"You have a right to your own opinion. You do not have a right to your own facts." Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Everyone has the right to program." Buzz Bennett

"Life is a place of service, and in that service one has to suffer a great deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great deal of joy. But that joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness." Leo Tolstoy

Tim Manners has written a Fast Company column headed Is Google Killing Radio Advertising? "Bigger isn't always better, and this is particularly true with regard to the power of radio as an advertising medium. But advertises (sic) like Google just don't seem to understand radio's true potential" writes Manners in his opening paragraph. Three paras later he quotes a USA Today item wherein Eric Schmit (sic) is quoted as saying "Look at the time people spend listening to radio, versus the money currently being spent to advertise on radio -- it's out of whack. Radio can be much bigger." Manners responds "Well, what's out of whack is the idea that bigger is better in radio. In radio, bigger is never better because the beauty of the medium is in its intimacy. In radio, smaller is better." He goes on to tell us he is a "former local-radio announcer...During a break, I'd pick up the phone. On the line is a listener -- a total stranger -- who would speak to me as if I were the closest of friends...Radio's true power is in that kind of one-to-one communication." Then Tim delivers the goods with this insight "The commercials sandwiched between the music and my patter did not capitalize on that connection. More often than not, the ads undermined it." He ends his writing "...if Google succeeds in using the power of the internet to jam radio's airwaves with more and more irrelevant ads, it will make the medium weaker, not stronger. It will disrupt the very thing that makes radio great. It will drive yet another wedge between radio and its listeners, and make radio even less relevant as a medium for marketing tomorrow than it is today."

Disappointing and almost too clever by half. Almost. Why this magna cum laude grad of Tufts failed to achieve the highest Latin honor we may never know, however, in this writing at least, he has failed to do his homework. Mr. Manners' "local-radio announcer" credential and previous bad experience with a sales department notwithstanding the guy clearly fails to grasp the fundamentals of the business.

As it happens size does matter. The power of radio as an advertising medium is well documented. Manners obviously misses Eric's point. It's Eric, not Tim, who understands radio's true potential. Radio reaches 93% of US consumers every single week. Radio captures a single digit percentage of the US ad spend. That is out of whack but the ad game often fails to be logical, rational or even fair. Welcome to our dysfunctional family picnic and ring toss.

Manners would have us believe that "In radio, smaller is better." He's wrong. He states "bigger is never better because the beauty of the medium is in its intimacy." Again, wrong. The intimacy characteristic of radio, of audio for that matter, that unique power of one-to-one communication is not diminished as the audience gets bigger. There's a technical term for his argument - goofy.

He writes "The fact that the power of radio as an advertising medium is a function of the credibility of its on-air personalities" and then references the great Arthur Godfrey. Certainly true that personalities can be very persuasive and effective sellers but radio is more than that one trick derby winner. What Manners has done here is wrongly discount the exceptional creative work being done by shops, inde producers and station teams. Closed circuit to Tim: check out the Mercury Awards and the Radio Lions winners. Bonus hint: Radio works. Bud Light would shut down their Real Men of Genius campaign if it were not working. You can bet the Volvo on it, these are beer guys.

Manners is as loyal as Achates to the conventional hack wisdom that states when writing about radio thou shalt bash Clear Channel. He also casts Google as a co-conspirator "teaming up...to clog the airwaves with more and more commercials." Writing about any possible Clear Channel - Google cabal is so de rigueur. And so off the mark. As Drucker once taught the market happens outside the enterprise. The ultimate success or failure of Clear Channel and Google will be decided in the marketplace, a very competitive marketplace. Further, relevance is Google's oxygen. To suggest that Google would be a part of broadcasting "more and more irrelevant ads" demonstrates Manners' acute naivete. And please, let's leave those Less is More guys alone already. Now at the tender mercies of their new PE pals my guess is LIM might be taking on a whole new meaning. Being private (no Reg FD) could mean that no one hears you scream. Or maybe not but it does make a good visual.

Back to the countdown. Google, along with the other media exchanges, seek to create a new sales channel. Manners fails to offer any reasonable support for his notion that such a new sales channel will make radio weaker. Any new source of revenue, properly managed by stations, will not become another "wedge between radio and its listeners" nor will it work to make radio any less relevant as a medium for marketing. It is possible one could make exactly the opposite case and actually be closer to the coming truth. The safe bet is radio and those FM with pictures guys will successfully jump the digital divide. Stay tuned.

