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9/18/00 Changing The Tactics Of The Revolution
From the age of 14, Radio has owned my life. I’ve always believed it to be the most powerful medium on earth, and I hope to see it one day dominate the total advertising market. I don’t care how the signal is sent — transmitters, satellites, wires, the Internet or something that we’ve not yet imagined. Radio will ever be Radio.
After years of fighting, a loyal soldier often becomes weary. It’s embarrassing enough if you believe the "official" 7 or 8 percent that we like to recite to ourselves. It’s even more embarrassing if you listen to the 3 percent estimate that we hear from objective analysts. Yes, it takes more than small progress and the occasional win to keep alive the hope that my life’s work may still one day be validated. There comes a day when a tired soldier either quits or says, "If we’re ever going to win this battle, we must invent a new weapon with which to fight."
We, the people of Radio, are stuck in a rut established by our forefathers. Training has not changed, attitudes have not changed; and as a result we continue to live on the crumbs that fall off the table of our newspaper, Yellow Page, outdoor and direct-mail competitors. Will we ever get angry enough to enlarge our share?
The buzz in the air is that Eric Rhoads is launching a new business. But that’s far from the whole story. I’ve decided to launch a whole new industry.
I’m doing it because I believe it may be the only way to get Radio beyond its tiny little market share. To the casual observer, what I’m doing will appear to be Internet Radio, yet I refuse to be lumped into that underwhelming and largely
irrelevant category. Instead, I am upgrading this technology, making it truly interactive, and taking its functionality to a whole new level. It will look and feel to the consumer like the Radio they’ve always known and loved, but in the eyes of advertising buyers, it will be a whole new medium.
The only real battle is Sight vs. Sound. Using our new Internet sound technology, we have hope of moving billions of advertising dollars from "sight" into "sound" technologies. We believe the overflow of our success will even benefit our cousins in TV. This new technology will allow us to align ourselves with major brands and open their long-deaf ears to the magic and miracle of music. We believe that media buyers will finally listen to us because we will be able to offer them the magic of interactivity and cold-logic transactability. In other words, they will be able to track results like never before.
I’m using the Internet to open new doors for Radio. My greatest hope is that you will soon be walking through these open doors and winning the war.
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From the Publisher
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