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AG News:
Tuesday - 7/27/2010
Where Are Examples of Radio's Online Success?
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Having watched (and written about) the ways the internet affects the radio industry since January 1997, I believe an ongoing problem exists, which we'll spend a few minutes on now. There are still few radio executives who understand that having an online presence requires work - time - to conceive, create, post, and generate follow-up response to visitor interaction.
This lack of being able to identify elements needed for a successful web site can be traced back to the run on Broadcast.com, an online radio system designed by Mark Cuban and jumped on by thousands of radio stations in the late nineties. Viewed as the first generation of radio's move online, Broadcast.com was built around the essence of what is, today, termed social networking. Its business model was funneling visitors from radio station web sites to the Broadcast.com web site - which was sold to Yahoo! for over $3 billion dollars, then closed a short time later.
The radio stations that bought into this fiasco all found a lack of success due to the amount of work required to keep a site's content fresh. It takes effort to build an interesting web site, and radio was not looking at, or asking about, the amount of effort required. This oversight by the radio industry was warned as such here, multiple times, when everyone thought Broadcast.com was the answer to easily getting online. We all know how that era ended. To this day, not many in radio leadership see a need for "effort."
Then came streaming, a panacea - first for the promise of expanding over-the-air audience, and next for the ability to track listeners. Neither proved worthy of that title, as it grew more apparent that the numbers of people listening on an individual-station basis was extremely low. Creating the ability to turn listener tracking into actionable data was found to require - again - more effort than radio executives were willing to give.
Ad delivery, online, didn't meet radio expectations when it was realized that the CPM rates being paid for internet advertising couldn't come close to what was being sought for over-the-air broadcasts. It still isn't close, but with the addition of bona fide metrics and analytics, this side of the online world is growing for most. Few radio stations are taking it seriously, though. Proof is in the agenda for this year's "Radio Show," produced jointly by RAB and NAB. Try to find mention of anything relative to analytics or metrics; let me know if you find it in these conference sessions, because I didn't.
Even the NAB/RAB Radio Show "Info Sessions" page lacks any company capable of explaining this growing field. (Note that AG has been calling for this type of information session for over a decade. It has always fallen on deaf ears at NAB and RAB.)
The latest crazes concern Facebook and Twitter. Again, in what has become a definite pattern, nearly every time you read about the radio industry's use of social networking there is nothing to accompany the words to explain the effort involved in making social networking work. Radio industry trade publications are of little-to-no help, mostly because none understands what this segment of "online" is truly about.
Perhaps, in the future, we'll see some demonstration of radio stations that have enjoyed success in streaming, ad delivery, and social networking. Today, though, you're hard-pressed to find anything written in "radio industry trades" that speaks of successful strategies - only hopeful ways to try and be successful.
As in the creation of radio programs, it takes an enormous amount of effort to make any online venture a success. And "effort" seems to be one element of radio that has died out with consolidation. Do it on the cheap, do it with as few man-hours as possible, do it with as few people as you can, appears to be the radio business model. It won't work.
Longtime Audio Graphics readers have noticed I've spent considerably less time writing about how the internet affects radio the past six months. It's the result of my giving up hope that radio will ever get past its affinity for using buzzwords and ploys. These methods disguise what are truly the best ways to make the internet work - all of which require effort.
There are too few reports of anyone in broadcast building a successful online enterprise. And, if you haven't heard yet, online is the future.
After 13 years there's just nothing to indicate that the radio industry is seeing any success online, and nothing to indicate it will. That's truly sad, considering the radio industry was best positioned to take advantage of the online landscape from the beginning.
Unless you can point to some of radio's online success, long live the buzzword. It's all radio is accustomed to using.
Please. Prove me wrong.
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