What Manners fails to mention is Clear Channel is but one of the many broadcasters in "alliance" with Google. My understanding is Google is now working with almost two thousand radio stations. The AdSense for audio initiative isn't new, it's over a year old now and those dMarc guys were at it for some time before that. Giving advertisers "the ability to buy radio ads online with a simple click of the mouse" seems an honorable mission but somehow not to Manners. He appears to be saying give only the listeners what they want and damn those advertisers (and underwriters). The reality is broadcasters have to keep both constituencies happy to keep the lights on and the bills paid. Success in broadcast remains a high wire act. It is certainly true, you can be riding high in April and definitely shot down in May. And let's not forget the feds either as radio remains a federally regulated endeavor.

Manners praises online-only station UltraRadio as a champion of local music and tells us it's "not unlike what radio great 'Murray the K' did back in the 1950s and 1960s" (hanging out in clubs and listening to what his audience was listening to). Good to know, thank you. Tim, here's two clues. Riff2. iChannel. Look them up. A great many local stations support their local music scene. Always have. Unsigned acts have never before been the focus of more radio attention. Moreover, there are many modern day Murray the Ks working in the trade today.

Size matters when it comes to innovation. Manners praises the size of a billionaire benefactor's wallet when it makes possible the very cool work being done at KEXP. Size can also be a good thing when today's market portfolio, the cluster, serves innovation. Kelly Kibler and J.D. Freeman are able to take a flyer on one of their Dallas Fort Worth stations because they have five other chances to win. Offering sponsorships by the hour and putting single sponsor opportunities on the market is certainly creative and the stuff of radio's early commercial days. Sidebar: As late as the 1970s my father's program was sold by the hour to advertisers including American Airlines and Budweiser (and yes, he delivered every commercial live, ad libitum).

Manners is too quick and perhaps even a bit cavalier when he gives bad odds to the life expectancy of music-oriented social-network sites ("..such dreams will die a quick death"). Never doubt the power of a great sales team or the incredible ingenuity of entrepreneurship to beat the odds. The lads at last.fm, and others, will find a way don't you worry. It's that marketplace thing again.

So, is it fair to suggest Google is killing radio advertising? As Borat would say...not so much.

Tim Manners is to be commended for making mentions of KZPS, KEXP and UltraRadio. Each deserves recognition. We can all do a better job of catching folks doing things right. He's also spot-on about one other very important thing "When radio is approached with that kind of intensity, with such extraordinary personal dedication to the interests of its audience, its ability to sell to that audience is hard to match." Closed circuit #2 to Tim: Radio is approached in that very way. It's happening today all across America. There's a lot of great radio out there. Get dialed in.

Congrats & cheers: Michael Gutkowski named COO of iVillage. David Lebow named CEO of IBS. Mary Jeanne Cavanagh promoted to Oxygen EVP Ad Sales.

Photo: Mendota sunset 2 by pharder1 Fine shooting. Thank you.

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better." Wendell Phillips

"Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration." Andrew Carnegie

"Genius is initiative on fire." Holbrook Jackson

Peter Smyth, Greater Media's president and CEO is one of radio's best. I've been a fan since my days at WBZ when Peter was across the street at WROR. Peter recently shared his thoughts on Google's AdSense for Audio initiative. Let me encourage you to read Peter's piece Can Google Sell Radio? Much of what Peter says in his writing is pitch perfect, however, I must respectfully disagree with his conclusion (i.e., "it's not time to surrender"). Peter is right on the state of affairs in radio sales and simply wrong on Google.

Perhaps his most intellectually honest and valuable observation is "it's time for us to take a close look at the leadership, operating philosophy, and organization of our sales departments."

Little has changed in the way radio sells radio. Radio still gets up each day and goes to work to kill other radio. This zero sum game is the real reason radio fails to gain share of ad spend. It's silo warfare to gain share of a single digit ad spend while ignoring the double digit dead tree guys. This is the same kind of thinking that drives stations with a one share in Arbitron to target and attack other one share rated stations rather than targeting and attacking the market leaders. It was ever thus. We've been talking about gaining share from newspaper, yellow pages, television, cable and other media for decades. The biggest challenge today is unlearning. As Dee Hock once said "The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind but how to get the old ones out." We are using the wrong metrics. It's time to change the denominator. Time to reboot Miller-Kaplan. Clearly, we have a leadership problem. Chances are Peter would agree.

