You Are Not A Radio Station

As I explained in my presentation to the Christian Music Broadcasters earlier this year (available through CMB for you Gold members), we - Christian radio stations - are actually not radio stations. Nope.

We are a Christian Media Ministry of which radio is only one part.

In his recent book Earn It, audio marketer Steve Pratt shares a key idea:

Ecosystems are greater than Platforms.

What does that mean?

Well, a radio station is a platform. So is a TV station. So is a newspaper. So is TikTok. So is Facebook. These are all platforms.

Facebook transformed into an ecosystem when it purchased or launched other platforms (e.g., Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus VR, etc.) thus connecting them all into an ecosystem, and any biologist will tell you that ecosystems are more stable and thus more successful in nature than any of their component "platforms" alone.

Disney was a platform for family-oriented movies. That was before Pixar and Marvel and ABC and ESPN and theme parks and consumer products and cruise ships and streaming services like Hulu and Disney+. Today it's an ecosystem (did you know that Disney's theme park division alone accounts for 60% of the company's total operating income?).

So an ecosystem is a network of platforms. Or, to paint the picture visually:

That's you in the center, not in the orange satellite to the upper left.

Our bias in radio is that the station - the tower, really - is in the center and everything around it must service it. That may have been true in the world where audience choices ranged from CD's to radio and back again. But that world is dead and buried and with it is buried the idea of the radio station as everything and the only thing that matters.

Listeners used to be our critical measure - ratings. Now it's attention. And attention is what grows the brand, whether or not it grows the listening audience. This is why worshipping Nielsen ratings is such a fool's errand nowadays. For non-commercial stations, who really cares about a sketchy measurement methodology built by and for commercial secular radio that ignores Spotify and Apple Music and Pandora and Podcasts and YouTube and SiriusXM and TikTok and Instagram. Ask your kids what fraction of their listening is left after subtracting all these, and then ponder what your reported audience shares are really worth.

This is not to say radio doesn't matter. It is still a huge part of your brand, but it is no longer all your brand is or can be. And management teams at many radio platforms still have not come to terms with the consequence of this. Debating whether this or that song is playable is missing the point.

Ultimately, it's the brand - the ecosystem - to which fans will gravitate.

It's the brand - the ecosystem - that will capture their attention.

It's the brand - the ecosystem - that will motivate their membership and/or their patronage.

The brand is your future.

Mark Ramsey Media does audience research for Christian Media - Perceptual research, digital studies, donor studies, music studies, etc. Learn more here. Call Mark at 858-414-4191 or email markramsey@mac.com.

And if you want a strategy to solicit major donors to pay for your research, look here and download this Listener Impact Study solicitation for donors from WAKW-FM.

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