Last night I had the "pleasure" of co-hosting a radio show called "Bam!" on 76.1 InterFM. InterFM is one of Tokyo's 5 major FM stations. It is the flagship of a network of FM stations in Japan called the "Mega-Net" (of which one of the big network stations went bankrupt about two months ago!).
Being on the show was a fairly pleasurable experience for the most part but the loss of "excitement" for working in FM radio was palpable in the air amongst the staff. The thrill of FM radio was lost on me long ago...(Actually, the station wants me to be on this particular show regularly and has had my photo on their web page for nearly a year, even though I haven't been there in a long time.)
Why haven't I been going to the radio station? Let me explain just one of the many reasons why....
Things in FM radio today in Japan are nothing like they were twenty-five, twenty, even ten years ago. I suspect the same is true everywhere. Even as recently as ten years ago being on the radio was exciting and there was the glam and glitz of "Hollywood" in the air.... Now? It seems like it is just a job to most people at the station.
Things aren't what they used to be... Although they never were...
I gather that the attitude of the radio station staff was just like that of a clerk at a government office or a manual laborer assembling nuts and bolts or attaching grommets at a factory. There was no passion. No buzz of excitement in the air. It seemed to me that everyone just consider this "another job."
People who think this way and have no passion for their work should find a job that they like or, most certainly, they should not be in any sort of creative endeavor.
I know how FM radio was over 30 years ago as I have hosted, produced, directed, cleaned toilets, served coffee and been a "go-fer" for radio shows and radio stations since I was a university student... In Japan, I am a very old-timer in this business.
During the program last night, I tried to pay attention to the commercials that they aired during the show and was surprised to hear that there were very few. Oh sure they had things that sounded like commercials, but, for the most part, they were "spots" about other programs.
Spots about other programs do not earn a station any money. Zero. Zip. Nada.
But I did hear, I think, two "real" commercials the entire two hour live show... One was for car insurance and the other one? Well, I can't really say that I understood what that was a commercial for... They were either selling milk or hiring drivers! I didn't catch it very well.
That's the problem with radio. If you missed it the first time, it's gone... you can't scroll back.
During the commercial for insurance, I wondered (again) why anyone would pay money for a 15 second commercial that runs at, say, exactly 10 pm and runs for exactly 15 seconds then disappears into oblivion? I mean, who hears these commercials? How much do they cost? How do they measure results?
InterFM broadcasts to an area of 35 million homes in Tokyo... Conservative estimates are 65 million people. So they have a huge potential pool of listeners. But how many are actually listening?
I suspect not many.
I have some anecdotal evidence that I can share concerning numbers of listeners....
In the past, I helped organized promotional campaigns for InterFM before whereby an airlines would, say, provide 3 pairs round-trip tickets to Macau with two nights free stay at a 5 star hotel... Basically the vacations were all expenses paid... The cash value for one pair of tickets with hotel was about (¥340,000) $3,600.
The commercials for the contest ran at least six times a day everyday for a week. That makes six 15 second commercials at 1.5 minutes a day multiplied by five days. That is a total of 7.5 minutes. (This 7.5 minutes will be an important point later in this article so keep this in mind!)
In a city of 65 million people, and only 5 FM stations, guess how many people signed up for the contest? 5,000? 50,000? 100,000? 200,000 people?
Nope. 82 people. Eighty two! Eight. Two. Oh! 8-2-oh as in "Oh my God! What a fricking disaster that campaign was!"
Of course there were more than 82 names who "signed up" for the contest. There were about 318 names in total (still lame!). But, I say 82 people (about) because everyone who signed up also signed up their spouses and their parents and in-laws... Some people even signed up their children. Heck, for all I know, some people could have signed up their dogs and cats. We could judge the fact that one person signed up their entire family by seeing on the sign up list the same family names of 4, 5, 6 people in a row.
So 82 is, pardon my French, "peis poor."
OK. Forget the poor results. Let's look at cost.
A campaign like this would normally cost about ¥5,000,000 (about $60,000) - heavily discounted it would cost about $17,000. And InterFM is one of the cheaper rated stations...
$17,000 dollars is a heck of a lot of money to pay for 7.5 minutes of airtime...
Now, think about it; why in the world would any sponsor pay ¥1,500,000 (about $17,000) for a week long campaign like this? I figure it is because the person who is in-charge of the money at a sponsor company is ancient and doesn't understand the Internet and still has some idea that FM radio is cool because "the kids like it." This person would have to be ancient because that would explain their poor eyesight. (As I know from experience, when you get older, your eyes get real bad!) I mean that these people would have to be ancient because ancient people are the only ones to have poor enough eyesight not to notice the white earplugs every second person on the subway is wearing.
(Hint: There is no FM reception in the subway and those white things in everyone's ears are earplugs for Apple iPods and iPhones!)
How much better that advertising money would be spent on creating a contest web page and using SNS and Social media like YouTube, Twitter, U-Stream, Pick, Facebook, Linkedin, blogs, Mixi, video blogs, vlogs, SEO that catches Google and Yahoo! to drive folks to your contest and company, product or service 24/7!
Heck, for what a sponsor spends on a week long campaign on the radio - where it is questionable if anyone hears it - they can get metrics and measure exactly the numbers of web page hits and what the effects of a Tweet or a YouTube has on their "bounce"....
Then they measure and tweak as they go along.
For $17,000, a sponsor could run a killer Internet campaign and probably run it for 3 ~ 6 months 24/7 before they run out of money....
Now, I ask you, how would you spend the $17,000? Would you opt for the 3 ~ 6 months 24/7 Internet campaign or the 7.5 minutes campaign on FM radio?
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Keywords:
Apple, FM Radio, Social Media, Macau, Japan, Google, InterFM, Tweet, Linkedin, Blogs, video-blogs, Pick, Twitter, U-Stream, Tokyo, FM station, Barter, Mega-net, Facebook, YouTube, SEO, SNS, Yahoo!, Tokyo, Taro Furukawa
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