Allan Waters, the founder of what was once one of Canada’s most successful broadcast empires said, “Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss our targets. Our problem is that we aim too low and hit our targets.”
With all the ‘bad news’ facing broadcasters today, it’s easy to get sucked into a negative-thinking trap.
We hear about the enormous debt burdens resulting from broadcast consolidation, and radio that once was branded as ‘live and local’ is now often voice-tracked with little local content to appeal to consumers.
Advertising’s share of marketing budgets continues to shrink, as does traditional media’s share of that shrinking share. Online shopping is hurting many of our traditional retail advertisers, and broadcast radio is no longer the only audio media choice our advertisers have.
And misery appears to love company. When we see fellow broadcasters with flat or faltering sales, we tell ourselves it’s okay to aim low and hit our targets.
The list of problems we face goes on and on, but I’m still from the Allan Waters school of broadcasting…our problem is we aim too low!
It’s pretty easy to fall into a ‘woe is me’ way of thinking, but virtually every business and every media is experiencing disruption, fragmentation, low-price competition, and various other problems that could be described as a crisis.
I believe the Chinese understand how to manage and succeed during an alleged crisis. They spell crisis with these two symbols.
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The symbol on the left stands for ‘danger’, and there is danger in every crisis. But what makes the difference when they spell crisis is the symbol on the right. It stands for ‘opportunity.’