Jacobs Media's Paul Jacobs provides us with insight on how the RAB and local broadcasters can become proactive and compete for shrinking newspaper advertising dollars.
Consider these two headlines from earlier this month:
December 16, 2008 – Detroit Newspapers Announce Suspension of Home Delivery Four Days/Week
December 17, 2008 – The RAB Announces "Imagine A Day Without The RAB"
These seemingly unrelated announcements one day apart actually have a great deal in common. While radio's biggest competitor for ad dollars – newspapers – is shrinking before our very eyes, the radio industry's sales trade association conducted a publicity stunt designed to demonstrate its high value.
What's wrong with this picture? While we don't fault the RAB's intentions, the Detroit newspaper announcement is where the action is. All observers concur that it will free up enormous advertising dollars at a time when radio could benefit – especially in Detroit, a city that has been hardest hit by the recession.
This is an opportunity for the RAB to demonstrate its true value by coming together to aggressively sell radio's benefits, reach, and results to advertisers who will be soon looking for other places to spend their ad dollars. This isn't the time to sit back. Rather, this is the time for the RAB to put together a task force here in Detroit to work with local broadcasters to create a meaningful initiative to move the needle on the metric that really counts – revenue.
We're big fans of newspapers and journalistic excellence, and it saddens us that America is losing great journalistic institutions. The scandal involving Detroit's "texting mayor," Kwame Kilpatrick, was uncovered by the Detroit Free Press. Losing an important voice in the local media landscape is painful. But it's a fact that newspaper readership just about everywhere is on a fast decline. Technology and demographics have conspired to squeeze this industry, and we don't see any realistic way they are going to turn things around. Compared with the relatively minor declines in radio listenership over the past decade, the newspaper model is in deep distress and is ripe for the picking by an aggressive radio industry.
Is the decision by the Detroit newspapers an isolated one or will there be similar "experiments" conducted by publishers around the country? Have we forgotten about Tribune? The whole media world will be watching Detroit – and not just because of the carmakers. How this media drama plays out will be the subject of research, study, and PhD dissertations.
This is the moment for the RAB and local Detroit broadcasters to come together and design a model that aggressively goes after newspaper dollars. Because if it works, it will be scalable in the next market where a newspaper fails.
The RAB will miss this golden opportunity if it places a priority on stunting, at a time when a substantive initiative could meaningfully demonstrate its value to radio.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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