EMMIS RESEARCH DETECTS 'IPOD FATIGUE' Tony Sanders – Billboard Emmis radio division president Rick Cummings told a group of Wall Street analysts Wednesday morning that his own research of college students is picking up what he called "iPod fatigue."
The comments came during a Q&A session at the UBS Warburg Global Media Conference in New York, as part of the presentation delivered primarily by Emmis president/CEO Jeff Smulyan.
"We spend a lot of time on the college campuses," Cummings said, "because they’re the leading edge" in trends and habits for younger listeners. He said his latest research has detected "iPod fatigue" which essentially means that younger listeners will have "100 songs on their iPods and they’re sick of dealing with it." The opportunity for radio, said Cummings, is "to continue to lean on content and to bridge that [technology] with the radio audience."
In other words, professionally produced content can be the bridge to reaching younger listeners who are captivated by the newest technology but who also have found the available content is too limited or too difficult to access.
Podcasting appears to be another part of that bridge's superstructure. To that end, Cummings said that Emmis is starting to offer podcasts. His own assessment is that podcasts produced by radio professionals can eclipse the quality of offerings available now from most other independent sources.
"The hottest podcast out there is something called Dawn and Drew," said Cummings, but his assessment is that the Dawn and Drew show will continue to have limited appeal: "It's ‘Wayne’s World’ for god’s sake," he said, referring to the Saturday Night Live parody of a cable access show and the movie of the same name. Capping off his assessment of the latest podcast offerings, Cummings said that the Dawn and Drew show may be a popular offering but, in total, "it has 9,000 consumers."
Smulyan's own quick assessment of the latest trends in podcasting and Internet radio was "there are eight zillion Internet radio stations," but that "none of them have made money." He characterized the regular cycle of consumer and media infatuation with the latest technology as "a cure for no known disease." He said it's vital to any business' survival to distinguish between "what's real, and what looks cool [but] has no commercial application."
In short, the trends in technology have run through cycles, each forecast as the death blow for terrestrial radio, but none ever able to deliver that fatal strike. "The iPod today was the CD five years ago," Smulyan said, extending the history lesson to include "the CB radio 30 years ago." Ultimately, he remains confident in radio's future because "We haven’t seen anything that replaces this particular experience" of over-the-air radio. |