10 Questions with ... Holland Cooke

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

• Education: Massachusetts State at Westfield, class of '72.5
• English major, Secondary Education minor
• Certified to teach in the public schools the last year The Commonwealth of Massachusetts granted certifications for life.
• On-air:
• WHYN and WSPR, Springfield
• WPRO, Providence
• WKBW, Buffalo
• WBIG, Washington
• Management:
• PD, WKBR, Manchester NH
• PD, WSNE, Providence
• Operations Manager, WTOP, Washington
• VP/Sky Radio, USA Today
• Present (since 01/01/95): Consultant

1. You've been attending a lot of non-broadcasting conventions, like podcasting gatherings. Is there a difference in the kind of people you see there, and the attitudes they have towards what they're doing? What are you taking out of those shows?

I attend a dozen conventions a year. Because "radio convention" is dang-near an oxymoron now, only about 1/3 of the shows I attend are radio-related.

More radio people should attend the massive, mind-boggling Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest trade show in North America, and a real whack-on-the-side-of-the-head, for three reasons:

a.) Its culture is the opposite of radio's present triage mode. The goal at CES every year is to obsolete whatever was shiny-and-new last year. Some 20,000 new products introduced at this year's show are a jarring contrast to radio-taking-pride-in which-station-can-go-All-Christmas-first.

b.) CES is usefully humbling to a broadcaster. We see a wildly expanding array of media options that listeners can use instead of radio. Yet, at the same time...

c.) I always come-away from CES re-affirmed about what radio CAN be. We have something all these sexy new-tech companies still envy: incumbency. There are gazillions of AM/FM receivers already in-use; and the two generations which control most of the USA's wealth grew up with a radio habit. Shame on us if we don't leverage that.

I also do Streaming Media East and Streaming Media West, and I continue to be struck by how much this new platform grows in the six months between these two conferences.

It's been interesting to watch the evolution of what's-now-known-as the Blogworld & New Media Expo...what-used-to-be a podcasting convention, which merged with what-used-to-be a blogging convention, and morphed into a social media conference. A couple thousand attendees populate a parallel media universe, creating audio/video/conversation content for an audience estimated at 100 million plus. Many are, effectively, doing Talk Radio without radio, by podcasting and blogging and building souped-up Facebook pages and tweaking Twitter. Many there are do-it-yourselfers who self-publish, often about narrow-interest/high-affinity topics. Not just martial arts, but a certain kind of Kung Fu. Typically they’re making beer money, some have attained quit-your-job income. Increasingly, I've spotted corporate suits trying-not-to-look-like-suits there. A 30-ish woman stood on the Exhibit Hall floor talking into her laptop webcam. When she finished, I asked, and she explained that Sony had just hired her to be its online human. She uploaded her unscripted video unedited, deliberately rough-cut, authentic-looking.

I'm doing some work with the National Association of Realtors, which produces "Real Estate Today with Gil Gross," so I attended NAR's convention in November. 19,000 attendees was DOWN, slightly, from previous years! Remember the Annette Bening character in "American Beauty?" Or how about Courteney Cox in "Cougartown?" Times 19,000. I met hundreds of 'em, and these are the sales reps radio NEEDS. Real characters, real entrepreneurial, real mojo.

What turned out to be R&R's final Talk Radio Seminar was sad. The innovative way NAB and RAB are joining forces for a joint Radio Show in September is smart. Talkers magazine's 13th annual New Media Seminar speaks volumes... 13 years ago, it was already a "New Media Seminar."

2. Is podcasting a mature enough business to make money in yet? If not, when do you think it'll happen, and what will need to occur to get there?

The only thing mature about podcasting is the term. Real-time broadcasting concepts like "Evening News" are becoming quaint. By evening, you already know the news. People are watching TV shows online. The networks put 'em there to defend against YouTube, Hulu, TV.com, et al.

