In the good old days the family radio was the hub for family entertainment. Parents and children gathered around to listen to serials the way they now gather to watch Grey's Anatomy or The Closer. There were programmes for kids, mommies, daddies, news programmes, and music - pretty much anything you could want. Then TV came along and radio started to take a back seat. Then MTV came along and, well, video killed the radio star, didn't it?
Radio still served a purpose: people had to listen to something during the commute to and from work and was a launching pad for local bands, but its popularity was definitely on the wane. Fortunately, nature abhors a vacuum and the shock jock hit the air waves. Shock jocks are loathed and loved but they attract listeners and they attract revenue and so, despite the controversy, radio stations love them (although the trend is to only have one shock jock per station - too much controversy is a bad thing).
But then social media entered the picture and people discovered that they preferred interacting online to almost anything else: they could download the music they wanted, to listen to when they wanted and YouTube became the medium of choice for new artists to break into the music scene. Music became public domain, people got tired of listening to the same songs over and over and over again and radio was once again relegated to the bench.
Writing on bizcommunity.com Daryl Ilbury says that to survive old radio needs to become new radio and new radio needs to connect with its audience in ways it has never done before. It needs to embrace the social revolution to remain relevant. To this end he predicted 11 trends in radio for 2011, some of which we will look at below.
• Celeb-jocks: the one thing people never get tired of is celebrity. TV has picked up on this which is why celeb reality and talent shows are so popular - think Heidi Klum and her quest to find fashion designers or Dancing with the Stars. Ilbury expects radio stations to sign on TV, music, comedy and socialite celebrities to host their own radio shows, regardless of talent.
• In addition, radio DJs will have to work harder to boost their public profiles and achieve a greater degree of celebrity to keep listeners coming back for more. In South Africa, 5FM DJ Gareth Cliff is a judge on South African Idols and has hosted his own TV talk show. We can expect more of this kind of thing as the year wears on.
• More talk: in an effort to better connect to its audience radio stations may implement an unspoken policy of more talk less other stuff. This has the potential to backfire, however, as only certain personalities can carry extended conversations on air. The air waves are full of DJs spouting rubbish and annoying listeners. Many people switch off their radios and turn on their MP3 players because they don't want to listen to unnecessary prattle.
• The growth of non-traditional revenue streams: most radio revenue is generated by ads, which, like waffling DJs, are annoying and alienating. According to Ilbury, radio stations need to follow in the footsteps of social media and find unobtrusive ways to finance their existence.
• Well-planned spontaneous programming: this requires a fluid and creating approach to radio shows and also means that listeners won't have to sit through the same songs repeated six times per day.
Radio is remarkably resilient; it has survived, largely unchanged, despite everything that technology has thrown at it. But as the media industry becomes ever more competitive and audiences ever more demanding radio stations will find that they have to adapt quickly to survive.
We write about media planning and buying for the leading resource for media, marketing and advertising professionals in South Africa, SARAD.
Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expertView the Original article
No comments:
Post a Comment