Back in the day I spent a good number of Saturdays and Sundays sitting in a conference room listening to the brilliant Kevin Sweeney as he taught us how to steal money from the dead tree guys. Kevin was the gifted sales development expert who famously said "Would you be interested in learning a technique that will produce a 100% improvement in your ability to close a sale?" He would then go on to preach the importance of the spec spot. Spec production is a lost art today. Sidebar: Later when I was a group guy we would use our unsold inventory on Mondays to play specs on the air when our sellers would call in from a retailer and tell us they were "ready." This only worked 75% of the time.

Peter writes about calling on retailers. Married to an owner of a retail business I am able to offer a somewhat unique pov here. Open for almost three years now my wife has been called on by just about every organization selling advertising. The most creative are those selling space in church bulletins. We advertise on television and in print, have done so for years. Accordingly, we are switch pitched weekly by every video and print seller. The most aggressive sellers are dead tree folks, they make face calls. The radio sellers tend to cold call via telephone. When told she is not interested in meeting with them their response is almost always the same..."You're making a mistake." You can imagine how powerfully that line works in positioning the radio seller as someone who understands what's on the mind of a small business owner. True story: one radio cluster operator (a major publicly held concern) took 16 months before making their first call.

My sense is this is not a singular experience. Radio simply does a poor job of selling radio's value proposition. In answer to Peter's well put question "Are we selling spots or are we selling value?" my thought is we are continuing to fail in articulating value; mostly, we are selling spots, doing whatever it takes to get the order. Further, we are asking too much of our sellers. The demands of today have eclipsed the skills and working knowledge of the majority of our sellers. They deserve better.

What Google represents is a new sales channel. It seems to me this is a potentially additive opportunity, given the right rules of engagement. What stands in the way would appear to be a dated mindset about inventory. We talk about calling on new customers, talk about developing the kind of clientèle that Google proposes to bring to us, we talk about a great many things when, perhaps, we should be decisive and take action. To succeed sooner we must learn how to fail faster. We need to understand that doing the same things and expecting a different result is flawed beyond any and all reason. We must stop focusing on getting better at a game that is no longer being played. We need to embrace that four letter word we most often avoid: risk. We have an urgent need to get different.

"..money doesn't talk, it swears" Bob Dylan

Leadership must be responsible for producing results.

The electronic ad exchange concept is not going to go away. Working with Google or any other ad exchange should not be viewed as an all or nothing proposition. Peter suggests, wrongly in my opinion, working with Google to be surrender. My thought is to work with Google is not to abandon our sellers but rather to abandon our bias against establishing new sales channels. It is the challenge of leadership to find new and effective ways to do business. To find fresh approaches that benefit both customer and seller. To boldly commit to doing what has not been done before. To adapt our basics, update our fundamentals, refresh and renew our best practices. The best used by date on the radio business model has expired. Radio is not alone, it's a sea change out there for all of ad supported measured media.

We need to stop kidding ourselves, stop making excuses, stop rationalizing failure and get on with the serious work of reinvention.

Surrender is a word I chose not to use especially when we have a robust vocabulary of proactive verbs available including imagine and collaborate. The sun is setting on business as usual. A bright new day of opportunity beckons. Surrender? Never. Truth be told we have yet begun to fight. Game on!

LATER: Lindsay Wood Davis weighs in and makes reference to Christina Maslach, a professor at the University of California - Berkeley. Pluralistic ignorance is the term coined by Dr Maslach to suggest we tend to think we are different when, in fact, we are not. This is in play when we say "our market, our stations, our situation is different." Thanks for sharing Lindsay.

Bravos to Peter Smyth and the Greater Media gang for doing the right thing on June 26th.

Please standby: When the legendary genius Ron Jacobs tells us he's got a "big idea" we best listen. Ron launches July 7, 2007 (07/07/07). Bookmark it now. Fair warning. All the best Ron!

Your comments are always welcome. Have a wonderful weekend.

Photo: Stella by Thomas Hawk

Very cool capture.

Great title.

Killer color.

Thank you very much!

