Radio e Internet, amiche o nemiche?

Diversi post fa mi sono occupato del problema della "svalutazione" commerciale e pubblicitaria della radio, un fenomeno ormai vistoso in un mercato come quello statunitense, dove le stazioni tradizionali soffrono alquanto per il combinato disposto della concorrenza interna della radio satellitare e per quella esterna di Internet e podcasting. In agosto della questione si era occupata, da Los Angeles, Daniela Roveda per il Sole 24 Ore, con un articolo che Gigi Nadali mi aveva puntualmente riportato da Dagospia

IPOD KILLED THE RADIO STAR - LE STAZIONI LOCALI U.S.A. IN VENDITA PER QUATTRO SOLDI – LE SATELLITARI SIRIUS E XM HANNO PERDITE OLTRE IL MILIARDO E MEZZO DI DOLLARI…

Daniela Roveda per “Il Sole 24 Ore”

La diffusione degli iPod sta mietendo un'altra vittima, il settore radiofonico americano. Ieri la CBS Corp ha deciso di vendere alla Entercom quattro stazioni radiofoniche in aree urbane dove gli indici d'ascolto sono in calo, mentre la Abc potrebbe essere costretta a rinegoziare il prezzo delle 22 stazioni vendute alla Citadel Broadcasting il febbraio scorso, sempre per lo stesso motivo: il numero di ascoltatori continua a scendere.
La crisi del settore radiofonico tradizionale si somma a quella della neonata radio via satellite, un servizio a pagamento che consente a chiunque di sintonizzarsi su stazioni radio operanti in qualsiasi area del globo. Nessuna delle due società di un settore considerato molto promettente fino a un anno fa ha generato un profitto, anzi l'anno scorso le perdite complessive della Sirius Satellite Radio e della XM Satellite Radio Holdings hanno superato il miliardo e mezzo di dollari.
La crisi delle radio tradizionali era stata attribuita in parte alla diffusione della radio via satellite, e in parte alla diffusione degli iPod.Ormai sugli iPod e sugli analoghi apparecchi MP3 è possibile scaricare non solo musica ma anche programmi radiofonici distribuiti via Internet. Prima di salire in macchina, ad esempio, l'utente può scaricare dal computer all'iPod quello che desidera sentire e ascoltarlo durante un viaggio senza interruzioni pubblicitarie.
Non è chiaro cosa abbia causato l'ulteriore calo degli indici di ascolto negli ultimi sei mesi, ma di fronte al peggiorare della situazione alcune societa' hanno preso le dovute iniziative. La CBS quindi ha venduto per 262 milioni di dollari le stazioni radio di Austin in Texas, di Rochester nello stato di New York, di Memphis in Tennessee e di Cincinnati in Ohio alla Enterprise Communications; quest'ultima ampliera' il suo raggio d'azione a 22 aree geografiche degli Stati Uniti. Il segmento radio era diventato un onere nei bilanci della CBS, e infatti il fatturato dell'ultimo trimestre era sceso dell'1% proprio per il calo della raccolta pubblicitaria presso le sue 179 stazioni radio. In luglio la CBS aveva gia' eliminato 115 posti di lavoro nel segmento radiofonico.
La ABC invece aveva preso gia' lo scorso settembre la decisione di vendere 22 stazioni radio alla Citadel Broadcasting per 2,7 miliardi di dollari, metà in contanti e metà in azioni Citadel. Una clausola contrattuale prevedeva tuttavia che la porzione in contanti salisse di 250 milioni di dollari (da 1,4 a 1,65 miliardi) nel caso in cui il valore delle azioni Citadel fosse sceso nel frattempo al di sotto di un certo livello. Le quotazioni della Citadel sono infatti calate del 27% tra febbraio e oggi, in gran parte per le difficoltà finanziarie del gruppo radiofonico della Disney, dove il cash flow quest'anno dovrebbe diminuire secondo le ultime previsioni del 15%.
Se la crisi delle radio AM e FM sta lentamente peggiorando, quella della radio via satellite pare ancor più preoccupante. Wall Street ha dimostrato la sua sfiducia nel futuro delle due societa' del settore spingendo le quotazioni della Sirius al ribasso del 44% e quelle della XM al ribasso del 60% quest'anno. Molti temono che la situazione si deteriorera' ulteriormente a fine anno, quando molte offerte promozionali per abbonamenti gratis arriveranno a scadenza.
(ripreso da Dagospia 23 Agosto 2006)

Della questione si è occupato oggi anche il New York Times, con un pezzo che parla delle intenzioni, da parte della potente Clear Channel, di cedere diverse stazioni radio nei mercati pubblicitariamente poco redditizi.

