It's OK to be ___?___ in online radio.

This concept is more complex than it appears.

In degrees of internet radio station operators, we have listed levels of competence, each accompanied by its definition:
Duffer: a plodding, clumsy, incompetent person
Neophyte: a beginner or novice
Intermediate: being or occurring at the middle place, stage, or degree or between extremes

___?___

Expert: a person who has special skill or knowledge

See where that underline appears? I'm having trouble finding the term that fits someone who has completed apprenticeship, yet hasn't quite reached expert. In traditional radio, they would be working a medium market - better than what's heard in a small market yet not good enough to break into the majors."

I coined a term for this in online radio back in 2003, but it doesn't exactly fit. My "Enthusiastic Amateur" declarative leaves room for bad-to-good competence.

What do you call someone who runs an online station like a person who plays golf weekly? It's the person who will spend a few thousand dollars a year on their internet station - via Live 365, Radionomy, Blog Talk Radio, or any one of dozens of companies now providing the stream backbone. There are tens-of-thousands of these online stations. All are ignored by broadcast radio companies, though not by audience.

Individually, the Enthusiastic Amateur (EA) means little; the EA has 10, 50, maybe a hundred concurrent listeners. Cumulatively, they become a problem.

The amateur radio station world is in constant flux, with EA content created and folded daily. Their common string is getting satisfaction dabbling in worlds they enjoy but know little-to-everything about. Those who fall into the "blank" and "expert" categories command thousands of concurrent listeners - and there are thousands of these people drawing millions of ears.

It's OK to be the ___?___ in online Radio. Or any of the other categories, too.

Here's a quote from an Audio Graphics article of October 29, 2009: "13,000 broadcast stations are now competing with just as many independent internet radio operations (many with dozens-to-hundreds of individual channels). By forcing a degradation of program quality over the past decade through consolidation in broadcasting, and firing the experienced/expensive employees to save money, radio groups are finding that the quality of what they produce for broadcast is not much different from that found at radio stations online."

The effect of this on the radio industry is in how a person listening to any of our above mentioned online stations cannot be listening to a broadcast station locally or online.

That YouTube delivers amateur music videos with millions of views, and that we have a long list of online radio programs produced by people with little more than a desire to turn others onto good music shows that the public is accepting amateur produced content.

The key to growth is how the internet radio audience is built more from people escaping the commercial radio experience than from curiosity on what's to be found online.

An exploding smart phone market, prolific growth in online radio listeners, and a sense that just playing what they think is good music (for whoever is listening) is being accepted by more people each month. Every study shows this true.

It's a good time to be an online radio station. Whether you are a duffer, neophyte, intermediate, ___?___, or expert. And if you figure out what that ___?___ word is, share it below. I'll start this off with "above-capable." What is your term?



Friday, January 30, 2015      eMail to a Friend



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