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Most people spend Boxing Day battling the sales or consuming mass amounts of sports on TV, but me, I drop my wife off at the shopping centre and have a few thoughts over a long black.
This morning I was thinking about how radio could be different in 2014 and the Albert Einstein line “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” came to mind.
If you’ve worked with me before you might recognise some of these from conversations or proposals gone past. They all ended up in the “crazy ideas” bin, so feel free to take them if you like, these ideas are all yours.
A great piece of programming that for a few seconds differentiated it from Nova, 973, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes Radio, 96five and whatever was on DAB.
Now that Nova has replaced Novanation with Coles Radio (is that what happened on Christmas Eve?) why not launch a new radio format in the face of ARN’s CHR attack, a DJ style nonstop mix, that happy and uplifting style of music that you hear on the Surfers Paradise Boulevard on Summer Saturday afternoons.
Heck, just give DJ Goodwill 24 hours a day, he’d rock it! In fact, give half to Konsky, half to Goodwill.
The high horse of the quality broadcasting studio is great, but what if your news guy is live from that crash that just happened for the 2pm bulletin, then one talent is hanging out with the families at that massive local park checking out what they’re doing and making a quick package out of it then your other talent is on a yacht for the Sydney to Hobart, or something absolutely crazy that breaks all the rules of radio but makes it more local than it’s ever been.
One of the rising stars of the 2013 radio industry is Nic Kelly and although he’s a shining star in studio you should see him on the streets. If you gave him a wage, a car, a camera guy, and a producer I think you’d be pleasantly surprised with his airchecks.
The Fairfax radio apps deliver the station’s content in an above-average manner and the new SCA apps are pretty cool, but they have all missed the mark on one main thing: two-way communication and delivering a better-than-radio experience.
If your radio station app doesn’t allow me to send a sound bite of my opinion, a video of that crash that just happened, a “text message” of feedback or to vote on a poll, why does it even exist? I can listen on the hundreds of other radio apps.
Also, the producer that’s producing the show on air right now should be able to put the poll up and receive the soundbites or other content. If an engineer or "web guy" needs to be involved you’re not doing it right.
I don’t know if they do that with every ad but would the Good Guys, Harvey Norman and that guy from National Tiles get a run on a station sounding that good?
Here’s my little challenge: produce adverts in the mind that they’re getting played on a certain station and they sound at home on that station amongst the other ads that all have that same format.
Firstly, there are some amazing podcasters in your very city. In Melbourne hundreds of thousands of people listen to some of the city’s little known comedians on podcast. Even my and Steve’s podcast the “Thing Committee” has been listened to over 350,000 times. Those kind of numbers on commercial radio would warrant ears being raised. But on podcast it’s the normal. Our podcast isn’t even “popular” with those kind of numbers
Secondly, you’ve got some really talented people in your building and they might not be hosting breakfast. Almost everyone in the station has been behind the mic, or would like to be, so why not workshop some niche shows they could produce on a weekly basis, record in the spare studio and put out on the station website. Imagine the possibilities!
You’ve got the resources and the skills, so why not do it?
But with that said, we’d all like to increase our business traffic and revenue, so if your advertising makes us money, doesn’t cost us money, then we’d love to hear from you some time.
Seriously, who is sales talking to?
I tuned into the talk stations and those particular presenters on that day felt way out of my care-factor space. They were people who bitched and moaned about “kids these days”.
Here’s a tip: some “kids these days” like to listen to talk radio but we resort to podcasts to listen to our peers because the old fuddies on the radio quite often leave us with a sour taste in our mouth.
I didn’t grow up in Brisbane but now call it home and I legitimately wanted to know who Obie was and why he had a segment every morning. And I worked there.
Obie’s probably a great bloke but I listened every morning and could never figure out who he was or what he did.
Listeners want to join the boys club, but we’d like an invitation.
I challenge someone to do something absolutely crazy on DAB, something that would create talk and lead the charge on DAB receiver sales.
She doesn’t even check the people.com app, it’s not as good as the website she tells me.
Britt is demographically right in the middle of the B105 target, she even likes radio, we met because she missed my breakfast radio show when I left, but she doesn’t care for Scoopla or anything of that feel on B105.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s not whatever is happening right now.
Here’s the key though: when you play it back don’t apologise about how it’s something old. Back yourself, just play it with no apologies. If it’s good content then it’s got legs for months.
Regional radio is just so much more important to it’s community. Jay and Dave in Mackay, Wayne in Esperance or Glenney in Kalgoorlie are the underrated heroes of their communities and they deserve a pay-rise, extra resources and a promotions budget.
It’s just a damn shame if they don’t get it and end up in real estate like most regional radio superstars do.
The greatest void on the Internet today is in original, relevant, relational, quality content.
Yep - what you do on air is missing online. You can connect the dots right?