Public Media v Social Media: Advantage Social Media

It's Addictive

Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users

How do you compete against something that is deliberately addictive? Does Public Media stand a chance when the deck is stacked?

In programming sessions we used to talk about how we had just seconds to draw in the listener before they would tune away. Once the audience is drawn into Social Media, they may never come back. A recent Pew study found that 45% of teens admit to face time with their screens all the time.

Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018

As an instructor I talk with teens about their media use. Most of them never listen to the radio. As Social Media addicts looking for the instant gratification of the like button, they haven't got time, and Public Radio isn't nearly as exciting.

Among adults, 59% say it would not be hard to give up Social Media, but that comment seems to be contradicted by the study published by the BBC. Indeed, among adults who grew up with Social Media, Millennials 18 to 24, 51% admit that it would be hard to give up social media.

Social Media companies are using color, sounds and unexpected rewards to drive compulsive behavior. A Social Media developer quoted in the article said quitting is a lot like trying to quit cigarettes, he went through withdrawal. I don't think anybody has said that about Public Media. Of course, we often talk about the news junkie during fundraisers. What happens if Social Media has a stronger allure?

Endless Scroll

Why is this so different? Listeners used to tune out all the time. If they were loyal to Public Media, they would always come back. One of the advantages of the of the newer technologies is the endless scroll. Users can thumb through an endless scroll of content. Public Media is just one of an almost endless stream of content. That's a shift from when we were a high quality choice among a few options. The competition is fierce, and the likelihood that we may never be seen or heard is increasing.

Millennials and Giving - It's Complicated

More Give Less

Millennials give less because they have less. 

Unemployment among millennials is high. Their unemployment rate is 7.2%. Among the youngest in this group, the rate is 14%!

Student loan debt is oppressive. The average is $37,000. 9.6% of those debts are past due.

Overall giving is down 12%.

On-line giving is up with Millennials leading the way.

Millennials are giving more than money. 

"They were far more likely to donate clothes, food and other supplies (41%) and volunteer their time (27%). While 22% of American adults gave more in 2017 than they did last year -- almost twice as many as the 12% who are giving less -- Millennials are showing how to make the most impact with the least cash."

Millennials are more likely to work for companies that give. Resurrecting the ideas of matching gifts might be a good idea.

Give.org finds that Millennials are the most generous generation in history. 



To find out more, go to thestreet.com.

You'll Lose Thousands of Listeners

WAMU recently replaced longstanding big band jazz program, "Hot Jazz." There's the usual reaction with angry calls...even a petition.

‘You will lose a lot of listeners’: Petition fights cancellation of WAMU’s ‘Hot Jazz Saturday Night’

Replacing programs on public radio has never been easy. I've done it. I feel your pain. I feel the listener's pain too. I've logged countless hours listening to complaints about program decisions. I didn't argue. I empathized. I thanked them for their support. I didn't change my mind. I didn't relent.

There's loyalty that builds among the core, but there's core as defined by the listener and core as defined by the program source. It's he larger core, the audience loyal to the radio station that I hoped to serve.

The Small But Loyal Audience

The small cadre of listeners loyal to a single program are always sure the programmers decision are wrong, misguided and foolish. They may say something like, "I've talked with all my friends, and they're really upset." I pointed out to one caller, "That's why they're your friends. You have common interests." That didn't mollify the caller. Despite the negative reaction from disgruntled listeners and flaming letters to the editor, my experience in all of these changes has been audience growth, not loss.

The point is, a station's audience divided up by small but loyal audiences has a much more difficult time generating listener support in numbers significant enough to be self sustaining.

A Bigger Picture

Core for the radio station is among the loyal listeners who tune in several times a week for a variety of programs. These are the people who support public radio over the long haul. They are the listeners who are most likely to be members. In the case of WAMU, that's 80,000 contributors out of a weekly cume of 730,000 listeners.

All Is Not Lost

Use the momentum of the petition to look for another platform. There are public and commercial radio stations other than WAMU that might be interested. Commercial radio stations (AM Stations) are clamoring for content on the weekend. There's also Internet Radio. Could this be the beginning of a big band music station. Then there are the possibilities presented by social media. Find you niche audience and super serve them with Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts and YouTube. There are many ways to get your content to your audience. Think beyond the box of your Philco radio.

Podcasts: How Long is Long Enough

What's the Sweet Spot?

Attention spans are falling. It's not that this problem is new. As a journalist I was taught to put the compelling information on top. Most readers would drop off before the tenth paragraph. (subheadings helped). In radio, stopset content over a minute causes tune out. Writers of long blogs are doomed. Maybe 5 percent might stick around for the conclusion. The sweet spot for YouTube is about four minutes. Since the inception of the smartphone, attention spans have dropped dramatically. Millennials have an attention span of eight seconds, but they aren't the only ones. 

Length A Barrier?

When it comes to podcast, length is for me. I'll often read the description, look at the length of the podcast, and find myself wishing I could read the text. I would rather skim the article to look for the pertinent information, then, if intrigued, I'll fill in the details by reading other parts of the article. If there is no text, I look at the length and usually decide not to bother. 45, 35 even 25  minutes seems daunting. I'm looking for the CliffsNotes version.

Podcast Sweet Spot

AudacitytoPodcast.com suggests the sweet spot is 30 to 45 minutes, about the length of a commute. That's really generous.

Cision.com claims the average length of a podcast is about 30 minutes with users actually listening 22 minutes. They cite the average commute at 20 minutes. Users prefer podcasts that are 16 minutes.

