Radio still connects content with audiences

 Reach Out and Engage

Even in the early days, radio was an extension of what I liked to do best, share what I've found, and then listen to the response. As an announcer, I went at it as somebody who was making discoveries, a curator in the hope of finding a common bond. At first I did that with music. Later I was sharing stories.

Radio does this very well, especially public radio. I craved the feedback, Content that resonated well with the audience became the benchmark. In the beginning it was the phone calls. Later it became actual research. Unfortunately, phone response represented the caller and nobody else. 

It worked. It worked really well. 

Radio is a personal medium. It's been said that everything that comes out of your radio speakers is local, because the listener is able to interact. Listeners would talk in terms of the the stations they listened to as their stations. 

Radio is a personal medium and, unlike other media, it can accompany you throughout the day. This fact makes radio the ultimate local community and loyal friend. Radio is highly personalized because it requires the listener to fill in the blanks … and they are entirely in charge of what they “see”. The Media Online

Radio has changed. Instead of lamenting being displaced by Social Media, look at it as a way of making your discoveries available on multiple platforms.

Check out Zane Derbyshire's article at The Media Online. Derbyshire is currently the head of all things content at East Coast Radio. In it he says, "Technology will take radio forward and allow for even more meaningful ways to connect the audience to the presenter.  Radio needs to make it easy for listeners to interact, be it through calls, WhatsApps, video sharing, or text messages. Sharing of great content also needs to become easier. If that happens, your audience will become the promoters of your content.

• Be proactive
• Reach out
• Use research
• Listen and engage

Please understand you're going to need to bring people in your own house on-board. I've had to persuade people who think only in terms of my show, my story, my music. That won't work for radio. Loyalty for the listener is primarily to the radio station. That has not changed. Don't believe me? Run a crossover analysis of Morning Edition to the rest of your broadcast day. You are likely to find 80% of your audience filters through morning drive.

Think of it this way, you're starting to understand the power of the shared experience. I share stuff on Social Media all the time, but now I'm appealing to a core audience that never exceeds 50 people. In my radio days it was about 100,000 core listeners. Pretty heady stuff. If you can bring that audience to your content, then you've succeeded.