You don’t hear much about paintball lately, but at its peak in 2004-2006 nearly as many people played paintball in America as played baseball - over 12 million people were shooting at each other for fun. Beginning in 2006, though, paintball suffered a horrendous decline; by 2016 annual participation had declined by over 70%, to about 3.5 million players.
What happened to paintball, and how could that possibly relate to radio? Some people attribute paintball’s decline to the Great Recession, but the trend clearly began well before 2009 (here’s an intelligent analysis of paintball’s decline by a key player in the industry). Something big happened to paintball between 2004 and 2006: the key suppliers to the industry, along with many paintball parks, underwent consolidation. Those suppliers’ advertising and promotional campaigns had been the drivers of much of the awareness of paintball, but consolidators reduced marketing budgets to improve profits. Paintball became less top of mind; with less buzz fewer people played, and the social spiral fell off a cliff.
In the short term, the reduction in marketing expense by the paintball industry had a beneficial effect on profits; the long-term result, however, was disastrous. Marketing is one of the many areas in life in which long and short-term effects are often the inverse of each other. In the short term, for example, cocaine or amphetamines can produce elevated alertness, a burst of energy, and a feeling of euphoria. The effects of long-term usage, though, can include paranoia and death. Short-term good, long-term very very bad.
What does this have to do with the radio industry? As a result of consolidation, recession, and digital encroachment on revenue, many owners and operators have reduced advertising and marketing dramatically, making the medium less top of mind. In most cases, they also reduced air staff, which resulted in fewer people going fewer places to represent radio to the public.
This has happened in the face of ever more competition for consumers’ time and attention, with info/entertainment options expanding exponentially. In the short term, those cuts were mostly prudent, and even essential to the survival of some companies. In the long run, however, radio is likely to suffer, with the damage potentially greater in sales than in listenership.
Like all consultants, I travel a lot. Very commonly, I can spend several days in a market without seeing any visible evidence that radio exists; no billboards, no television ads, not even bumper stickers except for an occasional dingy, grungy one on an old battered car. Who’s reminding local consumers – and more importantly, local advertisers - about radio? Well, our friends in other media, who continue the steady drip drip drip of “everybody’s listening to Pandora and satellite.” And of course local radio sellers, who generally like to remind prospects how inexpensive radio is and what’s wrong with other radio stations.
Business people tend to be more avid readers of newspapers than do average consumers. So after reading about Pandora’s growth and Sirius/XM’s commercial free channels, what does mister business owner think when a local radio salesperson reminds him or her how cheap radio is? “Of course, it’s cheap…nobody’s listening” is one thing that comes to mind.
Radio has to worry about the short-term, because you have to survive the short-term for there to be a long-term for your company or your job. Thus, massive increases in marketing budget are unlikely to happen anytime soon. For radio’s long-term health, then, our best short-term actions are to sell positively – “cheap” isn’t our best foot forward - and to make our stations as visible as possible, as often as possible.
As always, your thoughts are invited: alan@burnsradio.com.