YouTube is the second largest television network, if you want to view that as a network. It's massive. And that's where so much of media is being consumed today. So when we talk about tweaking for the younger generation, if you are not on other platforms, I don't think you can win place or show in the game. In other words, a big tower out in the field is not going to get the show. Job done,
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I think radio has waited too long to deal with on demand strategies in a significant way, and I wrote a piece recently highlighting the aging of the linear media business. But what I made clear was that podcasting is the new talk radio. And I mean that with all sincerity, and I mean it a little bit with the shock value too, that if you don't build out the next generation, then you are sorry. AM radio or your telephone booths. You're just not as important.
Now your guides through the mediamorphosis, David Martin and author of the book BRANDwidth, media branding coach Kipper McGee.
Hey kids, this time we're deep diving into the world of on demand audio and podcasting multi platform audio. That's right. With over three decades of experience, our guest has been a pivotal figure in transforming the audio landscape. He's driven innovation and growth at major broadcasting companies, including one where he was co-founder and Executive VP, Saga Communications. And by the way, a station guy at a legendary station, WABC in New York.
His expertise in content creation and digital strategy has guided brands through the shift from traditional broadcasting to digital audio. Leading a firm known for its strategic insights and creative solutions, he's a sought after speaker and thought leader shaping the future of audio. BRANDwidth on Demand is proud to welcome the founder of Amplifi Media, Steve Goldstein.
Hey, Steve.
This is a lovely intro. Thank you very much. Now the pressure is on, I guess. Well, I'm not so sure about that, but I do know you will have something to say on this. With TV and print audiences aging, what do these demographic shifts mean for the future of radio and podcasting done by radio stations or personalities? Well, so I think you have a combination of things occurring at the same time.
You have the aging of linear media cable news is at 70 and primetime TV, primetime TV, which was sold as an 18 to 49 medium. The average is now 65 for linear primetime TV. Newspaper, if still getting one, is 60. Talk radio is at 58. And that's a kind number because Nielsen combines sports talk, which is a lower demo, then news talk, which is a higher demo. So you can extrapolate out what that 58 might be without the sports talk stations. That is not a good looking number.
And then you have podcasts. Podcasts are checking in 30 years younger. 34 is the median age.
Wow. And how are the media habits of that younger generation changing the game, Steve? What can radio broadcasters do to tweak their engagement and content to attract these listeners?
Yeah, if only it were a tweak, Dave, I think it's, I think it's way more systemic than a tweak. And so, look, the generations, the younger generations specifically are using content differently. You know, you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to know that, TikTok, Instagram, things like that are significant factors, but so is YouTube. YouTube is the second largest television network, if you want View that as a network. It's massive and that's where so much of media is being consumed today.
So when we talk about tweaking for the younger generation, if you are not on other platforms, I don't think you can win place or show in the game. In other words, a big tower out in the field is not going to get the job done. And I do think about it through the same eyes of TV. The local TV station is under tremendous pressure for the same demographic reasons I just recited. They are using streaming. They are using YouTube. All to reach the audience where they are. And here's an example.
SNL in the middle of April, the highest rated episode of the year on SNL was with Ryan Gosling and it did 8 million views in linear TV. Meaning that 8 million people watched it either on Saturday night or delayed it and watched it at another time. But 46 million people watched clips of the show on YouTube. 170 million people. Watched clips on Instagram, TikTok, or wherever. So, what they've learned is that they must be multi platform.
And I think the same thing holds true for broadcasters, radio broadcasters. So I, I do not think it's a tweak. Podcasting is a necessary tool. Streaming is a necessary tool. I think you need to get out from under the notion that people are just going to listen to you on a radio. Yeah, we're still seeing that it's down from 93 percent for a long time, but now it's like 80 something percent of people listen to radio once a week or so.
On that note, is there a way that radio broadcasters can utilize those strategies that make a difference? Podcasting attractive to advertisers so they can compete with things like you mentioned YouTube and TikTok. Is there a way they can do that? Yeah, I think so. I really do. I think radio has underplayed the potential of time shifted audio. When I started Amplifi, which believe it or not, Kipper, is nine and a half years ago.
Wow.
Wow.
And a lot of weird eye rolls at the time. What's this guy doing? In the nine and a half years, I would say seven or eight of them, I thought time shifted audio was like the Rodney Dangerfield of podcasting. Nobody wanted to touch it. Today, I feel very differently about it. I think it's a significant retention strategy that is totally underutilized by radio, and I will give you a frightening example of this. So we took a market, a large market, top 20 market.
And we took the top seven morning shows. Okay. So this is not the, screwed up stations, the ones that are a mess. This is the top in the market. And we looked at listening patterns. And what we saw was that just under 60 percent were listening to the morning show one day a week. That's it one day a week. And only. 18 percent more were listening two days a week. So only 18 percent two days a week. That's frightening. That's systemic.
