Creating an impression which lasts.

This is forgotten when we obsess on legendary call letters even when the legend is only in our minds, not the audience’s.

It’s forgotten when we focus on today and don’t bother to build for audiences yet to come.

A great brand is like a PIXAR movie (and most PIXAR movies are, indeed, great brands) – it’s always fresh and worth enjoying again for reasons anew.

I was having a conversation with a big-time radio producer and programmer, recently, and I asked “where is the up-and-coming young radio talent?”

His answer:  ”On YouTube.”  And he corrals talent for a living, folks.

Lasting impressions require a frontier which extends beyond the current fiscal quarter and beyond the conventional jock-hunt.  It requires a readiness and willingness to create entertainment (and information) across platforms.  Exactly where the audiences are.

To do otherwise is to take my fossil metaphor a bit too literally and become locked into the past forever.

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Who in the world is Gordon Paddison?

Do you remember the movie Wedding Crashers when that viral video made the rounds where you paste your own face over the face of one of the stars of the movie and you send it to your friends?  That was the work of Gordon Paddison.

What about the social hubbub surrounding Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, one of the most popular movie franchises of all time? That, too, was the work of Gordon Paddison.

Gordon is the head of a company called Stradella Road, a branding and marketing and social media company specializing in the entertainment space and their clients include the likes of Facebook, Fandango, Google, AOL, Variety, Paramount, and the one and only Peter Jackson.

Listen to our entire interview here – or subscribe to all the Mark Ramsey Media podcasts at iTunes.

Gordon, when I first met you I asked how we spark some social media conversation about this or that and you replied with the perfect question.  You asked, “Well, what do you want people to talk about?”  In other words how do you organize the conversation?  You have to organize that conversation around “assets.” you said.  Explain what that means and why that matters.

Conversations must be contextual.  Radio stations have great assets.  People always say, “Well, movies are easy, because movies have great assets.”  But actually, any brand – any business – can have great assets.  Sometimes the assets are employees, and you can take those “assets,” the employees, and turn them into an editorial toolsets to position your business.  And your business, your brand, gives you a context for dialogue with your consumers.

Then it’s important to talk conversationally, because most of the dialogue online and particularly in social media is a volley of conversation – it’s almost like call and response.

We’re trained from “the old days” in broadcast media, which was more of a one-way conversation.  Now we have moved to a dialogue, and it’s important to allow that dialogue to be partially owned and to be driven by the consumer.

So it’s a little bit like ping pong but with a point if you can make it properly.

You say a radio station has abundant assets.  The norm in radio is to say, “Okay, I’ve got my radio station and I want to use my social media assets to promote my agenda and spread word-of-mouth about my station and its various activities.”  You’re suggesting it’s much more than that, right?

The great thing about a radio station is you have the shows, you have the content, you have your advertisers…there are a lot of different elements that you could exploit.  You have your personalities.  Indeed, the great thing about radio is that it’s driven by personality, so if you take the personality, the promotions, all together, and you look at the elements, each one of those becomes something that in social media can certainly be activated.

It’s about finding the dialogue with your consumers.  A lot of businesses I find are surprised when they start having success in social media.

We’ll set up something on Facebook and Twitter and then all of a sudden they’ve got 1,000, 2,000 people who are following them and they go, “Holy crap, what do we do now?”  And we answer: “Well, you actually have a dialogue.”

That’s the spirit of social media.  You have to be prepared to engage and to be part of an open dialogue.

Now you use the expression “success on social media,” and I’m interested in the definition of that phrase.  What does it mean to be “successful” in social media?

Here’s the thing, success in social media takes all different forms.

Some people will say, “We want to get people to like our Facebook page or tweet a certain number of things so that we can get the most people.”  Realistically, it depends on each business.  For some businesses that are highly transactional and you can actually track how many SKU’s are going out the door it’s going to be very different than for a branding play where someone like BP today has a very different objective than they would have had nine months ago.  At a certain time, at a certain inflection point, your metrics can change and your goals can be different.  Sometimes it’s branding, sometimes it’s direct response.

There’s a feeling among a lot of broadcasters that if we have a Twitter feed, if we have a Facebook page and we post some stuff on there that our job is done and it’s just a matter of counting how many people follow us.  That’s not true, is it?

