Radio with pictures = money money money
Posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 5:29pm. #
To Stockholm today, for a flying visit to the Radiopuls conference, run by transmission provider Teracom.
And, in the exhibition surrounding the conference – a novel idea of using the screen on a radio device.
On Capital FM‘s RadioVIS image service, I’ve seen images from the London traffic cameras. This was pretty cool and dynamic to see.
But this was something else.
“Smile, you’re on the radio!” said the poster next to this display, which basically told me to MMS a picture to a shortcode number. The cost? About $0.50 / €0.50 / £0.45 – of which around 50% goes direct to the radio station. And my picture would appear pretty quickly on the PURE Sensia. A 15 minutes of fame? Absolutely, but also around 25¢ of revenue to the radio station.
Also talked about, but not demonstrated, was the idea of a live vote being shown on RadioVIS – “Should we play the Beatles or the Stones next? Text BEATLES or STONES to 85757″ with the results being shown realtime on RadioVIS… possible without cluttering up the audio output of the radio station, and representing a hidden extra secret to listeners to a “radio with a screen”.
New technology’s always easier to work on if management can see a potential revenue stream. And this seems like one: if not “money money money”, it’s at least a small revenue possibility. A neat idea.
I also saw Planet Rock’s Malcolm Bleumel: who revealed that Planet Rock’s iPhone app has been downloaded 40,000 times in the first three months (made for them by Unique Interactive); that he sees the Digital Switchoff date of 2015 as “achievable”; and mentioned, interestingly, that nobody in the UK talks about DAB+ because more than 10m DAB sets need to be replaced, but we’re apparently just fine with replacing over 100m analogue sets… an interesting point I’ve heard nobody really mention before!
In spite of much of this conference being in Swedish (an inpenetrable language), I learnt a lot – and even watched Audioboo’s Mark Rock attempting a live demo. That worked – though his attempt to play a fairly untaxing Vimeo video beforehand failed.
Back to the UK now; and – thank heavens – a drive to work instead of relying on the train. London Euston travellers will know what I mean…
Terry Purvis
Really cool! It would be interesting to see if this idea takes of next month when the world cup starts! Stations could ask fans to send in their photos from the world cup, and offer some sort of incentive for the listener! It’d be a WIN WIN for all parties concerned, as the station would get a new medium of communicating, listeners get their minutes of fame and the chance to win the said incentive!