That suggests that the business model is just broken and the audience has already said, Hey, I'm doing other things. And so if they happen to like your morning show, shouldn't you think about strategies to help them? In offering that content on other platforms so that they can consume it in other ways because they've already voted and said, Hey, you know what? We're not around enough. I mean, maybe they're not commuting as often as they used to. Maybe they have other shows that they like.
I don't know, but I do know that taking a morning show and shoving three hours of it into a podcast is a really bad idea and it's not working.
So, shifting gears a little bit, what are the relative pros and cons of using the TLR, total line reporting, compared to those who separate the streaming signal from the on air broadcast? And do you need to be a certain size organization to have it make sense, or how do you see that whole world?
Yeah, I think that's very bespoke. I think it's a really good question, too. So, streaming is moving north. There's a lot more streaming going on, depending on the format, depending on the size of the radio station. It could be 12%, 15%. It could be as high as 20 percent of the audience listening via streaming. So, that's no longer a little rounding error. that means those little Alexa speakers in everybody's home are radios. And so that's pretty exciting. So that's great.
So that would suggest that combining those numbers together for TLR would be good. And the podcasting part of that is, let's say they do listen to a signature bit of the morning show and they listen to it within 24 hours. That's also accretive. And so if you combine those things and I'm just making up this number, let's say it's 20, 25 percent of the listening. That's a big number. I mean, all of a sudden pay attention. There's a, there's an opportunity here. So I don't think.
The TLR is a problem. I think it's an asset in most markets, but I do think that there are many scenarios in which people are making more money by separating out the opportunity of selling the stream and the podcast than combining it. So I do think, and I've worked with broadcasters who in their same organization will make that strategy a bit more bespoke, depending on the size of the market or the size of the station. But I love the idea that they're thinking about it.
How do you see a AI changing the future of podcasting, broadcasting, audio, and what ethical issues should creators of both consider to balance AI's benefits with maintaining genuine human connections with their audience?
Isn't to say, I think it'd be like NFTs and it'll just be gone in a year. Uh, I'm afraid not. I, I think this is a real thing. So it depends what media we're talking about. I am amazed at how good the audio is so fast. I would not have guessed that there would be such great intonation and things of that nature in audio. And yet it is. It is here. I do think that the audience is really sharp and I do think certainly on the podcast side, that authenticity makes a difference.
I think that broadcasters or any audio creator will make a mistake thinking that. They can use AI as the surrogate. But I also think that it's a great tool for production and for, the back office sort of stuff to improve workflow and things like that. So, in one place I worry about it a lot and the other, I recommend it often, but it is. Changing so fast. If we had had this conversation six months ago, I'm not sure we would have found audio samples that sound as good as what we hear today.
So it is moving rapidly.
Yeah, and it's kind of on a hockey stick trajectory. It looks like.
Yeah, and the legal issues. Dave, you asked about the legal issues. That is such a Pandora's box. There's so much going on there. And I think we'll see more. I read this morning that Drake fake song that they were suing the record companies and producers of it. I mean, you're going to see a lot of that, right? It just makes sense that people are gearing up trying to figure out how to protect their copyrighted material. And you see it on the graphics. You see it with pictures and watermarking.
I think we're going to see audio watermarking as well. I've had the conversation with Dan Granger and Stu Redvine over at Oxford Road and they're an agency that does bespoke audio, about how to watermark original audio. I think it's a conversation.
And intellectual property is going to be a very important issue going forward. It really is.
And I have a brother in law who is in that business has been it's he's moving to a couple of record years, I think.
Oh, no doubt about it.
Business is very good. So looking forward, opening your crystal ball app on your phone. What key factors do you think are going to really be shaping the future of podcasting in the next five, 10 years?
So I think when we're talking about podcasting, we're talking about a medium that is growing and changing rapidly. Again, I started my business nine years ago. There was $250,000 of revenue in the business. This year there'll be over 2 billion. So it's still small, especially compared to commercial radio, saying but it is growing rapidly just as on demand video. Has grown. This is the way people will expect to find and listen to audio.
And when I think about it in terms of radio, and here we are doing this radio oriented podcast, I draw your attention to the top 50 podcasts. On Apple podcasts or Spotify, it doesn't really matter, and the diversity of topics. Out of the top 50, only eight are political. About four are true crime and seven are comedy, business and technologies in their sports, self improvement. There are five titles on self improvement. My point here is that diversity of topics in podcasting is so great.
