Quick, Get On A Plane

What if I told you that radio won't die, as others are predicting? What if I told you that it will never go away? You'd feel pretty good, right?

But what if I told you that the horse and buggy still exist, and you can send a telegram if you really want to. Suddenly, your perspective changes.

I'm not one to shout about the death of radio. Unlike newspapers, we still have an audience, and if we remain relevant, we won't lose it. So radio can't die, right?

Before we get too cocky, let's not forget one important thing: Without advertising revenues, we can't survive on our current model no matter how much audience we have. And if advertisers perceive that radio is no longer useful as an advertising medium, no matter how big our audiences are, we won't have sufficient revenues.

Radio's future is not dependent on its audiences. It's dependent on the person who makes advertising decisions. In my career, almost every buyer I ever met at every agency was 25 to 30 years old. Advertising is a young business with young account executives, young planners, and young creative people influencing decisions. Today's 25-year-olds have never known life without the Internet, without websites, without MP3s, without e-mail. Do you honestly think they believe in radio as much as we do?

Radio's biggest challenge is perception, not reality. The first true Internet generation is in control of almost every advertising dollar in the world. Where do you think they'll place their advertising budgets?

At our Forecast conference in December, one of the advertisers said, "You people in radio have your head up your butt. I'm sitting here listening to your gibberish that as long as you have audiences, you'll be strong. It's simply not true. Every advertiser we have, and we're the largest agency in the world, is telling us to shift most of their budgets into the interactive space - Internet, online, digital video, and social media. If your argument is that you can drive website visitation with radio, you're focusing on the wrong thing. Here's the reality: If you can't offer clients radio plus robust digital interactive products -- and I don't mean website banner ads -- you will lose the game of selling advertising."

Three hours later, many of the group heads who hadn't heard that man speak, said, "Radio's big advantage is that it can drive traffic to websites."

Reality Bites

Life would be a lot easier if we didn't have to relearn how business is done, but if you plan to be in radio, you need to. That is exactly why I hold our annual Convergence conference. Instead of all the usual industry insiders, we bring outsiders in to tell you what's happening in the world to jolt you, stimulate your thinking, and help you craft a plan you can take home. We give you the knowledge and tools to reinvent. Every year at least a dozen radio managers tell me that they resisted coming, got talked into it, and are happy they came because, "It's the best conference in radio, because it's not really a radio conference." Past attendees will tell you they clung to every vital word, and understood after the fact that they had been living in the past.

Will you stay relevant as the advertising world shifts around you? What if the ads we used to get don't come back, because our stations don't have robust digital offerings? Whether or not you attend our conference, I encourage you to study the massive change going on around you - and embrace it.