What can Radio learn from the airline Industry? I have been on the road almost non stop the past few weeks, and so I've had a chance once again to observe the best and the worst of the airline industry. (Unfortunately it's been more bad than good, but you're probably not shocked to hear that!) As I only get to some of our locations once a year, maximizing every moment on the ground is key, so more regularly than ever before I'm utilizing both Westjet and Air Canada to try to make the schedule work. More often than not however, I'm left frustrated by a lack of options because both carriers have cut back on the number of flights, and the few they do have they frustratingly schedule within a few minutes of each other to the same destination. Such was the case as I was trying to make my way home from Prince George this past Friday. So many people trying to get through security I couldn't believe the line up, all going to Vancouver. Wouldn't it make sense to have some separation and choice for consumers, but no they heard us like lemmings into the same 10 minute window and wonder why we're not satisfied with the service. Unfortunately, we tend to do the same thing in the radio industry. All too often lately we're seeing markets with less than a handful of formats double up on a successful format in order to hurt the market share of a more successful competitor. We've done this too, so don't get me wrong, our company has been guilty of this practice also, but with more and more competition for audience and ad dollars, I sure hope our industry relies on this strategy less and less in the future and instead takes some risk and tries new things. Some of these bullets may not become cannonballs, but it sure beats serving up the same thing as the station across the street and nobody succeeding!
Absolutely. Differentiation, local content and actually caring about the listener is the secret. I can’t count the numbers of times I heard things like “the unwashed masses”, or “the lemmings” to describe our listeners, who should have been the most valued piece of the radio puzzle.
Awesome Rod … I always thought the most important thing we could learn from the airlines is not to crash 💥 hopefully we’re not too late!
Well put Rod.
President at Pattison Media Ltd.
1dBruce Claggett I'm working off my phone and it looks like I might have accidentally deleted your comment while working on a reply, fat fingers and a small keyboard isn't a good combo, I hope you will take a minute to repost. That said, I'm going to challenge you a bit, I'm awefully tired of hearing those who are down on the industry taking shots that radio doesn't innovate, it's just wrong. Our company alone has developed and introduced an attribution platform known as Validate, built our own streaming platform, introduced a skip the song function into our app for 102.7 The Peak which will be rolled out to all our apps in the not to distant future, and that's just scratching the surface on what is happening in our organization. So to say the leaders are stuck trying to apply old rules to new realities is a cheap shot that is inaccurate and unfair. Is the industry challenged? you bet, unlike any other time in our history. Could we /should we have reacted quicker? without a doubt. But we also are facing more competition for audience and revenue than at any time in our history. I certainly align with you that the industry does need to take care of the markets it is licensed to serve and continue to grow and innovate.