Let?s talk about content. Yours. For many of you, your content consists of music (that you picked out for listeners), commercials, and a jock giving call letters, time and temp. Others of you feature compelling talk hosts, either piped in or local. All of this goes out under your brand via 2 outlets, your broadcast tower and your Internet stream.Now let?s talk about what you could be doing with some imagination and innovation?what could happen if you stretched a little bit.
Development 1: Google?s YouTube just announced the launch of 100 new channels of professionally produced video, covering subjects like news, health, pets, celebrities, music, comedy, even superheroes. The content will come from sources like the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Jay-Z, Shaq, Madonna, Deepak Chopra, even brands like Red Bull.
The money deal is, YouTube gets 55% of the ad revenue these videos bring after their initial investment is recouped. These new channels will generate 25 hours of quality original content per day. And while it?s obvious people like watching videos online (users stream 2 billion YouTube videos daily, twice as many as last year), don?t think for a minute Google will stop there. The new channels will get to TVs via Google TV, and, thanks to their recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility, probably a set-top box of its own.
A VP at media-buying agency Universal McCann says, "This capitalizes on the trend of creating niche programming, thinking about people's passions and creating communities around them."
Development 2: Pandora, which in 6 very short years has found over 100 million listening outlets, is offering itself to businesses of all sizes for in-store background music through DMX, a leading provider of such things. How much will this cost mom & pop? As little as $25/month! And the background music industry represents $750 million a year.
So here are companies who are almost just like you. They don?t necessarily make content. But they?re figuring out new ways to present the content they license in new ways and in new places. YouTube would not resign itself to just being a place where people watch amateur videos on their computers. Pandora would not resign itself to just being a place where individuals listen to custom music on their computers. They keep thinking, keep moving, keep stretching. Stretching toward where the money is.
And then there?s us. For whatever reason, we have been amazingly quick to resign ourselves to forever being what we were 20 years ago. Here we are with advantages over the two examples above, because we do generate some of our own content. We just won?t do anything with it except desperately cling to our little slice of the pie one month longer.
Let me quote the VP of the media-buying company again. "This capitalizes on the trend of creating niche programming, thinking about people's passions and creating communities around them." Are you doing that?
Facebook offers your radio station a chance to launch all the tab views, channels and stations you want. You could be creating limitless niche outlets to super-serve your audience, community and advertisers, all under your brand. And if you ask me how that?s going to help your PPM, I?m going to spew. In case it hasn?t dawned on you yet, you need something more to sell than airtime Jack. There?s a reason you can?t afford to pay your lone surviving jock over 35k.
Stretch what you offer. Stretch how you offer it. Stretch toward the money.
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files. Stiles Facebook: www.facebook.com/mike.stiles
or on Twitter @mikestiles
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