Why You Should Listen To Larry

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At the end of the parents/teens presentation, Thursday afternoon, Edison Research President Larry Rosin detailed exactly what he thinks could be done to start turning teens back to radio. They were excellent suggestions that radio would be wise to think about.
Rosin said that there’s every possibility that teens will turn to radio once they enter the workforce. But radio shouldn’t sit idly by and expect that to happen. He said for a long time radio has assumed it was a monopoly and the monopoly has been broken. Radio needs to come to terms with that and start targeting teens and creating relationships with them in the local markets. Here’s what he suggests:
– Create ambassadors or campus reps at local high schools. Give them jackets that say they are representing your station and have them hand out swag.
– Get the kids to put radio station stickers on their laptops.
– Have high schools compete to have a local concert at their school rather than in your radio station conference room.
– Go where parents and teens are spending time together.
– Create specific events for parents and teens.
– Always encourage adult listeners to bring their kids along to any events you have.
– Create commercial-free sweeps during the times you know they are in the car together (i.e. driving to school).
– Recreate the on-air battle of the sexes contest so it’s a competition between the parent and the teen.
– Curate and publish specific playlist for parents and teens (just like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartRadio are doing).
The moral of this story is you just don’t know if these teens are going to turn to radio when they enter the worforce or if they are going to drag their parents with them to the streamers, so be proactive and bring them under your tent now.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I liked this because at least someone was talking about the issue. But Larry’s missing by miles here. Radio needs to hire DJs. Young, relevant local DJs. Swarms of them. Vox pro a 2-hr show in 30 mins…. And voila! That young dj will have thousands listening. The money will follow. It has and always will be about relevent content. Stickers? C’mon.

  2. Good ideas but ignoring the elephant in the room. Radio needs to bite the bullit before it’s too late and redesign the outdated 7 minute stopset. Other advertising models work and many advertisers are using them and younger audiences accept it. Maybe revenue may decrease a bit but the business remains viable. Just remember owners of the big AM sticks laughed at FM saturation thinking their “music” listeners would never leave. How did that work out.

  3. “Get the kids to put radio station stickers on their laptops.”
    This kind of demands the “old man yelling at clouds” meme.

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