Doug Harris, President, Creative Animal International, Houston, Texas
Since 1983, Harris has been working his special magic at radio stations across the country, creating powerful, promotions-driven ratings and revenue plans for satisfied station owners and thriving on the challenge of keeping radio listeners entertained and advertisers happy.
During his eleven year tenure at heritage AOR station KLOL-FM in Houston, Harris demonstrated his bigger-than-life approach to station activities and his special flair for producing uncomplicated events with seemingly global impact. From a box of autographed photos and albums, Harris created the KLOL Rock-n-Roll Auction, which enjoyed a ten year run and raised over $500,000 for Houston area charities. A simple shopping mall blood drive became the Rock-n-Roll Up Your Sleeve Blood Drive, garnering a national award for the station and a series of record collection years for the blood bank. The Rock-n-Roll Softball Championship of the World, the KLOL Street Machine Nationals, and Houston Music Awards — all produced by Harris — became revenue producing benchmarks on the KLOL promotional calendar.
During his career, he has given away, among other things, an oil well, a breast enlargement operation, a ton of kitty litter, over thirty cars and trucks, and roughly $1,000,000 in cash. He once claimed Halley’s Comet as Texas sovereign territory, named a Texas Ambassador to Australia, and sent him to Sydney to “bring it back.” He has awarded trips to destinations around the world, including a chance to spend Halloween night in Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, Romania and over the years has employed a “street” fleet of novelty vehicles including a three-wheeled spaceship, an ambulance, a 1957 Rolls Royce, a Bigfoot truck, and even a forty-foot brassiere on roller skates.
During his last years at KLOL, Harris branched out to provide consulting services for stations outside of Houston. Most notably, Harris and the programming team of Ted Edwards and Virgil Thompson engineered the rebirth of KISS-FM in San Antonio, taking the station from an Arbitron 12+ rating of .4 to a 5.6 in a single book — all on a marketing budget of $1800. A dramatic success at River City Broadcasting’s “The Point” in St. Louis followed, and gave Harris his first experience in the modern rock format. Additional projects in New Orleans and Dallas broadened his level of expertise with various formats, which now included Newstalk, Oldies, Contemporary Hits, New Age Jazz, AOR, and Classic Rock.
His professional accolades include Billboard Magazine’s Promotion Director of the Year, numerous regional ADDY’s, and three Promax Gold Medallion Awards for Marketing Excellence. Add WHO’s WHO IN ENTERTAINMENT and OUTSTANDING YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA listings and you have a more complete picture of the man one radio station owner described as “more energy, creativity and infectious enthusiasm in one human being than should be allowed by law”.
We scratch the surface of Doug’s outstanding talent and philosophy in this month’s RAP Interview. For more info, visit www.creativeanimal.com.
JV: Tell us a little bit about your company, Creative Animal, and what it offers to radio stations.
Doug: Creative Animal provides marketing and promotion services to radio stations in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I do a little work in Australia and New Zealand on occasion. My principal activity is helping sales and programming get along in the pursuit of ratings and revenue. A lot of times, the pursuit of ratings gets in the way of the pursuit of revenue, and vice versa, so my specialty is coming up with promotions and contests and sweepstakes and things of that nature, that are appealing to the client – the advertiser – but are also appealing to programming and vice versa so that they become partnerships as opposed to one-sided efforts for either beneficiary.
JV: What are some of the more common mistakes promotions people and programmers make at radio stations with regards to their non-sales promotions?
Doug: Not doing things with enough drama to get the attention of the consumer. The problem these days is that the consumer’s seen just about everything. I mean, anybody with Internet access last year could’ve seen a beheading. We’re out there trying to get the public’s attention, to get them to come to station events and things like that, and we’re trying to do it in an atmosphere where the media is delivering shocking things almost on a daily basis. It’s tough to get the listeners’ attention and participation, so a lot of times, they come up with prize packages that don’t have any drama or opportunities that don’t get the passions or the emotions of the listener inflamed, and that’s what you need these days – inflamed emotions, inflamed passions – to get the listener to not only make the decision to listen to the radio station, or participate in a contest or a promotion, but write it down and tell people about it at the same time.
