Saturday Opening Remarks

The Saturday portion of the New Media Seminar program began with a continental breakfast sponsored by CRN Digital Talk. The opening remarks were delivered by the emcee of the New Media Seminar – Jones Radio Networks talk show host Stephanie Miller – who did some of her trademark stand-up comedy and introduced keynote speaker Sean Hannity. “I told Sean, ‘Don’t listen to what anybody says, you’re not just another pretty face, you’re also really, really wrong about everything. That’s why God made you pretty.’”

Keynote Speech and Presentation

During his keynote speech, Sean Hannity championed the talk radio industry. “I believe we work in the greatest industry, the most intimate industry, the greatest communication with the greatest reach in audience of any medium out there. You can read all the predictions of gloom and doom about how radio is in trouble but in the end when it comes to the spoken-word format and personality radio, I stand by a theme we’ve had for two years, which is: the best in our industry, if we do our job right, is yet to come.”

In setting up his introduction of WABC, New York program director Phil Boyce and consultant Greg Moceri, Hannity told the attendees that talk radio is a business and “we’re in it to make money, to serve our advertisers. We need to educate the sales forces at our radio stations and let them know who our audiences are. One of the great things that’s happening is the PPM data. We’re getting information sooner, we’re getting more detail, we’re getting more analysis and we’re getting more understanding of who these people are.”

Phil Boyce and Greg Moceri presented a breakdown of information about demographics and psychographics gleaned from the Portable People Meter data from New York and other markets where PPM is now implemented. The presentation was titled, “Finding Hidden Gold in Your Upper Demos.” Also joining Boyce and Moceri for the presentation was Talk Radio Network CEO Mark Masters. Phil Boyce said of the PPM, “There’s so much data in the PPM that it’s mind boggling but one of the things we found was the hidden gold mine for talk radio that is truly staggering.” Boyce told the attendees that it is the job of the programmer to find that data and educate the sales staff because they are not likely to do that on their own. “They get beat up every day by these agencies and these 25-year-old buyers saying, ‘I just want to buy the top six 25-54s.’ No they don’t. They want to buy the top six 25-54s with money.” Boyce said the news/talk audience has money and PPM helped them find that out. “Don’t just look at listeners in a demo – look at listeners who have money to spend. Those are the listeners that advertisers crave. Look at listeners who are making more than $75,000 a year.” Boyce illustrated that when you put those parameters into the PPM data, most news/talk stations jump considerably higher in the rankings. Greg Moceri told the attendees a better way to look at a station’s or a program’s success is how much of a given market’s money spent each day is being done by the program’s P1s. For example, in Atlanta adults 35-64 spend 65% of the total money spent in the market each day. “Then look at which radio station best mirrors that or overperforms and WSB does it with 74%. That is a pile of available dollars.”

Mark Masters explained how his new National Advertising Company sells talk radio differently and doesn’t compete with his agency. Masters says his new company was able to bring new sponsors to his shows that are paying between 200% to 300% above national cost per point. “Why would someone renew paying a 200% premium above national cost-per-point? Because they’re making a return on investment. That happens in talk radio because we’re extending and loaning our brand over that particular product.”

 

 

The Talk Rumble

An annual staple of the New Media Seminar, The Talk Rumble, features talk radio hosts discussing the hot issues of the day. This panel was sponsored by Premiere Radio Networks and moderated by Alan Colmes of Fox News Radio. Panelists included: Jim Bohannon, Westwood One; Monica Crowley, Talk Radio Network; Thom Hartmann, Air America Radio; Lars Larson, Westwood One/KXL, Portland; Lionel, Air America Radio; Steve Malzberg, WOR Radio Network; Mancow, TRN-FM; Alan Stock, KXNT, Las Vegas; and Tom Sullivan, Fox News Radio.

The panel was introduced by KTEM, Temple, Texas and Syndicated Solutions Inc. talk host Lynn Woolley. Alan Colmes began by asking the panelists what they thought should become of Hillary Clinton as she had just suspended her campaign and conceded to Barack Obama. Lionel said he’s going to miss Hillary because every day brought another great topic to the table. “Remember how we tell our kids, ‘Don’t give up, stay in it.’ Hillary took that a little too seriously.” Lars Larson said, “She is God’s gift to talk radio but she’s the victim of the politics of personal self-destruction. She and her husband who went from being this guy who could have won a third term but for the Constitution and then he goes out and makes speeches that basically destroyed her candidacy.”

