Archive for the ‘Radio’ Category

Oriella PR surveyed 770 journalists from in 15 countries about their perceptions of the future of their media channels. More than half (52%) said their print publication, TV station or radio station might well be taken off the market, though they didn’t ask for a specific time frame. This was a sharp increase from the one in 3 who shared that view a year ago.

You can download a PDF of the study (free registration required).

While we’ve been obsessed with print, we need to remember that local TV and radio are hurting badly as well from a combination of the economic slump and the larger realignment of the media landscape. A couple of years ago, it looked like Clear Channel would own the world. Now they’re cutting left and right. Last week’s 590 jobs come on top of 1,850 in January. Full story.

I’ve just been passing on these search engine/traditional media deals without comment for the most part, because I haven’t figured out what they add up to. This particular agreement doesn’t seem to fit Google’s core business model, but my record at understanding that model and predicting what they’ll do next has been abysmal. Maybe some readers can connect the dots for us…

Google Reaches Deal With Clear Channel to Sell Radio Ads – New York Times

Google Reaches Deal With Clear Channel to Sell Radio Ads
By LOUISE STORY

Google will begin selling advertisements across all of the stations of Clear Channel Communications, the No. 1 radio station owner in the United States, at the end of June, the companies will announce today.

Google has been working for months to expand its ad sales operation into traditional media like newspapers, radio and television. To do so, it needs traditional media companies to allow it to sell some of their ads, and it had seemed to be making little progress in radio.

But the partnership with Clear Channel represents a step forward for Google. The deal will run for several years, and will give Google access to just under 5 percent of Clear Channel’s commercial time. That will include 30-second spots on all of Clear Channel’s 675 stations during all programs and all times of the day, executives at both companies said in interviews yesterday.

The companies did not disclose the financial details of the arrangement, except to say that Clear Channel would receive the majority of the ad revenue.

“It represents an opportunity to put what is arguably the hottest sales organization in the world to work selling our inventory, and we’re very excited about that,” said John Hogan, the chief executive of Clear Channel.

Mr. Hogan said that Google would bring new advertisers to his stations and would work with those companies rather than with Clear Channel’s existing advertisers. But, he said, the Google advertisers would have access to premium inventory — in contrast to some of Google’s deals with newspapers that are allowing Google to sell only leftover ad space. And, he left the door open for a broader deal.

“If it is a success, we would want to replicate it and expand it,” Mr. Hogan said.

Google has already signed on to sell ads for 800 stations nationwide, but they tend to be in smaller markets, said Tim Armstrong, Google’s president for North American advertising and commerce.

“Everybody from top to bottom at Google is excited about this partnership,” Mr. Armstrong said.

The deal will most likely stir more fear among the media executives who are wary of Google’s encroachment. Google may have an easier time becoming dominant in radio because of the importance of local advertisers there, said Gene DeWitt, chairman of DeWitt Media Strategies, a firm that buys ads.

“Most mediums tend to be driven by national advertisers, but not radio,” Mr. DeWitt said. “It’s the national advertising community that has kind of been keeping Google at arm’s length. These advertisers — on radio — may very likely be more willing and interested.”

Mr. DeWitt said that radio buying and selling generally had the most cumbersome processes.

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said last year that he planned to eventually have 1,000 employees working in the company’s radio unit. Google paid as much as $1.24 billion to acquire dMarc Broadcasting early last year, and used that company’s systems to expand its AdSense for Audio sales system to include radio capabilities. Advertisers log on to the AdSense Web site, choose what type of ad they want and submit their bids.

Google executives have said they hope to expand the offerings on their AdSense site to include all types of advertising, online and offline. On Friday, Google agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire DoubleClick, a company with display ad knowledge that Google hopes will help it move beyond the text and search ads that generate most of its revenue.

Google also recently started selling ads for the 125 national satellite channels on EchoStar Communications’ DISH Network. And the company is testing ad sales for papers like The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and newspaper chains.

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There’s not a lot more to be said about the sad fall of Don Imus. As I expected, CBS Radio wasn’t about to bring him back after MSNBC had canceled its TV simulcast. It has to be embarrassing for both networks to have to back down from the originally announced two-week suspension. After all, there was no new revelation. When they decided on the suspension, they knew everything they know now — except the depth of public outrage. As a result, they can attribute their stumbling response to nothing other than poor judgment.

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post
Associated Press
Don Imus leaves his New York home Thursday, the day he was fired by CBS after racist remarks about Rutgers women basketball players last week.WASHINGTON – Bowing to a national outcry and internal protest, CBS Radio said Thursday it would end Don Imus’ morning program “immediately,” possibly bringing the sometimes inflammatory broadcaster’s four-decade career to a swift and ignominious end.CBS followed NBC, which Wednesday canceled the MSNBC simulcast of Imus’ radio show. Imus touched off a conflagration last week when he made racist and sexist comments.

