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News From Audio Graphics:
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Rope, Radio, and Recycling |
Compete in a tug-of-war and you get a sense of the competition between new media and old. In the radio industry, it's important to realize they aren't pulling against each other.
Picture each media as having hold of a long rope to its audience. Old media promotes its content, hoping people will schedule time for what's broadcast (it pulls its audience in). New media is found by the audience, which then pulls in information. (Consider that there's little "promotion" of a web site's content outside of search engines).
News Flash: From Interpublic's Universal McCann "Media in Mind" report:
...among digital media's bleeding edge - adults 18-34 - social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others. (Source: MediaPost)
Those under 35 don't wait, don't want to schedule time, and don't consider digesting content unless there's something in it for them. How do they find that out? A friend may text (or Twitter) a message, they may receive an RSS feed (meaning they've scheduled delivery of content because it's what they want), or someone in their FaceBook list of friends may leave a message about a program.
People over 35 still, out of habit, schedule time for broadcast. They also, out of habit, use radio while in the car when they are trying to kill time (traffic reports excluded).
The challenges for the radio industry are to create content that's good enough to be pulled in by the under 35 audience, and to create, within its broadcast, a reason why the under 35 should be visiting a radio station's web site.
Don't believe that audio content can be the same for both. It doesn't work that way.
In broadcast, PBS and NPR are organizations that have bridged old and new media. Each continually offers "more on this at our web site" in each program it airs. We're also seeing more use of getting the audience to pull new media within general television programming with "See excerpts that didn't make this program at our web site...."
This recycling of audience is key for any broadcasters who want to get the most from their web sites.
While recycling was a word that radio depended upon for years, today it's been nearly wiped clean from radio programming (unless we're talking about pushing people to a morning show).
The radio industry is still struggling to find reasons why people should visit its web sites. Or, using our tug-of-war metaphor, why an audience member would want to "pull in" its online content.
While it may be doing OK in the car with those over 35, trying to keep the younger crowd with current radio programs is faltering. Results are that youth don't hear reasons to be recycled to a station web site.
Pull or be pulled is the difference between old and new audience-gathering techniques.
Until the radio industry creates a different approach to what it puts on the air, until it creates a reason for people to pull in its web sites' content, we'll continue to see an erosion of radio's importance in the under 35 crowd.
For decades radio has used that long rope to lasso an audience and pull people to advertiser-sponsored programs.
But times have changed. Now the audience is roping the content it wants, and when it pulls it in, there's a growing chance that radio won't be on the other end.
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