Video didn't kill the radio star; it went digital instead! Robert Pittman, CEO of iHeartMedia, said, “Radio is about keeping you company, while on-demand music is about escaping from everyone else." This is why it's the perfect medium for public relations; because we want our audience to relax in our company and to engage with our work.
On this podcast, I share why radio still reaches 93% of audiences, it's role in education programmes, and 5 tips for getting ready to go on air based on my own experience both of preparing clients and being on the BBC Radio both from China and the UK.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Video didn't kill the radio star; it went digital instead! Robert Pittman, CEO of iHeartMedia, said, “Radio is about keeping you company, while on-demand music is about escaping from everyone else." This is why it's the perfect medium for public relations; because we want our audience to relax in our company and to engage with our work.
On this podcast, I share why radio still reaches 93% of audiences, it's role in education programmes, and 5 tips for getting ready to go on air based on my own experience both of preparing clients and being on the BBC Radio both from China and the UK.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Today, we're going to talk about radio, because listening to radio is still one of those great joys we can enjoy. I was reminded about the power of radio today as I was driving my daughter and her friend home through the countryside of Somerset, and on the radio was an older man speaking about how he had become an accidental author. After working in a print company for his whole adult life, he retired and started taking care of his grandchildren. He'd been telling them stories, but he never got to finish them, and the children didn't want to go home until their grandpa finished the stories. In the end, he decided he would write them down whilst he was on a cruise with his wife and had lots of time on his hands. He got home, and his grandson took it to school. The teacher loved the stories, and the rest is history. He has now gone on to author several books. My daughter, her friend, and I stopped talking and just listened to this older man talking about how he connected with his own grandchildren through the power of story. It was the story, but it was also the medium. Radio is beautiful, because as the CEO of iHeartMedia, Robert Pittman, said, "Radio is about keeping your company." When we're driving, working, or going for a run, many of us listen to podcasts, and that's sort of intimate as it's one-on-one. It feels exclusive and quite private, but radio is shared. Radio is something we listen to together, and it's this idea that radio has this ability to bring us together in a way that, say, podcasts do not. Radio is an old medium. It predates TV. But in America, 93% of Americans are still tuning into radio versus only 3-5% on podcasts. So, whilst we think about the beauty and the prevalence of new platforms for podcasts and videos, like TikTok, actually, more people are listening to radio around the world than any other medium. With radio, the big growth, of course, has become the move to digital. There is now an infinite number of programs on radio dedicated to topics both large and small, and digital radio technologies have enabled broadcasters to start to narrowcast. There's a slogan of a community radio station in Mongolia, and it says, "Your radio is listening." Having been to Mongolia, which is a beautiful place, this idea that, across these grasslands of Mongolia, radio is listening is, for me, a wonderful and connected view of the power of this medium. Radio is really about the horizontal exchange of information. It's much more participatory between communities. We have radio stations at community levels like in universities or hospitals. We have radio, because the medium itself is still relatively cheap and relatively easy to manage compared to, say, video, and because ultimately, we can listen to the radio while we're doing something else. With video, you can't drive a car, you can't operate a machine, but radio and the conversation between the DJ or the host and the guest on a program is inclusive. It's a dialogue at a time when you can't necessarily have a conversation with somebody. There's obviously the music aspect of radio, and in America, talk radio has been popularized. Talk radio in places like Africa, however, where the technology of cellular communications has not caught up as rapidly and where maybe Wi-Fi and internet are not as widespread is more than just for listening to music. It's a lifeline for many people in rural areas. A report written about radio in Africa said that radio is like "a vaccine capable of reducing preventable diseases. Community radio is a simple and effective solution to achieve development goals, to prevent fragile states from becoming failed states, and also to help people celebrate their own culture." Radio still has an important role to play, because it is still in people's lives, even if we're listening to it on devices different from the ones our parents or grandparents were using. One of the radio advertising trends as far back as 2018 was that radio is still reaching over 90% of the population. 