3.0.1 Tendências do segundo choque

O negócios dos conteúdos vs o negócio da distribuição

Ramsey: «There are two places worth being in the future: The business of content - the unique and compelling kind. And the business of distribution - the wider the better.Some of the smarter groups are already experimenting with deals in these non-radio channels. Look for these deals to multiply. Further, look for players to get into the radio "game" who have no history here. To the degree that you simply need to hire a handful of program directors to create a broad menu of music-only channels, radio - on a national level - becomes easy for any company which has the distribution - and that means lots of competition which will quickly turn weaker radio brands into commodities.And where should you NOT be? You should not be putting all your eggs in the basket of any one technology (including over-the-air radio, by the way), especially if that technology has no significant distribution (you know what I'm talking about, but I already wrote my one post of the week on that topic).And you should not be in the business of pumping out tunes with no distinction and no added value. You should not, in other words, be in the business of creating a weak all-music brandless brand.Of course, you'll see these challenges first from the younger end of the audience. And no, they will not grow out of it.»

10 preocupações para a nova rádio (muito bom)

«Here are my thoughts on how news-based radio stations can rise to the challenges of multimedia convergence without overstretching finite resources. The key is sustainability.

1) Play to your strengths
The starting-point is your core product: the audio that you already produce and broadcast on the radio. Make it available in a digital format like MP3 for users to listen to or download from your station's website. Podcast highlights of popular programmes and longer (complete) versions of broadcast interviews.

2) Start a conversation with your audience
Your website is not just a place for programme schedules. The easiest and most effective way to create interactivity is by having a weblog. For more idea about using a weblog, see this post by the Bivings Group.

3) Listen to your audience
Try to respond to comments and always answer direct questions - giving your audience a voice only makes sense if you are prepared to listen. Make your audience feel part of the editorial process by soliciting ideas for future broadcasts/blogposts.

4) Don't bite off more than you can chew
(Pseudo-) multi-platform authoring is a good way to achieve sustainability. For example, with a bit of tweaking, the (carefully written) scripts that accompany your radio programmes can become your online articles/blog posts.

5) Make your podcasts interactive
Use free software like Odeo, Evoca or Voicethread to allow your listeners to leave messages on your website. Edit the voice messages for use on-air and in podcasts.

6) Don't reinvent the wheel
Whenever possible, use existing applications/platforms to build and foster communities. Not only do they work, but the best social software is often free. Upload your videos to YouTube and then embed them in your weblog. Hopefully, you will attract comments and reactions on both platforms. Create user groups. Put some of your photos on photo-sharing sites like Flickr  and encourage your audiences to share their pictures.

7) Create a multimedia culture
Winning over your staff may be your biggest challenge, but most will come round when they start feeling that they are engaging in a genuine conversation with their audience. Make short films of your presenters at work and of any studio guests. This will interest your audience and also boost morale in the newsroom because everybody likes seeing themselves on video. Encourage your reporters to take pictures and shoot videos to enhance online storytelling. As Howard Owens suggests, this does not necessarily mean investing in expensive, state-of-the-art equipment.

8) Cross-promote
Regularly remind listeners about your web address and talk about your online content. Use your weblog to preview upcoming stories - begin a conversation about your reports before they are broadcast.

9) Link to your community
Provide editorial guidelines online and link to the blogs of members who agree to abide by the rules. They may even link back to your website.

10) RSS feeds
Make your blog posts available as RSS feeds. This will make it easier for your audience to keep up-to-date and aware of new content on your website.

fonte: Multimedia meets radio, «10 ideas for a successful multimedia strategy» 27/3/07

Mais escolha ou melhor (pessoal e simples) escolha?

Mark Ramsey:

«Everybody wants more choice, right? Wrong. Everybody thinks they want more choice. In fact what they want is their choice - and the shortest possible path to it. Misunderstanding this leads us down a path that fills our supermarket aisles, not to mention our HD and satellite radios. (...)»

