State of The Station for WOWO Summertime 2021

State of The Station for WOWO Summertime 2021

by | Jun 16, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Here we are in the middle of June 2021 and this weeks article and podcast is a little different from my usual weekly updates.

Today an update on what is going on at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from an insiders perspective as we peak behind the curtain and give you some insights.

First a bit about me, just so you know who I am and how I know what I’m going to tell you.  I joined WOWO Radio in December, 2013 as the 5th person on a five person advertising sales team. WOWO is one of 6 radio stations owned by Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I not only survived, but thrived.  I won my first Feddy Award in 2014 for Supergoal.  Feddy’s are the Federated Media achievement awards, like Grammy’s or Emmy’s.

As the years went by, I continued to grow and I won my second Feddy Supergoal Award in 2019 for Federated Media’s Fort Wayne division.  These Supergoal awards are only given to one person each year in Fort Wayne and they do the same at our Federated Media South Bend division.  I also won my third Feddy in 2019, but this was company wide, not just our division.  This Feddy Award is Account Manager of the Year for our company.

The past nearly 8 years is just a portion of my background in radio, advertising and marketing.  I started while I was in high school on the radio and worked for a few other stations on the air and on the advertising business side for a few decades.  Finally, I will mention that right after I won my second and third Feddy Awards, I was promoted to become the General Sales Manager for WOWO Radio and now lead the team to help businesses connect with our listeners and convert them into customers.

Now let’s move on to what I really wanted to share with you.

WOWO radio is nearly 100 years old.  2025 will mark a century of WOWO radio.  The past 20 or so years, WOWO has been a news and talk formatted radio station.  Since I joined in 2013 we’ve had a couple of changes in our programming line-up:

Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Charly Butcher was on until August 2018 from 5am to 9am.  Charly unexpectedly passed away while on vacation and our company had to scramble and plan at the same time.  Charly was a beloved radio icon who I worked with when I was on the air at our sister station WMEE and when the opportunity arose for a new morning anchor on WOWO, Charly was given the opportunity which he handled marvelously.  He was in his early 60’s when he died and Federated Media had a couple of guest hosts as they did a local and national search for his replacement.  Turns out our news director, Kayla Blakeslee was selected and Kayla has been doing an outstanding job these past 3 years.  Looking forward, Kayla has decades ahead of her as the host of WOWO’s fast paced morning news show.  Her advertisers are getting results and her personal endorsement clients are thrilled.

National talk show host Glenn Beck kicks off the WOWO Mid-Day Double Play at 9am as he has for years.  Glenn also will endorse local businesses, ask me about it.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh anchored the noon to 3pm portion of the Mid-Day Double Play on WOWO until February this year.  He passed away a little over a year after announcing he had lung cancer.  Rush was able to continue his radio show with a rotating cast of fill-in hosts in 2020 when he was off for treatment.  After the announcement of his passing this year, the program continued with hosts playing clips from the Rush radio archives that were woven into the events of the day. 

The Rush Limbaugh program was syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks and while we at WOWO waited to see what Premiere was going to do to replace Rush, we looked around to see what our options were.  Should we wait and see or pick someone local?  Is there someone that we should consider that another network was offering? A lot of activity was going on behind the scenes even before Rush died because we knew we would need a plan.

We needed a plan to satisfy two groups.  The WOWO listeners who were loyal to conservative talk radio in the style of Rush Limbaugh for decades, was one group.  We also wanted to give our advertising partners a radio show that they would want to continue to support.  Now let me share with you something about that.

Not all of our advertisers would be called supporters of the conservative talk programming WOWO offers.  But they see the value in inviting the WOWO listeners to their business.  Advertising on WOWO is a great investment and I’ll have more on that in a moment.

Around the country over 1000 radio stations carried Rush and as we contemplated our options, we also knew the timing would need to be right.  Rush listeners grieved and by continuing with the legacy Rush shows on WOWO, it helped them, I’m sure.  We also did a poll to our database of listeners to see who they wanted and it turns out the listeners top choice was also ours.