Changing Its Tune

By RICHARD SIKLOS

The radio industry keeps losing people like Danny C. Costa, a senior at Boston University who grew up listening to radio in New York and New Jersey.
For the last few years, Mr. Costa has tuned out radio in favor of Web sites where he can get access to downloads or videos he heard about from friends. He prefers these to the drumbeat of the Top 40. He burns his favorite songs onto CD’s or copies them onto his iPod.
“I just sort of stopped listening to radio, because I had access to all this music online,” Mr. Costa said.
While more than 9 out of 10 Americans still listen to traditional radio each week, they are listening less. And the industry is having to confront many challenges like those that have enticed Mr. Costa, including streaming audio, podcasting, iPods and Howard Stern on satellite radio.
As a result, the prospects of radio companies have dimmed significantly since the late 1990’s, when broadcast barons were tripping over themselves to buy more stations. Radio revenue growth has stagnated and the number of listeners is dropping. The amount of time people tune into radio over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.
Over the last three years, the stocks of the five largest publicly traded radio companies are down between 30 percent and 60 percent as investors wonder when the industry will bottom out.
Now, radio’s woes have spurred a new wave of deal making.
Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio operator, is now considering selling some of its 1,200 stations in smaller markets after years of acquiring everything in sight, according to industry analysts. The Corporation">CBS Corporation did the same thing recently and now says it is looking at further station sales. The Walt Disney Company struck a deal this summer to get out of the radio business altogether, and in May, Susquehanna Broadcasting, the nation’s largest privately held radio group, was sold to another broadcaster.
But rewriting the ownership map is just part of radio’s scramble to find a new groove. In the last year, the industry has moved into overdrive by increasing experimentation with new formats and starting digital initiatives like HD Radio — a nascent format that will allow listeners with special tuners to hear more specialized channels. Radio companies are moving fast into Web businesses that incorporate video and other features that could not have been imagined when commercial radio first appeared nearly nine decades ago.
“It’s not a debate any more that radio is a structurally declining sector,” said Michael Nathanson, media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “What you’re starting to see are strategic changes in operating models to address the sluggishness of growth.”
What has set radio apart from other challenged media businesses — like video rentals, magazines, television stations and newspapers — was the swiftness of its fall from grace on Wall Street.
A possible reason is that unlike other media businesses, radio appears to have come late to the game of focusing on viable online business models. Although digital revenues are growing fast, they accounted for only $87 million of the industry’s $20 billion in 2005 revenues, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson Communications.
It is not just students in their dorms who are spending their listening time elsewhere.
Larry R. Glassman, a surgeon who does lung transplants and commutes between Cold Spring Harbor and Manhasset, N.Y., each day, used to tune into radio for his 40-minute drive, particularly to hear his classic rock favorites.
But now he subscribes to XM Radio, and recently had an XM receiver installed in a new boat. “Some of the programming I just flip over,” he said, adding that he would listen to XM in surgery if he could. Instead, “I use the iPod in the operating room.”
Mr. Glassman, who is 51, said he turned a deaf ear to radio primarily because of the advertising and because he finds the playlists of his favorite stations too mainstream and limited.
Broadcast radio advertising over all was up 0.3 percent in 2005, lagging in growth in comparison with the gross domestic product for the third consecutive year. It will continue to lag economic growth for the next five years, according to Veronis Suhler. (Only the newspaper industry gets a slower top-line growth prognosis.)
Radio’s digital efforts come as the nation’s two satellite radio companies — XM and Sirius — have amassed more than 11 million subscribers drawn to the services’ marquee names, led by Mr. Stern and various sports leagues, niche programming, sound quality and fewer or no advertisements. Still, some broadcasters argue that satellite has grabbed an unfair share of buzz given that its audience subscribers pale beside the roughly 230 million Americans who listen to old-fashioned free radio.
“As an industry, we’ve lost the hipness battle,” said Jeffrey H. Smulyan, the chief executive of Emmis Broadcasting. “Like a lot in life, it may be more perception than reality.” (Mr. Smulyan tried to take his company private earlier this summer in the face of its sagging stock price, down more than 40 percent since 2003.)
But the radio companies are looking to fight back with innovations of their own.
Clear Channel, for instance, signed a deal with BMW earlier this month to provide real-time free traffic updates to navigation systems in the automaker’s new models. The company announced another deal to beam its radio signals to Cingular wireless phone users, offering them streaming and on-demand content as well.
“We’re going to go to all sorts of different distribution platforms and have an additional five, six or seven revenue streams that we didn’t have even 24 months ago,” Mark P. Mays, Clear Channel’s chief executive, said in a recent interview.
Clear Channel has already tried other things — including stock buybacks, spinning off its outdoor advertising division and hiring a senior executive from AOL to oversee its online music efforts. It also adopted a much-watched plan to reduce on-air clutter by reducing the amount of advertising it broadcasts and running shorter spots.
Clear Channel managed to outperform the industry in its latest quarter, increasing revenue by 6 percent.
In aggressively moving online, radio companies are starting to offer new services with the sort of personalization that appeals to Web-savvy listeners. And they have put a greater emphasis on unique local programming — news, sports, traffic, weather and talk — that is tough for Web competitors to emulate.
Clear Channel already has one of the most visited music sites on the Web, and CBS Radio, formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting, has aggressively stepped up an Internet presence that was nearly nonexistent since last year. The company now streams more than 70 of its stations live, and it has started KYOURadio.com, a kind of a YouTube.com for listener-generated Podcasts.
The company has flipped formats at 27 of its stations since last year, pursuing growing areas like Spanish-language radio and using the popular Jack format, which has no on-air host and evokes the randomness of surfing for popular music.
In the first six months of the year, the operating income of CBS’s radio business fell 17 percent. Joel Hollander, chief executive of CBS Radio, said in an interview that although the business was not growing as it once did, it generated a lot of cash for the CBS Corporation and required relatively little capital investment.
“This is still a fabulous business,” he said.
Mr. Smulyan said he hoped that HD Radio and radio stations’ budding presence on the Web could help restore the luster of the business.
Peter L. Supino, an equity analyst at Wallace R. Weitz in Omaha, said the radio industry had awakened to the need to revamp the way it sold advertising and focus on improving its product, both online and off.
“It seems like an industry that had a nice run in the 1990’s that didn’t have to worry — it was just ‘step on the gas and take more in sales every year,’ ” said Mr. Supino, whose firm holds shares in Cumulus Media, the radio company.
While radio companies are pinning their hopes on HD Radio, it is still at least three years from becoming a big enough business to have an impact on industry revenues. And John S. Rose, a partner in the media practice at the Boston Consulting Group, says the industry has not yet figured out ways to use the pristine sound quality of HD Radio to offer paid downloads of songs.