Well, it depends.  For stations, any kind of platform acts as a syndication point.  Of course there’s a monetization strategy that each station may have but in terms of a marketing toolset, certainly, the stations could think of their websites or their Facebook page or Twitter as a repository that permits syndication, so whether they’re using limited assets or full content, it gives you a place to park and direct people to.

A lot of people always think of the old “walled garden” of portals as their destinations.  Well, realistically, you don’t need a destination, you need a refilling station so when you’re sending people out into the field you want to be able to have them go back and be able to reload, and the same thing is true of your consumers because often your best soldiers are your consumers.  They’re the ones who are going back and reloading so they can go out and talk about how cool you are.  You’ve got to give them some place to go and get a drink of water.

This is one of the challenges I think for broadcasters because there’s a tendency to view the website as the end-all and be-all be – the “portal,” if you will – whereas what you’re saying is that the purpose of social media is to enable syndication, enable the spreading of the word, and essentially take your message off your “home base,” is that right?

Absolutely but also it really does require the marketer or the brand to determine what they want to use the medium for.

Certainly, I’ve encountered a lot of businesses who will say, “Well, our interns are the best ones who know the most about the medium, so shouldn’t they be driving this force?” And the answer is yes, they do know the medium and they’re certainly great people to help drive a dialogue and to identify where the dialogue exists, but people who have years and years of branding experience shouldn’t necessarily put themselves out of the equation.  They know exactly what they should be doing with their brand.  It’s just a slight tweak to understand and to start an engagement effort and to understand what a two-way dialogue is in another environment.

It’s really about just setting your metrics, and then saying, “Okay, this week we’re looking for brand lift,” for example.  To say that the site itself is a be-all and end-all may be true if you’re looking to drive someone through a transactional funnel and that’s what that site is built for, but still you need to go and fish where the fish are.  You can’t say, “Okay, everybody over here,” and expect everybody to come.  That doesn’t work in the real world or the social world, so you’ve got to be able to have the dialogue where the dialogue exists and then have the reference to drive the dialogue where you want it to go.

Where do the ideas come from?  When you work with your film industry clients – with Peter Jackson, for example – where do the big ideas come from?  How do you design programs to gain engagement, interaction, and involvement?

I would say ideas come from Peter Jackson like water from a faucet.  He is incredible that way – in fact, most filmmakers and artists are creative fountains.  Realistically, the job of a marketer is basically to not muck it up.  It’s to do a good job to try and to turn a creative asset into nuggets of dialogue that won’t give away the farm but can hopefully spur a conversation and create excitement.

I don’t want to use a term “engagement” because what’s “engagement”?  It’s really excitement.  Especially if you’re trying to go to the movies or a concert or to buy someone’s new record or someone’s new movie on DVD, you want to be excited and say, “I really want to have that.”

That’s an interesting switch from “engagement” to “excitement.”  You’re really upping the ante.

Absolutely, at the end of the day we’re talking about ephemeral products here.  You buy toilet paper because you’re pretty sure you’ll need it.  But you go to a movie because you think it will be fun.  That’s a very different use scenario.  There are needs in your life and then there are wants, and activating a want is different than activating a daily need.

It’s interesting you say that, because a lot of what happens in radio on the marketing side is need-based, not so much excitement based.  It might be, for example, win this, win that, get your bills paid, get your mortgage paid, get a job for a year, things that have a tinge of practicality to them as opposed to something which is built for sheer excitement.

I’ve done a lot of research on this over the years and I found from my movie experience the consumers that we “gave away” things to, the people who enter contests, are the lowest converting customers at the box office – and I’ll tell you that’s not just true for the movies.  People who are sweepstakes-oriented and win this and win that generally are not your highest value customers or typically your advertisers’ highest value customers.

That’s interesting.  So who are the highest value customers?

Well, very clearly, if you have an email database, people who have decided to opt-in because they have an interest in a particular show, in the type of program you’re doing, and the type of business you’re in  – those people have a connection to your product.

I know when I was marketing, we had a 40% lift in recurring consumers due to our email database.  Those are people who chose and opened emails based on their proclivity to consider what we were marketing to them and discussing with them of great interest.  That was particularly effective.