Nielsen's recently-released "How U.S. Adults Use Radio and Other Forms of Audio" study demonstrates that only 50% of 18+ Adults' listening is to AM/FM. Do the math: Live-only radio programming is unavailable to most of a station's available listeners if it's one-and-done through the transmitter. In an on-demand culture, why wouldn't we archive everything-but perishable staples like news/weather/traffic? iTunes -- a free distribution system that iPod/iPhone owners synch-up on-an-ongoing-basis -- is "TiVo for radio." At Arbitron's recent Fly-In conference, veteran sports radio executive Bob Snyder preached-out the value of online "sports audio:" "I sold play-by-play for 20 years, but I could never sell frequency. Now I have frequency. Two spots in a game doesn’t do it. This does.”

Look for more along-the-lines-of that HD-2 channel that the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins are doing, and Delmarva Broadcasting's Graffiti Radio. My client KTBB/Tyler TX -- Arbitron market #145, mind you -- just sent 3 people to the Super Bowl for a week...and made money on it, via sponsored on-air/online audio/video.

3. What do you see as the outlook for broadcast radio in general and talk radio in particular in the coming five years? Are you bullish or bearish?

Times have never been MORE opportune.

If you're a non-Clear Channel-owned Rush Limbaugh affiliate in a Clear Channel market, you're about to lose Rush to an FM that will flip to Talk. You can probably already guess which FM. It'll be that second-in AC or Country or other ratings mid-pack or cellar-dweller.

Headline news: "Music radio" is a time bomb. Keynoting his second consecutive Consumer Electronics Show, Ford CEO Alan Mulally introduced the second-generation high-tech Ford Sync dashboard. A year ago at CES, he announced that Ford's goal was to sell a million Sync-equipped cars in ‘09. "We hit that goal in May," recession-and-all, he announced, to applause, in his CES2010 keynote. Remember: this was the only USA automaker that didn't take government money. See how they're selling cars? In that dashboard: Pandora.

So when Premiere yanks Rush et al, step-up and go-local. "The I-I-I-Me-Me-Me, I'm Right, You're Wrong, Democrats Bad, Republicans Good Show:" (a) is mature and agonizingly repetitive, (b) now contains more commercials -- many of 'em hokey direct response deals -- than listeners will tolerate, and (c) signals listeners that local information must be somewhere else. "Rush Radio" couldn't possibly say "repeater station" more clearly. How naive could we be to think a weekend "Best of" doesn't mean "re-run?"

With Big Corporate Radio crouched-in-the-fetal-position, ANY diligence by competitors will now R.O.I. like crazy. You will be conspicuous to listeners AND ADVERTISERS if you offer carefully-crafted local content, created by well-coached local talent who understand the station's distilled mission statement and appreciate the travails of the real-life Homer and Marge Simpson characters who fuel the local retail economy and would be flattered to be polled by Arbitron.

4. If you're advising talent on how to proceed with their career -- assuming that the talent in question isn't already established and under a long-term contract, that is -- what would you tell them to be doing to prepare for the future? What should every talent be doing right now?

Crafting Internet content, for the station, and your-very-own. Years of Arbitron/Edison Research studies tell us that no other partner medium can push traffic to the Internet better than radio. Flex that! View the transmitter as the means, not the end. The transmitter is merely one distribution system your brand enjoys. That-thing-we-used-to-call-a-cell-phone is "the new transistor radio."

Clearly, WiMax will be the tipping point.

5. As the present star talk talent, and, presumably, their audiences, too, get older, what should programmers be doing for the next generation? Where will they find the next wave of talent for broadcast radio?

If you intend to make a living as a consultant, you're constantly scouting for that talent.

6. What's your favorite social media tool? How can stations and talent use it to their advantage?

Being a B-to-B act (business-to-business), I personally am not on Twitter. But a radio station or radio show, or any B-to-C (business-to-consumer) act sure should be. Until Twitter, Cume cost money, for TV spots, direct mail, billboards, etc. The only thing programming could build was Average Quarter Hours. Now, Twitter can ping listeners, and they can share the ping exponentially. But use this powerful viral tool carefully. Be the-opposite-of-spam.