Outro contributo: «Having grown up in the abundance of the US, I was basically taught that freedom is, among other things, the maximization of choices. The more choices the better. All those choices. All that abundance.157 kinds of breakfast cereal…how to decide? The freedom to choose, at least on things that matter most, is a wonderful gift indeed. Yet, in our daily lives we too often burden ourselves with petty choices, unimportant matters, and frivolous decisions. In today’s world we may have political/social freedom (if we're lucky), but often lack “a freedom of mind,” the very freedom that can matter most when aiming to construct creative solutions to complex problems. Our minds — even our lives in general — have become complicated by clutter. (...) Life is about living with limitations and constraints of one type or another, but constraints are not necessarily bad, in fact they are often helpful, even inspiring as they challenge us to think differently and more creatively about a particular problem. While problems such as a sudden request to give a 20-minute sales pitch or a 45-minute overview of our research findings have built-in limitations — such as time, tools, and budget — we can increase our effectiveness by stepping back, thinking long and hard, and determining ways we can set our own parameters and constraints as we set out to prepare and design our next presentation (or next design project, etc.) with great clarity, focus, balance, and purpose» (fonte: «Can limitations and restrictions be liberating?», 29/03/07, Presentation Zen) 

«Consumidores só esperam 4 segundos em sites»

«É provável que os consumidores abandonem um website se demorar mais de quatro segundos a carregar, sugere um estudo do Akamai, acrescentando que a paciência diminui com páginas que demoram muito a aparecer. Dos 1058 inquiridos, 75% disseram que não voltariam a um site que demorasse mais de quatro segundos a carregar. A Akamai consultou aqueles que fazem compras com regularidade online para saber o que eles gostam e não gostam acerca desses sites. Cerca de metade dos consumidores maduros (aqueles que compram online há mais de dois anos ou que gastam mais de 1.500 $ por ano online) consideraram o tempo que as páginas levam a carregar como uma prioridade»

fonte: «Consumidores só esperam 4 segundos em sites» Newsletter OberCom nº 17 - Março 2007, a partir de «Websites face four-second cut-off»

Personalização também no satélite

em vez de comprar o pacote das «cem» rádios, a Sirius vai permitir comprar canal a canal, produto a produto.

«Satellite radio customers will get the option to pay a lower price for just the channels they want if the industry’s two big providers are allowed to merge (...). An a la carte option would allow customers to pay only for the channels they want to receive. Combined, Sirius and XM currently offer more than 300 channels of programming. But some of those stations are identical and many more feature similar formats and genres. “Customers may elect to receive fewer channels at a monthly price lower than $12.95; substantially similar programming at the existing $12.95 price; or more channels, including some of the ’best of both’ networks, at a modest premium to the cost of one service,” Sirius said in the Securities and Exchange Commission document.»

fonte: «Sirius proposes a la carte radio programming», March 21, 2007, By JEREMY HERRON, ASSOCIATED PRESS BUSINESS WRITER, Detroit Free Press

A palavra (em directo e ao vivo) na rádio sairá ainda mais valorizada?

«The shared experience of live radio (social listening at breakfast time, large sporting events and so on) should secure a place for broadcast radio in the digital future. However, in the future live broadcasters will need to become more interactive, more drawn to speech-driven or excitement-driven formats, offering content not available on other platforms. (...) Whilst live broadcasting could remain central for some listeners they will also have continual opportunities to catch up with missed features via delivered audio content. In the future there will still be a role for (live) broadcast radio but as a medium it needs to consolidate and rediscover its strengths and its ‘liveness’. On a professional level, producers will deploy ‘Long Tail’ principles and offer ‘sidechannels’ (specialized audio downloads) to cater for spin-off niches. More non-broadcast businesses will use audio on the new platform to connect with their customers, whether they are students or airline passengers. The ability of grassroots Podcasters to compete on a level playing field with big business is refreshing and means that more than ever it is content that is important rather than brand, heritage or frequency position. That’s the lesson, the revolution the radio industry needs to take away from Podcasting. The iPod has not killed the radio star (yet) but radio may require some retuning» (Berry, 159)

