Most everyone on the air in radio grew up with the axiom that "you paint pictures with your words." Many remember the old Stan Freberg bits where he cleverly used sound effects to create amazing "scenes" that were enhanced by your imagination.
For radio in 2007, however, those days are over. Morning shows, daypart jocks, and programmers who aren’t thinking in terms of visuals are missing out on entertainment value. And sales departments are losing opportunities to monetize web-based content that would enhance the overall consumer experience.
And this just in: comScore reports that in May of this year, three-fourths of Internet users watched an average of nearly three hours of online video that month. This translates to 132 million Americans watching streaming video, with YouTube leading the way. And of those consumers, they average two videos a day.
So what does this tell us about our content and our business? Video needs to be a component of everything we do. It needs to be integrated into our personality shows, whether it’s via webcams or listener-submitted videos. Events need to be covered with video to capture the excitement of station events, contests, interviews, etc. The video age online has signaled increased interest in going behind the scenes to see what happens at stations. It involves the listener in the process, and provides her with a unique/on-demand perspective.
The online video revolution also should signal the need to acquire employees (jocks, promotion people, etc.) who have basic video editing skills. We need to be thinking video in our hires, and making sure that our stations are staffed with employees who "get" the visual side of what we do. Every time I visit a web site that uses "photo galleries" to cover an event (often too many pictures posted that are not edited and poorly/not labeled), it screams how out-of-date stations often end up looking to listeners.
In the same way that walking into a home that last had interior decoration done in the ’80s simply looks tired and dated, radio needs to critically assess its websites and total approach to how it presents entertainment. Consumers are moving at a rapid rate as the comScore data illustrates. TV and newspapers have hopped on the video bus and are doing their best to move forward. Radio needs to get moving, too.
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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Yikes! The days of theater of the mind are over? Not if radio wants to stay viable.
While I agree that video elements on station websites has validity, just as supplying real usable content, not heaps of ads does, the tone of this post sounds like, “Radio…become TV.” I believe many of the struggles that radio faces lies in focusing on what we aren’t. We all agree that content is what makes radio great. And for better or worse radio content is “audio”. I think theater of the mind is more important than ever…even to the point of continuing it online. We need to con