Radio Saved by the Social Media Star?

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a longtime radio industry insider who shared his thoughts about the similarities between radio, online communities and social media. He talked about how radio was one of the first mediums for user-generated content, with listeners dialing in and expressing themselves, local communities/local conversations, and so on.

As a follow up on this, we decided to host a webinar yesterday on the topic: Re-inventing Radio With An Interactive Web Presence. Joining KickApps’ founder, Eric Alterman, were Jim Kerr of Pollack Media Group and Bob Hamilton of New Radio Star. During the hour long presentation they talked about the opportunities for radio, creating online communities and how to involve sponsors. You can view the archived version here.

What we’ve found is that taking existing on-air communities online is very natural for radio. You have listeners that are already part of a community and social media gives them a venue to drive even deeper relationships with each other and the radio station (not to mention the station’s sponsors).

If you work in radio, here are some examples that should get you thinking:

Black Crow FM: http://heyawl.com/ South Georgia Online Community

Indie 97.9: http://www.indie979.com/ Baltimore’s multi-genre HD station

KSUX: http://www.ksux.com/ Sioux City, Iowa’s country station