JV: Would the same apply to sales promotions?
Doug: Unquestionably. Too many times, the account executive or the client is starting with a budget figure in mind, and not thinking about what it’s going to take to move the consumer to action. Tomorrow is Saturday. We’re talking the day before a weekend, and tens of thousands of remote broadcasts will happen from car dealers and grocery stores tomorrow with a prize wheel and a tent, and we’ll wonder at the end of the day why nobody showed up. Well, it’s because there isn’t enough to get the listener excited. You need to do something that gets people worked up, and too many times we’ve got, “The client will never pay for that,” or “That’s too much money,” or “We could never get that prize package,” or whatever, and I found that just the opposite is true. If you get the client and say, “Here’s what it’s going to take to bring people out,” sometimes they’ll step up and pay the price.
JV: How do you deal with sales promotions where the client is calling the shots with their big schedule and says “Here… I’ve got 24 cases of this junk I want you to give away. Now make something out of it.” What are some of the key things to keep in mind when trying to create something from nothing?
Doug: I found very few prize packages that I couldn’t make exciting or at least humorous. We had a client one time that wanted to give away gallons of Bing cherries as a morning show prize. Now, this is in a small market, but still, who wants to win a gallon of Bing cherries? Well, the client was very insistent, and we wanted to get the buy, so what we gave away was your weight in Bing cherries. That’s the sort of whimsical thing that an air personality with any kind of skill, any kind of talent can have some fun with. They get on the phone and say, “I want all my big winners to call today, because I want to really give away a lot of cherries this morning.” There are things like that you can do.
I had another client that wanted to give away cans of propane gas for the picnic season. Well, again, not a very exciting or glamorous prize, but when you combine that with a gift certificate from the grocery store and the grill that is used with the propane and picnic supplies and things of that nature, suddenly you’ve got a package that’s brought to you by the propane guy, but the propane guy becomes incidental. He’s integral and he’s fundamental to the promotion, but he’s not the scope of the promotion, and that makes it more appealing. The weeks before a big picnic-style holiday like Memorial Day or Labor Day or July 4th, giving away the ultimate backyard barbecue or picnic package is pretty exciting. You can make something of that.
I think a lot of times, we get the prize package and we just roll our eyes and say, “Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do with this?” You just need a little imagination. Most of the time, by bundling or packaging with something else, or something thematically interesting, I think that most prize packages can be saved.
JV: We explore this next question in RAP all the time, and I’m sure you’ve heard it: Where does one go to get those ideas?
Doug: Well, if I’m on board, they come. They’re available with a phone call! But I think there are a lot of places where you can great ideas for promotions at low cost or no cost. The most valuable I’ve found is a website called www.lured.com. Make sure you type that in correctly or you’ll get some weird stuff on your computer screen. Lured.com is produced by a guy named Sammy Simpson, a Promotion Director who’s been at some huge radio stations around the country. It’s a free website that has listings of promotions by theme. For example, once you register, you can go in and type in ‘Mother’s Day,’ and it’ll spit out 50 Mother’s Day promotions all tested for radio. Of course, some of them are very fundamental and small market, and some of them are big and elaborate. You get everything, but it kind of helps you as sort of a stepping stone.
I think Chase’s Calendar of Annual Events, which is available at www.chases.com for about $50 U.S., is a spectacular resource. Sometimes it just takes a celebrity birthday to give you the fodder you need for a good nightclub promotion, or a space milestone, or something like that that you can get from Chase’s. It was Groundhog Day yesterday, I believe, and if you look up ‘Groundhog Day’ in Chase’s, you’ll find all kinds of information about things that can be done on or about the Groundhog Day celebration. Chase’s sits in the control room most the time, collecting dust, and every once in a while the morning show uses it as show prep. It’s a wonderful resource.