Será através da rádio de palavra que melhor se concretizará a necessidade de auto-actualização, enunciada por Maslow [Maslow, A.H. (1970).  Motivation and Personality(2nd ed.).  New York: Harper and Row]: «The desire to learn is one of the central elements in Maslow’s final level of basic human need.  Acquisition of knowledge for knowledge sake meets the criteria for self-actualization.  It is here that radio continues to excel.  The plethora of radio formats in today’s media environment provides listeners with a variety of information options, from stations that provide; all news, all sport, all weather, current affairs, feature programs, a wide variety of talk-based elements and everything in between.  This variety is coupled with radio’s innate advantages of accessibility, immediacy and localism (when satisfying) to provide profuse opportunities for listeners to access whatever information deemed desirable.  The continued high listenership to talk-based formats suggests this need is being met at a number of different levels» (Radio Listening as a Function of Basic Human Need: Why Did Maslow Listen To Radio? By Morris W. Shanahan1 , New Zealand Broadcasting School, and Nicholas Brown, The Radio Network, New Zealand , 2002)

 

A capacidade da rádio resistir (resilência)

«The development of downloads of audio content in MP3 formats may be seen as the web’s equivalent of the cassette recorder or the portable radio. Both changed the way listeners consume radio. The MP3 player, like the transistor, frees the listener from a large box wired to the wall and, like the cassette recorder, it allows programmes to be time-shifted. This demonstrates the virus-like nature of radio as a medium. Radio has found its way into all parts of homes and outdoors, into transport systems, into the internet and now into our MP3 players, an environment which is entirely suitable for radiogenic content. Like a virus, radio is also very resilient, fighting off attacks from television, compact disc and the increasingly visual world we live in. So for radiogenic content to find its way through the web to portable audio devices should not come as much of a surprise. After all, many people have taped radio programmes at home to listen to at a later point – even if it was just the weekly Top 40 countdown»

fonte: Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star?, Richard Berry, Convergence 2006; 12; 148

«Produtores são consumidores e consumidores tornam-se produtores»

«What Podcasting offers is a classic ‘horizontal’ media form: producers are consumers and consumers become producers and engage in conversations with each other. At a grassroots level there is no sense of a hierarchical approach, with Podcasters supporting each other, promoting the work of others and explaining how they do what they do. Whilst this is true of radio on the internet as a whole it is especially the case with Podcasting because the means to create are as accessible as the means to consume.»

fonte: Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star?, Richard Berry, Convergence 2006; 12; 146

«It is clear that in the Podcast world it is content that is king, with listeners choosing material that appeals to them, rather than selecting radio stations or formats as has been the case in traditional commercial radio models» (berry, 148)

A qualidade de som é importante na rádio via net?

«En épocas de home theater, el audio adquiere una relevancia especial. Según López, esta tendencia se encuentra transformando a Pinnacle: "Se está abriendo un nuevo mercado porque cada vez más el audio y el video corren juntos", dijo. "Antes, al editar video, el audio no importaba si estaba en alta calidad o en baja. Lo importante era la imagen. Hoy la mentalidad de la gente está cambiando, y el usuario está más exigente, quiere buen audio y video, y ya no alcanza con que la imagen sola esté bien. Por eso Pinnacle se está asociando con varias empresas que están en el entorno de la edición del audio, lo que le permite mejorar la calidad de sonido ambiente, de audio en micrófonos, etc."»

fonte: «¿Qué es una radio wireless? 12/03/07, Canal Ar

O declínio acentuado em 2005 (audiências de rádio nos EUA)

Source: Arbitron, “Radio Today: How Americans Listen to Radio, 2006 Edition,” February 14, 2006

(via The State of the News Media 2007; Percent of the population 12 and older, 1998 - 2005)

«Prosumer», por Alvin Tofler

«In the 1980 book, The Third Wave , futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term prosumer when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge (even though he described it in his book "Future Shock" from 1970). Toffler envisioned a highly saturated marketplace as mass production of standardized products began to satisfy basic consumer demands. To continue growing profit, businesses would initiate a process of mass customization, that is, the mass production of highly customized products» (fonte: wikipedia)

O «mass-media model» Ouvintes passivos

INTRODUÇÃO AO PONTO 5« (...) with a small number of well-funded speakers and hordes of passive listeners. Within a short period, however, a combination of technology, business practices and regulatory decisions did in fact settle the model» (Benkler, 2006: 192)

Acesso e propriedade convergem?