And it suggests a desire to listen to things that go way beyond conservative talk radio. They want to be entertained. They want to be informed. And there's also a lot of new personalities. And that's something we haven't seen in the radio business in forever is investment in new voices. And it is happening in podcasting. That is where the experimentation occurs. And I can tell you for sure that the mortality rate in podcasting is not good.
Most podcasts end up in the recycle chute, but if you make it. And if you are making it, it is because you are, differentiated and you're bringing fresh content on topics that people are interested in. There are topics like self improvement with Kuberman Labs that does extraordinarily well and has since the beginning of the pandemic. And there's Alex Cooper, who's talking about, younger, more millennial, And younger than that issues.
There's a great diversity of voices and I think that's what's going to drive podcasting in the future.
No doubt about it, Steve. We can all learn something from Steve Goldstein, the Amplify Media founder and CEO. Hey, got a suggestion or a guest or a topic. We're all ears. Drop us an email at show at BRANDwidth on Demand. com or reach out on social BRANDwidthPLUS on Instagram. Facebook and X. BRANDwidth plus together we can make this podcast even more epic.
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Coming up, Steve talks to us about what trends and opportunities he sees in time shifting your audio to on demand.
Yeah, we have a lot going on multiple stations and formats. We really need to bundle them all. Yeah, that sounds really good. Who are you talking to? Yeah, I'd like that. It's Dave from music master. Dave for music master at two in the morning. Who is this? I told you it's Dave from music master day for music master. Huh? What are you wearing? Huh? Kaki's from the industry's best music scheduling software, Nexus integration, client server, and yes, 24 seven support.
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We are here with the founder and CEO of Amplify media, Steve Goldstein, Steve. One question that many stations are still debating. Are the merits of utilizing podcasting for time shifting, to make the radio station content available on demand. What trends and opportunities are you seeing in this area?
So let's go back to something we talked about earlier. I think the TV model is a really good one for radio broadcasters. I think bite sized content is the win. It's not the long form. No one listened to your radio show for three and a half hours. They're not going to listen to your podcast for three and a half hours, but they might listen to four or eight minutes that were really great. And, sad to say, but you guys know you've been around doing this for a long time. There's.
three levels of content. There's A level B level and C level. And most content is in that C and B level. And the great moments are A level. And those are the moments that you should be making available to listeners again, for retention, but also for growth. These are two very different strategies and we do work with radio clients on this.
I think that there needs to be way more rigor and focus and thought placed into it as opposed to, yeah, we made a clip out of the thing and we made it into an MP3 and we published it. I don't think it's as easy as that.
And one thing, it just seems to me looking at it, A news talk radio station, one of the things you would think that people are coming to them for is information. Yet, many of them do top of the hour and that's it, and then the rest is network and spots. Wouldn't it make sense for more news talk or even sports stations to do a recap of that as a podcast and keep it there till the next one was recorded?
Well, you you see that in public radio the NPR hourly news is their top podcast You see that at the BBC BBC is the hourly newscast. So what does that tell you? It tells you that it's vital product, but not everybody's going to listen to it at the top of the hour. That's just old school thinking. They may get to it at 25 minutes after the hour or when and when they get into the car. That's what on demand is all about. And I don't think.
I don't think Linear can win any longer, even though they may do a great sportscast at a quarter after the hour. It doesn't mean people are jumping in to their car at a quarter after to listen to it.
No, Linear's the world of live sports now. That's about it. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a fantastic, but not at all, but it is not the only way to reach people. Very good. I think any final word, any final words of wisdom, Mr. Goldstein, I think radio has waited too long to deal with on demand strategies in a significant way. And I wrote a piece recently highlighting the aging of the linear media business. But what I made clear was that podcasting is the new talk radio.
And I mean that with all sincerity, and I mean it a little bit with the shock value too, that if you don't build out the next generation, then you are sorry. AM radio or your telephone booths. You're just not as important. Our thanks to the always insightful Steve Goldstein. Links to his blog, his website, and more all in the show notes. Just scroll down on your phone.
As always, our thanks to exec producer Cindy Huber for putting this all together. And coming up next.
Hey there, it's Thee Kelly Ford, host of Backstage Country on In 80 Cities, around this great country of ours, and afternoon hoston 1 0 3.1, the Wolf in Long Island. Would you like to learn how to lose weight, how to have better sex, and how to earn $10,000 in less than three months? None of that I can tell you, but we will have fun with Kipper and Dave coming up next episode of BRANDwidth On Demand.
That's a wrap, Kipper. Want to get better? Well, you need to seek out criticism. Start asking people, Hey, what am I doing wrong? We'll talk about that in the next One Minute Martinize. You'll find it in the show notes at brandwithondemand. dot com. I'm Dave Martin. And I'm Kipper McGee. Stay creative and let your BRANDwidth shine.