» New Media

Podcasting: Comics Get It, Why Don’t You?

Randall Bloomquist — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:15:26 +0000

Jay Mohr is the latest comedian to launch a podcast. He tells The Press of Atlantic City his weekly “Mohr Stories” is different from his stand-up, and a ton of fun. The paper says he’s working on his “virtual brand.”

What about you, Spoken-Word-Media-Guy? Guy-who-makes-his-living-by-talking? What are you doing to expand your “virtual brand?” Here’s a tip: Use the freedom that podcasting offers to do something different from what you do on the radio. Surely, there is more to you than politics. Right…. right? Try using the podcast to tap into your other passions.

I know. You won’t make money right away with a podcast. Probably not. But you need to consider the wisdom of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who tells his staff, “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.” Bring passion and hard work to your project and it will pay off.

Got an idea, but not sure how to proceed? I’d love to talk it out with you.

Thanks to Don Anthony’s Jockline Daily for hipping me to the Mohr story.

How to Get More Re-Tweets

Randall Bloomquist — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:06:35 +0000

Twitter, when properly employed, can help a talk show host or podcaster connect with his existing audience and promote himself to potential new listeners. Re-tweets are key to that latter goal. So, what makes a tweet more re-tweetable? Social media researcher Dan Zarrella reports that tweets that include a link are far more likely to be passed along.

Zarrella says, ”I looked at more than 100k randomly chosen active Twitter accounts and their Tweets. I analyzed the percentage of their Tweets that contain a link… [and] I found that accounts that had high link-percentages between 60% and 80% had the most ReTweets…If you’re interested in ReTweets, broadcasting lots of interesting content works much better than ‘engaging in the conversation.’”

The key there, of course, is “interesting content.” Read his full report HERE.

Zarrella’s website is packed with useful insights on how to use social media more effectively, including writing and timing tips. Check him out at www.danzarrella.com.

By the way, have you signed up for the Talkfrontier.com RSS feed? Do it and you’ll get a steady stream of useful insight and advice for spoken-word media professionals delivered straight to your email box or RSS reader.

What Did You Do Today to Shape YOUR Future?

Randall Bloomquist — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:57:16 +0000

ESPN Radio did this…

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Slacker, Inc. today announced that ESPN Audio content will be available on Slacker Personal Radio, providing listeners with customizable content from the country’s largest sports radio network.

Slacker listeners will have access to an interactive dedicated station covering all facets of sports entertainment, with the option to include ESPN SportsCenter headlines for hourly updates on any Slacker music station, and the ability to create custom sports stations with ESPN Radio programming.

ESPN on Slacker Radio will feature up-to-the-minute coverage of all major sporting events and top news stories on both a national and regional level. The interactive ESPN Radio station will also offer access to content from multiple ESPN programs and platforms, including Mike & Mike in the Morning, SportsCenter, The Herd with Colin Cowherd and more.

“It has long been our mission to provide listeners with the ability to experience ESPN Audio content wherever they are and through whichever medium fits best into their busy lifestyle,” said Traug Keller, senior vice president, Production Business Divisions, ESPN, Inc. “This new relationship will add unique value to the Slacker listening experience by showcasing customizable ESPN sports news and award-winning ESPN Radio programming.”
The Slacker Radio experience includes expert-programmed music stations, ABC news, comedy, custom artist-hosted showcase stations and leading music festival stations along with the ability for consumers to create their own radio stations. With the addition of sports coverage to this line-up, Slacker Radio will offer a fully customizable and personal online radio experience that includes the most varied and compelling range of content offered by any Internet radio service.

“ESPN Audio is the authoritative voice of sports news and original programming, which is key to Slacker’s goal to offer our listeners access to the most diverse content and programming possible,” said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker. “The ability to offer news, shows and updates from the biggest brand in sports further positions Slacker as the leader in Internet radio content.”

Listeners to the free Slacker Basic Radio service will have access to the interactive programmed ESPN station. Slacker Radio subscribers will have unlimited access to the ESPN Radio integration including the ad-free programmed station with unlimited skips, the ability to create a highly personalized, custom sports station based on a number of preferences including specific sports, regions and teams, and the choice to add top of the hour SportsCenter updates in English or Spanish to any Slacker station.
Slacker Personal Radio, available online at www.Slacker.com, on all leading smartphones and Slacker-enabled home entertainment devices, enables listeners to create their own Personal Radio stations based on any artist or mix of artists, or listen to and personalize over 130 expert-programmed genre stations ranging from Today’s Hits to Instrumental Jazz. Slacker also offers music festival coverage including unique stations based on performances and artist interviews from events such as Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits and artist showcase stations with one-of-a-kind content from chart-topping bands including Far East Movement, Plain White T’s and more.

