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Greater Media's Smyth Calls For Radio Sales Changes
November 7, 2006 at 3:28 PM (PT)
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GREATER MEDIA Pres./CEO PETER SMYTH's monthly web column takes radio to task for its antiquated sales procedures and calls for fundamental changes in the way stations sell ads. SMYTH notes that agencies have told radio management that radio is "just too hard to buy effectively and efficiently. We've heard from our sales staffs time and again that prospects tried radio once long ago and it didn't work. We continue to hand-write sales orders to key into software that was first written in the '70s because we've always done it that way. No wonder we can't grow radio's slice of the pie."
Warning against allowing GOOGLE, through its recent moves like purchasing dMARC and rumored interest in broadcast groups, to "become the ultimate national rep for the radio industry," SMYTH calls for "an industry-wide task force to study the processes of radio sales and begin to work toward a system that would allow radio to transition to a new selling process as we move to make radio more accountable in the eyes of our clients.... There's no reason that we cannot move forward to create a task force to study interconnection, integration of ratings data and audience delivery, and an electronic marketplace that's not just for leftover inventory."
Read SMYTH's column by clicking here.

