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News From Audio Graphics:
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CBS and Last.FM - Radio Industry Steps Into Social Networking
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Radio morphed into its own quagmire years ago. Part of the morph came from jumping into the internet via Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com with no plan on how to use online as an adjunct to radio's offerings. In 1997-98, thousands of broadcast industry-related radio web sites went up. All came crashing down a short while later when radio found out that the web called for more time and money than it wanted to invest.
As a whole, between then and now the radio industry let its creativity atrophy. Staff cuts brought stress to those still employed. Radio is no longer the fun place to be, as an employee or listener.
You know the story: The internet grew, and people that radio ignored in the nineties (everyone under 25) found their own places online. Time Spent Listening to broadcast radio continues to drop due to this shift that, for years, approached without being acknowledged by radio management.
CBS Acquires Europe's LastFM... was a headline on May 30, 2007. Clear Channel Tunes Into Social Networks" appeared as a headline May 1, 2007. The industry's two largest providers are finally heading into online with a workable approach that reaches the masses in a way the masses want to be touched.
Two questions: Will radio screw this up in the same way that it did web sites? (How many people were ever interested in looking at pictures of disc jockeys?) Or, are radio executives finally seeing that giving the audience tools to play with is now part of media's attraction? Interactivity is a real word, and the audience wants to interact.
Last.FM along with a few others like Pandora and Slacker have proved that the internet is an interactive world where today's audience wants to be, segregated into their own communities.
Comparative programming - that is, comparing your likes with others and matching those interested in similar music - is a new frontier that works because of the internet. As word about "community" radio's existence spreads, expect its aggregated audiences to be the target of advertisers. (It appears that the two largest radio companies are seeing this future.)
But, there are pitfalls that traditional broadcasters may not be aware of and which hold potential to recreate the online disaster that radio went through in the late nineties.
They are:
Running a radio station online is NOT like running one over the airwaves. Locally,
if a listener does not crave your programming, they are left with few alternatives.
Go to the Hip Hop/Rap page at RadioRow.com. Seventy-five stations are listed,
all from the same format. There is no limit to competition online, so it's back
to content being the magnet.
Being branded as "corporate" anything today is not cool. Clear Channel found that out
in 2000 when every radio station it owned started to proclaim itself "A Clear Channel
Station." Being tailored online to the consumer is your ticket. Give this tech-conscious
audience the tools and they will create their own world within your company's world.
Advertising is not a thirty-second spot anymore. It's sponsoring this hour of commercial-
free music, or helping the advertiser's chosen media enhance its audience's experience
(and getting credit for it). There is potential to gather information through sponsored
surveys which radio hasn't yet begun to understand, or to build a relationship with
consumers through online games. (According to an RRadio Network July 2004 survey,
51.5% of online radio's audience call themselves "a gamer.")
A couple of points that need to be made as radio groups enter into the social networking scene are:
1) This is the right direction, because it's where media meets the audience today.
2) As radio companies purchase these new social network radio sites, don't reinvent
them to suit broadcast radio's needs. Readapt broadcast radio to this newfound path.
Radio created a quagmire for itself by staying stagnant when the world was changing. Now, the only way to be successful is for the industry to buy into the world of social network radio and leave those who created it to integrate the broadcast side to SNR, instead of adapting social network radio to broadcasting. The radio industry has the experience to create the magnet (content) for both sides of this fence. But it needs to follow this time, not lead.
The audience is looking for fun, and a connection to its lifestyle with its music. When radio delivers this online, it'll be back in the game.
Social network radio only does this if the community is involved, which brings us back to "Interactivity is a real word, and the audience wants to interact"; the time has come for the radio industry to let them.
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