What happens when the future of News/Talk radio is not on the radio? #AM2DM happens. Good morning, Twitter! Today is the ONE HUNDREDTH #AM2DM and we’re celebrating with @NeNeLeakes. Bloop! https://t.co/lpjH3pLHQc — AM to DM by BuzzFeed News (@AM2DM) February 26, 2018 It’s not new. The show, a production of Buzzfeed News and found on a Twitter feed near you, just celebrated its 100th episode. It claims a total of more than 1 million views per episode, according to Buzzfeed. Pe

Tweet this: Quality news is dying. And… Twitter growth screeches to a halt – at 52 million users! Plus, rants and raves about the “connected lawn” and proof that Donald Trump’s hands are not as HUUGE as he says they are. It’s episode 48 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below: And if you’re reading this by email, click here for the audio. Sample

Periscope…Meerkat…When we all stream live, will Big Media pay the price? And… Facebook is about to EAT your news brand! It’s episode 16 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus, Tom rants about Fox News icon Bill O’Reilly. Mark rants about over-complicated decision trees for folks trying to decide whether or not to cut the cable cord. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below: And if

There’s been lots of attention in the radio industry trades lately about the lack of audience momentum for many broadcasters in the streaming space, even as so-called pure-plays like Pandora and Spotify grow by leaps and bounds. Tom Taylor writes: iHeart’s not the only terrestrial operator with flat or negative growth over the period from February 2013 to October 2014. #3-ranked CBS is down from about 69,000 average domestic streams (6am-8pm weekdays) to a little less than 60

How do you make a news story go viral? Also: Marriott – it’s a hotel chain; no, it’s a film studio! And what that means for all brands. It’s episode 11 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus, Tom rants about the Pope who pulls no punches and Mark rants about TV’s Celebrity Apprentice, which is setting back the practice of marketing by 50 years. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button b

What if your News/Talk station could have a mobile app that not only replayed your linear over-the-air stream, but also created something new? That is, what if you could personalize the content to the individual consumer – news, traffic, weather? And what if it could be presented in a non-linear stream, unique to every individual? That’s the promise of NewsBeat, a new platform built to give consumers the content they want whenever they want it – not just whenever it happens t

Where was News/Talk radio when hackers reportedly representing the North Korean government nuked Sony Pictures and scared major theater owners into locking out the latest movie from Seth Rogen and James Franco, The Interview? With stations labeled “Freedom” and “The Flag” and “The Truth,” News/Talk crows daily about the dangers faced by “free” Americans from their own government, so what did N/T broadcasters do when those same freedoms were abjectly denied to Americans due to

“Local” or “not local” is the wrong way to think about news and entertainment on the radio. When it comes to information, for example, there are two flavors – one kind is relevant to me, my family, or my neighborhood. The other kind is entertainment. Here is an overview of consumers’ “circles of interest”: At the center is ME. Then my FAMILY. Then my NEIGHBORHOOD. Why not a circle for city (i.e., “local”) news? Because the only city news that matters to me is the kind that af

Republican soul-searching followed the demographic slam to the gut from younger voters, African Americans, and Hispanics in the election earlier this month. And the reverberations from that punch have resonated through the ranks of News/Talk programmers and talent nationwide. While I can’t be specific about the research I have done in that area (it’s both extensive and proprietary), I can tell you this much: It should come as no great surprise. Interest in Talk per se – as e

So another News option vanishes from the dial in NY and Chicago. Does this mean “News doesn’t work on FM?” Of course not. It just means these stations in these specific formats executing what they did didn’t work well enough in these markets at this time. Perhaps these markets are just too news-soaked to reward new entrants without enough meaningful and palpable differences, I don’t know. Maybe the existing options were simply good enough. Maybe all the news bellies were al

A friend in Public Radio reached out to me the other day. He was looking for talent. Fresh talent. For a major broadcast client who wanted some original voices that speak to a younger demographic than the one Public Radio (and News/Talk) is most famous for. And I got to thinking…. How many times have I been asked for new “spoken word” talent by commercial broadcasters? Zero. This fellow realizes what most of my commercial peers do not:  The new talent is all around us but rar

Too many News/Talk broadcasters just don’t get it. What can they learn from Amazon’s new Kindle Fire? Quite a lot, I think. This is not a piece about Amazon vs. Apple.  Nor is it a piece about the merits and prospects for Kindle Fire.  Those are all discussed ad infinitum elsewhere. This is a piece about strategic thinking, specifically the strategic thinking that makes Kindle Fire different from the zillions of other tablet alternatives to Apple’s groundbreaking iPad. Amazon

Here’s my understanding of how PPM works: In any given quarter-hour under diary methodology, you used to have to listen at least five continuous minutes for that listening to “count” you as a listener and to “count” your listening as an “occasion.” Under PPM however, I’m told that those five minutes no longer need to be continuous.  That is, if I flip back to the station several times in a quarter-hour I count as a listener and my listening counts as one occasion as long as a

The audience for local news online is surprisingly small. From Lost Remote (one of my favorite blogs): A new report commissioned by the FCC discovered a “surprisingly small audience for local news traffic.” How small? Less than one in five news pageviews goes to local news sources — that’s a combination of newspaper sites, local TV sites and large independent news sites in a given market — and the average user spends just 0.45% of total internet time consuming local news. To

What do you call a News/Talk station that’s investing in original web video programming? You call it a station that understands “news” is what the consumer wants, the way he wants it.  “News” is not a newscast or the kind of news that limits itself to audio. And Bonneville’s KTAR has one such station.  They debuted a modest investment in video equipment (and I mean more than Flip cams, thank you) during the recent election.  This represents exclusive video content – not a cam

So says David Hall, one of the best known names in the Talk Radio business. And David doesn’t just mean that it’s too Conservative.  He also means that the political dimension of Talk Radio is simply too thin to support every “spoken word” station in America, and I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with that. Where is the new talent?  Where are the broadcasters who are taking risks?  Where are the experiments? David and I have a wide-ranging conversation about the prospects fo

Last week I was honored to be part of a panel at Al Peterson’s NTS MediaOnline Talk Show Boot Camp in Marina Del Rey. The topic was, as ever, the future.  In this case the future of News/Talk radio. Besides me, the panel also featured D: All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher, Sound Mind LLC’s Brian Glicklich, and Paragon Research’s Mike Henry. Erica Farber was our fabulous and able moderator. This audio is the full session, including Q&A (I was holding the mic so that explains wh

Who’s using apps and how important are they to our lives?  Those and pretty much every other question are answered in this infographic (see source here). Note that, among other things: App engagement (as measured by downloads) is much heavier under age 30 Men are more likely to download than Women The audience is relatively affluent Games and News are the two most frequently used categories – this should tell you a lot about the types of apps that you should be making (especi