Essentially You

Who's your target audience? You know who it is, right? Down to the smallest detail, I'll bet. Who is it, a 45-year-old middle-management white male living in the near-suburban ring, married, two kids, one in middle school and the other in high school, drives a Taurus, likes football but isn't obsessed with it, conservative but is okay with some moderate social things, wife works part-time at a non-profit, worries about taxes, the mortgage, and insurance? Or is it a 32-year-old African-American female, middle-management but fast-tracking to the C-suite, single, drives an Audi A4, lives in the city in the "arts district," spends a lot on Starbucks and Lyft, gets her dinner delivered via Postmates (sometimes to the office), likes hip-hop but not the hard-core stuff? You know your target listener. You may even be at one of those stations where the consultant had the PD put a collage together of pictures of that narrowly-defined listener. Bet you even gave him or her a name. (The listener, not the consultant. I know what name you gave the consultant.)

The interesting thing is that you don't know everything you need to know about that listener, not by a long shot. Research is good -- essential -- but there are things beyond the reach of research, or dependent on asking the right questions. Here are critical questions that might not elicit the truth even if you remember to ask them:

Do your listeners feel that they NEED you? Are you essential? WHY do they need you, and how out-of-their-way will they go to hear you?

I'll illustrate how this might slip out of the view of any research you do by looking at this week's news. Did you see that NBCUniversal threw in the towel on the streaming video-on-demand service SeeSo this week? Did you even know SeeSo existed? SeeSo was a streaming comedy service, and I guarantee some Senior Vice President of Development at Comcast or NBCU uttered the words "Netflix, but for comedy" at some point, because that was what it was. They loaded it up with both archival stuff ("Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" reruns) and new shows, some of which were good indeed. And then they put it on the market less than two years ago, four bucks a month. It did not work. Part of that was a lack of marketing. Part of that was something a lot of companies will be learning in the coming years: There's a limit to how much people will pay for streaming video entertainment. Sure, if you ask people "would you be interested in a comedy streaming service at the low, low price of $4 per month?", they'll say yes. But ask them to sign up after they pay ten bucks for Netflix and the equivalent for Amazon Prime and maybe Hulu and perhaps the MLB package and throw in HBO Now and, oh, yeah, Spotify or Apple Music, and suddenly "sure, I'd try that" becomes "do I really need this?"

Which means you'd better have ways of making them say "yes." Here's something you can't get anywhere else that you're really going to need to see. Here's exclusive sports you want without having to buy channels you don't want. Here's Disney. (Yes, that new Disney streaming package has some built-in advantages.) But "here are reruns of shows you've seen plus new shows about which you know nothing" worked only for Netflix and only because they spent a lot of money to produce high-concept buzzy series with a ton of publicity behind them. That's hard to replicate.

Wait, you're saying, what does this have to do with me and radio and/or podcasting? It's the same idea. Programming a station, doing a talk show, producing a podcast that you want to monetize, all of those need you to answer those questions. Is there an audience out there that NEEDS this? Can we make this feel essential to them? Why will they feel they need OUR programming, and will they go to AM/find us on FM/download and subscribe to get it? You could ask them in a focus group or survey, but that's not going to help. After all, you can get anyone to say they'd try anything if they don't think it's going to cost them anything much and/or they haven't thought it fully through. "If Liver 'n' Onion-flavored Oreos were available at your supermarket, would you try them?" "Sure!" (On a dare, that is. If you pay ME.)

That, of course, is beyond your control as a programmer, producer, or host. You're basically guessing as to whether what you're doing will be worth your audience's effort to hear it. You can't really know for sure until you put the stuff out there for them. But you CAN put yourself in their position, if you're willing to be honest with yourself. Just think of how YOU decide what services to subscribe to and which aren't worth it. You've been told to imagine talking to that highly-targeted person in the stupid collage haphazardly taped to the console. Try imagining BEING them. Put yourself in their car, deciding what to listen to. Be them, looking at the Apple Podcast directory and deciding what to pick. If you were them, would you listen to you? Why? Tailor what you do to answer those questions the way you want them to.

Besides, you have an advantage: Your stuff's free. You don't have to convince them to commit anything but time and a button push. What will make them give you that? That's your job to find out. It shouldn't be impossible. You know them well. They're the folks smiling at you from the collage in your studio.

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And they will love all the interesting, weird, funny, and relatable talk you'll get by sampling the options offered at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics. Find it all for free by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts.

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I THINK I'm going to be at Podcast Movement in Anaheim on August 23-25. I really need to get that confirmed. But whether I'm there or not (oh, I'll be there somehow), if you're looking for a convention with useful information and networking about podcasting, definitely go. (I'm not paid to say that, I'm not involved in running it, it's just a good gathering.) And then I WILL be at the Radio Show 2017 in Austin, which oh come on it's in Austin of course you want to go. I'll see you there (or in the queue at Franklin Barbecue, because Austin).

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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