I grew up listening to the radio. It was not just music, news,
sports and call-in shows as it is today. It was a mass
entertainment medium with soap operas, dramas, comedy and variety
shows. It was what we listened to in "prime time," not just "drive
time."
Then television came along and took over as the mass
entertainment source. The soap operas, dramas, comedies and variety
shows switched to TV and radio was left with the music, the news,
the sports and the talk shows.
Everyone thought TV would kill radio just as they thought it
would kill the movies, but both survived. It reinvented itself
capitalizing on its strengths. You can't watch TV while you're
driving to and from work so radio turned drive time into its prime
time.
Radio stations also began to specialize so that if you span the
FM dial, you can find almost any kind of music. Call it niche
marketing.
The Web is forcing businesses to do what radio had to do,
reinvent themselves to survive.
In retail travel, reinventing may mean reducing dependency on
airline tickets or using consolidators more often. It may mean
charging service fees for noncompensatory services. It may mean
finding a specialty and learning how to market it.
Another way to reinvent yourself is to learn to use the Web as
part of your business and that means more than putting up a
billboard on the Web with an e-mail address.
Some of the radio shows that were hits in prime time before
television arrived did little more than put their radio programs on
TV. They failed because they didn't know how to use the new
medium.
Others had successful crossovers to TV because they recognized
how different the new medium was. They hired directors with stage
experience rather than radio experience because TV was more like
theater.
The travel professionals who will succeed on the Web will have
to understand what makes it different from every other medium that
preceded it. That may mean understanding that you can sell
right-handed monkey wrenches in brick-and-mortar locations and
left-handed ones on the Web, because the Web can find the people
who want left-handed ones.