If I’m a radio station and I were to come to you tomorrow, what are the first things I need to do in order to build and develop a successful social media strategy?

Tell me what you care about.

Tell me the most important thing you care about.  It’s not just about “setting metrics,” it’s about what you care about.

What do you as a business really care about?  What do your consumers really care about?

Too often, what ends up happening is, “Oh my God, this tactical execution I saw is really good, so let’s do that.”  But wait a minute, let’s get 50,000 feet up and say for the business we want to move in this or that direction, and you may suddenly realize you need to do local cable ad placements.  That might be what moves the needle for you.

You need to look at the media mix and what really represents the opportunity for you.  A lot of people go immediately to tactics, but first they need to ask what’s right for the brand.

What do you really need?  How do you talk to your consumers currently and how would you like to talk to them in the future?

That’s the difference between strategy and tactics.

Correct.

Why was this so striking?

Because these results don’t simply answer the question for blogs.  I would argue they answer the question for any brand – even a radio brand.

How much effort does your radio brand invest in its distinctive voice?  How distinctive is your voice, in fact?

It’s almost impossible to imagine a distinctive voice that doesn’t in some way involve actual human voices.  A “distinctive voice” is an expression of personality, if not “personalities.”  In our zeal to skim and trim and thin, what are we doing to fatten our humanity, our voice, that which makes us most real and authentic?

Compelling and exclusive content is actually secondary, and it’s a reminder that all content – exclusive or otherwise – lives in a context.  And that context is the distinctive voice of the brand.

Both of these elements out-score the idea of simply being “unique.”  In fact, I could argue that being “unique” without possessing a “distinctive voice” is like having a body without a soul.

Note, too, that the idea of promotion and marketing and optimization – all the stuff we ponder heavily when vexed with the problem of “getting the word out” – all those items are viewed as relatively unimportant compared to what’s at the top of the list.

In other words, as the old saying goes, nothing kills a bad product like great advertising.

This picture is good to remember as you build out your brand and invest in it ingredients designed not simply to satisfy, but also to captivate.

Ando is, of course, a company at the heart of the online radio universe – from metrics to ad insertion to enabling the capability to stream in the first place.  No company is closer to the success stories and lessons for improvement than Ando.

Paul and I covered six key ways publishers (e.g., broadcasters) can enhance the power of their online radio efforts and better monetize those efforts.

Watch this video:

If you prefer the audio version, click here:

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What this picture leaves out is the suddenly changing definition of “radio” in a world where personalization, customization, and connection rule.  All of those factors will soon be built into cars, and the entertainment delivery system will be one of the most potent differentiators in the dealer’s showroom.

Yours will not look like mine because I will be able to make mine my own. There will be no such thing as an “audio entertainment system” per se.  It’s all entertainment.  It will have more in common with the face of your iPhone than the face of your current radio “dial.”

Pictures will figure in.  Interactivity will be central.  I’ll be able to connect with friends and share things on the fly.  I’ll be able to connect with my content “in the cloud” and my PC at home.

In general, the radio industry has no idea what’s just over the hill.

Where is the symposium of broadcasters to discuss the shape of tomorrow’s automobile entertainment system?  Where are the pilot projects pitched to Detroit meant to facilitate this transformation and to make sure today’s broadcasters are part of the future of entertainment on the road?  Where are the dialogues with Detroit about how to serve their customers’ needs better?

Instead, we get a self-serving and gratuitous trickle of announcements about HD radio creeping into this car or that one.

Meanwhile Detroit plots the overhaul of mobile entertainment altogether.

One day soon broadcasters will recognize that consumers control the future, that the future cannot be dictated to an audience who lusts for choice, connection, and control.

I hope that day comes soon.

But so says WIRED magazine in its September cover story.

Here’s the heart of their argument:

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen).

As this picture shows, the Internet is bigger than ever, but the Web is declining somewhat in terms of the volume of Internet traffic devoted to it.

Where is the rest?  In peer-to-peer, in video (which includes YouTube, something that ideally should fall under Web, it seems to me), and other types of apps which use the Internet for transport but do not use the Web browser.

WIRED adds:

Within five years, Morgan Stanley projects, the number of users accessing the Net from mobile devices will surpass the number who access it from PCs. Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible.

