Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Commercial Radio Australia’s Joan Warner previewed new research that shows radio and online deliver the greatest Return on Investment for advertisers than any other combination of media.
She told the Asia Media Summit that radio is successfully combining its core strengths of content creation with social media, to engage with audiences and “extend the life” of content.
Warner used the case study of a recording done a couple of years ago at Fox FM which went viral.
Fox invited the band Hanson into the studio where they recorded a cover of a Taylor Swift song.
After broadcast, the station posted it online and it went viral, then Taylor Swift retweeted it to her 58 million followers and played it at her concerts.
With broadcasters producing huge amounts of great content, and social media amplifying its effect, radio is confidently heading into the new media future, according to Warner. “Listeners love their radio station and they are loyal.”
When people talk about radio they say things like ‘that station is my favourite station,’ but no one ever says that about television stations. Radio has a special loyalty which television does not have, which has helped it to continue to be successful in the face of new media. “Radio has a head start when it comes to loyalty and engagement,” said Warner.
In the same session, Mark Egan, a video journalist and trainer, showcased the benefits of shooting video on smart phones. “The smart phone is the Swiss Army Knife of journalism,” he said, showing how good quality video and audio can be recorded on smart phones and filed back to stations more quickly that old technology. He said that broadcasters do not always take smart phone reporting seriously because it seems like it is just ‘consumer technology,’ not professional technology, but it is not.
Radio Futurologist and AsiaRadioToday columnist James Cridland reviewed the latest developments in radio from around the world. He discussed the UK’s RadioPlayer and revealed that a car RadioPlayer has now been released.
Using examples from Australia and South Africa, he highlighted the flexibility of digital radio for allowing pop up stations such as special events and festival stations that appear for a few weeks at a time on the digital dial.
“Radio has a strong multiplatform future,” said Cridland.
In an earlier session Media Guru’s Sanjay Salil discussed the power of digital platforms. The keys to modern media are content, distribution and engagement. “Use digital tools and be bold,” he said.
The way forward is to: digitize, manage, engange, then monetize contents, according to Salil. Facts in his presentation included the numbers of people engaging with media in India. One example he gave was Times of India, which has 50 million people reading its newspapers, 100 million people watching its tv channel and 41 million people listening to the company’s 32 Radio Mirchi radio stations.
In the same session, AsiaRadioToday’s Steve Ahern discussed the changing news cycle. “It’s not a 24 hour news cycle any more, it’s a 24 minute news cycle,” he said. Ahern discussed the ways that social media can help broadcasters keep up with the faster news cycle and how social media can also help broadcasters monestise content in new ways.
You can view a live stream of the conference and follow the twitter conversation in the embedded media below.
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
See also our earlier conference report here.