I Love Radio. I Would Love to Hear it in HD - Walter Sabo - Walter Sabo - Hitviews

Published: July 5, 2012 at 10:29 PM GMT
Last Updated: August 8, 2012 at 10:29 PM GMT

Based on Arbitron stats, Americans love radio too. 65% of ALL AMERICANS will listen to the radio today, 82% will listen this week. Source: RAB.

It's hysterical to hear people claim, "I don't listen to the radio." Really? Do you ride in cars? Eat in the kitchen? Walk into a store? You listen to Radio ALL day. Radio is the second switch:

Turn on the kitchen light then you turn on the radio. Turn on the shower; turn on the radio. Turn on the car; turn on the radio. Turn on the lights in the store; turn on the radio. "Radio is the second switch"---PLEASE RAB steal that line.

NOTHING sells like a live read on radio. Listeners remember advertisers presented by their favorite hosts. Think, SNAPPLE. One morning Howard Stern was tired, he didn't want to read live copy. So at each commercial break he took a phone call and asked the caller to "do the Snapple commercial…" "…do the Dial A Mattress commercial…" And that's what the callers did. EVERY copy point. The listeners knew the copy from memory.

Right now your favorite station is pumping out one or two additional stations that no one is listening to, the HD side channels. You may not even know how to hear them---and you're a media mogul.

First a useful fact: On Cable, Male viewers are obsessed with HD. If they have HD they WILL NOT WATCH non-HD programming. HD is a powerful marketing tool for winning and engaging men.

iBiquity and hardware manufacturers have done a superb job of presenting the case for HD to retailers and car makers. But they cannot get it done without a content story. Today there is no content story.

LEARN FROM FM. When the BEATLES arrived, the cool kids heard about it on AM Radio. In the mid-1960's the FCC ended AM/FM simulcasts and owners were forced to program FM separately. BUT that isn't what drove audience to FM. It was the show!

FM was handed to the scary kids to manage, because, after all, those BIG AM signals were the real business! And the kids experimented. They created dangerous programming cooked up in church basement studios like KPPC in Pasadena and WBAI in New York City.

FM Radio set sales were driven by teenage males wanting to hear subversive shows. FM Radio set sales were driven by young women enjoying calmer production and fewer commercials surrounding their favorite songs. FM set sales were propelled by new stars like Dr. Ruth Westheimer talking about sex---on an NBC owned and operated.

It is all about the show. At the dawn of FM, the show had few rules, brand new management and talent. Brand new. HD Radio can dazzle, HDazzle®, (don't steal that, I own it.) But first listeners must buy the radios and that will happen when shows come out of the speakers that they just don't want to miss. Give the keys to the dangerous kids.

Walter Sabo is the Chairman of Sabo Media, a company that offers executive-on-demand services. He has worked on-site to build out new digital content platforms such as Sirius/XM. His team was the first to discover the marketing clout of web stars, Internet organic video producers. They founded OMMA award winning HITVIEWS. The company placed brands such as CBS, TiVo and Mountain Dew inside UGC. In FM broadcasting he is a leader in the profitable sector of FM Talk and held executive positions at NBC and ABC Radio. He can be reached at walter@sabomedia.com.

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