Pricing and Availability

ESPN Radio integration into the Slacker Radio service is coming soon to www.Slacker.com and the Slacker Radio service on supported devices. The ESPN station will be available to all Slacker listeners for free and Slacker Radio Plus subscribers will have access to the full ESPN experience. Slacker Radio Plus is available for as low as $3.99 per month and can be purchased by visiting www.Slacker.com or selecting the “upgrade” button from within a mobile application.

About Slacker, Inc.

Slacker is the world’s first Personal Radio company offering “Your Radio Everywhere.” Slacker enables music lovers to play highly personalized radio online at the Slacker web site or on the go with Slacker Personal Radio players and mobile phones. Slacker mobile applications are currently available for Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones. For more information visit http://www.Slacker.com/everywhere.

Five Ways Social Media Can Make Your Show Better

Randall Bloomquist — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 02:17:17 +0000

Steve Allen

Before devoting himself to the art and science of social media, Steve Allan programmed radio stations in DC, Detroit, Boston and Cincinnati and held corporate programming positions with AM/FM and Clear Channel. As a former radio guy, Allen despairs at the medium’s apparent lack of understanding of social media. Too many stations/personalities continue to use Facebook, Twitter, et. al, as just another place to plug upcoming guests or deliver news headlines. While there’s no wrong way to use social media, those are probably the least effective ways to employ this powerful new medium. In this exclusive piece, Allen suggests five ways that talk stations and hosts can better harness the power of social media.

Seventy-one percent of US Internet users have a Facebook account and half of them visit it every single day. According to Nielsen, the average Internet user spends over seven hours per month on Facebook alone. To say that Social Media has become the water cooler of social interactions is a gross understatement.

How are you harnessing the power of social media to improve the content and reach of your show? More importantly, are you using social media as a tool in your creative arsenal?

Here are 5 things you can do – right now – to make your performance stand out.

Socialize – Stop sending listeners to your website and start inviting them to join you on Facebook. Your GM will hate this but he is swimming against the tide. Radio stations drive listeners to their websites for one reason only – to increase visitor count and page views so they can sell banner ads. This process has nothing to do with engaging your fans and making them more a part of your show. It does nothing to increase the emotional bond between host and fan. Website interaction is generally a one-way street while Facebook can create a conversation and generate real time feedback.

Think of it this way. Which is more powerful – 1,000 unique visitors or 1,000 Facebook fans? Calm your GM by telling him that you’ll drive your fans to his website.

Test topics – Assuming you have built a strong fan base (think of it as a good AQH) you can use that audience to test topic. Ask questions and gauge reaction. You’ll find that there are many fans out there who will converse with you in Social Media who will never call you on the phone.

Replace the bad phone call – How many local talk shows have a trained call screener whose sole function is to separate the wheat from the chaff? Today’s overworked show producer generally does not have the time to truly determine if that next caller is entertainment worthy. However, by using social media you will actually see good, repeatable comments and be able to attribute them to real people (or at least their handles).

Spread the word – Getting people to talk about you is the most powerful form of marketing. Getting them to spread the word about you to their social networks puts that marketing on steroids. As a talk show host you are (hopefully) a content creator. People love to share great content. This is the equivalent to the old politician’s trick of shaking hands and kissing babies.

SEARCH – Everyone Google searches. That is what we all use to find information. But how does that help you know what your audience is talking about? It doesn’t. But these tools can assist you in finding out what topics are being discussed in your market. After all, shouldn’t your content reflect your audience’s interests?

Google Real Time – This is a topic search to find out what is being said in, well, real time. You pick the topics and the engine reveals the conversations.

Samepoint.com – A multi-functional search engine that specializes in social networks. Like Google Real time – you pick the topics.

Twitter – Set up your search function on your Twitter account to list your local market. You can go deeper by using the advanced search. This helps you find what the biggest trending topics are in your area.

These serve as a great starting point to learn what people are talking about and can help you decide what topics are important to your show.

Social media can be a difference maker for you and your show. It brings you closer to your audience than ever before. In turn, they get a better feeling for who you are than they ever could. Social Media is not just an essential part of your show prep – it has become part of the show.