Even if WIRED is wrong about their case (it is, after all, in the interests of WIRED’s publisher, Conde Nast, to have mobile apps that showcase a curated experience for a profit), there’s no question that Internet-driven alternatives to the Web are growing.

Your Twitter app?  Your Facebook app?  Apps, all.

So what does this mean for radio, besides the obvious idea that you’d better be thinking in terms of apps?

It means, as Anderson writes, the future will be “less about browsing, and more about getting…our appetite for discovery slows as our familiarity with the status quo grows.”  In other words, give me services that make my life better and I’ll embrace them.  But don’t expect me to hunt for them.

Radio – especially that corner of radio heretofore called “News/Talk” – would seem to be ideally positioned to solve a problem for many consumers who might have one.  particularly if the information I want to “get” is related to critical issues facing my day:  Scores, weather, traffic, headlines, etc. Providing these values, however, is less about propping up our brands and more about showing the way to the solution of key consumer problems.

In other words, there should be an app for that.

And maybe there is – but not driven by the megaphone that is radio.

There may indeed be an app for everything, but how do you discover the solution to your particular problem?  How do can I “get” without browsing?

Maybe the answer is radio’s “megaphone.”

You can app your brand – or you can wrap an app around a solution to a problem.  The latter is the bigger win.

Hear WIRED’s Chris Anderson explain his argument in this interview with On the Media’s Bob Garfield:

(download the mp3 here)

The decision ends a two-year fight between the music and radio industries in India. Earlier this year, the Supreme Coart gave the Copyright Board four months to resolve the dispute over music royalties.

Currently, Indian radio pays 850 rupees ($18) per hour of music irrespective of the size of the station. According to an estimate, as much as 18% of ad revenues goes to the music industry.

The new system will be based on a 2% share of advertising income. It is expected that the new fee will also expand the number of stations that actually pay for its music.

Not much, probably.  But here are two unintended consequences to consider.

For a full blow-by-blow look at the implications for FM chips in mobile phones, read this.

Will FM be built into every mobile phone near you? Only time will tell.  But let’s consider some common questions and answers related to this possibility, all from my perspective.

As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

Question:  With FM on mobile phones I will no longer need to stream my content, right? Think of the money I’ll save!

Answer:  Wrong.  The purpose of streaming existing and new content via the Internet is not just to be present on mobile devices but to provide the heart of a broader brand experience attractive to consumers and advertisers alike. Dumping out of the online radio game now would be like dumping out of FM radio in the early 70′s because all the money was being made on AM.  The kind of precise targeting made possible by online radio will eventually produce CPM’s which surpass rates for terrestrial radio.  Online radio provides audience data sets and the ability to connect the right ad to the right audience at the right time in the right place for the right price.  It also provides the equivalent of more broadcast towers for infinitely less than the cost of a tower in the real world.  Forsaking online radio streams also means abandoning listening on more traditional desktop devices, where much of radio’s online audience currently tunes in.

Question:  AT&T’s bandwidth limits will put the chill on Pandora usage as consumers start racking up insane fees for their music listening, right?  Isn’t streaming as an alternative to radio simply not viable?

Answer:  Flat out wrong.  From the LA Times:

Pop & Hiss conducted a test run of an hour of continuous music streaming on the default sound-quality setting with Pandora on the iPhone. (Flipping on high-quality streaming doesn’t make a huge difference in bandwidth consumption.) It weighed in at just under 16 megabytes. In other words, you’d need to stream about 4 hours on Pandora every day to hit the 2-gig monthly limit. Mileage varies depending on your choice of streaming service.

This, of course, is well above average for radio listening even on regular radios.  Pandora has previously stated that far less than 1% of their listeners would be constrained by bandwidth concerns. And don’t forget that these caps only count when you’re away from a WiFi connection.  On WiFi, it’s “all you can eat.”

Streaming is simply different from radio and compatible to it.  Some measure of radio listening will head in that direction whether you like it or not.  So climb on board the merry-go-round or your seat on the ride will eventually be filled.

Question:  If FM is on mobile phones, that’s great because I don’t need a mobile app, right?

