Podcasts can be brand extensions for your on air talent

Broadcast Asia’s radio stream tackles music streaming, podcasting and video streaming.

 
Nic Shields, Executive Music Director at Mediacorp Singapore, Nick Piggott, Project Director at RadioDNS, and radioinfo’s Steve Ahern talked podcasting and streaming services in a panel discussion at the Broadcast Asia conference, moderated by CRA’s Joan Warner.
 
Ahern reminded delegates that people have always listened to music in various ways, spending some time with radio, but also selecting favourite music from their own collections of records, CDs or stored music. “Music streaming has primarily taken away listening time from personal music collections, but less from radio,” he said.
 
The panel also discussed the difference between renting music and owning it, which is the model of streaming services. Renting is more flexible because you can access any song you would like to hear from the rental service, but you don’t really own the music any more. Does that really matter? Probably not was the consensus of the group.
 
On the topic of podcasting, Ahern’s opinion is that radio companies should strive to be influential players on the new platform, especially with talk podcasts, because music rights can be difficult with podcasting. “Podcasts on topics that your on air personalities are interested in, serve as a brand extension for your talent,” he said.
 
Nic Shields agreed with that point and gave the example of his own podcast about dogs. “I love dogs, but if I talk about them too much on my radio show the listeners will get bored with my obsession. Now I make a regular podcast, with plenty of dog topics to talk about. It has found an audience of like minded people who seem to share the same passion as me.”
 

 
In another Broadcast Asia session, Aaron Pinto, Network Content Manager at Astro Radio talked about his stations’ successes in targeting younger audiences.
 
“At Astro we see that our competitors are more than just other radio stations, so we went beyond radio to create content in any space where our fans engage,” he said.
 
ERA is the number one brand in Malaysia thanks to engagement on many platforms. He gave the example of his breakfast team who broadcast a live video of themselves wrestling as part of a story arc that had been on air that week. The video got 2.4 million views in three days on Facebok and Youtube.

Astro has stopped using the term FM in its radio station IDs, because it is now developing brands that are beyond just the FM band.


 
GoXuan is a new Chinese brand for Astro, aiming to create lots of content for today’s Chinese youth. The studio for this station is designed like a radio studio but also with a green screen so announcers can quickly make videos as part of their shows. “Our listeners may not always consume the radio brand on the radio, but on digital they are consuming our brand. We think this is the new way forward for Astro radio…
 
“We will be hiring people who are digital talents as well as radio talent. Our message to our teams is you can’t just create traditional content you need to shift to create digital content as well.”
 

 

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