[Swprograms] Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video?

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a short answer to this question regardless of what follows  
below.  No.

John Figliozzi
Halfmoon, NY

February 14, 2007

Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video?

By RICHARD SIKLOS
Ted Stryker, a D.J. at KROQ in Los Angeles, considers it a perk of  
the job to wear shorts and T-shirts to work. But last Sunday as he  
dressed for the Grammy Awards, he pulled out his best blazer and a  
flashy belt buckle, knowing three video cameras would stream live  
coverage of his show to the Web sites of 147 CBS radio stations.

“What’s great about radio is no one knows what you’re wearing,” Mr.  
Stryker said by telephone as he made his way through the throng at  
the Grammys. “I wanted to make myself a little bit more presentable.”

Mr. Stryker, who has done some TV work in the past, said that to  
create his best radio voice, he often must contort his face in  
embarrassing ways.

“It’s so different doing radio compared to TV,” he said. “Who knows  
what faces I make when I’m talking on the radio? I hope I’m not  
making the same faces today.”

The nation’s commercial radio stations have seen the future, and it  
is in, of all things, video. As a result, the stereotype of a silken- 
voiced jockey like Mr. Stryker, slumped and disheveled in the studio  
chair, may never be the same.

Across the country, radio stations are putting up video fare on their  
Web sites, ranging from a simple camera in the broadcast booth to  
exclusive coverage of events like the Super Bowl to music videos,  
news clips and Web-only musical performances.

“This is no longer the age of ‘having a face for radio,’ ” said  
Dianna Jason, the senior director of marketing and promotions at  
Power 106, a Los Angeles hip-hop radio station. “This is a visual  
medium now.”

Audiences in Los Angeles, for example, will be able to tune in today  
to Power 106 for an annual Valentine’s Day event called “Trash Your  
Ex,” in which jilted listeners are invited to put mementos from past  
loves in a giant wood chipper — and to let it whir while the disc  
jockey, Big Boy, urges them on. And for the first time, audiences  
everywhere will be able to watch streamed video of the event, to be  
held in a parking lot in Pasadena, on the Web site power106.com.

Whereas video was once said to have killed the radio star — according  
to the pop song by the Buggles that was the first video shown on MTV  
in 1981 — it is now emerging as an unlikely savior for an industry  
facing an array of challenges.

In the age of YouTube and the radio talk show hosts Howard Stern and  
Don Imus as television stalwarts, this might not seem all that  
remarkable, except that the radio industry has been singularly tardy  
in embracing the interactive age.

But now many of the largest radio companies are scrambling to stay  
relevant as their listeners’ attention is drawn in many directions —  
iPods, cellphones, satellite radio and various streaming and  
downloading musical offerings from companies like Yahoo and AOL. “A  
lot of our stations are starting to embrace video and generate new  
revenue streams,” said Joel Hollander, the chief executive of CBS  
Radio, the nation’s second-largest radio company, after Clear Channel  
Communications. “I hope video helps the radio star. Maybe radio will  
save the video star?”

More than 90 percent of Americans still listen to traditional radio.  
But the amount of time they tune in over the course of a week has  
fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron  
ratings.

Industry revenues are flat, and the Bloomberg index of radio stocks  
is down some 40 percent over the last three years.

Reflecting the investor malaise, a group of private equity companies  
has proposed buying Clear Channel Communications and taking it private.

Video now makes up only a tiny fraction of the $20 billion a year  
that radio generates in advertising sales. But it could represent a  
much-needed new source of growth in a rapidly expanding online video  
market that everyone from Google to newspapers to broadcast  
television wants to be in.

Radio executives and personalities say their video efforts will be  
different because they capitalize on radio’s traditional strength in  
using on-air personalities and local events to draw in listeners.

Taking a cue from YouTube and the rise of user-generated video, a  
polished, TV-quality product is often not the objective. Another  
Power 106 video effort featured a staff member, dressed like a shrub,  
jumping out of a planter to surprise visitors to the station’s office  
on Halloween.

An alternative rock station, 94.7 FM in Portland, Ore., last fall  
began a “Bootleg Video” series in which a listener is lent a video  
camera to record a clip of a local performance by a hot band like the  
Killers for the Web site. “Sometimes it’s a little shaky, but we want  
that,” said Mark Hamilton, manager at the station, which is owned by  
Entercom Communications. “We don’t want it to be perfect.”

