Radio Still Leads Time with Audio

News of Radio's Death is Greatly Exaggerated

Edison Research is reporting that Americans spend 54% of their audio time with AM and FM radio. This is giood news for Public Radio. Lately there's been a debate that Public Radio is losing it's grip. Podcasting is the hot platform and the disruption will soon eclipse radio broadcasting.

Not So Fast

Podcasting is just another means of reaching the public media audience. According to the research...

• 54% of the timeis spent with AM/FM
• 16% of the time is spent with owned music
• 15% with pureplay streaming audio
• 7% with SiriusXM
• TV music channels such as Music Choice command 5% 
• Podcasts account for 2% of all time spent with audio.

You can read more about time spent with audio by linking to Inside Radio.

To be sure, younger listeners are gravitating to mobile devices, but the amount of time spent with radio suggests Content and Program Directors continue to pay attention to the craft of good radio.
I remember looking at some of the early research done for public radio by Church and Bailey. The research mentioned that public radio listeners were avid consumers of all media. The same is still true today. There's just a lot more platforms and a many more opportunities.

Is video the new radio star?

Inside Radio posted an article today about the importance of Video on a radio station's website. The article focuses on data gathered by comScore.

A new report from comScore shows that’s a smart strategy. The U.S. online video market attracts an average of 75 million viewers every day.  And content providers are doing a better job of monetizing those views. The gap between the number of video ad views and content views is narrowing, comScore data shows. The percentage of videos accompanied by a video ad jumped from just 14% in 2011 to nearly 23% in 2012.

Some public radio stations are on-board with this. Back in 2006 we did some early dabbling in video for radio at WNPR. We recorded and posted  the Steve Davis Quintet at Sweet Jane's in Hartford. It now has over 7000 views. WNPR's offerings are much more robust. WNPRVideo's Channel has 32 videos. The most watched is Kate Callahan and Two Doors with over 12,000 views.

WUMB919 (I had a cup of coffee with this station.) has 37 videos. Most of the views are in the 100's. The most recent video was posted about nine months ago.

WNYC has over 1500 videos. WNYC's Street Shots: Bruce Gilden, was posted about four years ago. It's a good example of the long tail of appealing on-line postings with over 600,000 views.

There are many more videos cross linked to each of these stations. An example of that cross linkage are videos posted by Colin McEnroe and the Real Life Survival Guide.

Still not convinced? YouTube is the second most utilized search engine behind Google. The platform is a must for your content.  A robust video strategy is going to bring more visitors to your station's website and will make more users aware of your content and your station.

And finally...According to the article from Inside Radio, advertisers (underwriters) are willing to pay higher cost per thousand rates for on-line video content and ads.