic power. The challenges and opportunities for financial gain for American corporations in engineering a solution to global warming are enormous. It seems that  in some ways this issue, although global in scope, is analogous in its enormity to the broadcasting industry seeking a solution to a wave of new competition brought upon the industry by the Tsunami of the Internet.

These quotations from Friedman’s Hot Flat and Crowded are thought provoking and relevant to multiple professional disciplines and enterprises:

The French poet Paul Valery, “The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

David Rothkoph, energy expert and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, “The  hallmark of those companies and countries that continually thrive is that they continually reinvent themselves.”

Chinese proverb, “When the wind changes direction, there are those who build walls and those who build windmills.”

Tom Friedman, Hot Flat & Crowded p. 25, “We have been living for far too long on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We need to get back to work on our country and our planet. The hour is late, the stakes couldn’t be higher, the project couldn’t be harder and the payoff couldn’t be greater.”

Tom Friedman, Hot Flat and Crowded p.49, The future does not have to be a Malthusian Nightmare-if we think strategically about how to mitigate what we can, adapt to what we can’t, and innovate our way to new possibilities that right now seem unimaginable. The longer we wait to set out on such a strategic path, though, the deeper the pail out of which we will have to climb.”

Tom Friedman has the ability to help people see things in a new way.  Fresh ”wisdom”, and outside persepctive  can invigorate the discourse to shape the next exciting steps for broadcasting. Freidman is the type of visionary that as a keynoter, would stimulate professional gatherings such as the 2010 NAB Convention.

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Hastings Responds To WSJ Article On Radio And Change

August 26, 2009: Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout said in an August 22 feature that once-dominant network radio declined sharply after the arrival of television in the late 1940s because it failed to come to terms with the challenges posed by the new medium. He wrote, “Americans of all ages embraced TV unhesitatingly. They felt no loyalty to network radio, the medium that had entertained and informed them for a quarter-century. When something came along that they deemed superior, they switched off their radios without a second thought. That’s the biggest lesson taught by the new-media crisis of 1949.”

ghhManagement chief and Broadcasters Foundation founder Gordon Hastings responds by saying that “for those on the scene, television did not evolve, it exploded into the American home. However, it did not result in radio’s demise. In fact, once radio adjusted, all through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties it enjoyed the most prosperous years in the medium’s history.”

Here’s his letter to Teachout:

I enjoyed reading your August 22 article. I was part of the generation that transitioned radio during the onslaught of television in the 1950’s and 1960’s

Having entered the radio business in 1955, I remember all too well the great audience transition from audio to visual. In fact, for those on the scene, television did not evolve, it exploded into the American home. However, it did not result in radio’s demise. In fact, once radio adjusted, all through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, it enjoyed the most prosperous years in the medium’s history.

 This happened in great part because a whole new generation of radio broadcasters (the establishment had already abandoned the ship for TV) got hold of programming, married the evolution of rock music and its superstars, and the medium soared in both listeners and revenues. The fact is, the old guard, with little forethought, left radio in the hands of a very young and extraordinarily creative group of broadcasters willing to take huge risks. They, in fact, had little to lose. This generation of radio broadcasters turned the industry around in relatively short order by rapidly adjusting to change as they went along. They also had a huge demographic advantage because they related to how the audience wanted to use the radio medium. This same dynamic, the marriage of music and young innovative programmers made the migration of radio listening from the AM band to the FM band in the 1970s, expanding radio audience levels to the highest in history.

 Today, another generation of the radio establishment is faced with an even greater threat, the Internet. If this causes a generational leadership change in the radio industry, it will again be good news. There is without a doubt a new generation that understands that the future of radio, like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the Internet as a whole, is about including the audience in the design and creation of the content.

 Crowdsourcing will become the method by which stations are in fact programmed by the audience, and the software is already available to accomplish that goal. Many of today’s cutting-edge companies are taking giant creative steps to make their product most relatable to the customer through crowdsourcing. Radio will do the same with stations programmed a day, hours, or even minutes in advance by the audience. The distribution system will be over multiple simultaneous platforms, with AM-FM broadcasting signals eventually only supplementing total audience participation. Home-grown video will be part of the content mix.

 By understanding that the Internet is radio’s future, the next radio renaissance will come from a generation that is already in that space.

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