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4 ways to maximize your talk breaks

Four Ways to Maximize Your Talk Breaks

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To create engaging breaks, radio should focus on timely tidbits, local happenings, and reveal themselves 

Faced with more competition than ever, radio stations need to make sure their listeners stick around for talk breaks rather than tuning out. The good news for AM/FM stations? Audiences want to hear what hosts have to say. In fact, listeners routinely say their favorite DJs and hosts are a top reason they use local radio. Talk breaks give these popular personalities a chance to speak directly to their audience, engage them on quirky or newsworthy topics, give a glimpse behind the curtain, or get personal. To make the most of breaks radio hosts and producers should plan and program these segments. Understanding that it takes 5 minutes of listening within a 15 minute period to get ratings credit helps us strategize length and content of these breaks as well.

When it comes to breaks, you want to sound as fresh as possible. If you’re a country station, your listeners want the latest music news and celebrity gossip. Sports listeners are hungry for info and insights on their hometown teams. Pop stations can dish on pop culture news and fun factoids to entertain younger fans, like it being National Avocado Day or National Leftover Day and local celebrations or promotions. Radio hosts can share details about their lives and interests. (Listeners really do want to hear about your dating life and your new puppy!) In these breaks you have the audience’s attention, so don’t waste the opportunity. 

Of course, radio hosts and producers are already multi-tasking media mavens juggling on-air, digital, and social responsibilities. Here are four suggestions for making your breaks as engaging as possible: 

  1. Hot topics in your community

    Radio stations are local experts, so there’s no one better to share news and information about happenings in your community. During talk breaks, music stations can share news about upcoming concerts and events while also plugging events your station is sponsoring and where talent is making appearances. You can also clue listeners in on up-and-coming acts that might be coming to town as well as intimate venues they should check out. Similarly, news and talk stations can keep listeners up to date on local news and current events including any newsmakers coming to town or gatherings. Sports stations can dish on local players and teams as well as upcoming opponents and the best tailgates in town.

  2. Give them the best industry news

    When it comes to dishing on the latest news and gossip, you need to be as plugged in as possible. Listeners expect their favorite DJs and hosts to be in the know.  Music format talent should be as up to date as possible on pop culture, celebrity news, and music information, and they should be ready to share that information like a newscaster. Likewise, sports stations can comment on developments in your team’s league or conference and information on teams and sports. Establish your over the air, digital, mobile, and social brand as the go-to resource for your audience’s latest news and information needs and your breaks will become indispensable.

  3. Craft conversation starters and destinations

    Listeners often view breaks as water cooler moments that give them fodder to use in casual conversations throughout the day. To facilitate those moments, radio hosts should be on-point with trends, quirky tidbits, and oddball news, and as they then relay that to your audience and tell them how it impacts your life. This can even be a way to tie in advertisers. For instance, if it is National Ice Cream Day, tell your listeners about your favorite flavors or failed attempts at making homemade ice cream. You can also direct them to a local ice cream shop for free cones. With effective breaks, you can help guide listeners’ conversations as well as drive them to local businesses.

  4. Keep an eye on what’s fading

    While it is important to stay on top of news and trends, you also need to know what’s fading out. These may be topics that you want to avoid, such as a song that’s past its prime or a celebrity who has faded from public view. If the audience thinks you’re out of touch with what’s cool and interesting you lose your platform as a must-listen during breaks. Take note of the topics in your industry that seem to have lost their luster, whether that’s an overplayed song, an overexposed talent, or a meme that’s had its five minutes run out.

At Futuri Media, we know AM/FM stations need help tracking news and trends. Our TopicPulse tool is like insurance for your talk breaks. We track what topics and conversations are trending or fading with your specific target audience so you can focus on your live broadcast, and make sure any voicetracked content is as fresh as possible once it airs. As a real-time story discovery tool, TopicPulse’s AI curates news and information from social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as more than 100,000 verified news sources. We track what’s popular, what is emerging, and what’s fading.

With TopicPulse, hosts and producers can quickly and easily find fodder for talk breaks, social posts, on demand content, and more! The web-based tool allows you to search by format, topic. and even keyword to find information and news stories that are relevant and interesting to your listeners. Based on our live-tracking, TopicPulse can see what topics are trending and what is burning out. During a live radio broadcast it is invaluable to know what your audience is searching for and reading about in real-time. Our system tracks what is about to go viral, and you can’t get much more up-to-the-minute than that.