67% of millennials are still listening to the radio, while only 3% are listening to Pandora or 2% for Spotify. So, radio is still a medium all over the world for us to communicate through advertising, but also through our public relations. And because radio tends to be local, with a few exceptions, radio lends itself really well to local stories. Another trend in radio is that there is increasing diversity in advertising due to the impact of digital radio channels. In the same way that the internet remembers what people have searched and starts to send them more information that they find of interest, the same is true with digital radio. They play more of what people are interested in listening to. Personalized content or channelization, which is a form of streaming, is on our radio more and more. For instance, I listen to Apple Radio, and it starts to select audio for me, so it's streaming audio. There are people like Elton John doing programming on Apple Radio. Radio is definitely still a big business. In America, this group called SiriusXM had a revenue of$5 billion four years ago, which may be something we never would have imagined. That's bigger than TikTok, so radio advertising is clearly still a booming business. Why? One of the reasons radio is still doing well is because radio broadcasts can provide real time information. It can be broadcast 24 hours a day with real or with pre-programmed content. Stations have the ability to reach across borders in a way that perhaps mobile phones can not, like in China where access to the internet is limited. Radio broadcasts, as we've seen with the BBC World Service, can unite people globally by language, and we're seeing that now with the Chinese global radio services and countries like Germany and France. Farm Radio International, which is a charitable organization that operates rural radio broadcasts in 39 African countries, says that radio is still the best communication for the rural poor. It's ideal for populations where people may not have very many devices and where electricity consumption of a TV may put radio higher up the availability ranking. Also, radio is great for people that are not literate. The internet is great, but you have to be literate and you have to have a screen. So, where illiteracy rates are high, radio can make a great difference in things like campaigns for fresh water or for healthcare. Now, let's think about radio and PR. A little while ago, I was on the BBC Radio Bristol for an initiative since I've been away years from England for 25 years and I'm now back home. The radio is interested in the life and the businesses that I've started overseas, and I went for an interview with them to talk about entrepreneurship. Here are a couple of things that I'd like to share with you about preparation for radio. Radio is a cheaper medium than TV, and so the segments can be longer. What may be a relatively low-level story about an Englishman who lived in China and comes back to the UK after 25 years was a half-an-hour slot with the DJ, because we had some conversations about China, about entrepreneurship, and then a record and so on. The production time was something that would never have been possible on TV. TV, on the whole, has very short slots. I've just done an interview with a client for a video slot, and it's only 10 minutes, so radio tends to be longer as a medium. Secondly, it's the person on the radio as it is on the TV that matters. If you were to do public relations with a print publication, the Q&A is often sent back and forth, and quite possibly, someone else is writing the article for the client. The PR firm comes in on its own there. The implication, therefore, is that the spokesperson can be authentic, but they must be prepared. When I did the BBC Bristol interview, I knew what I was going to be talking about. I was going to be talking about my own life, so it was relatively straightforward, but I did go on and listen to the presenter's radio show in advance. I also looked at their archive online to see what kind of stories and style this journalist had, because I wanted to be relaxed in the studio. You might do a pre-recorded radio interview which is fine and a little less stressful. But if it's live, the briefing notes both for the spokesperson and for the journalist must be thorough and complete. If you think about it, the journalist is there and they're on air looking at notes, and they've got an audience. They don't really want to wait around, and they don't want to have a bland interview where there are no facts or figures, so remember two or three key figures that that make a point. Without those, then as we say, in our SPEAK|pr program, we don't have any proof points or validation. We're just rendering an opinion. To sum that up, we need to do our research and listen to the programs in advance. We know the radio show, but we need to look at the external audience. How far is that reaching, for example, by geography? What's the demographic? Is it old or young? Is it men or women? Is it people who have different work experiences? We need to organize all of the information upfront before going into the studio or being live at home online as we often are now. We need to make sure that we're the right spokesperson. As I mentioned today, the old man who was talking about his storytelling and his becoming an accidental author was just the right person, because it was all about him. If you've got someone talking about your organization, who is it that's the most appropriate and most authentic? The final point is to have some prepared audio available. The studio may not have the time to prepare an outtake of something that you're doing. Whatever it is, have some high quality audio in .mp3 file format ready to share, so that they can slot that in. Like with print, it's all about making life easier for the journalist. Radio is often, if you like, considered as almost the poor person of the media world. People like to see themselves in print, because they see the picture. They like to see themselves on TV, because then they feel like a movie star. Radio is often the one where people can't see themselves, and they can't show other people. But actually, from a penetration point of view, 93% of people are listening to the radio, so that means it's higher than both TV and print. It just maybe suffers from perhaps a lower impact and reach. For some applications, especially for community and education-based public relations programs, radio is a real winner. And because there is so much airtime 24 hours a day and because it's relatively cheape rto produce, radio stations are always looking for good content, good people, and good guests to come on the show. In fact, if they'll take a grandfather who's writing stories about children's visits and an Englishman who's been away for 25 years to talk about entrepreneurship, then they'll have definitely time for your story. There's an old song by The Buggles who sang that Video Killed the Radio Star. What I'd like to propose to you is that it hasn't killed the radio star. It's still glimmering.