Remember when a toy was something somebody else made that you simply purchased? This week Mattel has announced a $300 3-D printer for kids that will set their imaginations free: Users upload design files via Mattel’s proprietary Design App, which works on Android or iOS devices, and can print parts to be assembled into toys. Terry Wohlers, founder and principal analyst at industry research firm Wohlers Associates, said “It should help to unlock the creative juices of our yout

The routine is familiar: At least one radio station in every market flips to “All Christmas” music around Thanksgiving, thus dominating the Nielsen ratings before and during the holiday period. The interpretation: Everybody wants to hear Christmas tunes during the holiday season. So let’s go all in and market the heck out of it! But what if something else is going on here? What if Christmas music is the thing you hear when you’re in the right place rather than being the thing

Over the past few weeks I have heard the story more than once: A big segment of a News/Talk show or a morning show was given over to an interview subject whose identity, content, and duration had nothing to do with what interested audiences and everything to do with what advertisers are paying for. Everybody was in on this joke – except for the audience. For them it was just crappy content. It seems quaint to reflect on the fact that advertisers once bought spots. Today, the

As you consider your target audience, don’t forget that target keeps moving. And it has profound implications for radio. Check out this chart from Business Insider via WSJ: This chart shows the changes in US demographics (age only) over the past six years. What you’re looking at is a slight decline in the overall number of 25-54’s (down 1.2%), a more sizable increase among 16-24’s (up 3.7%) and a massive increase among those 55 and over – the folks who are traditionally of li

“Fans, not just Listeners.” That was the theme of a national conference of show and digital producers for Southern Cross Austereo, Australia’s leading media and entertainment company. What happens to your strategies when your focus is on fans first? What happens to your ability to execute those strategies across platforms? It turns out that a cross-platform structure and asking different questions yields some impressive new outcomes. Watch this short conversation with Sam Cav

“Will you talk to me?” I mean, one-on-one? It’s my observation that most program directors spend infinitely more time talking to the ratings reports than talking to actual listeners.  Needless to say, this confuses input (listeners) and outcome (ratings). As a practitioner of consumer research, I’m not foolish enough to believe that one conversation with one listener represents a fact, but it does represent a story.  And the sum total of all listener behavior is the sum total