Three Trends Impacting Radio
TREND 1: AFTERNOON IS THE NEW MORNING
Talent has become radio’s greatest distinguisher against market competitors and in the expanding audio space. In less than a year, personality-driven afternoon shows are popping up all over North America.
Personality afternoon teams started back in the 80s with Steve Dahl and Gary Meier at WLS-FM Chicago. In the late 90s, Ryan Seacrest and Lisa Foxx made an impact in Los Angeles with their afternoon drive show at Star 98.7.
Today Los Angeles has two: Booker & Stryker Alt 98.7 and Sluggo and Kevin KLOS. New York: Maxwell & Crystal Z100. Chicago: McCabe & Jenny WTMX (starting April 18), Philadelphia: Bex & Buster Q102, Seattle: Julian on the Radio Star 101.5, and Calgary: Marc & Millions Jack 96.9.
There are established personality brands in the afternoon in Toronto Daryn Jones Kiss-FM, Minneapolis Staci & Hutch KS95, Vancouver Tara Jean Kiss-FM, and Cincinnati Freddy Mac & Nat.
The afternoon cume is equal to or greater than mornings in most markets. These shows are increasing audience engagement, adding brand depth, and delivering more listeners to their radio stations.
TREND 2: ON-DEMAND CONTENT/PODCASTING
Radio is finally joining television and podcasting making content available 24/7. Many personality shows are posting their highlight clips, features/benchmarks, and full shows online.
In addition to audio, progressive brands like The Bert Show and The KVJ Show West Palm Beach post video clips of their content.
Many personalities expand their digital footprint with passion podcasts that range from topics like wrestling, moms, whiskey business, etc. KVJ’s After the Show podcast of original content gets over 700,000 downloads monthly!
TREND 3: VISUALIZE YOUR SHOW
The majority of time spent online is watching videos. Listeners today not only want to hear you, but they also want to see you.
At the least, most shows are creating a video presence through Facebook and Instagram Live. Taking advantage of multiple video platforms exposes your show to potential new radio listeners. Additionally, Video humanizes talent by allowing people to see you with your facial expressions and body language.
As a way to deepen your personality brand, we encourage talent to post videos of show activities and personal videos. Since the pandemic, streaming the entire show has become a growing trend. Most shows stream live content segments, and they use graphics (with teases and promotional information, etc.) during commercials and music.
Photo by Ilya Chunin on Unsplash
