Are your radio and social media audiences two separate audiences?
How can we convert them to radio listening?
These two questions were posed by KBS Korea Senior Producer Won Sup Shin at the RadioDays Europe workshop in Korea, held as part of the Asia Media Summit.
There are 21 terrestrial radio services in South Korea, with KBS broadcasting a total of 7 channels, 5 national and 2 international. KBS is a public, licence fee funded broadcaster.
Other broadcast companies in Korea include:
MBC – public, but with no licence fees. Revenue comes from ads
SBS – commercial
CBS – religious
As in most other countries, traditional media use in Korea is declining and new media use is increasing. Television watching is declining most, but radio has also dropped, from 14% audience share in 2011 to 9% now.
“Radio has been losing its share, this is not unique to Korea, it is happening all over the world,” said Shin, but he questions whether the old methods of measuring audience are still relevant in the new media environment. “Traditional audience measurement data is not good enough any more.”
He gave the examples of a KBS show presented by one of the members of the famous KPop group SuperJunior. The show is called Kiss the Radio.
Presenter Lee Teuk describes his show saying: “My audiences share their daily routines with me and it makes me feel that I am chatting with my friends. Very personal messages like I’m pregnant, I screwed up my exam, the bus driver is turning on your show, it makes me happy.”
The show host must have an emotional attachment to the audience according to Shin. Once that is achieved the host can link with the audience on many platforms and on many levels.
Radio Drama has been seen as a dying format, but Shin says if you deliver radio dramas in the way the audience wants and it will work. Podcasting is proving that.
“Radio dramas in the past have not been popular with youth, but when we put it on iTunes as a podcast it suddenly got popular, our podcasts got a high rank in iTunes. We were able to reach youth with this type of radio content and it was popular with them…
“Some audience segments that went away from radio content are now consuming it in new versions.”