Dan Bongino debuted on WOWO and hundreds of other radio stations on Monday May 24th and the response has been excellent.  Dan’s show is not from the Premiere Radio Network so it created a bit of confusion when about three days after Dan debuted, the Premiere network announced they were going to pair Buck Sexton with a guy from the Fox Sports network to co-host from noon to 3pm.  Dan did an excellent job of explaining that they were a different network and he wasn’t going anywhere.

I am very happy with Federated Media’s decision to add Dan Bongino from noon to 3pm and I think you will be too if you listen.

Afternoons on WOWO continue to be the Pat Miller Program.  Pat marked a 20 year milestone on WOWO this year.  He started out hosting a Saturday morning show on WOWO and then took over afternoons from 3pm to 6pm when that daily show became available.

Nights on WOWO continue with a tape delay (by three hours) of Sean Hannity’s radio show from 6pm to 9pm. We have one more change occuring starting next Monday night at 9pm.  Mark Levin returns to WOWO.  Mark is another national conservative talk show host that was on from 9pm to midnight when I started at WOWO and his return is welcomed by all.

Now that you know the line-up, what about our ratings?

Ratings are done by an independent company that surveys people in the Metro Fort Wayne area and provides us with monthly updates.  During my time at WOWO, we have been either number one, two or three out of nearly 30 radio stations in the number that matters most, total number of listeners.  It’s been at least 5 years since we were third and usually we were number two behind our sister station WMEE in total listeners ages 12 and older.  We’ve always been the most listened to station for grown ups.  Well the last rating update has WOWO as the most listened to radio station with over 100,000 listeners every week.  Hat’s off to all of my co-workers in the programming department and news department for that outstanding accomplishment. 

I was asked this week by the manager of one of the largest retailers based in Fort Wayne, how we are doing financially?  Did we take a hit during 2020 and have we started to recover?

Here’s the answer:  March 2020 was when the state of Indiana was told to stay at home to prevent the spread of Covid.  Federated Media made some adjustments and also worked with our advertising partners to help them survive.  Numerous times I have been thanked by our clients for our being sensative to their situations and it has paid off for both them and us.

WOWO’s goals are to not just beat 2020, but to grow beyond our 2019 pre-pandemic levels.  We are doing it.  I have some of the very best advertising and marketing people in our city working for me at WOWO.  We hear it from our advertisers that we really listen, care and respond to what our clients need.  

As you look forward to the rest of 2021 and the years ahead, my pledge to you is to continue that level of service and earn your trust month after month after month.

Email me if you would like more information, Scott@WOWO.com and one more item…

I am looking for just the right person to join our WOWO Advertising Sales Team.  Email me Scott@WOWO.com and I can give you more details on what can be one of the most rewarding careers available in Fort Wayne, Indiana at WOWO Radio.

The Disappearing TV Audience

The Disappearing TV Audience

by | May 19, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Not even a pandemic can save broadcast television.

As America opens up again after being told to stay home last year, we’re getting new data about some of the long term affects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  And since I’m a media and marketing dude, not a doctor, I’m going to focus on what I know about.  Get your health and wellness info from someone qualified to advice you.

I am qualified to talk about media and marketing because that is not just my passion but it’s been my livelihood for a few decades plus I have access to data that most of you don’t.

One of the predictions about 2020 was that media consumption habits were going to change due to our being stuck at home. Less people on the road would decrease radio listenership and TV would stop the slide in viewership that it’s been suffering for the past decade.

Well, radio listenership may have shifted a bit temporarily, it’s just as strong and healthy as ever.  Broadcast TV, that’s a different story.

Here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we have had 5 major broadcast TV stations since I was a kid.  ABC was channel 21, CBS was channel 15, NBC was channel 33, PBS was channel 39 and FOX was channel 55.  Those were the channels my Mom watched 20 years ago without cable and people of her generation are still watching broadcast TV, but not as many or as much because they are dying off (80 to 90 year olds), or they’ve done what my generation and those younger are doing and watching TV from cable or streaming services.