Amid so much uncertainty, it is little wonder that sessions at next week’s National Association of Broadcasters radio convention in Dallas advertise things like: “Learn to steal money from your local newspaper” and “Harnessing the power of blogging.” It is also a sign of the times that the convention’s opening reception does not have a broadcaster as a host. Instead, Google will be buying the drinks.
(September 15, 2006)

La radio americana è in forte crisi di inserzionisti e ascolti e il New York Times avanza con i suoi intervistati la teoria secondo cui se tanti danni vengono dal mondo online, allora la radio deve rivedere le proprie attività sinergiche con Internet. Non a caso, conclude il quotidiano, il Radioshow, la mitica convention di Dallas che la NAB, National Association of Broadcasters, dedicherà alla radio, sarà sponsorizzata, tra gli altri, da Google e inciterà l'industria ad appropriarsi dei nuovi linguaggi, come i blog. Sarà. Molti DXer americani, commentando questo e lo stuolo di altri giornali che hanno preceduto il NYT su questo argomento, continuano a sostenere, in modo secondo me sensato, che se la gente smette di ascoltare la radio la colpa è dei programmi ripetitivi e noiosi. Un crollo qualitativo legato alla scarsa attenzione che gli editori radiofonici prestano ai veri talenti. In radio trionfano le programmazioni automatiche e i deejay sottopagati. E contro la cattiva programmazione non c'è sinergia (o standard trasmissivo) digitale che tenga.

Tags: radioascolto, radiofonia, radio, dxing.