Traffic and billing companies fight over clients just as much as transmitter makers and processing companies do. When a client changes preferred vendors — or goes back to its earlier one — it’s a big deal.
Marketron is highlighting the return of broadcast group owner Greater Media to its client fold, while competitor WideOrbit says it takes responsibility for that outcome.
“Greater Media will replace its current traffic and billing system in its four largest markets with Mediascape,” Marketron stated in an announcement by CEO Steven Minisini. “We are excited to have Greater Media back on board.”
Minisini says this shows that his company’s offerings “are superior to those of our competition.” Minisini said approximately 150 broadcast groups have signed Mediascape agreements in the last seven months. “The market has clearly chosen.” (Marketron is an affiliate of the Wicks Group of Companies and thus a distant cousin to Radio World; publisher NewBay Media is also part of Wicks.)
WideOrbit released a statement from Eric Mathewson, founder and CEO: “After implementing WideOrbit’s WO Traffic early this year, Greater Media has decided to revert back to their legacy traffic system. This is a decision by Greater Media that WideOrbit regrets and which WideOrbit takes full responsibility.”
But he said WideOrbit has installed some 35 North America radio station groups representing 650 radio stations over five years.
“WideOrbit earned this business directly at the expense of the same vendor that has reclaimed Greater Media as a client.” He said 2,100 radio and TV organizations have adopted WO Traffic software in the past decade and that Greater Media “is the only client group to ever revert back to their previous traffic system.” But he also complimented the broadcast group’s management and said WideOrbit had failed to defend its reputation for customer service.
“While we worked with Greater Media to provide incremental training and support after some initial difficulties, we failed to diagnose the scale of the dissatisfaction that their users were experiencing and in turn did not respond to solve these issues in our normal, timely, manner. We want to stress that Greater Media management has been very pleasant through this difficult process and we look forward to supporting them wherever possible in the future.”