Answer:  Wrong.  The purpose of a mobile app is not only to act as a stage for your online radio stream(s) but also to create a monetizable and engaging experience that surrounds your brands.  The mobile space is increasingly an app-oriented space.  If we cease to play that game we will become irrelevant in it.  The future of radio is not simply the future of our over-the-air content, it’s the future of our brands in all their shapes, sizes, and manifestations, online and off.  In any marketing equation it’s critical to meet the consumers where they are, not where we wish them to be.

Question:  This deal would be premature.  Shouldn’t we fight the idea of a performance royalty tax?

Answer: The wind is not at your back, friend.  I have long argued that radio would be pushed into some sort of performance royalty – I think it’s inevitable. And that’s despite the very real promotional value that radio provides the labels which has almost entirely been discounted.  In my view, we should be charging labels for this airplay and doing so openly and legally.  Tit for tat.

Question:  Don’t surveys indicate consumers want FM on their mobile phones?

Answer: Some surveys do indicate this.  And I don’t generally believe them. That’s because consumers usually want more of many things, yet don’t necessarily buy them when they materialize. For example, right now there are many mobile phones already including FM radio and they are not strong sellers. Note that this doesn’t mean consumers wouldn’t use FM radio if it just happened to be built into their phones.  That’s another question entirely, and one whose answer evades these surveys.  I think some consumers would use this feature and some would not, but it will never be a mobile phone selling point.

Question:  Wouldn’t more audience via mobile phones means higher ratings for our brands?

Answer: Let’s assume that your premise is accurate and more audience would result.  In a diary world, it might impact ratings at the margin, yes.  But not in a world where the radio can’t be picked up by a PPM device unless the meter-keeper attaches a clunky interface between the slick new phone and its trusty earbuds.  Good luck on that one!

The larger question is why we’re using targetable, identifiable, customizable mobile devices to play a reach-based, anonymous, estimate-dependent Arbitron game designed for a world where media comes in only three shapes: Print, TV, and radio.

Question:  Wouldn’t FM on mobile phones give broadcasters the ability to power one-click commerce through “buy” buttons and downloadable discount coupons via RDS or other mechanisms (and eventually more powerful options via HD)?

Answer:  Yes.  And it would do so on an industry-standard basis, assuming radio embraces industry standards.  Of course, you’ll be sharing some of that bounty with our new friends the mobile phone makers, but c’est la vie.

Anything that promotes interactivity between consumers, radio, and our advertisers and also expands the boundaries of what “radio” represents are generally good things.

Question:  Can I get commerce capability and interactive monetization opportunites such as coupons through existing tools and mobile apps – do I have this power today?

Answer:  Yes.  This capability exists today without waiting for any new add-ons to the mobile phone. Quu is one such tool that solves this problem.  Text messaging platforms do likewise.

I ran this question up the flagpole with Fred Jacobs and Tim Davis of Jacapps, and here’s what they wrote back:

None of our current apps is pulling from an actual RDS feed.  To my knowledge, there’s not an API or access point for iPhone (or Android) to access the FM receiver to gather the RDS data in its native over-the-air format. That limitation aside, the possibility of accessing this data in other ways is quite high.  A given station could take the intended RDS data and dual-encode it – first for the RDS transmission, and secondarily to an XML/RSS or even .txt that would be available via the internet and could be included in any number of ways in the app – either as links, as text or as instructions to pull images/coupons from other locations. Ultimately, the use of RDS-type feeds via metadata embedded in the stream or as stand-alone XML files has a great deal of potential, and to some extent is already being used in our apps.

Question:  Isn’t the idea of FM on mobile phones a big middle finger to AM broadcasters?

Answer:  FM on mobile phones is really all about paving the way for HD radio on mobile phones. So your day will come, AM broadcaster – via HD.  The logic is as follows:  Once manufacturers install FM chips and see how desirable the feature becomes, HD will be an obvious upgrade.  This is sensible logic, although it’s the same logic that predicted HD would be all the rage by now once consumers heard how great the sound was and what terrific new options were “hidden” on new HD radios.  By the way, it’s worth mentioning that any and every AM station already has access to mobile environments via specialized apps.

Question:  Isn’t a government mandate for FM in mobile phones anti-consumer?  If consumers want it, let them ask for it!

