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New features and more AudioNET® radio stations added - details in the AudioNET® Bits below... Rowlands Cashes Up with Missen Money Melbourne audio production studio Rowland Productions has a new general manager following John Rowland's decision last month to put the business on the market. The new GM is Daryl Missen. Daryl joined the studios six months ago as an engineer and has bought a 'significant' share of the business to become a partner in Rowland Productions with John and his wife Barbara. Both men say their new business arrangement is based on a passion for audio production and their mutual belief that Rowland Productions is well situated as the advertising industry shakes off its recent depression. "...dream outcome..." "Daryl's decision to invest in Rowland Productions and take on the day to day running of the business is a dream outcome," John says. "Our staff and clients already know him and he has abundant energy and ideas." Daryl says when John announced his decision to sell, it seemed crazy not to invest in a business he'd admired for so long and grab the opportunity to influence its future. "The audit John undertook to prepare the company for sale has identified some key strengths in our offerings for clients and now we have an injection of cash and secure ownership we're poised to aggressively pursue new business," Daryl says. Check out Rowlands' new website at www.rowlands.com.au
Stay
in the Dark or GASM Good Audio Sense has ventured into print with GASMagazine a quarterly, glossy about the people and places in the production industry at work at play. GASM is being delivered free to production studios in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney. The inaugural spring 2002 issue features a Phil Webster photo board, an ode to Bill Armstrong and an eclectic and entertaining mix of personal stories from various industry identities. GAS Managing Director Rodney Lowe says GASMagazine aims to look at all facets of the production industry as well as general entertainment such as music, theatre and fine dining. "It is not a money making venture for GAS. We will strive to cover costs and hopefully further issues will get bigger, better and appear on your desks due to great advertising support and commitment by all those involved."
Revelling in the RISK
Conference Speakers Push Radio Industry Buttons A new name and new image for FARB heralded a new format for the annual commercial radio industry conference, which included an international line-up of speakers and a few blunt bollockings for the owners, managers and programmers of our local radio stations. Sir Bob Geldof, himself a media proprietor, was directly critical of the lack of local music content on Australian radio. Sony CEO Denis Handlin repeated this theme more politely by outlining some of the innovative ventures Sony is undertaking to expose Australian artists to more people. These include joint events with TV stations, such as the ARIA broadcast, and getting ad agencies and retailers to use local artists as backing music on locally produced commercials. Handlin's lament was that he never hears any good ideas from radio - in fact, while TV execs ring him constantly, he doesn't hear any ideas from radio. The most welcome criticism came from New York media analyst Walter Sabo, who told the assembled radio execs that they were selling themselves too cheaply. ... 'us' radio not US radio... Geldof, Sabo and Handlin all plainly told Australian radio bosses to forget about looking to the US for programming and ideas and develop the talent available locally. ACNielsen provided a demonstration of their 'watch meter' technology for measuring Australian radio ratings, while Arbitron's US representative John Snyder explained why Arbitron is advocating audience panels as well as its Portable People Meter technology to measure its audiences. Ex-convict and US talkback host G Gordon Liddy provided larger-than-life stories to illustrate how talkback radio can harness people power to effect change. All the speakers had a common theme: the future is all about change. All the speakers are businessmen in big companies with big bucks at stake and all are are constantly looking for the next new thing: new ideas, new techniques, new technology, new music and new issues. Which raises the question - What's really new in Australian radio? For video, sound and photos from Friday's conference (18.10.2002) and the winners from the Australian Commercial Radio Awards check out the Commercial Radio webcast on their site from Tuesday 22.10.2002.