Jim Bohannon was asked if it matters who Barack Obama’s preacher is. “It matters a lot because presidents pick people. They pick cabinet members, sub-cabinet members, advisors and judges. Who presidents choose to voluntarily associate with means a lot. And if you hold your first fundraiser with a convicted terrorist and if you hang around for 20 years with a hate-spewing thug in clerical garb, that says a lot about the people with whom you choose to associate.”

But Thom Hartmann said he’s more concerned with John McCain’s longtime relationships with lobbyists. “People who are passing bucks to him and people he’s been doing favors for all these years. I didn’t see Barack Obama setting up legislation that would favor his pastor. I think this is a debate that will work to Obama’s advantage this fall.” The topic of the candidates’ associations was a hot topic as Monica Crowley asked if Barack Obama had any normal friends. “I want to see Michelle Obama with soccer mom friends. I want to see if Barack has any male friends who cut their grass on Saturday – any normal people. They all happen to be domestic terrorists or radical racist preachers.”

Tom Sullivan said the issues and character remind him of the 1992 election of President Bill Clinton. “We knew a lot about Bill Clinton long before we elected him in ’92 and we re-elected him in ’96. We have gotten this country to where more people vote for ‘American Idol’ than they do for president. That’s what this is about – likability, not about the issues, sadly.” Mancow said coming from Chicago he had a perspective on Reverend Wright long before the rest of the country knew about him. “I live in Chicago and I knew about Wright before I knew who Obama was. The guy’s a racist, a separatist – he’s just a bad guy. I know the city and I know the politics and everybody around him in this machine is dirty. I guess America’s ready for it, but, boy, dirty politics. Think New Orleans. Think Chicago. Yes, he’s [Obama] a good talker. He puts on a good speech but what a disaster this man will be.”

The topic of what to do about Iran was broached when Steve Malzberg said, “You’re dealing with a bunch of imams who want Armageddon. There’s no mutually assured destruction like with the Soviet Union. They want chaos and the end of the world. They’ll bomb Israel and go to heaven and get their virgins. That’s why you can’t let them get the bomb, they’ll use it.” Alan Stock said, “Don’t forget Israel took out the capabilities of Iraq in 1981 and they’re threatening to do that [in Iran] this summer as well. If they don’t do it, we should do it before, God forbid, Obama gets in and becomes friends with these people.”

 

The Nature of the Future

Dr. Michio Kaku, host of Talk Radio Network’s “Science Fantastic” program, delivered his speech to the attendees and noted that in the entertainment world there is a misconception that science doesn’t sell. “Look at PBS. The number one program is NOVA, the science program. Look at the History Channel. They have lots of programs about World War II but then “The Universe” series came on and soared to number one on their list and renewed for a third year. And my book, Physics of the Impossible, people told me any book with the word ‘physics’ in it will never hit The New York Times best-seller list. It’s been on the list now for five weeks running. People crave science. They seek it out.”

 

Life on the Frontier: Pioneers of Internet Talk

WPHT, Philadelphia talk show host Dom Giordano introduced this panel moderated by WCCO, Minneapolis talk host Jack Rice and featuring panelists: Gary Baumgarten, Paltalk; Ian Bernard, Free Talk Live; Liz Dolan, The Satellite Sisters; Erin Farrell, CRN Digital Talk; Roberta Gale, PodJockey; and Alan Levy, BlogTalkRadio. This intensive look at what some of the trailblazers in this aspect of talk media are doing was sponsored by Paltalk.

Rice opened by illustrating how important it is to view oneself as more than a “radio show” host or a station that just sends audio via its transmitter. He noted how WCCO’s website saw a tenfold increase in visitors after the 2007 bridge collapse disaster in Minneapolis. “The very next day I had a woman who survived the collapse and helped four other people to safety in the studio with me and we recorded the interview on video. That was a big part of the traffic increase. I did that because what we do in radio is not just radio anymore. I used to carry a digital recorder everywhere I went. Now I carry an HD video camera with a shotgun mic.”

Liz Dolan of the Satellite Sisters says the first question she’s asked by talk radio people is, ‘How do you make money?’ Dolan told the attendees they went after the biggest company they could think of. “We’re launching a major project with Proctor & Gamble. They’re doing a series on our show and a series of webisodes for women with my sisters on the Proctor & Gamble website. How did we get that giant deal? We went to Proctor & Gamble and said, ‘Your website – it sucks.’ We are content providers. We know how to provide content for you. These companies are not out desperately trying to buy ads but they are trying to figure out what entertaining content they can be a part of on the web. And these marketing departments literally don’t know what to do with the dollars they have to spend on the Internet.”