TopicPulse also offers IdeaStarters™ that are updated in the TopicPulse app throughout the day and delivered via e-mail twice daily to prep for AM and PM drive. These packaged talk break content offerings feature talking points and even pre-written script suggestions that your hosts can plug and play.

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Futuri Media Discusses Digital Strategy for Broadcasters with Broadcast Dialogue

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Our very own Jim Tarantine and Zena Burns spoke with Broadcast Dialogues‘s Connie Thiessen about Futuri’s recent studies on podcasting and time-shifted radio content, and how broadcasters can take advantage of the growing digital audio space. They use their discussion on this podcast to discuss in-depth and answer the question, “What if radio was created after the internet?”

The podcast is available to listen to at broadcastdialogue.com.

Today's Podcast Listener: 2019 National Survey Report

Major New Podcast Study Reveals Listener Habits, Trust in Hosts

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National study also contains insights on implications for radio

Las Vegas, Nevada, April 9, 2019 – Most podcast users are millennial males, listen weekly, and engage with podcasts at home, according to a major new study by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) and Futuri Media, a leading audience engagement and sales intelligence technology firm.

Results were presented at the National Association of Broadcasters’ NAB Show on April 9 as part of a panel discussion titled “Radio’s New Analytics: Understanding Listeners, Delivering Results.”

The study, which included a national survey and in-depth interviews, was conducted in February 2019 with 2,000 regular podcast users who listened to podcasts in the past six months, and 18 participants who gave in-depth interviews on their habits. The study did not define podcasting vs. other types of on-demand audio, and respondents self-identified as podcast listeners. The study results suggest that consumers now consider several types of on-demand audio to be podcasts.

While the study was not limited to those who use terrestrial radio, the sample was large enough that it delivered several insights on the radio format preferences of those who also listen to podcasts regularly.

The study found that nearly three-quarters of users have been listening to podcasts for less than three years and, on average, listen to 4 podcasts per week for either 30 or 60 minutes. Users listen to podcasts on multiple platforms, but YouTube is far and away the dominant platform (70%), followed by Spotify (34%), iTunes/Apple Podcasts app (33%), Pandora (30%), and Google Play music app (23%).

Not surprisingly, nearly 80% of survey respondents listen to podcasts on their mobile devices. What is somewhat surprising is that the users listen to podcast most frequently at home (3.9 on a 5-point frequency scale), followed by in vehicles (2.8/5).

Politics and Government podcasts are the most popular, with 15% listing it as their favorite genre. Music was next (11%) followed by interviews/conversations, comedy, sports and recreation and non-fiction storytelling, cited by 8 – 9% of respondents.

Listeners trust their podcast hosts highly, prefer host-read ads, and look for creative, informative, humorous, and integrated podcast experiences. They want to listen to hosts who are authentic, feel like a friend, and share the users’ passions and beliefs.

The study also found that among radio listeners who listen to podcasts regularly, 25-34 is the top age cell with both spoken word and music formats, with spoken word format attracting a more male audience (73% vs. 27% female), and music formats having a more even, but female-leaning split (51% female to 49% male). The top five favorite radio formats for regularly podcast listeners surveyed were Classic Rock (11%), Hip-Hop/Rap (10.9%), Country (10.4%), News/Talk (9.7%), and Alternative Rock (6.6%)

The study, which was supported by Futuri Media and their POST podcasting system, was designed and executed by UFCJC Telecommunication Professor and Director of Media Consumer Research Sylvia Chan-Olmsted with the help of doctoral student Ms. Rang Wang on the survey and undergraduate students in a capstone class who helped conduct the interviews. More insights from the study can be found at http://bit.ly/2019podcaststudy.

The Profound need for time-shifted audio for the radio business

New Study Shows Radio Can Significantly Benefit from Time-Shifting Content

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The study concluded that there is a profound appetite for time-shifted radio content among radio listeners – notably, highly monetizable and younger audiences – and that opportunities are currently untapped as awareness of the availability of time-shifted radio content among listeners remains low.