7 Podcasting Best Practice

Cision's Recommendations

1. Respect People's Time 
2. Plan Your Content 
3. Augment the Audio with Text (the complete text) 
4. Don't Use Listens to Measure Success 
5. Distribute - Promote - Embed 
6. Benchmark 
7. Master the Audio 

Longer isn't always better. In fact, longer doesn't seem to work for readers on the web. Slate found in 2013 that readers can't stay focused. About 5 percent of people who land on Slate pages and are engaged with the page in some way. Attention span is way down. A survey of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span had fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. We now have a shorter attention span than goldfish.

The #Cost of #Air #Pollution

What if we focus on policy and it's impact on the quality of life?

Easing the Standards

The EPA wants to ease the standards on air pollution. The reasoning is the standards get in the way of economic growth, but there's a trade off.  There's a cost much greater than the cost of clean air standards impose on industry.

According to the World Bank...

Air pollution costs the global economy more than $5 trillion annually in welfare costs, with the most devastating damage occurring in the developing world, according to a new World Bank report. The welfare figure incorporates a number of costs associated with air pollution like health and consumption.Sep 9, 2016

Bad air also costs lives...

What If We Focused on Issues and Policy?

Focus on the event...not the person.

When teaching students about road rage, I counsel, focus on the event instead of the person. The strategy diffuses the rage. The same strategy can be applied to the policies that are coming out of the Trump Administration. By focusing on the issues and coming up with next steps, there can be room for common ground and a way forward.

Recently HUD announced it wants to raise rent for those getting housing assistance. Those getting assistance fall well below the poverty line.

Rents Are Up...Income Is Not

Household Income Not Keeping Pace

Pew Research and APM's Marketplace are reporting that household income is not keeping pace with increases in rent. According to Pew, after the recession of 2007 - 2009 fewer people were able to transition from rentals to home ownership. Add to that the influx of millennials into the workforce increasing the demand for rentals, and the supply of rentals is down while demand is up.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Millennials are taking a double whammy. Home prices stagnated and fell during the recession and its aftermath have rebounded to the higher prices seen during the bubble of 2007. Millenials are priced out of the market. Millennials aren't the only demographic facing the financial pinch.

American Families Face a Growing Rent Burden

17 million are rent burdened and the numbers keep going up. Rent Burdened is defined by HUD as cost-burdened families. Those “who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing” and “may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, and medical care.” Severe rent burden is defined as paying more than 50 percent of one's income on rent.

The Pew study finds 38 percent of all renter households are burdened. Severely rent burdened households—spending 50 percent or more of monthly income on rent—increased by 42 percent. It is now 17% of all renters.


The chart below demonstrates that the problem has been getting worse since 2001.

Less Disposable Income

Households that are rent burdened have fewer dollars to spend. They often make choices between healthcare, food and education. 
According to Pew's findings:
Rent-burdened families are also financially insecure in many other ways:

• Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) had less than $400 cash in the bank; most (84 percent) of such households are African-American-headed.
• Half had less than $10 in savings across various liquid accounts, while half of homeowners had more than $7,000.

The growing disparity is leading to a growing underclass that is on the outside looking in with little hope of reversing their situation.  Our economy is stronger when our citizens are able to participate as individuals and as consumers. Keeping large portions of the population on the outside will only further divide us. 

And there's a growing cost of poverty. The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year. The United States has the second-highest child poverty rate among the world's richest 35 nations, and the cost in economic and educational outcomes is half a trillion dollars a year, according to a new report by the Educational Testing Service.

End the disparity. Offer hope through living wages, educational opportunities and affordable healthcare.

Music Makes the Workload Easier

This blog isn't about what you and I might think our listeners ought to be hearing. It is about how a portion of our listeners spend their time listening to the music.  I've been through this discussion many times, but in order to serve your audience, you must have your audience in mind. You are here to serve the audience. There is no service of nobody is listening.

Core Values of Music

If you were part of the discovery of the Core Values Project, you might remember the revelation that the classical core used music as a way to help them concentrate on work and other tasks. Classical music has intensive and ambient qualities depending on what the listener brings to the music.

There's plenty of research to support that assumption.

The research was done by the Public Radio Program Directors Association. If you look at Qualities of the Heart and Spirit notice the top two qualities.

• Internal State (peaceful, soothing, relaxing)
• Inspired by Beauty and Majesty (of the music)

Head Clearing Experience

The Station Research Group published listener comments from the focus groups. Among them:

(3. CLASSICAL MUSIC CLEARS THE MIND AND HELPS LISTENERS FOCUS ON THEIR TASK)

• Classical music does alter your brain waves. 
• Has anybody else seen that? it has a physical reaction 
• …Lowers your blood pressure. 
• Yes, you can concentrate better. 
• ...Or whether it’s writing a poem and you just need the feeling. So then you want to listen to feeling. 
• It seems to be enjoyable yet you can achieve what you want to. 
• It just seems to help clear the way and make it easier. 
• It gives me something to focus on; it brings order into chaos. 
• If you listen to Bach, it just orders your mind. For some reason, if I have to do a lot of paperwork I love classical music
• I've heard they’ve done studies like Mozart stimulates your intellect or something.

Music Helps You Concentrate

Chad Grills, CEO of the Mission and publisher of the podcast The Story, wrote and article about 

The Science Backed Ways Music Affects Your Brain and Productivity

Among his findings:

• Music with lyrics works better with mundane tasks.
• Ambient music works better with more challenging tasks.
• Music can help relieve negative emotions like stress, anxiety and depression. 
• It can even decrease instances of confusion and delirium in elderly medical patients recovering from surgery.
• For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks.

There are even some lines in the article you might want to borrow for your next fund raiser. The benefits of music could be applied to any format and platform.