I'm also seeing real smart use of Facebook. At home, I can hear the Providence market, and I heard a local talk host beg on-air to get to 1000 Facebook Fans. Meanwhile, MY BARBER launched the Facebook page "I Love My Rhode Island Accent" and got to 25,000+ in a couple weeks...without a transmitter to beg on. He simply set the table for a conversation more-engaging-than "The I-I-I-Me-Me-Me, I'm Right, You're Wrong, Democrats Bad, Republicans Good Show."

7. What's one piece of advice you can give to programmers and talent regarding the PPM -- should they be changing what they do to accommodate the meters, and how?

PPM proves that...every...single...syllable...matters. Cut-to-the-chase, and get-to-the-phones. best-caller-first. Rinse, repeat.

Jerry Seinfeld said that there's no-such-thing-as "attention span;" people are either listening or gone. Or as Research Director, Inc. partner Charlie Sislen put it: “Listeners used to have to love ya. Now they have to find you interesting.” Recently, Charlie and I briefed a bunch of ad agency people in a market where he and I share a station group client. Charlie is hip-deep-in Portable People Meter data, which he is crunching in every market where Arbitron how uses PPM. "Nothing has changed about the way people listen," he explained. “They’re no longer voting for favorites” the way diarykeepers do in diary markets where unaided recall remains.

8. You're known for carrying hot gadgets around at conventions; what at CES this year caught your eye as something you'll want for the future?

I was actually the-last-person-I-know to own a cell phone. I just didn't want to be that loud talker in the restaurant saying "YOU'RE BREAKING UP!" while the couple at the next table was breaking up.

But seriously: The headline I took away from CES wasn't a gadget, it was "the cloud," the way that, increasingly, we store our stuff -- software and all -- online, and access it anytime, anywhere, on any-number-of-devices. 'Makes sense. I know someone who has 8000 songs on his Zune. What if he loses it?

9. Radio is competing with a new advertising culture, with pay-per-click and pay-per-sale pricing and more precise targeting. How can radio compete? What can stations tell advertisers when selling against new media?

Sell OUR OWN new media.

From the recent Veronis Suhler Stevenson annual Media Growth Forecast: "Consumers are spending more time with media which they support and pay for as opposed to ad-supported media. This development is a culmination of two decades of this secular shift towards consumer-controlled media, and shows no signs of slowing."

Radio has a head start! We're established, trusted content providers,with pre-existing advertiser relationships. Shame on us if there's a dark production studio.

Where-the-money-is: Yellow Pages, still billing more-than-all-of-broadcasting-combined in every market. I'm working with a what-the-Yellow Pages-don't-want-you-to-know-consultant, on client stations' behalf, and there are PILES of money that local advertisers -- especially attorneys -- are now questioning. Why: Google has become a verb. Have you used 1-800-GOOG-411? Caution: Opportune as the Yellow Pages are, right now, this money will be all gone in two years. Pounce!

10. Last year, you did some fill-in for Jim Bohannon. What was it like to get back behind a mic, and do you still have the itch to do that again?

As Sarah Palin would chirp, "You betcha!"

Actually, guest-hosting for Jimbo was a dare. He and I are pals, and have been teasing each other about this for years. Ditto for WBT/Charlotte's Bill White, who was my peer when I programmed WTOP/Washington and he programmed co-owned WTIC/Hartford. So, with a couple Jim Bohannon Shows under my belt, I called Bill's bluff and did WBT's John Hancock Show 3 nights in August, when that mighty 50KW signal goes from Canada to Florida. What a kick.

I hadn't been on-air for 13 years when my USA Today job blew up, and I hung out my consulting shingle on 01/01/95. Until then, I had been a Triple-A on-air talent. Like Tommy Lasorda, I coached-my-way-to-the-majors. So when I started filling-in on WBIG Oldies100 in Washington in 1995, it amused-and-horrified friends there who only knew me as a suit. PD Steve Allan called it "recreational jocking." I played it like I was coming-back-from-the-weekend at mid-1970s WPRO. And every so often, a thick New England accent would show up on the request line.

Recently, I was telling Jim Bohannon, "You're working MUCH too hard. Take some more time off, willya?"