A new study conducted by Futuri Media and Nielsen, “The Profound Need for Time-Shifted Radio Content for the Radio Business,” finds that time-shifting content, which revolutionized the TV industry years ago, now offers major opportunities for the radio industry, with high consumer interest, but low consumer awareness.

As noted in a piece in Inside Radio, “Conducted by Nielsen and Futuri Media, the study finds that half of respondents say they will listen to time-shifted audio while a high percentage are willing to share audio content they access on social media channels with their friends.” More key takeaways from the extensive study, which had a sample comprised of 602 individuals that listened to radio content for at least one hour over the past week. include:

  • More than half of radio listeners 18+ would listen to short audio clips on social media. Among that group, nearly 8 in 10 would listen to time-shifted clips of radio station content.
  • Younger audiences and heavy radio users, leaning male, are the sweet spot for time-shifted radio content.
  • Station websites and mobile apps matter as much as social media.
  • Listeners who are interested in time-shifted radio content want to interact with your station.
  • P1s engage with time-shifted radio content even when not listening.
  • Radio has yet to actualize its potential in the time-shifted space.

The study also found that stations using Futuri’s podcasting, on-demand, and digital audio management system, POST, to produce time-shifted radio content see higher ratings and revenue than non-users. A Nielsen analysis of minute-level PPM data compared against POST server logs shows that AM/FM outlets who produce time-shifted radio content using POST get 3x more time-shifted listening on average within 24 hours of the original broadcast than stations not using POST. This number goes up to 8.4x higher time-shifted minutes for listeners aged 18-49 and 5.4x for the 25-54 range.

A complete white paper on the study, which includes more key takeaways, insights developed from the survey data, and tips on developing a strong time-shifting strategy, is available for free download at futurimedia.com/timeshiftedaudio.

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Big Opportunities For Radio In Time-Shifted Audio

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Time-shifted audio is a huge opportunity for radio, and our Daniel Anstandig just previewed two key findings from a soon-to-be-released Nielsen and Futuri Media study on this topic:

  • Nearly half of respondents said they understand the concept of time-shifted audio, find it interesting and would listen to it.
  • A high percentage of participants are willing to share audio content they access on their social media channels with their friends. (And since Futuri’s POST pushes out PPM-encoded audio – well, think of the opportunities there!)

Stay tuned for the forthcoming survey’s full results, and listen to Daniel talk with host Paul Heine on the Inside Radio Podcast.

Futuri Alpha Media

Alpha Media Stations Add Futuri Media’s SaaS Technology Solutions for Podcasting, Show Prep, and Smart Speakers

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Group deal includes Futuri Media’s POST for podcasting, TopicPulse for story discovery and show prep, and Alexa Skills

 

Cleveland, Ohio, January 17, 2018 – Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, today announced a wide-ranging deal with Alpha Media, a diverse multimedia company. This new partnership empowers all 228 of Alpha Media’s stations in 50 US markets with multiple tools from Futuri Media’s audience engagement suite.

All Alpha Media stations will have access to podcasting system POST, which instantly turns broadcasts into PPM-encoded on-demand audio, complete with fully licensed images, and distributes on multiple platforms; and customized Alexa Skills, enabling all stations to make streams, on-demand content, and interactive features accessible in the hugely-growing Alexa-enabled device market. More than 50 select Alpha stations will have access to TopicPulse, the revolutionary story discovery and show prep tool that analyzes social media and 100k+ sources of verified news and information to deliver audience-specific insights on what’s trending, what’s about to go viral, and what’s on the downswing.

“Alpha Media is a fast-growing, diverse media company, and it’s a privilege to extend their brands’ reach and engagement as their technology partner,” said Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig. “Marrying Alpha Media’s content and local media expertise with Futuri’s audience engagement technology gives their brands reliable, real-time consumer intelligence and distribution on multiple key platforms, like smart speakers. We look forward to powering their programming innovations.”

“Like Alpha Media, Futuri Media prioritizes quality and innovation, and you can see that in their products. That made this partnership a natural fit,” said Alpha Media CEO/President, Bob Proffitt. “I was impressed by Futuri Media’s commitment to training services, round-the-clock support, and ongoing consultation. They understand the industry and how to engage fans of every demographic.”

