800.275.2840 MORE NEWS» insideradio.com THE MOST TRUSTED NEWS IN RADIO FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015 Programming’s biggest challenge in 2015: Keeping up with the audience. With a battery of entertainment options to choose from, consumer tastes and media behavior are changing faster than ever. Audience preferences have become a constantly moving target. One of programmers’ biggest challenges is keeping up with them. “They have too many places to get new, unique, different, creative, innovative content as opposed to the same compartmentalized eight or nine radio formats,” Cox Media Group VP of radio programming Steve Smith says. Smartphone penetration hit 77% in November 2014, up from 67% in November 2013, according to Nielsen. Half of Americans now own a tablet, up from 34% just one year earlier. With more choices, consumer behavior across all of media is changing at a faster clip. “The percentage changes are greater month to month,” Nielsen VP, programming business partner Jon Miller says. “The migration of audiences is happening faster than six months or a year ago.” With consumer access to nearly everything, all the time, programmers can ill afford to get caught off guard like some AC stations did five years ago when the core audience had moved on to Blackeyed Peas and Pink while AC stations were still banging Billy Joel and Rod Stewart. Consider that country looked unstoppable at this point last year. Now it’s coming off its quickest ratings declines in three years. The rate of change will likely only get faster. “We’re looking at where the audience is going, what kind of music they will want to hear and how we can present it in the right package so they listen for long periods of time,” Smith says. Staying abreast of rapidly changing consumer tastes? There’s an app for that. While technology is speeding up the rate at which consumer tastes change, it’s also helping radio keep pace. Apps and other tools that allow listeners to vote for songs or provide instant feedback are becoming more prevalent. Beasley Media Group and Cox Media Group have built alerting features into their apps that ping listeners when their favorite songs air. “If we don’t figure out a way to give them what they want faster — right away, quite frankly — that will be a challenge,” Cox Media Group VP of radio programming Steve Smith warns. To remain in sync with evolving tastes requires carefully paying attention to the core audience: where they go, what they watch and listen to, how they communicate. What’s trending on social media, climbing the streaming songs charts, getting Shazamed or parodied on YouTube are all factored into the equation. “We can’t kid ourselves,” says CBS Radio EVP of programming Chris Oliviero. “With the content evolution of technology and the fragmentation of the audience, no format is immune from these challenges.” To avoid living in the past, Oliviero notes that the youngest members of the coveted 25-54 demo were born in 1990. It’s a poignant reminder of how programming must evolve as new generations enter and exit radio’s key formats. “We have to continue to check ourselves to keep looking forward as the world evolves and changes and realize that it never stops,” Oliviero says. “It’s about getting out in the streets, listening to the audience and finding out where they think it’s going to go,” Smith says. “Then going back in the building and creating those formats.” SESAC offers new rules — but radio’s not ready to say yes. Is it an olive branch worthy of ending a lawsuit, or a stick that could be used to beat radio stations into NEWS INSIDE >> submission? That will be the question before a federal judge as he weighs a request by SESAC to dismiss a suit brought by the radio industry after taking steps that its TiGHTER RESTRICTIONS attorneys argue undercut complaints made by broadcasters. SESAC presented its SOUGHT ON POLITICAL offer to the Radio Music Licensing Committee which has sued the performance rights AD BUMPING organization over its alleged heavy-handed business practices — most notably its all- [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 1 NEWS insideradio.com FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015 or-nothing blanket licensing contracts. SESAC tells the court that as of November it has alerted music publishers that they’re now free to make deals directly with radio owners, a move designed to potentially allow a station to forego signing a contract. An online database has also been created which SESAC says will, for the first time, make it possible for a radio station to see which songs are in its catalog with a 30-day grace period for “unintentional” infringement when a new track is added. It also pledged to keep in place the “all-talk amendment,” which currently allows more than 1,850 radio stations to receive a 75% discount on blanket license fees. The now-expired offer would have put the limitations in place through December 2025. In a six-page letter to the court, CEO Patrick Collins says SESAC is aware of “hundreds” of radio stations that perform its works without a license but it’s only brought four lawsuits against eight stations during the past 21 years. “It is extremely rare for SESAC to bring a copyright infringement suit against radio stations,” he writes. The RMLC disputes that SESAC’s proposal constitutes “complete relief” and in a brief response to U.S. District Court Judge Darnell Jones it says it believes the radio industry’s lawsuit should move forward. A hearing on the request will be held this spring, further extending the timeline of a case first filed in October 2012. SESAC’s closer to wrapping up its case with TV. A new offer to radio comes in the wake of SESAC’s settlement with the television industry where the performance rights organization is looking to speed up its settlement with the television industry. SESAC has asked a federal judge in New York to not waste any more time and move up a hearing that had been scheduled for March 18. SESAC says the two industries can’t be looked at in a silo, telling a federal judge that because some companies own both TV and radio it would be “impracticable, if not impossible” to put restrictions on radio that it’s lifting from TV. While SESAC would like to use similar rules for radio as in television, there’s a multimillion dollar difference in the legal cases. SESAC has agreed to pay $58.5 million in damages to the Television Music License Committee, which brought the case on behalf of its television station members in 2009. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer has already given preliminary approval to a deal. The Radio Music Licensing Committee’s legal arguments have been less concerned with monetary damages, and more focused on changing the process by which rates are set, including moving away from a take- it-or-leave-it approach that’s frustrated broadcasters. That’s because RMLC believes if SESAC is brought into something similar to what ASCAP and BMI currently face, it will mean smaller rate hikes for radio. It’s still unclear what impact the Department of Justice’s ongoing review of the consent decrees under which ASCAP and BMI operate could have on radio’s case against SESAC. Political ad buyer seeks expanded FCC limits on station pre-emptions. As broadcasters prepare for the onslaught of political advertising that the 2016 presidential race is expected to bring, the Federal Communications Commission has agreed to give a fresh look at an often-used policy. The political ad buying agency Canal Partners Media argues the so-called “last in, first out” pre-emption method — used by stations to pre-empt a political spot in favor of a commercial advertiser’s previously-purchased spot — violates the federal law that ensures federal candidates access to the airwaves. Canal Partners Media argues any political spot must be treated as a “first-in” advertiser regardless of when the candidate actually purchased the airtime. The Media Bureau isn’t saying whether it agrees, but it has decided to take public comment on the ad agency’s request for a declaratory ruling. The FCC has set a March 2 deadline for filing comments, with reply comments due March 17. (MB Docket No. 15-24) Now it’s CBS Radio that’s sued by an ex-intern. A growing number of interns are taking on a new label: plaintiff. Now it’s CBS Radio that’s being sued by a former unpaid staffer. Camille Demere has sued the company for her time as a newsroom intern at all-news WCBS, New York (880) and as an online intern at CBSNewYork.com for nine months during 2009 and 2010. Filed in New York Supreme Court this week, the lawsuit claims her typical 40-hour per week unpaid duties violate the state law that requires a company to pay minimum wage since CBS would have otherwise needed to hire additional employees or extend staff hours. In the 10-page complaint, Demere seeks class action status to allow other interns to also seek payment from CBS. Over the past year there’s been a wave of intern lawsuits against media companies from unpaid [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 2 NEWS insideradio.com FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015 staffers working on everything from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” to PBS’ “Charlie Rose.” In most cases companies have opted to settle. In radio, iHeartMedia also faces legal action in New York by a former intern.