I’m also a big fan of www.trendcentral.com. Trendcentral.com produces a daily online newsletter. It’s about a one-minute read, and it’s all about hip, young, trendy things that are happening for teens and young adults. www.dailycandy.com is great resource if you’re working with a female audience, particularly at an AC or a Contemporary Christian station. Dailycandy.com is, again, a daily online newsletter. It’s about a 45-second to one-minute read — just an idea, a twist, something different. And there are dozens of these kinds of sites out there.
The “Green Book of Songs,” which is produced by Jeff Green of R&R, is a listing of 30,000 songs by theme. So if you’re looking for a hook or something that has to do with trucks, you look up ‘trucks’ in the Green Book of Songs. That’s at www.greenbookofsongs.com. There are just dozens of resources out there. The production person or creative person should not bear the burden of having to come up with the idea themselves all the time. It’s okay to look other places.
JV: What are some brainstorming methods you recommend? You get a group of people in the room, then what?
Doug: I use a four-step process: Find the place, find the team, state your case, and start to dream. The basic elements are: you’ve got to have a comfortable place where people can stretch out. Hopefully something with some lights, some sunlight, and some exposure to the outside world, so a conference room works well. But if you don’t have a conference room, go outside. If the weather’s good, go out and sit in the park or on a park bench, or an area close to the building, and get some place where you’ve got some room to move around.
The second step is putting the right team together and making sure that you don’t use the same creative people over and over and over again. A lot of people think, ‘Well, every time we have a creative meeting, we have to have these same six people.’ Bring in the receptionist every once in a while. She talks to more listeners and advertisers everyday than anybody else. When was the last time you asked the receptionist what she thought of a promotion? I guarantee you she’ll know if one’s not working; people have been calling to say it’s too complicated or they don’t understand, or if they’re excited they’ll be calling. That’s who takes the calls. So, make sure you have a lot of different people on your team. Rotate. Get different people each time.
Next is “state your case.” Make sure that you’ve got a creative challenge that is manageable and that people understand. You can’t say, for example, “We need to sell more cars for this car dealer.” It needs to be something like, “We need to get more credit-challenged people to come in and buy used cars over this 30-day period.” That’s more of a creative challenge that people can get their hands on.
And then in the “start to dream” phase, which is the last one and my most favorite of course, is where you get to send a message to your body that it’s time to be creative, and that means playing some music, or putting on a funny hat, or playing with some crayons or something like that — doing something to let the brain wander so that an idea has time to come and visit.
JV: What about solo brainstorming?
Doug: That’s the way most people have to do it. The secret to personal creativity is release and inspiration. The first thing you’ve got to do is find a way, a socially acceptable way, of release at work. Maybe it’s taking a walk outside the radio station, or walking down the hall to the break room or something like that, but find a form of release. Go have a cappuccino or a double decaf, something or the other from Starbucks. Treat yourself to a Krispy Kreme donut. Get out and find some form of release.
For a lot of people, it’s blowing bubbles. A lot of the people I train, I give them bubbles to blow because it’s a very relaxing exercise that you have to focus on. You can’t be talking about other things and blowing bubbles at the same time. It requires you to focus. And then you seek inspiration. Those websites that I talked about are places to go for that. I’m also a big believer in periodicals. I think we have a lot of men who’ve never read Cosmopolitan or Jane or Mirabella, making decisions about a radio station’s programming and promotions for women 25-54. We need to get out and find out what’s going on in their lives, and one of the best ways to do it is to read the magazines that they read. Stop by a Barnes & Noble or Border’s book store and visit the magazine rack and pick up two or three magazines that might be of interest to the people you’re trying to target. That’s a great place to get inspiration.
JV: I believe you mentioned that most of your work at radio stations is with the programmers, promotions and salespeople.
