The other day I came across a newspaper’s bemoaning the impact the Internet has had on traditional mass media.
The article mentioned the Wall Street Journal as one of the few publications that has managed to get subscribers to pay for its online content.
In many cases, radio programming attracts fewer listeners and radio commercial advertising is more difficult to sell (and often at lower rates) than in the past.
Yet some radio programs and some radio stations flourish.
The difference? The ones that flourish create and provide compelling, original content that is relevant to their listeners’ lives.
Life was easier when the local newspaper was the only game in town (i.e., in the life of the town’s residents) and at most there were a few radio stations who had what listeners didn’t: access to specialized content.
Most often that content was music. If you wanted to hear music whenever and wherever you were, you turned on the radio. “Another 7 in a row!” the music station would exclaim.
Some stations, foolishly, still make “7 in a row” or “30 minutes of nonstop music” their Big Reason for you to listen.
But while the local radio station boasts “another 7 songs that we have chosen,” listeners have on their hips a device that delivers another 6,000 songs in a row — and every one of those songs was chosen by the individual listener, not by the radio station. Who do you suppose loses that particular competition?
The reason Wall Street Journal readers pay for their digital subscriptions is that WSJ has information those readers want dearly enough to pay for it.
Which brings me ’round to the other part of the radio equation: radio advertising. Thanks not only to vastly increased competition by New Media but also to the staggering incompetence of the owners and managers of some large radio groups, some “experts” have proclaimed the radio commercial to be dead.
As with all advertising, probably 90% of radio advertising is money down the drain. Not due to the effectiveness of the medium but because of the incompetence of most of the people who create radio campaigns. They — most, not all — don’t know understand how radio advertising really works and haven’t a clue how to craft an effective radio commercial campaign.
Ah, but the other 10%? Those who view radio advertising not as something that’s so easy anybody — including the business owners themselves — can create it?
They’re making lots of money with their radio commercials.
Combine a radio station that provides meaningful, relevant content with one staffed by talented professionals who know how to produce measurable results through an ad campaign, and the result is a radio station that continues to thrive.
Newspapers, magazines, TV stations, etc., who blame their hard times on changes in the delivery system are missing the point:
End users care far less about the method used to access the information or entertainment than they do about the value and relative scarcity of that content.
