If you’re a Jacobs Media client, you no doubt have seen this “portrait” before. With all respect to the great content creators who read this blog, distribution has become equally as important as the Digital Age comes into sharper focus.
Yes, content is king. It will always be as long as there are audiences that want to be entertained, informed, and moved. But gone are the days when there were limited numbers of pathways to receive it. If you are a multi-decade media veteran, you vividly recall the finite ways of accessing content: TV, radio, print were the gateways. But if you were outside the media inner circle you were shut out.
There was virtually no way to be heard – to get your music played, to get your poetry published, to get your film viewed, and to share your feelings and opinions beyond your kitchen table. There was no outlet for you to get your story told.
Today, we’re living in a world of infinite channels where everyone can be seen and heard. Amazon’s AMP Radio which I’ve written about here on JacoBLOG will get your radio show streamed, and you might just get paid more than you would for working for an FM radio station in town if you start building an audience on the app.
Do you make great videos? They can be viewed and shared on channels like YouTube and TikTok. If they’re any good, you might get paid – a lot – and that might add up to bigger paydays you’d see if you were producing a local newscast at the TV station in the area.
Many years ago, the great Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” was asked by Wired magazine where viewers of the future would watch his political satire – on
television, online, or somewhere else. And he flipped off this response:
“We make the donuts – we don’t drive the trucks.”
In other words, his team’s job was to produce the content; it was someone else’s problem to sweat over how it would be distributed.
If only that were true today. For many years, I have heard broadcasters take the “Field of Dreams” philosophy about content and discovery:
“If you build it, they will come.”
Not necessarily. Because in order to “meet the audience where they are” – a fundamental in 2022 – content creators need to understand how to reach their shifting audiences. As of this year’s Techsurvey 22, only 81% of core radio fans had a working radio at home they used. Meantime, 92% of them own a smartphone. This is why we do those Techsurveys – to help broadcasters understand where their audiences live when they’re not tuned into their radio stations.
A recent piece in Variety illustrates the growing complexity of this quest in a series of charts I’ll share with you. Aptly titled: “Survey: The Growing Demographic Divide Across Media Platforms,” Gavin Bridge lays out a road map for media companies, channels, and brands.
No, radio is not included in the chart. Even so, it’s an eye-opener:
The Gen Z (15-29) and Boomer (60+) columns pretty much tell the story, whether we’re talking broadcast and cable TV’s older skew, or podcasting and gaming’s strong showing among younger consumers. This clearly points to that schism that drives those under 30s away from traditional media.
But if you’re in radio, don’t feel left out. The study includes three agree/disagree statements about radio (satellite? broadcast?):
Here’s where you see the perceptual barriers taking shape, in terms of overall preference, radio vs. streaming, and attitudes about music repetition:
That column on the far left carries a lot of weight – the enjoyment of listening to radio. While disturbingly low among Gen Z’s, other generations are respectable. And even one in four young people admitting to happily listening to radio is perhaps even higher than the medium deserves, given its lack of interest in this generation.
So, based on this data, how would you distribute your content if you were looking to achieve a hit record album?
Look no further than Taylor Swift. Her “Midnights” album comes out last Friday. Obviously, for her fans (and hundreds of radio programmers), this is a big event in a music industry that has had precious little to celebrate.
But the way in which her team pre-promoted “Midnights” broke the mold. The big reveal was on Amazon’s streaming play-by-play coverage of “Thursday Night Football.”
Here’s the teaser trailer for the videos I’ve made for Midnights 🌌 Thank you @amazonmusic for premiering this, the first video for Anti-Hero will be out tomorrow at 8am ET. And Midnights will be here SO SOON!!!https://t.co/jjqUNkpPke pic.twitter.com/xzmqXa5Cqy
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 21, 2022
There’s a serious partnership here with Amazon Music, providing a 2-minute tease in the middle of the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints shown on Amazon Prime Video this past Thursday night.
I’m not privy to the “Midnights” strategy, but it is obviously stretching well beyond radio. An NFL Football game overwhelmingly reaches men – a lot of them. (interestingly, viewership for the game hit a season low for “TNF,” failing to reach 8 million viewers on Amazon Prime).
Taylor also pre-promoted “Midnight’s” songs on a TikTok series called “Midnights Mayhem with Me” starting in late September. Her fans enjoyed Lana Del Rey featured on one of the songs, as well as the release of seven bonus tracks, and a music video for “Anti-Hero,” the album’s lead single.
The strategy is obviously working. Taylor cooed about all-time spin highs for “Midnights” on Spotify, as well as Apple Music and Amazon Music, in addition to the largest vinyl sales for a new album in the 2000s.