"...US Radio is Dead..." "Radio transmits ourselves, creates the community that we crave. Speech and self-awareness are the twin, thin legs upon which we try to elevate ourselves above other animals on this planet," Sir Bob explained. The reason radio creates communities and press and TV fail is that "in radio none of the tricks of the other media are necessary - it comes straight to us." But he said in Australia, which prides itself on its rawness and naturalness "you are playing drivel. Your focus groups are telling you to program what American radio is playing and US radio is dead." He dismissed focus groups as useless because he says people have no idea what they want to hear from being played 20 seconds of pap over a phone line. He said it was up to the radio station programmers to take a lead and introduce audiences to new music on the air. .talk is cheap. Sir Bob said the most popular radio station in the US at the moment is a university radio station with free form programming. And he chided Australian radio programmers for ignoring Australian artists and paying lip-service to Australian content. "You are killing a part of the culture of this country - you are failing your community. How do you explain the rise in talk radio here? Because you won't play the music that represents the culture of your country." At least he said with talk radio, Australians get to hear Australians, even though he lamented that serious arguments are often reduced to cheap and easy phone ins. And he said that, as a businessman himself, he knows that radio exists to make money for its shareholders and that's as it should be. But there's more money to be made by paying attention to local artists. "...people are starved to know who they are..." "You fail as businessmen when you fail to play the music representing the culture of your country. Stop using half-wits we call DJs who play what you tell them to play, and you tell them to play what's coming out of the US when what's coming out of the US is crap." Sir Bob said in the UK, the record industry was the sixth biggest in the country. He said Australian radio owners were doing themselves, their audiences and the whole Australian economy a dis-service by not playing more local music, which he believed was what Australian audiences wanted. "You cannot remove the community from the medium. People are starved to know who they are amongst themselves."
From the other side of the Atlantic (and politics!) to Sir Bob Geldof, US talkshow host G Gordon Liddy strode across the front lines of his audience microphone in hand and equally passionately, but at higher volume, boomed out verbal illustrations of his life in radio. Liddy's CV is too incredible to be fiction. At 29, he was made the youngest supervisor in the FBI in Washington during the Kennedy era. In 1971 he was Whitehouse Staff Assistant to President Richard Nixon, and the following year he resigned that job to run the 1972 Republican Presidential Campaign. It was that campaign that saw him sentenced to 20 years' jail for his role in Watergate. He served five years before being released by President Jimmy Carter. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree, a law degree and served two years as an artillery officer during the Korean War. He says he believes his credibility with his audience is due to the fact that he has first hand knowledge of most of the topics he raises in his show; from crime to law and from politics to war. .'using power reasonably'. Most of Liddy's address to the CRA conference comprised anecdotes of issues he's raised on air that he says have forced government action: the forced relocation of an FBI agent involved in the Waco raids; his questioning of the 'suicide' of Hillary Clinton business associate Vince Foster; his pressure over the Blackhawk Down incident which forced the resignation of Clinton defence minister Les Aspin. His current campaign, in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the US is to force Congress to allow airline pilots to be armed. Liddy unashamedly rallies the numbers of his audiences in 260 radio markets across the US, to force change where he sees change is needed. But he reassured the conference, " I try to use my power responsibly. I have an opinion and I express it but give all the reasons I've arrived at that opinion and let my audience know what those reasons are."
.revealing Q and As. Some of Liddy's more telling opinions came in answer to questions from the audience.
.life in the 'big house'. Q. What was it like in prison - in the 'big house' as you call it. A. (This is very long, and not a direct answer, but very funny.) When Liddy arrived he was put in the 'arrivals' section where all new prisoners go. There were 90 men in a unit built for 50. After every meal there was always a rush for the few toilets available and Darwinian rules applied - survival of the fittest. According to Liddy "This is where one uses one's intelligence." He immediately let the warders know he could type and he was nominated as clerk of the unit. He got a typewriter and some memo letterhead. He forged a memo from the chief warden to the officer in charge of the arrivals section declaring that due to an alarming rise in VD in the arrivals section, one toilet was to be set aside for the exclusive use of inmates with VD. In Liddy's words, "The next night I had my own private toilet!" He said it cost him some sniggering and comments from the other inmates, but he couldn't have cared less. He had what he wanted. This was all he would say about his time in prison except to declare that prison officials were delighted when Jimmy Carter pardoned him.. "they were glad to see the back of me." www.liddyshow.us
Money,
