Tuesday, April 15, 2008

NAB2008 ...

While I'm no longer working in radio, I do often think about "the business" and certainly do this time of the year when the NAB show opens in Las Vegas. I was lucky enough to go to the show twice, as well as the not as impressive radio show twice, and learned a whole lot about the broadcast industry in the process.
There are some interesting headlines coming out of radio these days. Despite their attempts to polish the turd, most of the news is pretty grim. Is there anyone working in radio anymore? It seems like you are either a big star, in corporate, or a computer. Seriously though, there is always hope. There are a ton of sales jobs in some major markets, if you are into that.
I love all the focus on "localism" without actually hiring anyone local. We need to be local ... but we have laid off everyone in Syracuse ... Ahhh, the computer will do it. Too much. What will the bean counters think of next?!
One of the big stories out of NAB is the news that one of the big corporations will be dropping its Arbitron subscriptions in some markets and offering RFPs for other companies to track listeners. I don't know if this wave of criticism about Arbitron is fair. I mean, broadcasters have been complaining about the accuracy of the diary polling for years. Arbitron then answers the call and spends years moving to electronic system. And the early tests proved every bad thing advertisers thought about radio, and then the broadcasters freak out!
Anyway, I found this link on what of the emails I received. It looks like some sort of new publication by Scott Fybush called Radio Journal: ["Radio Journal"]. I've known of Scott for a long time and this is the first time I have seen the magazine. It's pretty good. I dig the layout.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the kind words about The Radio Journal. It's actually a very old publication - the continuation of the old "M Street Journal," which has been around since the late 80s. I've been involved with it for the last four years or so.

Subscriptions to the weekly edition are free - just sign up for the e-mail at www.theradiojournal.com.

What you ran across was the special NAB Edition, which appeared in print at the convention. The rest of the year, it's a PDF-only publication.