We have a collection of restaurants run by the Hall’s family in Fort Wayne that a friend of mine predicted would be out of business in 10 years because all their customers were old.  He made that prediction 20 years ago and most of those restaurants are still here.  Why?  Because they keep making old people is my answer.

But there is more to this problem for broadcast TV because the TV networks are not creating shows that younger generations want to watch.  The younger generations are finding them online or on streaming services, not ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox.

MarketingCharts.com shared data that compares July thru September 2020 with the same 3 months of 2019 and except for those age 65+, the trend for watching less broadcast TV that has been going on for more than a decade, continued despite being told to stay home.

This continuing decline is because of the habits younger generations have formed that simply can’t be ignored.  Teens are now watching less than an hour of TV, that’s a drop of 21% in just the last year. The 18 to 34 year olds viewing habits dropped over 23% in the past year.  The only age group that didn’t lose viewers were those 65 and older and they barely retained the number of viewers and time spent watching TV.   It happened to the Yellow Pages of the phone book, it continues to happen to the newspaper industry as technology changes occur and consumer habits change, the decline continues and is happening to broadcast TV.  Not even a stay-at-home order in the worst pandemic of our lifetimes has been able to save the TV stations from losing viewers.

I have a couple of questions for you if you are a business owner that has relied on TV advertising to draw in new customers.

How is it working for you compared to years ago?

19 out of 20 business owners I asked this question to at the end of 2019 (before the pandemic) told me that they have seen a decrease in their return on investment on advertising on traditional local TV.  The other person had no idea because business was booming and he used multiple avenues to advertise.

The other question is would you like to see an alternative form of advertising that hasn’t become less effective, that can either work hand in hand with your other marketing and advertising or replace some of the advertising avenues that aren’t producing for you like they used to?  Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com and I’ll put you in touch with someone from my team to discuss what can be done to make your business successful and growing this year and for years to come.

Radio Back On The Road

Radio Back On The Road

by | Apr 27, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

“Nobody listens to regular radio anymore”.

I’ve heard that myth every year for years.

My predecessors, heard a similar myth I’m sure when music became portable.

Phonograph records have been around for more than a century but in order to listen to them, you needed a record player which wasn’t very portable.  This changed a few decades ago with the invention of 8 track tapes.  My parents could buy an 8 track tape player for their car and listen to an entire record album while driving down the road.  People thought that would kill off radio stations.  But it didn’t.

8 track players were replaced by cassette tapes and eventually compact discs replaced both tapes and records. The audio systems in our cars continued to evolve as well as the prediction that radio was about to be replaced by these newer, portable ways to listen to music.

Compact Discs were just the beginning of digital music players as iPods and other MP3 players made it possible to have hundreds of songs in your pocket.

And of course the internet was supposed to kill off radio stations too, especially when our cars became connected to the online world.

I mention all of this history for one reason.  Like I said at the beginning…

“Nobody listens to regular radio anymore” is just a myth.

1000 adults 18 and older participated in a survey a couple of months ago and here’s some of the details:

According to results from a national CARAVAN survey conducted by ENGINE Insights for Xperi’s DTS the pandemic has increased the importance of the personal vehicle and in-dash infotainment today, versus pre-COVID. The study says this is especially true for Millennials and Gen Z.

Now you might think that they want to be able to connect to the internet while they are driving.  Not so fast.

According to the study, radio is indispensable or highly important to seven out of ten vehicle owners, with nearly 80 percent of Millennials valuing radio in the dashboard. Also, nine out of ten vehicle owners say it is important to have radio in their dashboard, with over half wanting it as the anchor of their media diet.

What about satellite radio?  Wasn’t that supposed to be the wave of the future?

