$5 million for a 30-second spot
Just a quick reminder that CBS is already selling 30-second spots for next year’s Super Bowl. They’re getting $5 million for a :30.
And NBC is already projecting more than $1 billion in ad revenue for the 2016 Olympics, based on inventory already sold, more than a year in advance.
Meanwhile, AC Radio, which dominates every major American market for the entire month of December — as opposed to just one night for the Super Bowl — mutely accepts Nielsen’s decision to discount its biggest cume event as aberrational.
Of course it’s a freaking aberration; so is the Super Bowl. So is every huge freaking TV event which commands higher rates.
Deep breath, Doug…
In many American cities, stations playing nothing but Christmas music for over a month out-cume local TV stations.
Yet Radio doesn’t treat that as its own version of the Super Bowl.
We tend to apologize for it.
We don’t pre-sell that extraordinary listening event months in advance, using the old theory of supply and demand to drive rates ever upward.
I’m told Radio just doesn’t do it that way. We’re not TV. Agencies won’t do that for Radio. Blah blah blah…
We’ve been told for 30 years that listeners don’t want to hear air talent, that they won’t sit through new, unfamiliar songs, that Radio doesn’t need marketing because it’s “self-cuming” (whatever the heck that is), that mornings is the most important day-part, that agencies won’t pay more for ads during December. Blah blah blah…
Then Apple shows up with BEATS 1, centered around world-famous air talent featuring mostly new songs curated by artists, with the biggest spotlight placed on nights and tens of millions spent marketing it…
Isn’t leading the whole point of leadership?
Nothing will change inside your company until YOU change it.
Nothing will change inside Radio if we keep telling ourselves it can’t, because it’s always been done this way and not that way.
And so we sit and watch and congratulate ourselves on our huge reach, and dole out enormous bonuses to our CEOs while we cut staffing and budgets, and spotlight the very people most committed to maintaining the status quo.
Arrrrgggghhhhh. Stick a fork in my head before it explodes.