Doug: Yes. I don’t get to interact with the Production Director as much when I’m working with my radio clients, but what I try to do with every idea is try to create a vision for the promotion, or a vision for the contest or sweepstakes, and I insist that it get written down because no idea will ever come to life until it’s written down. And when you force someone to write it down, a little bit of the vision for the idea usually comes out, and that’s what could be very helpful to a Production Director. If the salesperson walks down the hall and says, “I need a car dealer spot to build traffic on Saturdays,” and the Production Director accepts that, then perhaps he or she deserves that kind of abuse.
I have seen some of my more successful colleagues come up with a simple questionnaire. I use four questions. I ask the AEs to tell me what is the purpose, theme or objective of the promotion. Specifically, is there a tagline, that sort of stuff. I ask who the listener is or who is the target, and 25 to 54 adults is not acceptable. That’s ridiculous. You can’t program or promote to a 25-year-old female the same way you do to a 54-year-old male. I call that the “Jack Nicholson Marketing Attack.” Tell me specifically, are we talking about homeowners or apartment dwellers? Are we talking about new car buyers or used car buyers? Are we talking about more men or more women?
The third is what is the desired consumer reaction? What specifically do we want the consumer to do? And finally, how will we measure the success of the campaign? And then, if you want to, ask some questions about what is the tone and manner of the spot. AEs can follow the rules if a person in authority tells them, so you have to get the GM or the sales manager on your side when you’re dealing with them in situations like this. I think Production Directors can ask people more than “What’s the length of the spot?” and “What’s the music bed?” or “Is there a jingle?” I think they can say, “Tell me what you’re trying to communicate here,” and take it from there. I think the more successful Production Directors I encounter are those who’ve incorporated some sort of a client needs analysis that the salespeople do anyway, and ask the salespeople to communicate that to them before a production order goes in.
JV: How does one know if his or her crazy idea is going to work or not? I mean, we can all come up with off-the-wall ideas, and in a lot of cases, they should be thrown out the window. What makes a crazy, off-the-wall idea worth exploring further?
Doug: I think it’s important to acknowledge that there’s an element of risk associated with creativity, and if you’re not willing to take that risk and fail on occasion, then you’re in the wrong business, because if you just play it safe over and over again, you’ll find yourself doing the same ideas, and you’ll become formulaic. That’s getting in a rut, and the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole. You don’t want to get in a creative rut.
I have found that most creative people have a creative partner, at least a sounding board or a mentor. When I go back to a client, for example, I never go with ideas that I haven’t bounced off of my creative partners. I have a couple in the office that I talk to and I say, “What would you think about this?” and “How does this sound to you? Does this sound too over the top, too outrageous?” And I try to go to the client with at least three ideas: one that I think is safe and manageable, one that has a little more impact, and one that is just completely off the wall and out there. Now, I realize you don’t have the time to do that with scripts, but from the standpoint of creative elements, always give the client a chance to reject something, and if he wants to throw my crazy idea out, fine. But if he buys into it, then he shares the risk in whether or not it’s going to work.
JV: You also have a fairly new ad agency, Noisemaker Communications. Tell us about it.
Doug: I started Noisemaker Communications two years ago. We specialize in clients who use radio, although we do some TV work and some print work. Our belief is that radio is the superior means of communication, and that a well-crafted 60-second spot can move mountains. We have worked for the Houston Arrows, which is an AHL hockey team, where we hired Larry Hagman – J.R. Ewing – to be the voice of the Houston Arrows and talk about comparing hockey to football, since Texas is a big football state. We just bought the rights to “Happy Birthday” and re-orchestrated that for a Toyota dealership as their jingle. That’s the kind of off-the-wall stuff that we like to do. And we realize that most of those opportunities may be cost-prohibitive for local radio stations, but you’d be surprised what you can do with a good CD and some good voice talent. A lot of our clients are in retail business, and they’re looking for retail traffic on weekends. So we’ve found a way to perfect the call-to-action in a 60-second spot that makes people come out and come to a furniture store, or come to a car dealership in the space of an 8- to 10-day period.
JV: What’s the trick?
