After reading our story yesterday on “Project Reinvention” Kathy Crawford, MindShare President/Local Broadcast, addressed our call for radio to join the committee, which aims to cut down on the labor intention that broadcast has now gotten us to. It will create more efficient buying, and buying on the new digital multicast channels for radio and TV without hiring more staff (3/31/08 RBR #63).
Crawford tells us the radio function of the committee will be activated, as soon as the TV objectives are completed. RAB CEO Jeff Haley, on the committee already, will be participating when it is radio’s turn, along other with yet-unnamed radio execs.
Why TV first? “Because television is a little more complicated than radio is,” said Crawford. “It’s hard to tell when radio will be a part of this, but I would love to start it before the end of the year, but it may be that we can’t get that started until afterwards. The other issue with radio is that I can download the exact times from the stations, but I don’t have PPM data in as many markets as I have Nielsen’s LPM data. So we need to move in that direction, right alongside of LPM. I’m going to talk to Arbitron in the next few weeks about what their new rollout schedule is.”
