I’m listening to a presentation from Mark Ramsey right now. He’s talking about the challenges radio faces in a digital age, the way advertising is going to change and how radio needs to rethink.
He just dropped one of the best lines ever: “Radio is like smoking, you’ve got to start them young.”
It’s true. So many people ignore the 12-18 demo. Top 40 radio gets ‘em “for free,” the whole while trying to target adults. You never want to be seen as a “kid station,” because the lucrative adult market will tune out.
But guess what? Those teens grow up and become 18-24, then 25-34… That’s how Z became a big fat beast of a radio station back in the day. That’s how I’ve managed to stay on 95.3 for nearly 15 years. I’ve grown as the radio station has grown. We were an energetic Top 40 station in the beginning, and we still are, but with an adult focus and a demographic people who have grown in life right alongside me.
When you look at overall tuning numbers for radio, teen listening is down. They’re listening to online radio, iPods, or playing video games.
So, in the future, that means adult listening will be down. In order to survive, radio needs to get younger. It needs to be able to quickly adapt to technology and the demand of an audience to have what it wants when it wants it.
It’s a big challenge. If you’re a radio nerd, check out the presentation.
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Ah, so true, Buzz.
The thing is, radio has to have a unique value proposition… Offer on-air, and online content the listener can’t get anywhere else. It’s difficult to determine what that is, especially when dealing with the old-school mentality that is behind radio programming/management.