«The big opportunity of the future is in finding a way to unobtrusively and effortlessly present new music. Radio as we know it will be replaced by digital music services that tie seamlessly into music distribution systems. Access and ownership will ultimately converge. If my digital “radio station” delivers my favorite playlists on demand—anytime and anywhere—the only reason I would accept another service would be that the service is more personal. It is likely that the very term “radio” will go the way of the word “record”—into the dustbin, or on to the digerati-wordsmiths to morph into the future.»

Leonhard; Kusek, the future of music, pág 27

Os consumidores querem o controlo em vez de escolhas?

«Currently, subscribers are tied to receivers, not users. Ms. Kevorkian said that limits the willingness of people to own more than a single receiver as well as the time they spend listening to the systems»

«(...) have long argued, the market is shifting towards options which facilitate "control" (like iPods) and away from options which provide more "choice," but not much "control" like radio or satellite.Anyone who thinks "choice" and "control" are the same doesn't know the difference between 500 TV channels and a DVR»; (...) «The significance of all this, of course, is that value may be rooted in the content itself, but the big bucks are in the entity that takes that content, organizes it, customizes it, and filters it. Just ask Google»

«The big opportunity of the future is in finding a way to unobtrusively and effortlessly present new music. Radio as we know it will be replaced by digital music services that tie seamlessly into music distribution systems. Access and ownership will ultimately converge. If my digital “radio station” delivers my favorite playlists on demand—anytime and anywhere—the only reason I would accept another service would be that the service is more personal. It is likely that the very term “radio” will go the way of the word “record”—into the dustbin, or on to the digerati-wordsmiths to morph into the future.»

Tendências (mais controlo, menos escolha)

«Arbitron did not report mp3 player usage among these folks (indeed, they don't even measure it), and my own research has clearly shown that heavy mp3 player users tend to listen to as much radio as anyone else - but are less satisfied with what they hear on the radio. The implications of all this are profound: If satellite tracks with radio as new audio entertainment and information options proliferate, then they will be on the wrong side of the trend curve as technology progresses. Under that scenario, it would mean that, as I have long argued, the market is shifting towards options which facilitate "control" (like iPods) and away from options which provide more "choice," but not much "control" like radio or satellite. Anyone who thinks "choice" and "control" are the same doesn't know the difference between 500 TV channels and a DVR.» Mark Ramsey, «What Arbitron's new Satellite Radio stats might really mean», 27/02/07

A geração iPod e os media tradicionais

«On the content front, the question is how far online sources of news and entertainment will replace traditional ones. In the case of newspapers, a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Centre found that nearly one in three Americans regularly get their news online. Even adding print and online readers of daily newspapers gives a readership of 43 percent of Americans, well below the 50 percent who read a newspaper 10 years ago. Is the content worthless? Certainly, many peer-produced sites contain large amounts of rubbish. But some sites have considerable impact. CNET, some of whose stories are written by "citizen journalists", broke more stories on the crisis at Hewlett Packard this summer than did The Wall Street Journal. Flickr collected pictures that summed up the London bombings of July 7 2005. Where such sites are visited by a small elite, they may offer sophisticated commentary on law, finance and management. A further challenge to traditional producers of content is the ease with which material can be distributed online. Copyright laws are poor protection online, although publishers have fought a fierce rearguard action to protect their intellectual property.

Some traditional producers of content will find ways to benefit from these new online channels. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, uses clever software to deliver to readers the stories likely to interest them most, and to tell them which are the stories most widely read or blogged, and to encourage them to air their own views. As for the music industry, it has suddenly acquired new showcases for snippets of music videos, with vastly larger audiences than ever before. Advertising online As for advertising revenue, it is threatened not just by Craigslist et al. The business model for most open source and peer-produced activities online is advertising: a real diversion of resources from traditional media. The challenge is all the greater because online advertising is often carefully targeted, like Google’s. In 2005, online advertising became the fourth largest in revenue terms in Britain, running at three times the level of radio advertising, and overtaking billboards and the business and consumer magazine markets.»

