Have You Watched Any Radio Today?

Faced with a 13-year downward slide in the average “time spent listening,” terrestrial radio is looking for a solution to halt the decline. Ironically, the solution may be quite un-radio: video. A story in the New York Times titled, Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video?, details how Web-based video may be radio’s answer to get people listening more.

Web-based video is dramatically altering content on the Internet. While major online video sites capture most of the buzz (YouTube, Brightcove, Google Video, etc.), the now easy access to video communication capabilities is also creating a revolution for other types of traditional media that were denied, because of their technology, the option of utilizing video. This not only includes radio, but newspapers and magazines as well.

Newspapers now see Web-based streaming video as a significant contributor to their bottom lines in the years ahead (story here). Despite periodic reports of doom and gloom on the traditional side of the newspaper business, there are some real success stories of newspapers that have smoothly integrated the whole Internet thing into their business model (see story on VG).

You can see similar stories with magazines, too.

All this is going to further blur media distinction, but it will provide new opportunities for media companies and advertisers to utilize a full gamut of communication tools to get their messages across.