Four in five vehicle owners (79 percent) feel it is very important that listening choices in their vehicle are free (radio/podcasts/etc.) versus subscription based.

Surely podcasts then are going to kill off radio stations.

Nope, the vast majority of podcasts have a teeny tiny audience and last less than a year.  Similar to what I observed when blogging was the hot new internet sensation 15 years ago.  The podcasts that have staying power and a significant audience are those linked to broadcast radio stations.

It was ten years ago that I walked away from a successful job in the radio business and joined a website firm.  I came back to radio less than a year later.  I left radio again and worked full time in social media, but in 2013 returned once again in radio to stay.  See, when I was working outside of this business there was something I continued to do.

Listen to the radio as I drove to my internet job.

Last month, my radio station, WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana had a birthday. WOWO turned 96 years old on March 31st and it’s not about to be irrelevant.  Besides our news and talk hosts and anchors doing their regular radio shows, they have podcasts too.  Not to replace what they do on the radio, but to supplement it.  We also podcast the interviews so listeners can listen later or share too.

Want to know more? Contact me.  Scott@WOWO.com

 

 

Radio Listenership As The Pandemic Winds Down

Radio Listenership As The Pandemic Winds Down

by | Apr 7, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

What’s going on in the media and marketing world now that we’ve gone through the first year of a worldwide pandemic?

As an insider to information that you don’t have access to, I have some answers.

And let me preface this by stating, no the pandemic is not over, the virus did not disappear and the battle is still on.  I lost a very good friend last month to complications that included Covid.

However, with the millions of vaccines being injected every week we are in a much better place than we were 6 months ago.  Here in Indiana anyone age 16 and older is now eligible for the vaccine as long as the supplies are there.

Even before I dig into the media habits, a couple of observations regarding consumer habits.

My local stores no longer have shortages of toilet paper and disinfecting wipes.  We have an abundance of hand sanitizer at my office, and the face mask business is preparing for a slow down, now that everyone has learned how to wear one, although too many people pretend they are just political statements or refuse to cover their nose.

What else?

I’ve got some quotes from Insider Radio to share:

One year after the coronavirus outbreak tuned the world upside down, the latest in an ongoing series of Nielsen Audio Consumer Sentiment surveys shows several key metrics are pointing in radio’s favor. Among them, 64% of Americans 18 and older said they agreed that it is safer than it was a month ago. .

That’s a comparison of March 2021 to February 2021.  Here’s more:

Among the employed, two-thirds now work outside the home. That’s up nearly 70% since April. In addition, workers at home due to COVID-19 declined by more than half since April 2020.

There is the perception that most people are holed up, not going out, working out of their basement and it’s simply not true. And they are listening to their favorite radio stations.  

The initial virus outbreak one year ago caused a rapid downturn in the number of people using public transportation. One year later Nielsen’s survey shows all groups are still using less public transportation due to COVID. What’s more, those spending an hour or more in vehicles shot up 150% since April, and heavy radio listeners are more likely to spend an hour or more in the car.

Yes, radio is still an effective way to reach people and invite them to spend money with your business.

Heavy radio listeners are more likely to make major purchases within a year, and are 18% more likely to purchase or lease a new or used vehicle, and 64% more likely to buy a new house.

My radio station, NewsTalk 1190 WOWO 107.5 continues to have the largest adult audience in our market of over 25 stations.  We are one of two stations that consistently has well over 100,000 weekly listeners.

And I have a team of advertising and marketing specialists that can design and create the messaging and media campaign to help you convert our listeners to become your customers and clients.  Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com and I’ll hook you up.

 

The Significance of 200 Episodes

The Significance of 200 Episodes

by | Feb 3, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

The Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast turns 200 this week.

To me, that’s a little bit of a bragging right.  For you, perhaps it will give you a little bit of confidence or trust in what you are reading or listening to.

Indulge me for a moment as I talk about the significance of this and I’ll be sure to wrap up with a couple of questions that can help you with your business or branding.

