All the key players showed up in Toronto on Thursday October 21 for the Ontario Association of Broadcasters conference and gala. It was pleasing to see so many broadcasters present, many of whom were looking to fill the conference void left by the demise of the CAB.

After the AGM there was a day of interesting sessions. While all the speakers where well worth the price of admission, the three that stood out for me were  Mark Ramsey who gave a thought provoking speech about “Success in the Post-Media age.  Over lunch research and futurist John Parikhal talked about “Media in Chaos” and the 5 trends that are reshaping TV, Radio and the Internet.

1. The demographic disconnect. The demographic shift is from young to old. For the first time, Canada is now producing more older people yet agencies still focus on 25-54s. Also, the population as a whole has much greater diversity.
2. The disappearing middle. There is nobody in the middle anymore. It is direct, and in a direct communication world it’s entirely different.
3. The always-on culture. The power shifts from the transmitter with its intrusiveness to the receiver who has the choice of how to do things, how to use information and how to communicate.
4. The chaos. The chaos is a shift from scarcity of advertising inventory to excess of ad units. Now there are so many different ways to reach people.
5. The filter factor. The final shift, says Parikhal, is hugely significant. The power shift has gone from reach to engagement. It’s no longer enough to just get to people, you have to get their attention and engage them. Simply buying reach is barely relevant because of this ability to unconsciously and habitually filter out people who’re trying to sell stuff.

You can read more about this here. John is clearly not impressed with PPM, and suggested that the radio  industry was being fooled into paying for measurement data that will ultimately hurt radio especially at the agency level. 

Next was John Potter from the Radio Advertising Bureau. He talked about how to monetize radio and the internet. John showed lots of slides and we have provided a link so you can see all this material here. 

The event finished with the presentation of “Lifetime Achievement Awards” to Jim Waters and Duff Roman.

Hat’s off to the OAB team, who worked hard to put this one day conference together. Well worth the money.