Radio’s death has been predicted ever since the first commercial broadcast as our 1920 counterparts clutched their pearls and chugged back their brandy alexanders, at the effect radio listening was having on traditional American past-times.
Let’s not pretend that radio is as robust as it was even 10 years ago and while the points raised in my esteemed colleagues post have validity – https://techdailypost.co.za/2022/01/28/opinion-radios-death-is-almost-here-as-predicted-by-gareth-cliff-7-years-ago/ – radio has the potential to rise and reinvent itself.
Where is radio now?
Numbers don’t lie. The new and improved BRC Rams published in 2021 tell us that radio listening is as healthy as ever with 22 million South Africans listening to radio for an average of 5 hours every day.
Let that sink in.
It’s easy for us on tech platforms to assume that access to information is easy but it’s not. Even if you get over the sensitivity around data pricing and usage, you still need to consider that most information you will find online…is in English.
Radio fills a massive gap in providing news, entertainment and content to millions of us in our mother tongues.
Advertisers see this. Radio offers amazing value for the audiences it reaches and you can’t be a respectable marketing professional and ignore radio. If you have the budget, you’re buying airtime.
And radio does work.
At Ultimate Media we work across all categories, FMCG, banking, short-term insurance, mobile manufacturers – and we get results across the board through simple radio activations on a number of stations, in a number of languages.
You can’t argue with the fact that South African radio stations often appear in the lists of most listened to radio stations in the whole world.
But it’s changing. The same RAMS report is starting to show a shift of radio listeners. For the first time we now know that while radio listeners are loyal to radio, they are also starting to consume streaming audio platforms and adding podcasts into their daily routines. Some are listening to audio on digital platforms almost as long as they are listening to radio.
Advertisers are starting to realise that a full funnel audio strategy is the best way to keep themselves relevant and reach ears and the radio industry’s speed to react to this, could be what decides their fate.
Radio advertising is expensive, digital advertising is not. So when you’re multi, multi – million rand businesses, you don’t want to play the click and impression game but the market and more importantly the audience is going to force them to.
Advertisers will follow the money and if the audience with the money moves, so will they. It’s important for radio to fully embrace that they need to sell an audience and not their brand. South African radio station brands are some of the most iconic brands in the country. So many people have an affinity to those brands, especially the likes of 5 and YFM – no matter what your age; advertisers are less interested in your radio brand and your ethos than they are in the audience you can offer them.
Radio is often accused of ‘’moving the party to a different room’’ when it comes to digital. They’re hosting, they’re circulating the room, but it’s still the party and their rules.
I don’t truly believe that anyone wants to kill you, Radio. You’re still a very important guest at the party. But it might be time for you to let other people choose the music or you may be the ones left facing it.
Writes: Paulo Dias – Head of Audio Innovation Ultimate Media | An SA Podcast guy | Host That 80s Show SA | Co-Host MKT Sports Show | *Opinions my own*
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