GENEVA — Many radio schedules around the world look the same. It would be difficult to find a general interest radio station’s schedule that does not include news bulletins containing weather and traffic reports. This formula is repeated several times a day.
The bad news is that weather and traffic reports are in danger of becoming as obsolete as classified ads in newspapers. This could put your current sponsorship deals at risk.
Data killed the radio star
What characterizes this type of format — and similar ones such as stock market updates or sports results — is that they are based on publicly available data and can be broken down into very recognizable segments with limited possibilities.
Temperatures, for example, can rise, fall or stay the same by a certain number of degrees. The same logic applies to wind, humidity or rain. Similar patterns can be found for traffic reports, stock market updates and sports results. In fact, you could create the script for this content using a template that varies with the day’s data. This is certainly how it is done in many radio stations.
Before the advent of the smartphone, this content was scarce and not very user-friendly, and radio was the place to find it. Today, however, dozens of apps provide weather and traffic news, often with richer content than radio.
Compared to radio, dedicated smartphone and smart speaker apps can offer additional features, such as real-time traffic information and alternative directions, webcams from weather stations, more granularity — such as local sports events and hyperlocal weather forecasts and traffic reports — and integration with other systems, especially vehicle dashboards for traffic information.
In fact, checking their preferred weather or traffic app before leaving home has become a habit for many people. As a result, these alternatives to radio may provide more value to users.
Of course, killing your darlings is difficult, so you may want to consider a third option: fighting back.
Refresh your content before it dies
Faced with this uncertain future, radio stations have three options: resist, desist or fight back.
Resist: The first option is to bury your head in the sand and hope that none of this will happen. Keep your content as it is because, you know, it has worked for decades — people still listen to the radio in their cars, and the author of this article might be wrong.
Desist: The second option is to eliminate this type of content. It sounds radical, but this action would clear your schedule of content becoming obsolete for your listeners, who are already replacing it with a better alternative. This move would free up space for potentially more valuable content that could keep your audience and your sponsorship deals in place.
Of course, killing your darlings is difficult, so you may want to consider a third option: fighting back.
Think about what is unique about your coverage of this type of content and focus on that. This means not just looking at the content but considering and developing its context to help audiences sort out the important from the fleeting in this age of abundance. For example, providing journalism or entertainment beyond data and standardized reporting. How about some humor around the daily weather forecast? And a quiz to guess the most congested route of the day?
Do what you excel at
Those who want to disintermediate you in these areas do not play editorial; they are data providers. You must, therefore, make the most of your journalistic and content creation skills. They are your strengths — they make radio’s value proposition unique.
Applying them would allow you to create a distinctive, more valuable and AI-proof radio product. What cannot be automated will increase its value, hopefully translating into a more profitable sponsorship deal.
In addition, with its unique approach, this type of content could easily be extended to digital platforms, where traffic and weather reports currently play no relevant role.
By doing things differently from what you have probably been doing for the last few decades, you can transform your format, present your output in a richer way and positively surprise your audience and your sponsors.
The author is a co-founder and research director at South 180.