Taylor Swift has finally released her new album #Midnights and fans across the world are loving the new record 🎤
Now the singer has shared her joy after the record broke Spotify’s record for the most-streamed album in a single day 🤯
Let’s discuss 👇https://t.co/qPPfBC0QE8
— Metro Entertainment (@Metro_Ents) October 22, 2022
Knowing the Taylor machine, they will continue to work radio hard, and you’ll still be able to go backstage with your kids to take selfies with her. But the words of the media mavens are written on the radio studio walls.
And you won’t read this in any publicity pieces but most of the tracks are getting lots of radio play, especially “Anti-Hero.” On Mediabase, I rough-counted more than 4,000 spins of multiple songs in just the first day (or so) of release.
That’s probably some sort of record, too, but broadcast radio just doesn’t think in those kinds of P.R. terms.
A big part of the Taylor strategy is knowing where her fans are – their social hangouts, their streaming channels of choice, the games they play and their perceptions, feelings, and attitudes on a wide range of topics. But a lot starts with distribution – where they go first to be entertained.
Radio broadcasters would be wise to get out the litmus paper strips to test the changing waters. A better grasp of “Queen distribution,” of course, starts with conducting more extensive, focused, and strategic research about where their audience is, want they want, and where they’re headed – not just testing the music for “burn” or determining the attractive prizes to give away this Christmas.
Our Techsurveys are a starting point. Stakeholder stations not only have a keener understanding of how their format fans use other media, they receive a detailed profile of how their core audience consumes content, and on what gadgets. The Media Usage Pyramid below for Michigan Radio, the NPR News station here in the Great Lakes State is a great illustration. And the thumbs up/down emojis signal the team about over and underperformance in these key areas, compared to thousands of public radio news consumers.
The pyramid provides a lot of information on one slide – or infographic. Note how the Michigan Radio cores profile higher than the average for local online newsletters, podcasts, and ownership of connected cars. And while it’s nice that three in every ten station fans own a smart speaker, more than three times as many own a smartphone. That data point speaks volumes about how Michigan Radio might think about its messaging and promotional inventory.
Distribution is a key variable for the survival of traditional media – like radio stations. And the tower, transmitter, clock radio, and boombox may no longer be the most viable or the most effective places for your content to be enjoyed. Stations need to know how their audience has changed, and what the trends tell us. The clock is ticking.
The Queen’s not going to stand for whole lot of dillydallying around.
Content IS King, but don’t mess with the Queen.
Postscript: Thanks to Steve Schram at the team at Michigan Radio for allowing me to use their pyramid.
And Techsurvey 2023 will go into the field in early January. If you’ve participated in the past, we hope you’ll become a stakeholder once again. The data is rich, and the need to know where your audience goes when they’re not listening to you has never been greater. And if you’ve never been a part of one of our studies, make this the year you become a stakeholder. Look for details soon or reach out to Lisa Riker to reserve your spot here.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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Great and timely read, once again. Thank you Sir Fred! Radio 45+ is huge. And, that’s the truth!
But what about the younger-than-45 listeners? The trend isn’t healthy for broadcast radio. I think it’s not as simple as educating youngsters to the fact that radio exists; they know what it is, it’s in their cars even if it’s no longer on a shelf or table at home. Most of them (75% apparently) just don’t enjoy it.
My gut tells me it’s a function of reduced attention spans. You and I may tolerate commercial breaks better than they do–who among us hasn’t learned to “tune them out” until the music resumes? The youngsters (a cringeworthy term, I know) are too familiar with media that have no such breaks, and they don’t yet have enough life experience to appreciate the valuable human/local elements that broadcast radio alone can provide. I still think one of the only obvious ways to bridge this chasm is to set some talented young people free on your HD3s to program what they and their pals want to hear, no ads, and limit the supervision to preventing anything that jeopardizes your license. This could carry them across the gap so we can pick them up on “our” side of the canyon.
John, I believe reduced attention spans IS part of it. But the other issue is that most radio doesn’t speak to younger people (say, under 30). Part of the issue is that little-to-no radio research is conducted among young people. It’s hard to get them to “our side of the canyon” if we have no idea where they are.
Thank you, Clark.
If there were an updated version of “The Graduate” , the seminal line would be STREAMING. For audio and video it’s the only format that will count in years to come. The challenge will be linear vs. immediate choices. The new media consumer mantra? “I want what I want when I want it and where I want it”.
Done with all that. (And now I see Dustin Hoffman/Benjamin Braddock just staring at the one word of advice, probably said in 2002).