Doug: Well, the secret to effective advertising is very simple: a compelling message from a credible source in a dramatic fashion. That’s what all advertising should strive for – a compelling message from a credible source in a dramatic fashion. In the case of a car dealership, we just did a promotion called, “Building the Million Dollar Toyota Tundra,” which was an opportunity for listeners to come down and get a list of eight options on a Toyota Tundra and arrange them in any order that they like. It was an insured risk promotion. If anyone arranged the eight Tundra options in the correct order of the secret envelope, they won $1 million paid by an insurance policy.
Well it’s pretty remarkable when the promo starts out, “Don McGill Toyota has your chance to build the million dollar Toyota Truck. Register all month long,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That has the kind of drama you’re looking for. That’s helping somebody decide between the Toyota dealer on one part of town, and the Toyota dealer on the other part of town. One Toyota dealer has a chance for me to win $1 million and has Toyota Tundras, and the other one just has Toyota Tundras. That’s the kind of drama that we’re looking for, something that makes sense.
We use a lot of radio station personalities for personal endorsement, because we think that their connection with the listener is a little more intimate than the voice of the General Manager or somebody like that, although the voice of the General Manager can be very effective as well. But the big secret is just doing something that’s compelling, and price/item advertising by itself is not compelling. It has little or no drama. That’s why we like to use jingles. That’s why we like to use station voices, personalities with their names. That’s why we like to use big promotions.
We just did a promotion for the hardest working truck in Texas. We offered a $5,000 cash prize to the truck with the highest odometer reading that could be brought into the dealership. Well, we had over 100 people bring their trucks in. That’s 100 qualified people who definitely need new trucks. They came in with hopes of winning the $5,000 cash. That’s the kind of stuff that we do – big, bold, different, out of the ordinary.
JV: You spent a lot of time in radio, and you’ve been around the production environment in radio. You’re familiar with it even in today’s consolidated environment. What are some of the things that production people can do to improve the commercial creative in their stations?
Doug: I think the production people are among the most overworked and underpaid and under-appreciated professionals in the industry. They do have some pretty sexy new tools, though. This whole digital thing has made life incredible. It wasn’t that long ago we were using razor blades and tape, and now most people have consoles that can do amazing things. I think we have to acknowledge that most production people are under the gun to crank out an inordinate amount of work in a relatively small period of time, and my advice would be when you’ve got a client that comes to you and says, “Give me something special,” that you take an extra effort to do something remarkable on a regular basis. Realize that some of the stuff is going to come in, and it’s going to be fairly pedestrian; you’re just going to crank it out and voice it and do the best job you can. But try to do something exceptional a couple of times a week. Try to do stuff that you’re so proud of that you’d put it on your demo. If making spec spots is part of the work for production people, I’d knock one out of the park every week that you’d send to the salespeople and say, “This is what we’re capable of, if this will help you,” and hopefully, the Production Director is being rewarded when a spot sells.
I’m a big fan of audio success letters, and I think this is something that production people can do for the salespeople that will endear them to the sales department — and anybody that can associate themselves with the revenue side of things is going to keep their job. When a client has a successful promotion, a lot of times the sales department will ask for a success letter, which everybody knows the account executive writes and the dealer or the client puts on his letterhead and signs at the bottom. What you can do with a MiniDisc recorder is get the client talking about the promotion, maybe on the exact day that it happened, or the client talking about the radio station or the spot, or how the campaign worked. That’s something I think Production Directors could do, go to the account executive and say, “Here’s a MiniDisc player. Go out and record the client saying this, and I’ll build it into a little two-minute piece for you.” If you could do a couple of those a month and give them to the salespeople, I think that would be a great way to show the value and talent of the production department.
JV: Your website quotes you as saying, “We help our clients find a good parade and get in front of it.” What are a couple of examples of that? Are you talking charity events here?