For more insight from Steve Allen check out his blog http://smthree.wordpress.com or visit his website www.smthree.com.

KTAR Sees Video in Radio’s Future — Lots of Video

Randall Bloomquist — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:47:55 +0000

More evidence that Bonneville is the most forward-thinking and forward-acting American radio group. This piece is reprinted from my News Talk Edge newsletter

KTAR/PHOENIX BELIEVES IT HAS SEEN THE FUTURE OF RADIO, and it is video. In what PDRuss Hill calls a glimpse of things to come, the Bonneville news/talk station streamed three-plus hours of original live video election night coverage on its website.

“What we did with video on election night was just the beginning of what we plan to do with digital media,” says Hill. “We subscribe to the thinking that someday the transmitter won’t be as valuable as it is today. I tell my staff that radio still works because of the captive nature of the in-car audience. But that won’t last forever. Apple, Google — they are already looking at that dashboard space. We want to be ready for that. The best way to maintain our dominance is to be on as many platforms as possible.”

While audio, including terrestrial radio, will certainly continue to play a major role in that multi-platform strategy, Hill says the real growth opportunity is in video.

“Video is one of the biggest revenue magnets on the web,” he says. “We don’t think it’s smart to walk away from the money if you can get into it.”

Conversely, he adds, with the exception of music, audio appears to have limited appeal on the web. “Where is the YouTube for audio?” Hill asks. “You can’t [easily] upload audio to Facebook. Audio is not viral, and it’s not going to be.”

According to Hill, KTAR’s election night webcast coverage was purely a lab exercise. It wasn’t pre-promoted, and there were no sales or audience goals/expectations associated with the project. KTAR produced the webcast internally using its staff and about $30,000 worth of cameras and software. Hill says the station invested in quality gear because while web users will accept a certain rawness in video, “we didn’t want to look like some geek doing the show in his garage.”

The video equipment was purchased with money culled from the current capital budget. As Hill notes, the station got a leg-up on the future for the cost of a new promotions vehicle.

Hill emphasizes that while the webcast did feature appearances by KTAR radio hosts and news people, its content was 100% different from KTAR’s radio coverage of the election. This, he says, is a vital distinction going forward. Radio-with-pictures – webcams, short video podcasts by hosts – is simply not viable as a major revenue generator, according to Hill. To be a player in the digital realm, stations must create lots of compelling original video content for the web. Hill knows that’s a tall order. In fact, he thinks KTAR failed that test on election night.

“Our election coverage looked too much like a bad local TV station,” he says. “We don’t want to do TV news. We’ll lose every day with that.”

True enough. KTAR’s election night offering consisted of “anchors” sitting at a counter introducing and bantering with various KTAR radio talkers, a panel of local political bloggers, and live video reports from the local Republican and Democratic headquarters. Watch a snippet here. Hill says KTAR’s radio coverage took precedence on election night because, “Our motto is ‘do no harm’ to the thing that is still responsible for 90% of our revenue.”

KTAR plans to produce and stream/podcast several hours of original daily video starting in the first quarter of 2011. Hill says the station is currently trying to decide what type of content to provide, and looking for talent that might shine in the video format.

The video stream will be fed via a new website with a non-KTAR URL. This, Hill argues, is crucial to the successful launch of a video endeavor.

“The brand won’t be KTAR, because that means radio,” he says. “Whenever we do some thing in the digital space, there is a perception – inside and outside the building – that we are doing it to promote the radio station. We want to change that model to using radio to promote digital. Radio is a great bullhorn and we want to use the power of radio to promote our digital [product]. That gives us a great leg-up.”

A New Trick that Old Radio Should Consider

Randall Bloomquist — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:24:50 +0000

What if you could fill a weekend time slot, a secondary Internet stream or an HD Radio channel with tons of original local programming — for free. Is that something you’d be interested in? It’s happening already on blog sites across the Internet from Huffington Post to hyper-local news sites. People are sharing their reporting, opinions and expertise with commercial websites in exchange for nothing more than access to an established Internet platform. Read allabout it in this Ad Age article. Imagine the appeal of being heard on a platform associated with a news/talk radio station!

Would the content be uniformly great? Nope. But I’m constantly amazed at the quality of the audio programming posted to the web by amateurs. With some minimal screening and grooming, you’d could easily create a stream of unique material generated by people with a real passion for the work. You might even turn up a true star.

