Team-owned websites – This is the freshest flower in the garden and something that teams only utilized via press releases up until the last five years when everyone in the sports world has gotten serious about driving traffic to their team-owned websites. The folks who run www.BaltimoreRavens.com are tireless in their efforts to bring you inside The Bellagio without really saying much. I love Kevin Byrne’s blog and often read the work of John Eisenberg, who is still relevant, intelligent and one of my favorites in the marketplace. And the www.Orioles.com and world of MLB.com via Britt Ghiroli bring you all the public relations news that Mr. Angelos deems you should know about the Orioles. In general, all of the teams in the big four of professional sports do a very nice job bringing fans closer to their teams. It’s now become another funnel for information and profit for the franchises. It’s the way teams can sell tickets, concessions and dispense “house information” to their fan base. This is the growing segment of the sports fan media experience and it’s always couched with the obvious – there’s very little credibility in the “media” involved in the information on a team’s website. They’ll never criticize the coach or a key player or take on ownership or ask tough questions. It’s a public relations arm. But oft-times a very good one!
But make sure you know this: you have access to ALL of the aforementioned on your mobile device. It’s all a click away.
And while some media entities may think they’re still in the dark ages of “one way” media, the awakening will be theirs in the coming years as the public will seek trusted and immediate agents for their news and information. And it won’t be about getting the newspaper in the morning or what’s on the radio or what’s on the 6 o’clock news. That world is dead. The new media world is evolving on a level playing field for access and it’s built on timeliness, accuracy and trust.
WBAL-AM was always No. 1 because they had the biggest signal. FM radio always made more money because it had a clearer signal and more penetration of the market.
Now, WNST.net – and anyone else who has a web frontage – has the exact same “signal strength” as newspaper, television and radio stations that dwarfed us in access points in 1998 when my group first came forward to purchase AM-1570 in Towson.
Websites that fabricate rumors, trades and misinformation will not be trusted.
The backbone of the media industry is the corporate money that is entrusted to garner your attention and your business. That’s the one thing we all have in common.
8
Local businesses are eager to spend their money wisely on local media and driving business to local merchants continues to be the heart and soul of what every media entity is striving for as the holy grail of existence.
At some point advertisers will catch on to being scammed by these alphabet soup players who either lie about their numbers or have “subscriber” companies like Arbitron and Neilson to lie for them by using an antiquated system and the small means of sampling in the marketplace.
Every click on the internet is accounted for and tracked. Every friend on Facebook. Every follower on Twitter. Every subscriber to YouTube. Every click on all of our websites is measured meticulously by the advertisers to create a return on investment for local business.
Despite Arbitron saying no one has ever heard of — or heard — WNST, somehow we have 11,000 Twitter followers.
Somehow, 1.5 million people found their way to WNST.net last year.
Somehow, almost 4 million people have watched WNSTV videos via YouTube.
Yes, we do video, too so we’re not just a radio station. We also host and encourage authentic
SEE PAGE 4
