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Reasons to Feel Good about Radio’s Future

Submitted by Alan on

The New Golden Age of Audio

One of the best quotes I have stumbled on in the past several months came from one of radio’s youngest and brightest owners, Vince Benedetto, whose Bold Gold Media has assembled a group of stations in small and medium markets in Pennsylvania and New York state. Interviewed in a recent RAB podcast, Vince said:

“I didn’t get into radio for what it’s been over the past 50 years - I got into it for what it’s going to be over the next 50.”

I met Vince last fall at the Radio Show in Nashville, and he impressed me as one of radio’s brightest - and youngest - entrepreneurs. He’s an Air Force Academy alum who spent years in digital counter-terrorism, so he knows his stuff in the digital realm. The best example of Bold Gold’s online prowess may be the company’s WWRR-FM (105 The River), a classic rock/classic hits hybrid in Scranton, Pa. It’s a class A FM, not a flame-thrower, and may not blanket the Scranton-Wilkes Barre market. Nonetheless, The River’s Facebook page has more followers than there are humans in that metro.

When I last checked, the River had over 850,000 followers on Facebook - in a market with a 12+ population of just under 700,000. The station’s weekly reach and engagement statistics are measured in millions. And as Vince noted in the podcast, “when you go to a prospective advertiser with a Facebook following the size of River’s, you don’t have to spend any time persuading the prospect that radio is relevant. When his (the prospect)’s company has a few thousand, and you have a million, that pretty much speaks for itself.”

Amen to that.

Audio is exploding. Publications like AdWeek and The Financial Times have proclaimed this the New Golden Era of Audio (RAIN’s Kurt Hanson and Edison’s Larry Rosin have been saying it for years). Audio content and audio controls are new darlings of the tech world. 

Who has more experience and knows more about producing audio content than radio?

A more important question is: will radio seize this opportunity?

Stations and clusters that are embracing the digital future are enjoying revenue growth today.  Those that aren’t are declining. Which camp are you in?