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The New Farm Team
January 27, 2016
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I made a big career change recently and it was a bet on the future.
I saw how people were changing their video habits from linear to digital TV - Netflix, YouTube, the DVR, Hulu - it's a pretty big list. By the end of the decade, it is expected that more people will watch TV via digital sources than linear.
The same changes are occurring in audio. Streaming choices proliferate, satellite is strong, TV audio sources such as Music Choice are growing, and of course, hundreds of thousands of on-demand podcasts to choose from. Ease of use via the phone and the connected car are giant catalysts to accelerated growth of on-demand audio.
So I made my bet that while linear radio doesn't go away, more and more people will consume audio at a time and place of their choosing --- podcasts. And indeed, the growth, in a short time, has been impressive.
For a bunch of reasons, commercial radio has lagged in product development of on-demand audio. If they don't get on board, they risk looking like newspapers in an interactive world. This column will be about strategies and ideas for commercial radio to step up its on-demand game.
So let's start here:
Radio Has A Farm Team
The changes linear radio has gone through have resulted in night and weekend shifts disappearing and young talent migrating to other platforms such as YouTube. We know the story well. The lament about the vanishing farm team has been around for a while. And then there is this:
Last week something really interesting occurred. A new morning show was born on one of the reshuffled iHeart stations in Seattle, Power 93.3. But Carla Marie and Anthony didn't come from some smaller market on their way to the nation's 13 largest. They were podcast hosts.
Having the radio bug and frustrated in not being able to garner enough mic time during the Elvis Duran Morning Show, these two young staffers, under the guidance of their morning show boss Elvis Duran and iHeart's talent coach Dennis Clark, started "My Day Friday," a once a week podcast about kicking off the weekend. It took off, resulting in cross promotion and sales appearances. And now, a show on a major IHeart radio station.
So there it is folks --- talent incubation - one of many ways linear radio can brilliantly and synergistically use podcasting.
My warmest congrats to Carla Marie and Anthony whom I wrote about on my Amplifi Media blog in October. You can read it here.
Thanks to Joel Denver, Perry Michael Simon and the All Access team for their foresight in developing podcast oriented content.
Steve Goldstein is CEO of Amplifi Media, which develops digital audio strategies and content. Amplifimedia.com
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