Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Some other good stuff at a recent PRII event on the future of radio I wasn’t able to attend (unfortunately the website structure means I can’t link to the page, so here’s the choice tidbits instead):

Because new media will complement but not replace it. There is a lot of talk about the advent of internet-led ‘consumer generated content’ – sites such as YouTube and MySpace, for example. This fails to take account of radio’s long-standing history of interactivity on shows such as Gay Byrne, Joe Duffy, Gerry Ryan etc, all of which are CGC but just not labelled as such.

While the Internet won’t replace radio (or any other traditional media channel for that matter), the following insight about radio highlights the role it will play in targeting niche groups.

Challenges remain, however, particularly because to date radio tends to have a geographic rather than a demographic reach. This makes it expensive to target niche groups who are, worryingly, ‘opting out’ of the radio culture – namely young people and foreign nationals living and working in Ireland.

As a recent Bear Sterns report about the Entertainment Industry and the Long Tail points out:

The Internet, with falling storage and bandwidth costs, can act as a global distribution network…These trends are “democratisizing” content creation , taking it out of the hands of just the traditional Hollywood players and TV networks…As this occurs, consumers will move to the “tail” of the demand curve, creating niche markets.

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