Roberta Gale of PodJockey said the fact that almost anyone can webcast should not cause people to dismiss the medium as inferior to radio. “It’s easy to be dazzled by the Internet but what we often forget is that it’s about content. To paraphrase George Orwell, ‘All stations are created equal but some are more equal than others.’ And what makes them better is talent and content.” Gale also said the steps it takes to get to content on the Internet are getting fewer every day. “In a few years people are not going to be intimidated because you are going to be able, in the space of the second it takes to click on the radio in your car, to push a button and that podcast is already downloaded. All of that technological fear is going to be gone.” Free Talk Live’s Ian Bernard told the attendees that unlike radio, people listening to podcasts have the ability to fast-forward through commercials if they begin to annoy them. “The Internet audience is pretty intolerant of commercials so you can’t take a four-minute commercial break with a podcast. You should probably keep the commercials to 30 seconds or less. Integrated sports work really well and short, pre-recorded commercials are the way to go.”

BlogTalkRadio CEO Alan Levy said all the talk of monetization is important but he believes his company’s goal of democratizing the medium also serves an important purpose. “What blogs have done to newspapers, platforms like BlogTalkRadio are doing to audio. We’ve created an army of broadcasters. Since we began almost 18 months ago we produced almost 100,000 segments. The money will come. My audience and listeners are participants. They come to be part of the equation.”

CRN Digital Talk Radio’s Erin Farrell explained how her company started in the early 1980s on the concept of taking radio stations and putting them on the audio channels of cable TV systems. Farrell says that business model didn’t involve the Internet obviously, but it illustrates what can be accomplished by expanding beyond the traditional delivery system. “We also have on-demand content. We have videos that can be put on the cable systems. It’s a way to take radio and really bring it to every single medium, which is what we have to do if we want to survive.”

Paltalk’s Gary Baumgarten told the attendees his website has become like a favorite radio station. “Our experience at Paltalk is we have a very loyal kind of listener. We are one of the stickiest sites out there in that people come and stay with us. It all started when Opie & Anthony opened a room at Paltalk on their own and suddenly there are 500 people an hour going through this room. They stick there all day long and talk to one another. They hook up with one another and it becomes a real community. To answer the question about monetizing: if you build it, they will come. If you build listenership, you can sell it.”

 

Making Money with Online Content

McVay Media news/talk specialist Holland Cooke delivered a presentation on making money with online content. He kicked off his presentation by stating, “It’s all about putting your content wherever it can be to make it as available as possible.” When it comes to selling what your station has to offer – namely, your talent – Cooke told the attendees his client station WZTK-FM, Raleigh used its morning show hosts to produce podcasts. “We had the two advertisers come into the production studio with our wiseacre morning guys and just talk unscripted and when you do this you get the opposite of an informercial. The stuff that comes out of their mouths is compelling copy.” Cooke also explained to the crowd that using YouTube for your online video needs is smart. “The price is right. You can host your own video but the files are really big and bandwidth gets pricey quick. It’s a robust server. Even if you can afford a lot of video hosting, how many people can view it simultaneously? YouTube can take a punch. They give you the code so you can put the player right on your page so that to look at your YouTube video they don’t leave your website.”

 

The Freedom of Speech Luncheon

The Freedom of Speech Luncheon was sponsored by Altria, Young American Broadcasters and the Talk Radio First Amendment Committee.

The luncheon program began with talk host Allen Hunt delivering the invocation. Then Talk Media, Inc. CEO Carole Marks introduced Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the recipient of this year’s Sharon L. Harrison Memorial Award for Outstanding Community Service by a Radio Talk Show Host. During her speech, Marks said, “We are here to acknowledge the fact that this amazing woman is one of the most charitable community servants in our industry. She’s an example to all of us how the power of talk radio can be used productively to help other people.” In accepting the award, Dr. Laura Schlessinger observed how her own career has been full of surprises both positive and negative and said some people deal with the ups and downs of stardom by turning to drugs and alcohol, some get into despair. But her audience’s trust in her to help them led her to understanding that having purpose in life is what it’s all about. “If you did things in your life that matter to someone else – no matter how seemingly small – the despair goes away…I’m crying over this [award] because this has been a search and a struggle to find meaning and I’ve found it every time I turn on the microphone and help people in any way I can.”

 

The second portion of the Freedom of Speech Luncheon was dedicated to honoring those across the globe who are struggling to bring freedom of the press to areas where that liberty is not usually enjoyed. This portion also saw the awarding of scholarships by the Young American Broadcasters. U.S. Broadcasting Governor Blanquita Cullum told the attendees, “I was very cavalier when I used to be on the air. I always thought I knew what freedom of speech was. I didn’t. I’ve learned from journalists who, on a daily basis, put their lives on the line. We have lost many journalists this year. It’s hard to believe that working for American companies, journalists die.”