There’s lots of talk about the impact of smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo on usage for radio. Indeed, last year alone, some 25 million of these devices were sold, 11 million in the holiday quarter alone. The appeal to broadcasters is obvious: A device that’s all about listening – and it’s being embraced by millions of American households who quite possibly don’t own radios at home and thus are less likely to listen to them. What if we could return the radio to the living roo

Yesterday I published a piece that argued two things: First, the decline in streaming for broadcast radio stations is real – it’s a trend, not a blip. Second, that decline has consequences not only for your streaming strategy but also for the strategy of spreading your radio brands across every new platform under the sun (“Alexa, I mean you!”). So what do you do? Here’s what I think you have to do. And not just you, but everyone who comes at digital from a place that has not,

Where is the business of podcasting headed? And… Marijuana entertainment value gets high. Plus, rants and raves about Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, newspaper brands highlighting their importance with blank pages, and Stephen King’s IT. It’s episode 70 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

Gordon Borrell has issued his latest report benchmarking local media’s digital revenues. Required reading for anyone in the local media business. Yesterday I published a transcript of Part 1 and the full video interview. Today, Part 2: Whereas the emphasis in the radio industry seems to be “let’s communicate the value of the Nielsen numbers, let’s make the Nielsen numbers as accurate as they can be,” you’re suggesting that there’s way too much dependence on Nielsen and the tr

This was the headline: “Fox adopting YouTube’s Six Second Ad Format.” “This is the first time that a broadcast television company has committed to the ad format, which YouTube introduced last year,” the companies said. That means Fox TV will be airing six second spots across its platforms, including linear television. And don’t think that this trend will stop there, folks. At my hivio event last year I presented research which explicitly tested what consumers – listeners – wa

So I’m reading a headline predicting a 4% decline in radio advertising over the next year and another 4% decline the year after. Meanwhile we are constantly reminded about clients pushing for lower rates or for tech-enabled solutions which risk commoditizing radio altogether. The solution? Well, remove ownership caps, of course. That way we can buy more stations, cut more people, and provide a greater fraction of less value for fewer clients with, at least, less competition.

10 media trends you need to know. And… Niche! It’s the new mainstream! Plus, rants and raves about lying with podcast trend statistics and more. It’s episode 60 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 and subscribe to Media Unplugged at iTunes. Or do the same at Stitcher. Or G

I am blessed to do a lot of research work with Christian non-commercial broadcasters. As I travel around the country working with these amazing and passionate folks, I have discovered something unsettling – a trend that, I believe, should concern them a great deal. Here’s what I hear: Over time, the magnitude of giving is steady or rising, but the total number of givers is declining. Also – as my own research shows – the age of the giving audience is not just a little older t

According to a new global media habits study from Kantar Millward Brown, if you think your audience hates advertising now, just wait. It is about to get a lot worse. The study spanned 39 countries and 23,907 interviews, including populations representing Gen X (35–49), Gen Y (20–34) and Gen Z (16–19). According to the report: It’s particularly tricky to get Gen Z to engage, because they are highly discriminating and more averse to advertising in general. In the online space G

I have written extensively about the challenges radio will have in cars with a dashboard which is built to sync with Apple Carplay and Android Auto. I have also written a lot about what happens to radio when cars drive themselves (hint: It gets ugly). But there’s another force out there and it’s a force in the other direction. And that force is your own voice. Ford has announced an integration between their Sync platform and Amazon’s Alexa voice control system: [Starting] thi

One of the biggest secrets in radio is what’s happening to listening over the long term. Talk to insiders and they will acknowledge that while a huge majority of Americans still listen to the radio the amount of time spent listening continues to decline. Or does it? Well, it depends on how you measure it. And that should add one more reason to the long laundry list of reasons why broadcasters should be irritated at Nielsen, which presumes to produce the accepted unit of measu

Cue the panic in the radio streets. Facebook is moving into the audio space by making available a publishing tool called “Live Audio.” “Should you be worried?” asks Radio Ink (which should be in a position to answer that question rather than ask it). First, let’s acknowledge the utter inevitability of this announcement. Facebook’s job is to extract dollars from potential advertisers who value the platform’s virtually infinite and addressable audience and want to reach them in

Everyone’s abuzz about podcasting! Well, kind of. Maybe not everyone. You’ve probably seen the 2016 stats: According to Edison, 21% of Americans ages 12 and up have listened to a podcast in the past month. That’s followed by this spin on trends: “That is up from 17% in 2015. Monthly podcast listenership has increased 75% since 2013.” Everyone deserves a high-five, right? Those numbers are huge! But wait a minute. I think folks in the audio space are missing the bigger story:

I love “future of radio” discussions, even though the premise of the phrase is completely wrong. Radio people care about “the future of radio” – listeners don’t. Indifference to what listeners really care about is why Clear Channel didn’t acquire Pandora when it was bargain-priced. It’s why there are many podcasts that sound like radio shows and enjoy radio-sized audiences but have never played on a radio station. The issue isn’t about the “future of radio” per se, but rather

The evolution of the car dashboard: It’s all some folks in radio want to talk about. Understandably, since such a large fraction of radio listening happens while driving. But isn’t it just the nature of disruption to change the conversation all at once? And that’s what happened today with the news that consumers wanting Android Auto no longer need to wait to buy a compatible car to use the platform. Now the platform is coming to them!Look out #radio: #android #auto is coming

If you’re waiting for a new music format – a knight in shining armor – to save your flagging ratings, then you will be waiting for the rest of your professional career. Because there never will be one ever again. What’s the next big new format? Radio has been asking that question forever. Most recently, the answer was Classic Hip Hop. Is it the next big thing? Maybe not (from Radio Ink): If you listened to Radio One CEO Alfred Liggins on his earnings call you might come to th

We all know the folks in the print business are being squeezed by digital. At the New York Times total revenue fell 1% while Gannett Co. reported revenues down almost 9%. And remember, those declines take into account any growth in digital. But this note from MediaPost is particularly telling: It’s worth noting that [circulation] revenues now make up 59.7% of NYTCO’s total, up from 41.3% in the third quarter of 2010. The proportion derived from advertising has fallen from 51.

Andy Bowers is the Chief Content Officer of Panoply, a leading podcast network and an innovator in the space. In this Q&A from hivio 2016, the audio future festival, I talk with Andy about Panoply’s business model, how the company works with advertisers and brands, and the future of podcasting as a business. Among the questions Andy addresses: Describe Panoply For advertisers, Panoply is more about impact than scale. How is that distinction important and how does it work for

I have written a lot about the coming transformation of the auto dashboard and my belief that, in the long run, it will be the domain of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – that these platforms will squeeze out most alternatives. Why? Because consumers will exert their will on automakers and demand that their dashboards are not only as powerful as their smartphones but that they are identical to them (at least within the constraints of driver safety, a sacrifice any driver under

People under the age of 50 spend more time every week using apps and the web on their smartphone than they spend listening to the radio. Indeed, the biggest users of radio are persons 50-64, while the lightest users are 18-24’s, who spend about 50% more time with mobile apps/web than they spend with the radio. That’s from Nielsen data, by the way. So you can assume it’s as accurate…as Nielsen data (I have left TV usage (live and time-shifted) off this chart – that’s actually