I had heard this story over the years but always assumed it was apocryphal. Too good to be true. Rudy Pylant (“Mister Rudy”) was a local radio personality in my hometown. His fans were legion and he got lots of letters. Like this one his daughter recently discovered and shares.
“Smartphones and other portable Net-connected devices are now the closest things we have to universal receivers and transmitters of live news. Not many of us carry radios in our pockets any more. Small portable TVs became passé decades ago. Smartphones and tablets are replacing radios and TVs in our pockets, purses and carry-bags.”
“Television has also become almost entirely an entertainment system, rather than a news one. News matters to TV networks, but it’s gravy. Mostly they’re entertainment businesses that also do news.”
“…emergencies such as wars and earthquakes demonstrate a simple and permanent fact of media life: that the Net is the new TV and the new radio, because it has subsumed both. It would be best for both TV and radio to normalize to the Net and quit protecting their old distribution systems.”
— From a post by Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto.
It was almost 40 years ago I got my first taste of being “on the radio.” It as a very little pond but I was happy fish. It was easy to convince yourself a lot of people were listening to you. Very ego gratifying. I marvel at the freedom we had.
eMarketer has done some meta-analysis of data from dozens of research firms using a variety of methodologies. The result is a series of estimates of how much time consumers spend with all major media, regardless of multitasking or simultaneous usage, from 2008 to 2010. A few excerpts relating to radio:
The average time spent with all major media combined increased from about 10.6 hours in 2008 to 11 hours in 2010. TV and video (not including online video) captured the lion’s share of all media time, about 40% each year. The internet’s share of media time increased over the same period, from 21.5% to 23.5%, as did mobile’s share, from 5% to 7.5%. The share of time spent with magazines and newspapers fluctuated between 8.5% and 11.5%, while radio and all other media—video games, moves in theaters, outdoor media—declined.
Mobile devices received an average of 50 minutes’ worth of attention every day—the same amount of time allotted to newspapers and magazines combined.
While TV, print and radio will slowly lose ground to digital media. Those trends have been most apparent with print media in recent years, but are now beginning to show up in TV and radio usage as well.
Average time spent listening to the radio each day is 96 min. That still strikes me as a very respectable amount of time. The trend, however, is going the wrong way. What are radio operators doing to reverse it. What can they do to reverse it?
“over six in ten respondents say they tend to ignore or disregard Internet ads. Among those who ignore online ads, two in five say they ignore banner ads (43 percent) the most, and one in five say they ignore search engine ads (20 percent) the most.”
“people who said they ignore ads on other media: television ads (14 percent), radio ads (7 percent) and newspaper ads (6 percent).”
11% in the 18-34 demo say they ignore radio ads, compared to 6% 55+.
Election night was a big night for radio station news departments. Or, they were back in the 70’s in the little town where I worked.
The candidates would crowd into the county clerk’s office and watch as the votes were written on a big chalk board. The radio station news guy would setup a small transmitter and send back updates that were broadcast live. You were either there… listened to us… or heard the results the next morning at the local coffee shop.
When I started working with The Missourinet (a statewide radio network) in the mid-80’s, it wasn’t that different. One of our reporters would set up at the Secretary of State’s office with a dedicated land-line (before cell phones). Maybe they used one of the state’s phones, I don’t recall. But the reporter would phone in regular updates to the network newsroom where they’d go out to affiliate stations around the state.
Sometime in the 90’s technology improved to the point where we could Telnet into the the state computers (via very slow modem’s) and access the numbers directly. And then report them over the network.
Fast forward to the Web. No more Telnet but those early websites were very glitchy. And slow. But they got better every election. It was a wonderful thing. Anyone with internet access could see the returns as they were tabulated. But it was still easier for radio stations (and their listeners) to take our reports than produce their own.
Last week one of our news directors stopped by my office to talk about what we would do online for the upcoming election. Missouri’s Senate race is the Main Event and we’ll have reporters at both candidates venue. They’ll do interviews and feed those back to the network where reporters will be working the Secretary of State’s website.
One the other end of the information pipe, people will still be listening to the radio and watching TV but I expect Twitter and Facbook to be where many get their first information. (Does the Secretary of State have a Twitter feed?). And most of it will be mobile.
Eventually we’ll all vote electronically, without standing in line. And we’ll see the results in near real time.
Will this elections more susceptible to fraud? Girl, please! Is the TSA making flying safer?
Mark Ramsey was listening to Fresh Air on NPR the other day and heard Terry Gross reading the credits, which included a reference to “the Chief Content Officer.” That what most stations call their “Program Director.” (A job I once held)
Mr. Ramsey also mentioned that back in July National Public Radio annoucned it would hereafter be known as NPR. It’s been National Public Radio since 1971 but switched tothe acronym because –according to the Washington Post– “Its news, music and informational programming is heard over a variety of digital devices that aren’t radios.”
Hmm.
Our company operates several news networks, including:
Radio Iowa
Wisconsin Radio Network
South Carolina Radio Network
Nebraska Radio Network
We (not me) came up with Radio Iowa back in 1996 and thought it was pretty cool at the time. Like, “Radio Free Iowa.” I was not involved with nameing the others.
We have websites, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages but are first and foremost radio networks.
If someone were starting a new radio network today, what would they call it? I have no idea.
The American Youth Study 2010 “surveys the the media and technology habits of America’s 12-24 year-olds, and represents a sequel to a study originally conducted by Edison in 2000.” Among the findings:
A big part of my job during my early days at Learfield was affiate relations. Periodically, I would survey the stations to learn more about how they used our news and sports. Here’s a snapshot from 1988.
Back in those pre-web days, we also did a newsletter each month. One page, front and back. I typed it on a typewriter, made copies and put them in the mail. Example: Missourinet newsletter – Jan87
The whole process now seems … quaint. Typewriters and envelopes, once a month. But there was a simplicity that seems appealing in retrospect.
I really, really hope small town radio stations figure out how to survive and thrive in this new media world in which they find themselves. If I had The Secret Nazi Formula, I send guys out on motorcycles (with sidecars) to each and every station. But I don’t.
I’m taking a vacation day, sitting in the Coffee Zone fine-tuning one of my Pandora channels (“stations?”). I’d like to share just a couple of features:
For those unfamiliar with Pandora, it’s a streaming music service. You start by picking a song or artist and Pandora starts playing songs based on that information. You vote thumbs up or thumbs down on each song, and Pandora just keeps refining the music you hear.
If it all starts sounding a bit too similar, you can “Add Variety” (see image above). For example, I added Paul Simon and Brandi Carlile to my Pomplamoose channel. The result is so finely tuned to my musical tastes, I don’t see how any radio station could match it. They could not. And with every song I listen to (or don’t) my channel gets better.
Pandora also gives me the option to share my creation and find others who like the same music.
So. What’s missing? Commercials? Weather? Sports? News about the oil gushing into the Gulf? A funny guy to talk over the beginning of my songs? Weekly specials from my local supermarket? Maybe.