Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

1. Distance yourself from non-radio podcasters. Anyone can do a podcast.  But radio needs to drive home that only radio can do a professional podcast.  Fresh Air with Terry Gross is the number one downloaded podcast on iTunes.  If it weren’t running on NPR stations, imagine what could be charged for a spot.  And imagine running four or six spots in a full podcast.  But let’s talk about what Fresh Air is doing so right that commercial stations need to go to school on it.
2. All formats can do on-air podcasts. Even various music genres from hip-hop, classic hits to country and beyond can have a late Sunday night show focused on the hyper-interested fan – or as we call them P1s.  On-air first, in the iTunes store second.  Learn the best topics for your first moneymaking radio podcast.
3. Charge a premium for podcasting. Just do it!  Hold your breath and be prepared to run without commercials until you gain traction and the first advertiser buys at your premium rate.  Stations are holding the advantage.  You can’t buy the podcasts I am proposing for deep discounts, bonus spots, programmatic buying or added-value.  But, selling podcasts like spots won’t work.  Here’s what to do instead.
4. Millennials are not podcasting’s prime audience. Podcasting has eaten into talk radio’s younger, in-demo audiences as far as time spent listening away from radio but this is fair warning that Millennials will not sit through a regular podcast no matter what the topic.  How to know if a future podcast project will hit the available Gen X audience.
5. For Millennials, radio will have to become skillful at utilizing SnapChat. Don’t know what SnapChat is or how to use it?  Don’t feel badly.  Most people over 25 (and I’m not kidding here) have trouble wrapping their heads around SnapChat which is actually how Snap wants it.  And Disney has made a big commitment to SnapChat.  To get moving, understand and exploit SnapChat, follow these steps and blow away the competition.
6. The winning format for a successful radio podcast. The absolute worst way to do a radio podcast is to do one like most spoken word radio shows.  There’s a lot about podcasting that lends itself to radio, but some things don’t transfer.  Learn what radio formatics successfully transfer to podcasting.

Join the discussion on podcasting and these other topics at the 2017 Media Solutions Lab in Philadelphia, April 5^th.

Learn more here.