Money, Money is All About Memory Memory Memory Australian radio stations are seriously under-estimating their value and under-charging for their airtime according to US media strategist Walter Sabo. The CEO of media management consultancy Sabo Media acclaimed radio as "the most effective medium in the history of man." Unlike television or print or the Internet, radio gets 98% penetration and 98% usage, or in the vernacular " they've got a box in the living room, you've got two boxes in the bathroom!" Sabo spent a large part of his speech explaining how memory works because radio stations need ratings to sell on, and ratings measure recall, not listening. .sex, survival and guys like us. He says the brain learns to remember in two ways: serial learning and paired association. Serial learning is why 10/10 WINS has such great recall - it's not listened to that much in New York, but the announcers say the station name 32 times every 15 minutes. A local example Sabo gave from Australia is 4MMM in Brisbane, currently rating number two in its market, which gave a station ID 13 times in 15 minutes, during some recent Australian media research. "People don't remember anything until they've heard it three times, so you need them to hear it six times before action is required," he stressed. Paired association is about giving people the information you want to give them, coupled with information they want. And the three top 'wants' are survival information (traffic, weather, news) sex, and information from people like them (testimonials.) ...training the lowest common denominator. So the motto here is that radio stations that want ticks in the book need to employ these memory joggers. And if stations are advertising in other media, they can use them to effect to grab other stations' listeners. There were some added warnings though. ACNielsen research commissioned by CRA found some startling blanks in the minds of their test audiences, which included adults with post graduate and graduate degrees. In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Melbourne listeners top-scored in identifying their Premier, with 90% correct. Despite massive publicity, only 55% could correctly identify a movie starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. And THEN when it came to radio stations: 54% of Sydney interviewees identified Nova 969 as a radio station, in Melbourne 85% knew Gold FM was a radio station and in Brisbane 84% knew New 97.3 was a radio station. Why not 100%? Sabo says one of the reasons is because when radio stations advertise they forget to tell the readers/viewers/listeners that they are in fact, a radio station. .don't overlook the obvious. "You will never see or hear an ad for Coca Cola that does not contain the words 'soft drink.' But billions of dollars in advertising are wasted every year because radio stations won't use the word radio." So, to get back to Sabo's original point about under-charging for advertising - radio is the best medium for employing these memory joggers, not just for radio to advertise itself and get ticks in the book, but for radio's advertisers to get to their customers and increase sales. "If it's cheap then people think there's something wrong with it. Nothing sells like radio - so charge more." Radio Comps Cop a Fair Ruling The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has announced a ruling which exempts radio prizes from the GST. Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner has welcomed the ruling. "This is good news for the commercial radio industry and is a fair and commonsense ruling from the ATO," she says. "The radio industry has consistently argued that radio prizes be exempt. The original draft ruling would have meant products given away as part of radio contests or giveaways could have been treated by the ATO as supplies and therefore would have been subject to GST. This would have resulted in a significant and unfair cost for radio stations and their listeners." Eavesdropping
on a Crazy Mixed Up World A few weeks ago, another engineer told us about "The Mixerman Chronicles." It turns out that Mixerman is a moderately well known mixing engineer in LA, who is working on a big budget album at the moment. He is writing a daily diary of everything that is going on in the session. Sometimes it makes you laugh, and sometimes it makes you wonder why you'd want to be in this industry in the first place. It's a great read. Here's the link... AudioNET® Bits ... From Dave Cox Thanks to a road safety campaign produced at GAS in Adelaide we've added several new community radio stations in South Australia. Check the AudioNET® radio station list on the House Keeping page. Following a suggestion from Ben at GAS in Melbourne we've added a new feature to save you time when you're sending several different deliveries for the same agency or client. When you hit 'send another track' the information for 'agency' 'client' and 'product' is automatically generated. You can of course type over these if you need to. All you have to manually fill in is the key number. If you want a delivery confirmation the instant the stations have been notified, remember to tick the box when you get your 'upload success' message. This will generate an automatic e-mail to you, setting out the delivery confirmation details below your studio's logo. You can then easily forward this on to clients via e-mail, providing pro-active delivery confirmation for them. This feature can be permanently switched on by accessing your user preferences on the House Keeping page and selecting delivery confirmation on upload, as your default.
If you have any suggestions about improvements to AudioNET, we would like to hear from you at feedback@dbmsystems.com.au or call Dave or Verity on 03 9687 9055.
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
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Alan Kay
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Killer Bits: October 2002
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