Two Wise Words

I was reading an article online about a conference of public radio program directors. The conference was held in Hollywood, just below the famous hillside sign and just above the sidewalk where imprints of the hands and feet of the famous are enshrined in concrete.

As with all conferences, there were workshops, breakout sessions and major seminars. There was probably too much drinking, some extra-curricular sight-seeing activities, and major-league schmoozing. That part wasn’t in the article. What was in the article was a sentence from the closing remarks, done by Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered:

Be necessary.

He was speaking to radio program directors about a medium that’s finding itself increasingly pushed to get outside of the box. With broadcast-style wireless Internet getting closer by the day, radio is going to have to expand its brand onto the web, but most station websites now are little more than sales portals. They’re not necessary for the radio listener, who in five years or so will probably have a small, portable device they can access the Internet with 24/7, checking scores, doing emails and listening to any radio station on earth with a web stream. Lots of people have that now, but the day is getting nearer that most of us will have wireless Internet with unlimited service in a convenient, take-with-you-everywhere size. What radio has been good at…local and free…has got to be expanded by then because that little device means that “local and free” will have to compete with every station in the world with a web stream plus all the new Internet stations that seem to be cropping up each day.

Now, that’s competition!

Be necessary.

That’s really great advice for all radio program directors, not just those at public broadcasting stations. Actually, it’s great advice for anyone running any kind of business, especially in our current economic slowdown/downturn/recession.

In order to be a survivor, you’ve got to be necessary to your customer or client. You’ve got to serve their needs so well, sometimes giving them things even they didn’t know they needed, that you become a piece of their lives or of their businesses. 해외축구무료보기