New Media Smokes the Old....Radio Stays Game..

By Jimmy Carter in Wisconsin at Country USA

I covered the breaking news of Elvis Presley's death live of WHHY-Montgomery on that hot August day in 1977. I had an wire machine with bells ringing, a phone line with an Ampex reel to reel tape recorder and the ABC radio network. The day changed my life..a future boss was riding through town and stopped at a pay phone to call his TV station in Nashville to ramp up their coverage. He listened to out updates and bulletins over the AM radio air.

Thursday I covered the death of Michael Jackson after a tip on Facebook....updates on Twitter. I had a hard phone line and an Iphone monitoring tweets. My social network coverage smoked the traditional TV coverage which was slow and terrible for hours.

I updated radio via phone while continuing to update twitter and facebook. The late midday and afternoon drive folks got it overall...some were scared of the story. Some just didn't answer the hotline since no one works at the stations that actually breath. The good stations I work with mostly had it going. Check out this column written by All Access editor Perry Simon... This week was a watershed moment again for the new and old media Perry's column got it right.:

Where were you when you heard Elvis died? Or Princess Diana? For a lot of people of a certain age, Thursday was one of those days. But for Michael Jackson's death, radio and television weren't the primary way a lot of people got the news. In fact, TMZ.com had the story before everyone, and was out there on a limb alone for a while before other news organizations confirmed it. A few observations about that:

1. Practically everyone was careful to note that until there was confirmation from a more trusted source, like an established news organization, one shouldn't assume the news of Jackson's death to be true. That says a lot about the value of an "old media" news brand, even in the new media era. (And the trustworthiness of sites perceived as "real news" versus "gossip sites," but that's another topic)

2. Nevertheless, the first place a lot of people seemed to go this time was to the Internet. The exchanges on Facebook and Twitter were where news was being disseminated, and where conversations were being held.

That second point is something radio should be looking at. People have more choices on where to go for breaking news, and for a place to talk about and commiserate over events. And since that's the world you live in now, you have to answer this question:

When the news started breaking, and people were tuning in to your station to find out what was going on, did you have the information? Did they immediately get the latest?

If the answer was no... yeah, well, see, that's a problem.

The argument here isn't over whether the media overreacted to the news of Michael Jackson's death. It's about what your listeners want, expect, and need from you. With all the talk about wanting to reach people under the age of Medicare, this was a perfect example of a story that hit the sweet spot. People who were in high school when "Thriller" came out are in their mid- to upper-thirties today. To them, Michael Jackson was Elvis. He was iconic, whether they were big fans or just casual consumers. Add to that the controversy and just plain weirdness of his life in the intervening years, and you didn't have to be a radio genius to see that it was time to drop everything else and talk about this one for a while, whether you liked him or not.

Perry went on with more and find it ver in the News/Talk section...Country radio today now has listeners and artists who were all over MJ growing up. The later years Michael gets some folks to despise him. People actually clapped at the news at the festival I am attended...Not everyone but a few...but even with a few, HORRIBLE!

Watch digital slaes for MJ music break records...he will be the hot pop music pick at all the online sites..

Farrah dying,Ed...a bad week...Next week I'll give some thoughts on the new Taylor Swift show I saw this week in Oshkosh. Brad Paisley's new show and cd...

But right now..it's a hot summer in June and it feels a lot like that hot Summer day in 1977 when I was playing Peace in the Valley at the opening of my 5pm news...

PS:Can the FCC or somebody go after the cable networks and systems who can NOT control the sound level of the commercials...it is awful to keep having to mute and unmute..