RadioBanter - View Single Post - Putting ARRL back "mainstream" with hometown hams

May 4th 05, 08:52 PM

From: on Tues,May 3 2005 12:04 pm

K=D8=88B wrote:

=2E . . .

Obviously a lot of this proposal needs a great deal of "fleshing
out" and
refinement, but I present it in the spirit of a "topic for
discussion". I'm
sure that the minds gathered here will not be bashful about
improving my PBI.

All warm and fuzzy good Hans but it's another OF's top-down
"reorganizational solution" which I don't see would work any better
than it's predecessors.

The League needs to recognize/concede that it has a serious marketing
problem and address the problem the same way other businesses do in
these situations. They have a product line which isn't selling to a
large sector of their potential buyers. Why? Nobody actually knows.
And
nobody will know until the League finds out why the Techs aren't
buying
their wares.

Well-run businesses tackle this problem via market research and the
League needs to do a bunch of long-overdue bottom-up market research
as
a first step if they expect to get any more real penetration into
their
Tech market.

I'm in complete agreement with Brian Kelly on that.

ARRL budgetarily exists on SALES OF PUBLICATIONS, not the
annual dues. Figuring $30 x 170 thousand members (allowing
for all the "Life" memberships done once) yields only a
%5.1 million per year. That's about the cost to produce
(and stay afloat) QST, the "membership magazine," to pay
the printers, the fullfillment enablers, QST staff, all
the magazine ancilliary costs - provided - they ALSO have
revenue from advertising sales. Without that advertising
sales income, QST will dry up and become just a newsletter
printed on newsprint.

The IRS forms (available on another website) show that
the ARRL monetary income for 2002 was about $12.5 million.
Even if all members paid $40/year dues, the total dues
income would be only $6.8 million. The rest of that income
came from PUBLICATIONS and RESALE of other goods...all
pushed on the ARRL website.

The League should go out into the trenches in volume and, for openers,
start asking all the Techs who are not ARRL members why they aren't
members and what the League needs to do to pry the forty bucks a year
out of them. Then properly analyze the results of the surveys and make
the appropriate changes in their product line. Shuffling SM's duties
around and talking up ham radio to the town burghers, etc., etc. as
"potential solutions" would drive a real marketeer to tears of
laughter.

Quite so. :-) But that CANNOT be explained to the
entrenched, we-know-what-is-best-for-everybody, old-
school thinking of the "leaders" at the ARRL. They
seem to want to run a little clubhouse of the BoD and
Hq staff, keeping things nice and cozy for themselves.

The psychological term is "conditioned thinking" by
the League. The leadership seems stuck in the way
things were done a half century ago...plus the rah-rah
self-promotion of the "ideals" of their elders of that
long-ago period. Their conditioning is almost absolute.
They just don't seem to understand that their cozy
existance-in-the-clubhouse is NOT what the newcomers
want to preserve. Newcomers, already exposed to the
wonders of worldwide webbing (no ionospheric
propagation problems), aren't interested in being
the epitome of morsemen as they were in the 1930s.

Yes, the ARRL plays to "high-technology" on things
such as satellite communications and "talking with
astronauts on the International Space Station" (all
three of them sometimes) and has a lot of books
(shipping cost extra if mail-ordered, no shipping
cost if purchased at ham stores) on a few things
which are state-of-the-art, sort-of. Lots of style,
plenty of gloss, little substance in general.

The vast majority of ARRL concentration in
publications is on the HF ham bands...where no-code
test Technicians are still forbidden - by law - to
operate. VHF and above is still treated "different"
something to be shunned by "real" hams...now as it
was a half century ago. Too many oldsters are still
conditioned to that time and to "working DX with CW
on HF," collecting "wallpaper" (QSL cards) to show
their "prowess" as "radio operators." OK, that was
FB in the 1950s when all the League "leaders" were
young. Times have changed, the "leadership" hasn't.

"Marketing" research by the League? Don't bet on it.
The "leadership" is still inclined to have their
"burghers" their way...emphasizing, of course, "CW"
skills as the epitome of all "real" radio amateurs.
It worked for them when they were young, and, by
T.O.M., it MUST apply to newcomers of today! :-)

League business as usual...as it was then, so shall
it be now...