Mark Blevis

…continued from Hot and Cold media (part 4): too much with too little…

Issue #5: despite what you think, you’re not competing with technology

I’ve always been a fan of radio and the variety of programming it offered. When I was 13 I would wake up to the CHEZ 106 morning show. During breakfast I would listen to CBC (since it was on in the kitchen). After school I would turn on CHEZ, again. And, I would often set my alarm to listen to The Zero Hour at midnight, also on CHEZ. When I got my Sony WM-4, I listened to the radio even more. Even though I had my own cassette tapes to listen to — which I did — radio had something to offer.

Of course I also helped to raise the average daily television consumption statistics and have gone in and out of phases of being a newspaper junkie.

So, what changed when I got my first iRiver — the one with the built-in radio — and then an iPod and ultimately an iPhone? Why was it so easy for me to give up cable (beyond the fact that my wife-to-be didn’t have it and didn’t want it)? Why am I watching specific content online?

I don’t believe media organizations are competing with technology. Technology is just another delivery channel. About the only thing that portable media technology offers that the media organizations cannot through traditional delivery channels is time-shifting. The rest of the playing field is level.

I believe that the competition is with personality. Great personality breeds strong relationships.

I’ve done several informal surveys of people I know and the consensus is that radio lost its personality. As an added bonus, radio reduced playlists, over-specialized and over-homogenized their formats and programming. Portable media players allow consumers to program their own personality and expand the playlist from a limited 200 songs to a seemingly unlimited number of songs.

Ottawa’s CHEZ 106 is a great study. It’s billed as a classic rock station. If you judged classic rock by CHEZ’s playlist, you’d swear that genre begins and ends with about 250 records. In fact, I enjoy telling the story of being in my car and turning off CHEZ in the middle of Hotel California and six months later, back in my car, turned CHEZ back on in almost the exact same spot of that song.

It’s not just about the songs, either. I couldn’t find my own rhythm with the new style of on-air hosting. That applied with a number of local rock and pop radio stations. Even CBC had a few shows I left behind because I couldn’t connect with the style of the time. I’ve recently discovered new approaches and even new talent on some of those shows and have become a committed listener, again. The content hasn’t changed — the personality of the show, not just the host, has changed.

Television’s personality has also evolved. It’s a long tail coming out of the reality and pseudo-reality crazy, neither of which I really bought into. Talking with people about the reality craze is like talking about Rick Astley during the height of his fame — nobody admitted to listening to him, but his records were selling like crazy and he was playing a lot of sold out concerts. But I really didn’t listen to him.

The print publications that remain strong are the ones that have a strong macro-personality (the publication itself), or have outstanding micro-personalities (specific journalists or columnists).

In all variety of media, advancements in technology provide additional ways to reach audiences. If your personality is strong, people will continue to seek you out whether through traditional channels, through media streams online, on subscription-based content, podcasts or as programming on sites such as HULU. Each of those distribution methods offer new (possibly challenging) ways of revenue generation. How successful you are is based entirely on your personality and the relationships that personality breeds.

Suggestion: Focus on creating strong personality-based content and think more creatively about how to use technology to distribute that personality.