| He
says that his station Radio 98.7 FM learnt the hard way about the importance of
the internet. “Our ratings went down a year ago as listeners felt that our
site was not user friendly. A site is not an extension of the station. It is the
station. "Also
a station needs personality. So the branding should have key words that listeners
can easily relate to. For our station, we decided to be cheeky, creative, informative,
energetic and personalized. It also helps if stations focus on local musicians.
So stations should get in touch with local musicians. Sometimes you can do an
exclusive deal with undiscovered talent.” He
gave the example of Don and Drew who have now become popular abroad through podcasts.
The station owns the copyright to their songs. The group even did a cheeky song
about the scare of dengue fever in Singapore. Also new media means that stations
have to focus on product selling as opposed to just the feeling. “With
listeners getting more empowered, stations should look to put listeners on-air
as much as possible. Those listeners will then blog about it and give the station
free publicity. The station can then approach the advertisers and tell them to
check out the blogs. That would be proof that users are tuning in. “The
station has a user control session on Sunday morning. DJs should also be blogging.
Stations should have a Youtube account. A station should always take advantage
of anything free on new media. What we did once was to have contest asking users
to create a TVC. The winning entry was shown on Youtube and the winner got $15,000
which was the marketing budget.” European
Broadcasting Union Radio News & Sport’s Michel Mullane says that now
radio stations are pursuing listeners online. They have to do that as the young
generation is increasingly going online. Stations are now engaging in conversation
as opposed to earlier when they would take feedback and laugh. Online stations
can make podcasts interactive through voice messaging software like Odeo. Stations
are now going online without losing their core strengths. Station should have
their own branded channel on Youtube. They can post photos of their operations
of Flickr. A blog post on Youtube can have videos of DJs working which is what
BBC Five Live is doing in the UK. They filmed episodes of their film review programme
and pasted it online. They also had clips of the films being reviewed. | 