Answer: The nature of radio is utilitarian.  Nobody ever asks for it.  Yet they always assume it will be there – somewhere.  Consumers will never ask for this.  Nor do I think they will seek out phones that offer it, any more than they seek out phones that already offer it or mp3 players that do so. Government mandates are perfectly reasonable ways to sustain corporate interests, whether we’re talking about the merger of competing satellite radio companies or the requirement that all TV’s go digital.  These rules may or may not be “fair” or “right,” but don’t pretend they’re unusual.

Question:  Isn’t radio pursuing this to “prop up” a “horse and buggy” medium?

Answer:  It is incumbent upon broadcasters to pursue any and every way to extend their power and influence and profitability and relevance, whether you like it or not.  Radio has certainly not positioned itself well in the pantheon of new media, but I’m eternally hopeful that will change with the rolling of the occasional head.  Meanwhile, part of radio’s pursuit of relevance and profitability must include an eye to the future where the future is farther than three months away.  So would FM on mobile phones be the end of radio’s mobile strategy or only the beginning?  It should be the beginning. I fear it would be the end.

Question:  Doesn’t Forrester have a point?  ”Forcing devices to carry FM receivers,” said Forrester’s James McQuivey, “doesn’t change the fact that, given a choice, people will choose to listen to Pandora on their mobile  phone more readily than the local, misogynistic morning talk show.”

Answer:  Aren’t you glad Forrester isn’t producing your local radio morning show?  Do I need to answer a statement which is obviously pulled from a Forresterian posterior, and a poorly tended one at that?  For the record, I do think people will be more likely to listen to Pandora on their mobile phones than to the local radio station, but not if it’s misogynistic morning talk they want.

Question: Won’t FM on mobile phones add audience to radio?  It’s more distribution!

Answer:  Yes, more distribution is always good.  But does radio have a “distribution problem” when more than 90% of listeners tune us in?  True – more distribution means more occasions of listening, not simply more listeners. But remember that it has been a full generation since radio has been portable. Portability for radio is a relatively new experience for younger listeners today and an unfamiliar one for older listeners (watch this video for a glimpse into a time where portability was as close as some really clunky antennae).

Portability of FM will come in the wake of zillions of alternative things to do with their mobile devices and a great mashup of media that transforms things like “radio” into cross-media value propositions, all mediated by the Internet.  This doesn’t mean FM on mobile is a bad idea, it just means it won’t be as good as you might think.

Question:  Isn’t radio commonplace on mobile phones across the world – and consumers use it there, right?  Aren’t we in America the oddballs?

Answer:  From what I can tell, yes.  Radio is likely to be found on many mobile devices the world over, although I haven’t seen statistics on how consumers use it.  My guess is that they do.  Then again, radio in many parts of the world is dramatically different from the way it is in the US.  It is often less competitive with fewer options than we have here.  In some cases, foreign stations are more compelling to listen to across multiple platforms and service more needs for their audiences than ours do in the US.  In some markets radio is even a comparatively new medium, evolving side by side with mobile phones.  So while the analogy is interesting, it may not be predictive.  After all, digital (a.k.a. HD) radio is big in some countries, too.

Question:  What about radio’s role in providing emergency information in a crisis? Doesn’t that justify radio’s presence on mobile phones?

Answer:  Indeed, radio is the device that one hand-cranks in an emergency when all the TV’s and WiFi go out.  Of course, we have radios in our homes, at work, and in our cars, so it’s not quite clear to me why this particular feature is an essential ingredient to a mobile phone, no matter how it’s powered or by whom.  I do bristle at the notion that radio’s significant value proposition is reduced to its role in a crisis as a key argument point to enter the mobile phone space, but as an additional reason to do so, I have no complaints.

So there you have it.

Your additional questions and answers are welcome.

RTL Group made a €537 million profit in the first six months of 2010, up 46.3% against the first half of 2009. Revenues grew 7.5% to €2.661 billion.

The group explains the higher profit with better results in Germany, Netherlands and France and also points to cost savings implemented last year. RTL Radio, a market leader in France, increased its profit 87.5% to €15 million.

In January, RTL Group expanded its presence on the Dutch radio market – where it already runs CHR station Radio 538 – with the acquisition of Radio 10 Gold from Talpa International.