Think about it.

Facebook Fan Pages: Anything Worth Doing…

Randall Bloomquist — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:44:19 +0000

The attached article offers some very good insight on creating a Facebook Fan Page that your listeners will actually want to join. Too many radio station/show fan pages consist of nothing more than plugs for upcoming show segments, news headlines or half-hearted attempts to generate listener comments on a news story or issue. Some appear to be complete afterthoughts. I recently came across a station fan page that hadn’t been updated since January. On another station’s fan page, listeners who posted questions or comments about programming decisions received no answer — or a terse response. Both of these Facebook miscreants are in Top 10 markets.

A Facebook fan page isn’t mandatory, but once you put it up, the page becomes part of your brand. Its content needs to reflect the standards you want people to associate with your station or show. That’s why one of my clients has its marketing director approve and oversee all fan pages associated with the station.

But a fan page can do more than expose your brand. It can be a powerful tool for building a connection with your most loyal listeners — but only if you are willing to provide real value, including a willingness to engage them in a good-faith two-way conversation. Think of your fan page as a cross between a Loyal Listeners Club and “Ask The Manager” and you’ll start to see the real value.

Kimmer’s Podcast: A Second Act Worth Following

Randall Bloomquist — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:15:04 +0000

Former WGST/Atlanta talker Kim Peterson is launching a podcast this month, three-plus years after I fired him. In its heyday, Kimmer’s show was fantastic; a one-of-a-kind roller coaster ride through the day’s news and topics driven by Kimmer’s manic energy, macho conservatism and rollicking sense of humor. No surprise that his fans and sponsors were, well, fanatical.

If Kimmer can capture that old magic in his podcasts he might actually make enough to support his golf and motorcycle addictions. He’s already signed one of his biggest radio sponsors to underwrite the project. A successful podcast from a local host who has been off-air for an extended period would further prove that great audio content will not be denied and that fans will pursue uniquely desirable material .

And who knows? Maybe this project will lead to a broadcast comeback. Lord knows radio could use a re-energized Kimmer.

Is your content unique and compelling enough that people would subscribe to your podcast if you lost your radio show? It better be, or you’re going to lose your radio show. If that thought gives you pause, call us at Talk Frontier. We make talk radio better.

Time to Add New Clubs to Your Bag

Randall Bloomquist — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:58:52 +0000

Allow me to introduce the new Top Dog at CNN Radio. Take a look at his resume in today’s article from NTSMediaOnline.com. Job history look familiar? Probably not. I spoke to a CNN recruiter about this job almost a year ago. It was clear to me within minutes that they were looking for an Interactive guy, not a traditional radio guy. This is radio’s future. Unless you are 64.5-years-old, you better figure out the Interwebs…

Victor Kong Named CNN Radio VP

In his new role, Kong (pictured) will manage development of new audiences, partnerships, and content for digital platforms and the network’s original audio news service to broadcast radio affiliates. He’ll be based at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters and report directly to Susan Grant, EVP/CNN News Services. Kong was most recently EVP/Sales and Business Development for Hoodiny Entertainment Group. Prior to that he served as VP of MySpace/Latin America, and before that as VP/Growth Strategy and New Media Sales for MTV Networks/Latin America. “We are excited to have Victor lead CNN Radio’s original audio news content in the media landscape,” said Grant. “He brings a dynamic skill set from his multi-media career and a proven track record building partnerships, growing audiences and integrating digital media.”

KLBJ.com — An Almost Perfect Site

Randall Bloomquist — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:35:20 +0000

Stations looking to overhaul their websites should take a look at KLBJ.com. This is a great looking site — clean layout, easy-to-read fonts and type-sizes, useful content and links, easy to navigate — even the color scheme is refreshingly adult. But I wish the homepage had a much larger Listen Live link. I would put that link in the spot occupied by the bike jersey promo — upfront and unmissable. A radio station is a source of audio news and entertainment. Stations should put as much sound as possible on the home page. Instead we seem to emphasis text stories, which users can get just about anywhere on the web.

The CBS Radio stations used to feature a ton of their own sound on their home pages. Not sure why they stopped doing that. WCBS-AM does makes some of its audio news available just one-click from the homepage. But I hate sitting through a 15-second pre-roll EVERY time I click on a new story. that’s a lot of time to think whether I really want to spend time listening to the piece. How about just a billboard instead?