Imus – as well as CBS and NBC – struggled for the past eight days to craft an effective response to widespread criticism of his calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” But neither repeated apologies nor a two-week suspension imposed this week by the two media companies quelled the furor. Advertisers deserted Imus’ show and protests continued, inside and outside the companies.

CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves said he made the decision to stop carrying Imus’ program after he and CBS executives heard from “all segments of society” in recent days.

“In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society,” Moonves said Thursday in a statement. “That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision.”

Imus indicated that the end of his CBS run was near during Thursday’s program, a radiothon for charities he has supported for years on his show: “I don’t know if this will be my last radiothon. My suspicion is it will be.” Imus, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, said on his show that the uproar had become “insane” and “out of control.”

Civil rights leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson became closely identified with protests against Imus. But one of the earliest sparks may have been provided by the National Association of Black Journalists, an organization based at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The group said it heard about Imus’ remarks the day after they aired from one of its members – an employee of MSNBC – and quickly issued a news release calling for a boycott of Imus’ show. The release caught the attention of organization members at media outlets across the country, prompting some of the initial news coverage, said Kristin Palmer, an NABJ spokeswoman.

The Don Imus racial slur fallout is growing fast, and MSNBC has cut his TV simulcast after the big advertisers — including General Motors, American Express, Sprint, Procter & Gamble and Staples — pulled out. That’ll put pressure on CBS to go beyond the two-week suspension and cut him loose as well.

The interesting thing about this to me is not so much the content of the remarks, but the built-in accountability of the mainstream media — something that doesn’t exist in the blogosphere. There’s no defending Imus. But aspiring web pundits and bloggers put stuff out there every day that’s far worse. There are no repercussions, because they fly under the radar and generally don’t have advertisers to bail on them.

An incident that attracted far less attention was that of Bambi Francisco, who resigned from MarketWatch (a Dow-Jones financial news site) last week over a conflict of interest.

I’m not arguing for censorship, oversight or even accountability of amateur news blogs. I’m simply saying that its absence will always draw a credibility line between professional and “citizen” journalists. That’s why I’ve been reluctant to joint the breathless “golden age of journalism” chorus.

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Global Internet ad spending to outpace radio in 2008 | News.blog | CNET News.com

Global spending on Internet advertising lags spending on TV, newspapers, magazines and radio but will overtake spending on radio next year, according to a new report.

Internet ad spending will have grown six times faster than traditional media between 2006 and 2009–from $24.4 billion to $42.9 billion–and its share of the total ad market will jump from 5.8 percent to 8.7 percent, according to March statistics released by ZenithOptimedia, a London-based media services company.

Internet ad spending is projected to grow 28.2 percent this year, while the rest of the market grows only 3.7 percent.

Besides the Internet, only cinema and outdoor advertising are projected to grow faster than the overall market by the end of 2009. The fastest-growing ad markets are in the Middle East and in Central and Eastern Europe, while North America has the slowest-growing market.

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I wasn’t really looking for it, but today’s announcement that XM and Sirius are merging seemed inevitable. When people have to choose between two systems to purchase hardware, one tends to emerge the winner.

We saw it long ago when VHS won the consumer market (though Beta ruled in the professional world). If you were going to have a VCR, you had to cast your vote, because they didn’t play both. Similarly, most of us are only going to have one computer on our desk, and the world doesn’t seem to like a 50/50 split. That’s why Windows consistently wins, even though it’s arguably the third-best OS out there, behind OS X and Linux. (Yes, I know you can run two systems on one machine, but who wants to?)If the satellite radio market had evolved so that the hardware worked with either system (or both), maybe we would have had competing companies indefinitely. But there’s generally room for only one satellite radio in a car, and the market may not have been big enough — fast enough — for two players.

With the “either/or” question resolved, satellite radio could take off in a hurry. If it does, we’ll finally begin to see how it will affect local broadcast radio. Just how local is local radio, anyway? If you’re primarily playing the same recordings every other top 40 station is playing, what’s the incentive for listeners to stay local rather than listening to a commercial-free paid version? This is very much the same sort of question we’ve pondered with regard to the shrinking national news coverage in local newspapers.

Local talk radio is probably safe for a while. In my city, the talk stations — especially the sports talk stations — have a big local following, and they probably don’t have to worry as long as they’re featuring local programming. (But syndicated programming like Jim Rome? I just can’t see that making sense in the long term.)

I’m talking as if national radio only competes with local in cars, which of course isn’t true. But on the desktop, there has been a steady increase in the number of people listening to online radio. I don’t do it much, because it slows down the computer, but it’s a growing market