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This blog post originally appeared as part of the Pearson Higher Nationals Blog, on their HN Global platform.Those original websites have now been retired. The text provided here does not include images that were included on the websites.
In Part 1 of this series, we considered the way in which streaming was changing our relationship to music. In Part 2, we are looking at the steady rise of podcasting and its role in the growth of spoken word content.
Cast your net broadly…
As a child, I used to marvel at the way my parents and grandparents talked about the radio. They used to describe sitting by the radio to listen to the news, or a musical performance or a ‘radio show.’ For them, the radio was (usually) a large wooden cabinet that sat on the floor of the sitting room. For me, it was a handheld box of plastic with a telescoping antennae that (for most of the time) didn’t get used because I was too busy watching the television.
As I got older, I began to enjoy when WJR (one of the local radio stations in Detroit) began to play old radio shows and to produce new radio shows. The weekly airing of CBS Mystery Theatre (https://www.cbsrmt.com) or the occasional re-broadcast of Fibber McGee and Molly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibber_McGee_and_Molly) allowed me to begin to understand the power of audio and the way that it fired the imagination. Whether it was the sound of a creaking door, making me nervous as I listened to Mystery Theater, or the crashing sound of all the junk falling out of Fibber McGee and Molly’s closet, sound made the story come to life.
Of course, we listened to music on the radio, too.
As times changed, in the US, there was less and less demand for radio drama, comedy, game shows. The UK has always had a more active radio landscape; primarily due to the fact that the BBC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC) as a publicly-funded institution had a more diverse remit. The US, where radio (and media, generally) were driven by commercial production. Radio became divided between music and talk-radio; a genre that was much more about opinion and, later, created the ‘shock jock’ – a radio host whose radio persona seemed designed to be abrasive, narrow-minded, and (eventually) politicised and partisan.
You can’t imagine my joy upon discovering BBC Radio 4, when I moved to the UK. I’m not afraid to admit that I enjoy The Archers; although I’m more likely to listen to the weekend Omnibus rather than the daily programme.
Around the world, radio still commands about 80% of the audio market. In some countries, it is well into the mid-90% range. The low cost of consumer radio technology has meant that it remains one of the most widespread broadcast media formats in the world. It is estimated that each week about 3 billion people will listen to the radio. Advertising revenue from radio is expected to exceed $40 billion.
Radio is a broadcast medium. This is to say, that the same content is made available to everyone who tunes in. You don’t choose what you will hear, other than to choose when to listen. Radio stations will either seek to provide a range of different types of content, to appeal to a wide range of listeners, or will focus on specific types of content to address their local market. This is why, within a given geographical locale, you may have multiple radio stations broadcasting different types of content (rock music, country music, ‘oldies’, news radio, talk radio, etc).
Listen narrowly…
Around 2004, podcasting started to take off. While it had been around, in one form or another, for a while; it was the increasing availability of portable MP3 players (like the iPod) and the growing availability of broadband internet that allowed the medium to begin to achieve traction.
The key difference between radio and podcasting is that the latter is not a broadcast medium. It is narrowcast; meaning it is designed to appeal to a specific audience and is consumed where and when the listener chooses. There is no need to seek to develop content that can appeal to the widest possible audience, because the audience is choosing the specific. There is no need to be geographically relevant, because anyone can access the content. There is no need to schedule programming, because the listener will download or stream the content whenever they wish. Further, most podcasts are based on a subscription model – meaning you can get the latest episode delivered to your device by signing up to the ‘feed’.
While podcasting is still a small, in terms of revenue generation, it is growing. It is estimated that advertising revenue, for 2019, will reach about $850 million, and will rise to more than $1.6 billion by 2022. That is an estimated 188% growth over 3 years! For advertisers, podcasting is an exciting new area for exploration. When you have access to a more defined audience, it is possible to target advertising more specifically. For example, if you have a podcast about a specific video game you are also likely to know the demographic that engages with the game. Therefore, you will have greater specificity about who is listening to the podcast and can advertise products and services that are likely to appeal to this more narrowly defined group. In turn, this group may be more likely to find the advertised goods and services to be relevant to them and more likely to make a purchase.
While streaming media has changed the way we consume music, but hasn’t changed the nature of music, it has had profound impact on the way that spoken word content is being created. The success of podcasts like Serial (https://serialpodcast.org) has reintroduced long-form and episodic audio content to a mass audience.
Further, the majority of podcasts are produced by independent companies or individuals, there are less restrictions on the way that they may approach the development. This, in turn, allows for content to be released that may be appeal to a very niche market or to be more biased (for better or worse). There is less need to be concerned about offending the listener, because the listener will have sought out the podcast.
There are about 95 podcasts dedicated to listening to people play dungeons and dragons listed on the Apple Podcast Directory. There are thousands of podcasts dedicated to politics; ranging from discussions of global issues to neighbourhood-level. There are thousands of comedy podcasts; by well-known comedians as well as unknowns, in nearly every language you can imagine. The range of categories to be found on different podcast directories is astonishing, and continues to grow – as podcasting is creating new genres and new audiences. People who may have been unlikely to listen to the radio, for spoken word content, are discovering podcasts that appeal to their specific interests.
The technology of podcasting may be internet-based, rather than ‘over-the-air’ broadcasting, but this new medium is returning to us some of the joy that can be discovered through the imagination, conversation, and information of audio content.