"Johnson well says, 'He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.' Life is made up of little things. It is very rarely that an occasion is offered for doing a great deal at once. True greatness consists in being great in little things." Charles Simmons

"In great straits and when hope is small, the boldest counsels are the safest." Livy

"The art of using moderate abilities to advantage often brings greater results than actual brilliance." La Rochefoucauld

The History of Rock and Roll: Bill Mouzis has a commemorative CD set on offer. A share of proceeds benefit charity. Beginning today at 3pm Boss Angeles' time (pac) place your order at Bill's site here. Robert W. Morgan narrates the Pete Johnson written opus, engineered by Bill Mouzis. In 1969, during the watch of legendary genius Ron Jacobs, 93 KHJ presented this 48 hour history making special. More info here. Please join me and order yours today; a strong addition to any serious audio collection (and it benefits some good work). My thanks to Claude Hall for the tip. Thanks too to Bill for making this available, very cool.

Black Swan? Lots of buzz on the new Nassim Nicholas Taleb writing, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. NPR TOTN info here. NYT Book review here. It makes a book list by Tom Peters here. Amazon info here. I did enjoy Taleb's previous book, Fooled by Randomness and highly recommend it. Speaking of buzz...Feedburner!

Kudos: Chicago programming ace Elroy Smith is stepping down. He joins the greats that have made a difference in Chicago radio including Lucky Cordell, Lee Michaels and Marv Dyson. He's certain to do more great work. All the best Elroy.

Congrats & cheers: The Library of American Broadcasting honors the "Giants of Broadcasting." Those honored this year include Cathy Hughes, Diane Sawyer, Dennis Swanson, Joseph Flaherty, Dennis FitzSimons, and Charlie Rose. Also honored are the late, great John Blair and another we lost, the charming wit Tony Malara, forever our favorite master of ceremonies. Howard Lindzon, Adam Eland, Jeff Marks and the star of the show Lindsay Campbell all headed to the big time, CBS acquires WallStrip. Check out today's vid wherein Lindsay is escorted out of Black Rock "We're here to save your network" (nice cameo Quincy).

Connecting the dots: "If the ad networks are just playing an arbitrage game, then they will not survive in the long run" so said Gokul Rajaram project management director for Google's AdSense. He's right on the money. He also believes indies can survive by adding value to publishers in a sustainable and scalable way. Bravos Gokul! OMD's Temeka Kee writes Google Inches Toward Comprehensive Online (and Offline) Ad Solution here.

Google Proposes Innovation in Radio Spectrum Auction, a writing by John Markoff via NYT here. Kudos John, well done! The bottom line...there is plenty of spectrum needing more diverse, innovative allocation and Google's concept would seem to provide opportunities for real depth in practical shared distribution.

Alpha is the new beta: Operator 11. Smash or trash? You decide.

Hope he's wrong, but my sense is he's right: Michael Arrington is a bright guy. If you are not reading Techcrunch put it in your reader and give it a week. Read his post - Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now - with comments here. Danger, Will Robinson! Dave Winer weighs in and agrees with Michael to wit: "As they say, you can't throw a pot sticker into a crowd without hitting a budding entrepreneur with a pitch. The place is crawling with get-rich-quick schemes." More Dave here. Bravos to Michael and Dave. There is a late 1999 vibe out there and lots of cash parked on the sidelines. Reminds me of something the brilliant Gary Hamel once said "Money makes you stupid. Lots of money makes you really stupid." This remains a year of amazing opportunity for the real deals. The danger is the enticement of easy money. The sketchy business model. Dave Winer's superficial pet food example is only too real. Sales and profit are very, very important, don't leave home without them. When the team is more concerned about, focused on, preoccupied with the next round rather than obsessing on sales and profits, trust me, you're in the wrong outfit. Word to the wise - do not make a move without paper that includes a bullet-proof exit.

Thank you very much but you just can't motivate others. A bunch of emails on yesterday's sales manager post. One example: "Hey, did you forget about being a motivator, duh?"

Well, no. Motivation was discussed and dismissed.

Granted, a great leader should have the ability to inspire, to encourage, to incite but even the greatest leaders are not able to motivate. Can't be done.

People motivate themselves.

The real enemy of the dead tree guys - the dead tree guys."I'm talking industrywide mismanagement among print-media companies -- both glossy and newsprint. I'm talking Detroit-in-the-'70s, with no Lee Iacocca in sight." Simon Dumenco writing in AdAge, Are Your Shoes Tied? Then You're Smarter Than Many Print Execs. Bravo Simon! Read the entire article here.