3Cinteractive Blog

If radio understood the appeal of the internet, they’d know a great website isn’t the key to the battle to raise revenues.

Despite a growing database of purchased MP3’s, an iPhone, and an in-car iPod cable, I still enjoy listening to the radio. I have several routine drives that I make throughout the work week, and at least two of them are spent using the radio to catch concert news, hear sports updates, or stumble upon a new band. I think of radio like a nice blog I visit because they offer a mix of opinions and content I can’t find anywhere else (i.e. it can’t be downloaded from iTunes). New music, a pinch of throw-back music, and DJ commentary add a spin that you might find in a podcast, but podcasts don’t have the same feel.

But in a suffocating attempt to leverage new media, radio stations are building content-oriented websites and promoting them on-air to their listeners. This was a great idea when users were listening to radio in the workplace… but with the boom of iTunes, most people who work at a computer aren’t listening to the radio. Instead, radio is slowly being limited to in-car entertainment.

The biggest problem with website-oriented in-car entertainment? No one is by a computer! So why are Radio DJ’s asking their in-car listeners to go search the station website to learn more about an artist, concert, or song? The last thing radio needs to do is push more people to the internet, especially for content better served by a Google search! In the off-chance a consumer remembers to look for the information, the chances of them using the radio website to find it are slim. Sure, there are exceptions, like station specific information, but by the time someone gets to a computer, do they really care? In an society dictated by instant gratification, I doubt it. If listeners are really looking for funny videos or concert clips they’re better off on YouTube… and the listeners know this!

As Chris Anderson discusses in his book “The Long Tail,” the appeal of the internet comes from volume and an endless selection of “niches.” To an internet consumer, a 70’s rock album is just as new as Tuesday’s newly released single. On the internet “new” is a relative measurement (i.e. has the person seen it before), as much as it’s an absolute measurement (i.e. how long ago was it released). On the internet, media consumers that are interested in the absolute “new” visit blogs because they offer unique content that hasn’t been marked and filed in online content libraries (e.g YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.).

To adapt to new media, radio stations need to begin functioning like blogs and go beyond streaming downloadable content. Radio stations need to begin interacting with their clients in a medium that allows the user to instantly receive content where they listen to radio. Blogs are new-age talk radio with two advatages: the content can be consumed on the computer and they maintain their readership by RSS feeds - it has essentially taken over workplace radio. Undoubtedly, the internet is draining the original market for radio stations, but taking a step back… there is still something there and the cell phone gives radio a fighting chance.

The business model of radio is not to provide new music to people in their cars, it’s to gain repeated listeners and understand their demographic well enough to sell advertisements. Media gains listeners through unique content and the ability to remind them (because people are busy) when you’ve got more of their favorite stuff. Radio DJs can provide unique flavors for their frequencies, they just struggled to ping users. Instead of realizing this they panicked, feeding people to the internet - thinking that users had no idea how to listen through their computers - and hoping they’d blindly visit the station website for updates. It’s not that people had no idea how to listen on the internet… they just had better options.

Radio took the blunt edge of the sword with the internet boom and, despite how kick-ass their website might be, they will never get that back. Radio still has a good presence in the car, and the text message boom gives them a tool rebuild a viable business model: advertising to a database of loyal listeners. Now, instead of driving consumers to the internet, radio stations can ask users to send a text message with their mobile phone. In exchange the user not only discovers the name of the song and the artist playing, but also has the ability to interact with the radio station and sign up for on going alerts (remind you of RSS?).

The introduction of the internet started the bleeding by pulling consumers away from the radio at work. Today, the evolution of the cell phone allows radio stations to pull people back with more accuracy than ever before.

- Ainsworth