Doug: I’m talking about anything that captures the interest or the imagination of the consumer for a period of time. For example, we’re in an Olympics period right now, and we represent the Sugar Land Ice and Sports Center. The Sugar Land Ice and Sports Center is a training area for one of the Olympic athletes, so the big parade here is the Olympics. We’re doing a publicity campaign that says, “An Olympic hopeful is training at the Sugar Land Ice and Sports Center. Why don’t you come out and do a piece out here?” We’re pitching the local media on this sort of thing. The rodeo will be hitting a number of Texas markets here in the next 30 or 45 days. We’re doing promotions with car dealers where, if you buy a new truck, you get a pair of western boots for free. The public’s thinking about rodeo and that’s a great time to buy a new truck, and when you’ve got a new truck, you want to look your best, so get yourself a new pair of boots at the same time. That’s finding a good parade. Certainly charity events are good parades, as is the Super Bowl this weekend. A lot of people are having the Super Bowl of Savings, and a lot of radio stations will be doing the Super Bowl of Rock n’ Roll.
Whenever you can tie into something that already has an emotional bridge with the consumer, and you can borrow the equity from that promotion, you’re tying your radio station or your morning show or your client into something they already feel warm and fuzzy about, or passionate about, and that can have a real impact for you.
JV: What’s one of the key things you would tell a group of local direct salespeople about how to make more money?
Doug: I would tell them that the old days of the client needs analysis of going down and sitting in front of a client and saying, “Tell me about your business,” those days are over. Right now, the client is more time-compressed than ever before and doesn’t have time to sit and educate you about his business. So the first thing I would tell an account executive is to go visit the client’s place of business, particularly with local direct. The next step would be to Google him or his industry, and chances are, if you’re talking about an entrepreneur in a medium or small market, there will be something that’s been written about him and you’ll have a reason to go and talk with him, or you’ll have something to talk about with him when you get in front of him. And when you get the appointment with the client, you say, “Well, who is the decision maker in the buying process for your product?” If he says, “I’m not sure,” then you could say, “Well, when I was on your sales floor last Thursday, I saw this happening, and I think we can help tie into that.”
I think that’s the best advice I can give, to know the client. If we come in and start talking about the radio station and our award-winning morning show and how we have the best remotes in town, instead of talking about the client and what his particular need might be and uncovering that need and a way to service the need, then I’d say we’re kidding ourselves. We’re just going to be selling remote packages for the rest of our lives.
I’m also not a big fan of going out and throwing a promotion to a client in our first meeting. I think it’s insulting to the creative process that you take an off-the-rack promotion and throw it in front of a client, because the client’s going to know it wasn’t personalized for him, unless it’s something like the perfect rodeo promotion or the perfect NFL football package or something that’s been created exactly for furniture dealers in mind. You’re suggesting that he’s a commodity just like he thinks radio is. There’s no difference between this furniture store and that furniture store.
I think the biggest mistake people make is walking into a client with an idea to share with him the first day. If he wants to know the kind of stuff that you do, then you toss a few ideas out of stuff that you’ve done recently. But going in and saying, “We’ve created this idea especially for you” in the first meeting I think is a big mistake. You need to go and research the client, find out what they’re like. In the first meeting, you could find out if a client is in favor of Saturday remotes. You can find out if a client is predisposed for or against consumer registrations or gifts with purchase or programs like that. If you do just a little bit of research, when you come back, then you’re able to say at the second meeting, even if that second meeting takes place in front of a computer screen as you’re walking the client through the promotion, you at least say, “This promotion was tailored specifically for you. This spec spot was done just with you in mind.”
Salespeople need to know about the RAB website. There are over 1,000 spec spots on the RAB website, which is at www.rab.com. You’ve got to join the RAB, but a lot of radio stations are already members. I think Production Directors can gain from the site as well. The have over 1,000 mp3’s of successful radio spots online. So if somebody’s dogged for an idea, that’s a great place to go.
JV: You do a lot of seminars and workshops. Do you have some that you would recommend for production people?