The Web site for the radio station WFLZ in Tampa, Fla., features a  
video series called “Naked,” on the lives of its hosts away from the  
microphone. “I’m not very pretty today,” one of the station’s disc  
jockeys, Ashlee Reid, says sheepishly on the latest installment as  
she arrives at work and realizes the cameras are rolling before  
bantering with a colleague about chest hair.

Ms. Reid, who is 26, said being videotaped was odd, but in the year  
that the radio station has been producing monthly installments of the  
show for downloading, it has not yet caused her and her colleagues to  
alter their hair or wardrobe. “Maybe we should, but we don’t,” she said.

Similarly, producers for Adam Carolla, the Los Angeles morning host  
whose program is carried on many CBS Radio stations, regularly record  
vérité clips featuring Mr. Carolla and a co-host, Danny Bonaduce, for  
posting on the Web.

The nation’s biggest radio companies are also doing slicker  
productions, like Mr. Stryker’s Grammy show, that try to capitalize  
on their size and reach.

Clear Channel, whose Internet efforts are led by Evan Harrison, an  
executive vice president, has elaborate video programming available  
on the Web sites of its 1,200 stations, including Tampa’s 933FLZ.com,  
where “Naked” is featured. Clear Channel has made some 6,000 music  
videos available for downloading online, but has also been producing  
original video content that individual stations can feature on their  
Web sites and disc jockeys can promote on the air.

These programs include “Stripped,” a series of taped performances by  
artists like Young Jeezy and Nelly Furtado that are often acoustic or  
done in small clubs. The company has also been producing “Video 6  
Pack” in which bands like Fall Out Boy appear as hosts of their own  
program and play videos they like.

According to comScore Media Metrix, Clear Channel sites ranked sixth  
in December among music Web sites, behind MTV, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace  
and Artistdirect.

Radio industry executives stressed that, so far, their video efforts  
could be considered experimental and only one facet — along with  
blogs and audio podcasts and a nascent service called HD Radio — of  
how the industry is adapting for the Internet age.

“People are either going to have to get with the program or get  
lost,” Fatman Scoop, a disc jockey on Hot 97, an FM station in New  
York, said in an interview. “People don’t sit in front of a radio for  
three hours like they used to. If they don’t hear a song they like,  
they go to the Internet.”

In his case, what listeners will find on hot97.com is a weekly video  
show about relationships that Fatman produces with his wife, Shanda  
Freeman, called “Man and Wife.” Introduced in November, the shows are  
usually taped in the couple’s bedroom in New Jersey and run several  
minutes each.

Fatman, who prefers to be known by his radio name, said that the show  
was entirely owned by him but that his bosses at Hot 97 — owned by  
Emmis Communications, like Power 106 — recognize that raising the  
visibility of its personalities on the Internet could only be good  
for attracting listeners and advertisers.

“What we’re trying to do is reach the listener in any way possible,”  
he said. “If somebody sees that you’re on ‘Man and Wife’ on  
hot97.com, they will listen to your show.”

Radio and video may be a more natural fit than expected. In his book  
“Understanding Media,” the cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote  
that “the effect of radio is visual.”

Certainly, Howard Stern and Don Imus have had video extensions of  
their radio shows for years. Even Mr. Stern’s new employer, Sirius  
Satellite Radio, is planning a move in that direction. The company  
has said it plans to start beaming a video service of children’s  
programming to play on screens in the cars of Sirius subscribers  
sometime this year.

For now, most of the new video ventures originating from radio are  
just starting to generate revenue. Mr. Hollander of CBS Radio and Mr.  
Harrison of Clear Channel declined to say how much new revenue they  
were attracting.

Mr. Hollander said plans were in the works at the CBS Corporation,  
which is better known for its television network, to begin  
integrating some of its video programming into the radio division’s  
Web sites. The Web site for WSCR, the company’s sports radio station  
in Chicago, featured live video from its pregame coverage of the  
Super Bowl in Miami. Earlier, the station streamed coverage of its  
15th-anniversary celebration.

Mitch Rosen, the station manager for WSCR, said the video efforts  
attracted advertisements from 8 to 10 businesses that normally  
thought of the station as only an audio outlet. To add some visual  
flair to the anniversary broadcast, Mr. Rosen put two of the  
station’s popular hosts in tuxedos. “They did get some ribbing from  
listeners,” Mr. Rosen said.

For crossover advocates like Fatman, however, audio and video will  
soon be interchangeable in the D.J.’s repertory. “That’s where it’s  
going,” he said. “It’s getting to the point where you’re going to  
have to be good at both.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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