In what dmg says is a first for Radio in Australia, they’ve launched their first on air ‘Google Hangout.’ The new live streaming feature was launched with Smallzy’s Surgery, Nova’s national nights show.
Management says, that this was a natural fit as the audience for his show “lives and breathes online.” This technology connects announcers to their fans and fans to one another, enabling real time interactivity between power fans.
In the exclusive, intimate chat 22 people joined the Google Hangout last Wednesday night while Smallzy was also trending Australia wide on Twitter with the hashtag #smallzyssurgery.
dmg Radio’s Chief Digital Officer Rebekah Horne says, “As all media becomes more social, platforms like Google Hangouts enable users to participate, create and personalise their own media experience and provide distribution and scale for local content programs to reach broader audiences and provide audiences with an enriched radio experience beyond linear transmission.
“dmg plans to create more of these real-time event-based radio moments bringing fans and talent closer together. The power of social networking when combined with broadcast is that its usage is complimentary in that most social media users still access radio via the radio but use social media concurrently. Behaviour shifts from one of passive listener to active participant over time as an interactive relationship develops between listener and host.
Social media followers look forward to and feel a closer connection to the hosts than non followers and they are likely to engage cross platform. Radio has always been able to move quickly. It’s one of the great attributes of the medium — and social media provides a great extension of the medium,” says Ms Horne
dmg Radio plan to continue incorporating Google Hangouts as part of their digital programming going forward, with creative concepts in the works about how to utilise the Google Hangout functionality to deliver exciting entertainment moments to their audience.
Smallzy’s Surgery has also announced that the show is headed to the Brit Awards on Feb 21, launching a competition to take listeners along. The competition page clocked up 1000 views in less than 30 seconds and by the end of the show it was up to 11,000 views.
Smallzy will be doing weekly Google Hangouts from the NOVA studio and listeners anywhere in the world with a computer and a webcam can join in.