Scarce attention – how do I get a piece of it?

Scarce attention – how do I get a piece of it?

By: Omar Essack, Executive Director: Broadcasting, Kagiso Media

With scarce consumer attention and ever expanding media to further fragment it, radio has to push the boundaries, constantly reinvent itself and take risks if it is to survive. Ultimately, who wins? The winners will be the stations that provide what the audience wants and can’t find anywhere else!

The battle is not just about today’s audiences, but certainly for tomorrows. That is, a generation of listeners which have not grown up with a radio habit, who are used to getting media on demand for free and whose attention is more fragmented than any generation that has come before it. Welcome to the attention economy.

How does a traditional radio owner deal with these challenges? We would say that cutting costs to the bone and implementing formulaic playlist driven radio formats with as much automation as possible is exactly the wrong thing to do. Everyone in media gets that MP3 players are music radio substitutes. To compete, radio owners must exploit their weaknesses, not emphasise their strengths.

Creating ‘episodic’ radio is one way. In a sense radio should go back to ‘cliffhangers’. Especially in the morning show, where people are tuned in on a daily basis on their way to work or in the case of Sandton’s kugels, the gym, a manicure and a massage.There is a lot more opportunity to run programming in short ‘soap opera’ bursts that keep developing every day. It’s almost as if radio has to go full circle to how it all began. Ultimately it’s about retaining the audiences interest,keeping them on the edge of their heated leather car seats so to speak. , And when I say Soap Opera, stop imagining ‘Scandal’ or ‘Isidingo’ or ‘Generations’ and start thinking a real life episode from the crazy morning show guys life. Start thinking about an avowed single guy being given a toddler to look after for a week on his own and relating the story of the mishaps and mayhem daily. However this plays out on air, it can only work as long as radio owns the car and remains a primary medium for people driving to and from work.

Pushing the boundaries in ‘fringe’ listening times is another. Here radio programmers should value the opportunity to experiment with new ideas, controversial voices and outrageous shows. We’ve put John Vlismas, South Africa’s original lunatic, on East Coast Radio and Jacaranda 94.2 on Monday nights between 10pm and midnight. It subverts every notion that you may have about whata good radio show should sound like, and listeners are responding in a big way! John’s show has taken interactive radio to new heights, or should that be lows. He gets a flood of text messages and some are from seriously disturbed people. What he does is radio’s great strength. He sits in a studio and stirs up emotions. Because he’s after the watershed time, he can say and do pretty much what he likes. It’s the stuff you can’t get anywhere else, except if you pay R150 bucks to watch his stand up show.

We know that the Internet and mobile phones have democratised media making it possible for everyone to create content. That does not make everyone worthy of an audience, though. We also know that audiences, young and old, still value content and entertainment created by professionals and amateurs who know what they are doing. People will always go where they are most entertained and informed at their convenience, and at a cost that they believe reflects the value they are getting. In some cases that will be FREE and in others the entertainment may be worth paying for.

IN an age where most people believe that all media must be free and piracy has made that model a reality, young people will download Coldplay’s music for free but still pay to watch them play live. There’s a very important message in that scenario.

Not everyone can be the band Coldplay, although all the technology exists to make it possible for anyone to create their own rock songs.

This is the era of micro-media. If radio is to thrive and prosper it requires more than a couple of brave decisions. It requires new ways of thinking and that means investing in new skills, new ideas, talent, content and research. It may also require new business models and a willingness to share the spoils in more meaningful ways with those that can re-invent themselves and the medium.