«The Impact of Digitalization», KPMG, 2007 pag 14

Receios de potenciar a internet (introd 5.0)

«A forte implantação da Internet no escalão etário em referência revela que há igualmente a possibilidade de cada vez mais jovens escutarem a sua rádio preferida através da Internet. Esta será uma audiência que procura também a designação do nome da música e do artista que está a tocar, a possibilidade de participar em passatempos ou os endereços de correio electrónico dos locutores. A maior parte das estações analisadas disponibiliza todos estes elementos, mas há um receio geral de inovar e arriscar outros conteúdos, porque isso implica a utilização de recursos técnicos e humanos que muitas vezes as estações não dispõem e para os quais, muito possivelmente não terão qualquer rendimento. As estratégias operacionais desenvolvidas baseiam-se essencialmente na ideia de veículo de promoção para a estação e no eixo estabelecido pelo potencial interactivo da Internet, estando a generalidade das estações pouco vocacionada para a produção de conteúdos que explorem os principais traços da identidade da Internet. (...) Uma fórmula encontrada passa pela disponibilização de informações paralelas sobre os artistas e as músicas, agradando aos usuários e satisfazendo ao mesmo tempo as necessidades das editoras, que encontram na Internet um campo fértil para a promoção dos seus artistas, através de dados informativos, realização de passatempos e publicidade».

Cordeiro, Paula, «A rádio de modelo multimediático e os jovens» in http://bocc.ubi.pt/pag/cordeiro-paula-radio-modelo-multimediatico.pdf (pág. 18)

Mandar ou não mandar (a rádio e o iPod)

«We have put customers in control and they like it. You like it in your personal life. I like it in my personal life. I have an iPod, you have an iPod, everybody has an iPod - and there are times when I want to listen to the music I want to listen to. And frankly, there are other times when I don’t want to be bothered with all that and I do want to tune into my favorite radio station.

What about HD radio? When the radio was basically the only choice in a car – AM or FM or whatever – then advancements in radio technology could play an important role. If you look at the car companies today, they’ve had to engineer the cars to be compatible with iPods. They’ve had to re-engineer their tuners so that they could either carry XM or Sirius. I’m afraid in some respects the technology has sort of diminished the importance of HD radio. Again, though, because it’s a dogfight, you’re fighting for attention both with consumers and also with the manufacturers. I’d be fighting like crazy to make sure that HD radio gets promoted to the car industry so that they start installing the technology. In the past, the auto industry would pick up on these things automatically because they had limited choice. Not any more.»

fonte: «The Auto Industry’s Bad Branding – a Lesson for Radio», Hear2.0, 4/01/07

Muitas opções de escolha é demasiada escolha?

Mark Ramsey acha que sim:

«Words of warning for those who think a zillion channels of anything - satellite, hd, or Internet radio stations - will give more people more of what they want and make them happier as a result. Too much choice is a turn-off. Read this piece from Australian TV (or see the Windows Media version of the TV story) How do we cope with too much choice?  Simple. We avoid the options. So when you hear marketers - especially marketers in the audio information and entertainment (a.k.a. radio) space tell you a piece of technology is good because it offers up "a lot more choice," tell them to do their homework»

fonte: Hear2.0, «The dangers of "too much choice"», 21/12/06

A blogosfera como um gigantesco boca-a-boca (poderoso instrumento de marketing)

«Hoje, com a Internet, este mecanismo é muito mais poderoso por diversas razões. Antes de mais o alcance, que o leva até milhões de pessoas a custos baixíssimos. Depois, a evidência de que a Rede é modelada segundo softwares e isto permite aos projectistas exercer um controlo preciso e monitorizar rodas as informações. (…) Por assim dizer, a blogosfera funciona como uma gigantesca Word-of-mouth network. Os blogues estão à disposição de todos, como o diário histórico dos feedbacks no eBay.» (50-51). Granieri não tem dúvidas ao afirmar que foi essa rede de boca a boca chamada Internet (e a blogosfera em concreto) que fez o sucesso de alguns grupos: «Graças à Word-of-mouth network houve grupos musicais que encontraram lugar e que sem os blogues provavelmente não teriam tido o mesmo destino. Desde o sucesso do desconhecido rapper Dizzee Rascal em Inglaterra, aos Radio Depts, aos italianíssimos Perturbazione, que acabaram por também abrir um blogue» (Granieri, 2005:63)