Doug: I do a session called, “Unleashing the Creative Animal in You,” and also, “How to Steal Your Next Idea,” and also, “33 Things You Can Do To Ignite Your Creative Spark Today.” Those are my three big ones on creativity, and I think all three of those are available on CD from my website. But I think that Dan O’Day has some of the best stuff out there for production people, and the good thing about Dan O’Day is that he’s very generous with his tips and suggestions. If you go to www.danoday.com and click on “Articles and Information,” you can get a lot of great references from him that don’t cost a thing. Plus, he’s got all kinds of books and CDs and such that he sells.
JV: What’s your take on the future of terrestrial radio versus the satellites and iPods?
Doug: I think the satellite radio people owe a debt of gratitude to their PR and advertising machine. I think that the frenzy they whipped up among everyone from Wall Street to Wal-Mart about satellite radio is purely a function of promotion. It’s not surprising that everybody knows about satellite radio; they spent $750 million on advertising between Sirius and XM. Whereas, when is the last time you saw a local radio station doing a TV campaign? Even when we promote our advantages, we’re only doing it on the radio airwaves. We’re not spending money in external marketing. So it’s no wonder that everybody’s worked up to a fever pitch about satellite radio.
But here’s my take on it; the only thing we really can compare satellite radio to is cable television. Cable television comes along in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and it kind of flounders around. People think it’s kind of interesting until it comes up with two pieces of compelling content, and that is HBO and MTV. All of a sudden, everybody’s got to have cable television. “Oh my God, did you see that ‘Oh Ricky, You’re So Fine’ video?” “Yes, I saw it 17 times yesterday.” “Isn’t it wonderful?” “Yes, it is.” Movies without commercials, movies with actresses taking off their clothes, movies with cuss words on television? “Oh, my gosh, I have to get that!” You see?
Now, fast forward about 20 years later. Cable television has not put broadcast television out of business. In fact, there are more networks now than there were in the 1980s, and there’s still no effective way of measuring cable television viewership in the same fashion that there’s no effective way of measuring satellite radio listenership. We know how many subscribers there are, but it’s 100 channels.
The bottom line is, it’s never going to be about the delivery system. I don’t care if it’s something on my belt, or a chip inserted into my brain, it’s all going to be about content. We have got to be the providers of compelling content, and let the listener and the consumer decide about the delivery system. Satellite radio just got its first compelling content, play-by-play sports and Howard Stern. I just don’t know that the ‘70s channel is going to be compelling enough to make millions and millions of listeners subscribe to satellite radio.
I do think that Howard Stern has already demonstrated that he’s going to take a big chunk out of the market, but I just don’t think that we’re all going to be out of jobs because of satellite radio. We’re going to be out of jobs because what we’re doing is boring and doesn’t have any bite. And I don’t mean that in a vulgar or profane sense. I mean that it’s not very exciting. If satellite radio had designed a play book for their world domination and in it said, “Now, if radio will just do this, we’ll be great,” they’d be smiling. We’re following their play book exactly. We’re homogenizing our music so that it’s not particularly deep in any category. We’re voice-tracking our personalities. We’re taking local out of our presentation. That makes us sound just like satellite radio. All the music’s the same, all the jocks sound the same. It’s basically time and temperature after 10 a.m., except we can’t do the time anymore, because it’s a voice track situation. We’re not doing promotions anymore, we’re not advertising. We’re not doing contests or sweepstakes except national contests and sweepstakes. Where’s the advantage to local radio?
JV: The only difference is we’re making them sit through commercials.
Doug: That’s right, although I don’t think that satellite with no commercials will last forever in much the same way that some of the more popular cable TV channels, like TLC and A&E, all have commercials now. I think that’s an eventuality, particularly with Mel at the helm of Sirius.
JV: If you could do it all over again, would you start in radio and spend as much time there as you did? What would you do differently?
Doug: If I had to do it all over again, I don’t think I would change a thing. I started working for a family-owned radio station. I was able to learn a lot of different peoples’ jobs in a short period of time. If I wanted approval on something, I only had to walk down the hallway. I later got to work in their other radio stations as a consultant, so I got experience in a number of different formats in a relatively short period of time. It’s been a sweet, wonderful ride.