ABOUT FUTURI MEDIA

Futuri Media is a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth by deepening consumers’ trust in, affinity for, and loyalty to brands and the teams who represent them. Futuri Media’s audience engagement and sales technology, for which it holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries, is used by thousands of broadcasters and publishers worldwide. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s fastest-growing private companies for four consecutive years, Futuri Media’s best-in-class customer support is a key driver of its growth. Founded by CEO Daniel Anstandig in 2009, Futuri Media is dedicated to driving measurable success for its partners through innovative SaaS technology, proactivity, speed, and trust in all of its relationships.

ABOUT ALPHA MEDIA

Upon the successful completion of all pending transactions, Alpha Media, a diverse, multimedia company will own or operate 227 radio stations and 224 websites serving 49 markets across the United States. In addition to the stations and websites, Alpha Media owns the intimate performance venues, PDX Live Studio in Portland, OR., Alamo Lounge in San Antonio, TX, and StudioEast in Kenosha, WI. Strong relationships with clients and community members keep Alpha true to its Live and Local philosophy. Alpha Media is relentlessly focused on innovation, efficiency, and entertainment.

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Nielsen Audio Study: Futuri Stations have 30X Larger Increases in TSL; 5.75X Larger Increases in Tune-Ins

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A Nielsen Audio study shows sharp increases in both tune-in occasions and time spent listening (TSL) on radio stations offering consumers Futuri’s “Instant Alerts” feature (also known as Song Alerts, a key part of interactive programming system LDR) that sends text, tweet, or e-mail alerts to listeners when one of their favorite songs is about to play. The Instant Alert Efficacy Study, commissioned by Futuri Media, tracked listening activity for several months on 10 mainstream formats at 40 stations in 16 major markets measured by Nielsen’s Portable People Meter.

Notable findings include:

– Futuri stations using Instant Alerts showed an average of 5.75X larger increase in Tune In Occasions compared to “control stations” that did not use Futuri’s systems.

– Futuri stations using Instant Alerts showed an average of 30X larger increase in Time Spent Listening compared to “control stations” that did not use Futuri’s systems.

– 62.5% of stations using Futuri’s Instant Alerts increased tune-in occasions within 90 days of launching instant alerts.

– Futuri’s Instant Alerts clients were 36% more likely to see tune-in occasion increases greater than 10% within 90 days compared to control stations.

– Futuri’s Instant Alerts clients were 45% more likely to see tune-in occasion TSL increases greater than 10% within 90 days compared to control stations.

– Based on a survey of Instant Alert users, Instant Alerts capture engage fans and create an intent to listen more. Over 83% of Instant Alert subscribers said that they planned to listen more to that station in the upcoming week.

– Over half of the Instant Alert survey respondents said they “planned to listen a lot more” to their favorite station, indicating that stations with more instant alert sign-ups generally indicate forthcoming increases in listening.

– Instant Alert users may be more likely to fit the profile of a station’s “heavy user” or “P1.” 41.6% of respondents reported that they would listen greater than 2+ hours more in the coming week.

– Over 70% of Instant Alert users reported that they were “very likely” to recommend that radio station to a friend compared to 30% who said they were “somewhat likely” or “not likely.” Instant Alerts may not only motivate more listening, but greater affinity for a station.

– The analysis indicates that consumers who recently became Futuri Instant Alert users anticipate becoming more engaged with the station in terms of time spent and the likelihood of recommending the station to a friend.

– Nielsen: “This study identified a clear (high confidence) statistical relationship between the listening levels of Futuri stations as compared to control stations.”

“This study provides a meaningful link between engagement online and broadcast ratings,” said Daniel Anstandig, Futuri Media CEO, when the 2015 study was published. “This study is proof-positive that Futuri’s Instant Alerts can generate more tune-in occasions, translating into more TSL, a larger audience share and a stronger average quarter-hour market rating. Equally important is the evidence that Instant Alerts are effective at building affinity, which leads to brand loyalty and sharing. Ratings, retention, and referral – that’s a powerful combination.”

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Futuri is the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software for the enterprise. Brands rely on Futuri to make their content more relevant, accessible, engaging, and results-driven. Founded in 2009, Futuri holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies for six consecutive years, Futuri is the only audience engagement platform that includes solutions for sales, marketing, and content teams.