Your Wildest Streams - Part 3

We heard from a number of you about our streaming blogs last week.  R&R's News/Talk/Sports Editor (and former Jacobs Media staffer) Mike Stern writes today's entry:

Radio people don’t seem to realize that listeners don’t understand or care about the legal and talent issues that affect streaming.  All they know is that when they stream their favorite station, they hear the same four PSAs over and over again, or the stream regularly goes dark for a few minutes or, on one station I stream periodically, the annoying message “This station is in a commercial break and will return to normal programming in a few minutes,” plays over and over and over.  Programmers would never permit this on their terrestrial signals, but accept it on their streams.

To take the issue a step further, at the R&R 2008 Talk Radio Seminar, Andy Lipset, managing partner at Ronning Lipset (which is essentially a national rep firm for major online radio providers including AOL Radio, Yahoo! Music and who recently took over national sales for all CBS Radio online streams) suggested stations and advertisers take the commercial efforts on their streams a step further.  While admittedly challenging in the face of budget cuts and reduced staffing, Lipset suggested advertisers run separate spots on streams that are more appropriate to the medium.

Working from the assumption that streaming listeners have the player minimized on their screen, he suggests writing specific copy and providing graphics, links and special offers that will engage a streaming listener, get them to open the player and click on a link to the advertisers site or a special page on the station’s Web site.  He says streaming is about engagement.  Terrestrial listeners have to fire up their computer and search, or pick up the phone and dial, to access an advertiser’s brand.  Streaming listeners are two clicks away – a click on the player and a click on a link.

Comments

[Rich Tubbs]

I hear way too many stations covering their spots with psa's or instrumental music. Valuable time wasted.

I think many stations, especially smaller markets, could benefit from specially prepared local content to air over the spots. Give me a parks and rec report or "This Week at City Hall" feature over a HD radio psa anyday.

These would be easy to can, plus the internet product would sound even more local then the on-air product. And local local local is the only way that small-market broadcasters can make the transistion to the new media.