First of all,  what’s a ScLoHo?

Nearly 17 years ago I registered the ScLoHo.com & ScLoHo.net domains, and even before that I had email accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo! that used ScLoHo.  I may have even had a MySpace account under the ScLoHo moniker.

ScLoHo is a made up word.  I took the first two letters of my first name (Scott), middle name (Louis), and last name (Howard) and created a unique word. There is a Wikipedia user page that has more of my history. The name Scott Howard I discovered is not unique.  The most famous Scott Howard is the fictional character in the Michael J Fox Teenwolf movie.  So ScLoHo became a unique way to identify myself online and it eventually spilled offline too. My wife and some coworkers call me ScLoHo and every once in awhile.

Here’s how ScLoHo became more than an email address.  I started a blog on the old Google Blogger platform which grew into multiple blogs.  It was a way for me to share stuff online about media and marketing along with personal stuff.  It was nothing I got paid for, it was simply a passion of mine to capture and share some wisdom from others and myself.

In 2011, I left the radio stations I was with and took a position working with my friend Kevin Mullett in the web-world and Kevin encouraged me to spend money and buy my own spot on the internet.  Not just a domain name like I had been doing, but a real hosted website.  It took a few months to design but I launched ScottHoward.me in October 2011 and moved over 10,000 article that I had written to the new website.   Also I want to emphasize that the dot me is only because the dot com version of my name is taken by a realtor in California.

The blogging articles never stopped on this website, although I slowed down to about 50 articles a year.  I used to do 50 per month, that’s how I got up to 10,000 in a short period of time.  Later this year, I will be writing my 15,000 article which is another accomplishment that not many people have done.

And before I tell you about the significance of 15,000 articles or 200 podcasts, here’s how the podcast even came about.

Our company, Federated Media, decided that it would be a great idea for someone to create an advertising or marketing podcast about 5 1/2 years ago.  I wasn’t in management at the time, but was writing these weekly articles on the subject so a couple of the managers asked me if I would consider switching to a podcast instead.

I told them I could do both.  With my on-air background, I knew how to do all the recording and production.  With my desire to continue writing, I created an audio version of what I was already doing.  Sort of like books on tape, read by the author.  It took a few weeks of planning including picking out theme music, and creating a logo after deciding on a name for the podcast and then it debuted 200 weekly episodes ago.

Here’s a few lessons that you may be able to apply.

  1. Do What You Are Passionate About.  There is no way, that I would still be writing weekly and then creating 200 podcast episodes if I didn’t care about this stuff.
  2. Do It When You Don’t Feel Like It.  There are times when I really don’t feel like writing or recording, or producing this material.  But I have found a way to push through those times, because they don’t last forever.  Here’s my secret… I usually have a few articles ready to go in advance.  That way when I don’t feel inspired, I can pull something I wrote from a day when I was feeling inspired and turn it into a podcast and publish it.
  3. Don’t Do It Only For The Money. Here’s another secret… Nobody pays me to write the articles or produce the podcast.  Which leads to my next lesson:
  4. Invest In Yourself. In real dollars, I have spent a few thousand bucks over the years making purchases for this website and the podcast. I have no real tangible way to measure the Return On Investment, dollar for dollar, but that’s okay.
  5. Invest In Others. That was the primary reason for starting my own website and blog and now 200 episodes of the Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast.  It’s not about me, it’s about sharing with others lessons and observations about Media, Marketing, and Life from this dude who just turned 61 years old on his last birthday.

There are plenty of others that I know that started a blog and after a few months, they quit.  Plenty of others who attempted to do a podcast but after awhile, they quit too.

The significance of sticking with it, that’s important.

Sticking with it doesn’t mean that you don’t make adjustments.  You have to adjust because the world is changing and you and I are changing too.

Quit smoking, quit drinking if you want, but don’t quit on yourself.  You can give up on many things, but don’t give up on your dreams and don’t give up on those around you.

Do the right thing and do it well.