Kids today. What with their Pokemon Go, and before that Angry Birds, before that Candy Crush, and before that…. Wait, I’m sensing a pattern here.

It seems that today people are a fickle bunch. It only takes looking at the ever-rolling wave of fad after fad that consumes the mind and attention of a seemingly huge portion of the population.
The lessons for the radio industry seem clear when it comes to trying to attract and retain listenership amongst these same people.

If you’re not entertaining, you’re over.
Pokemon Go achieved dizzying heights in just a few weeks which is an astounding success, but finetune your listening radar, there are already the faint but growing sounds of fatigue from those who have either played through or those who experience faults with the game. These people are not being entertained by its novelty anymore. Just wait as in a few more weeks there will be multiple articles and reports declaring the game craze over. The game developers will have to create exciting and flawless new programming and ideas to stem this inevitable tide.
In the same way radio must always be adapting and growing to meet the needs of our listeners, or else run the risk of losing them elsewhere.

Fresh is best.
Even with the best evolving gameplay and technology, our itchy-footed audience will always be on the lookout for something different. Variation is the spice of life and its human instinct to seek it out. While we can’t chop and change our station format to capture their attention we can regularly freshen and update our imaging, jingles and marketing to create a different sound and feel. This can help satisfy our listeners need for variation.

So while we all hope our station could be the Pokemon Go of the radio industry we need to be more than that. We need to change and adapt to avoid burnout so our listeners don’t have to go out looking for the next best thing. We have to be the next best thing ourselves.

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