Carel: Rich McFadden.

Vice President of Operations at Radio America.

Welcome to Voice123's AV123.

I've got to tell you I've got to tell you that the subheader on your LinkedIn profile made me smile, because you know spoken word audio content produced distributed and monetized deeply engage your audience It's interesting that you should say that because a radio jock friend of mine said to me the other day that the art of the spoken word.

The art of conversation is dying.

People don't speak with one another anymore.

They speak at one another.

Is there truth in that statement, do you think?

Rich: Yes, absolutely there is.

And that is the beauty of podcasting that I love.

Because in podcasting, when you put that headset on or those headphones in or those AirPods in, I have an audience of one, whereas in, you know, traditionally I'm 30 years in the broadcast industry where we have an audience of many, but we're only speaking to one individual at a time.

So for us in radio, it is not a hard conversion to go digital, even if we're on YouTube, because we are trained to speak to that one person.

And it always hurts me when I watch somebody on YouTube.

Hi, you all.

Hey, I'm speaking to the whole country here.

No, you're not.

You're speaking to one person.

And that is the art that is going away is knowing how to get behind a microphone or in front of a camera and speak to one person at a time.

Carel: Yes.

Rich: And that's what we always talk about with our hosts is listen, it's, it's an audience of one.

Picture this person in your head.

They can't talk back to you necessarily, immediately, but you're talking to them.

And it's a very intimate conversation.

You're not projecting.

You're having a conversation with them.

Just like you were, if you were sitting at Starbucks across the table and there's a table right next to you and you don't want them to necessarily hear what you're saying.

So you're having this intimate conversation back and forth with each other, except that that person has headphones on and they're sitting in their kitchen or their car, or they're on a walk with their dog and they're not talking back to you.

But that's the conversation you're having.

Carel: Yeah.

It's, it's really interesting that you should mention that because I remember most distinctly when I started out as a newsreader on our national radio service, I was as nervous as hell.

It was my first bulletin that I was going to read to the entire nation.

And the, Manager of Presentation at the time, a very, very English gentleman by the name of Christopher Bennett phoned me just before the news broadcast and he said to me, how are you feeling, dear boy?

I said to him, I said to him, Mr.

Bennett, I am so nervous.

And he said to me, well, then I have some advice for you, dear boy.

Imagine.

An old lady sitting in a rural cottage somewhere in the countryside in front of the fire knitting.

You're the only person keeping her company.

Read the news to her.

And I never forgot that.

And ever since then, I have always broadcast just to that little old lady sitting in front of the fire knitting.

Because that's the intimacy.

And I think it's something that one needs to learn and something that one needs to appreciate because if you don't understand the importance of the human condition, you are literally starting to speak at people.

You're not speaking with them anymore.

You're missing the point.

Rich: Exactly.

Carel: So, so tell me, Rich, where does Radio America see itself in the ever expanding on demand audio podcasting environment?

Rich: I mean.

Carel: Radio America is a radio station, right?

Rich: Yes.

We are a syndicated network.

So we create programs 24 hours a day, seven days a week that approximately 800 radio stations around the United States takes our programming.

They can take one show or they can take many.

And so back to my previous point is this is kind of a natural transition for us.

In that the programming content is always king and we know how to make content.

And we know how to talk to an audience of one, and we know how to make that listener feel like we are talking directly to them about things that are important to them.

The only thing that's different is the distribution.

Whereas for the past 30 years, we send it up on a satellite and seven or 800 radio stations around the country will take one or more programs and we will get listeners on their radio stations.

Now it's we put it into an RSS feed that goes up to Apple and Spotify.

and iHeart and all of the other platforms for RSS feeds, and we put it on YouTube and we get we put it on Instagram shorts and clips and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and wherever oh X, sorry, and wherever else you might get your media from.

We put it on all the platforms and the harder part is making sure that you are creating that content and optimizing it for that platform.

Carel: If I could just interrupt you there on that point, how has your approach to audio programming changed with the rise of, of digital distribution platforms?

Podcasting, on demand audio, et cetera.

Rich: There really isn't too much of a difference in how we program.

It's really funny.

In radio, you used to have time to set up a topic.

You used to spend that first segment of the hour telling people about something and why it was important to care.

And then now with ADD media, if you don't tell somebody what you're about to talk about and why it's important in the first 30 seconds, you've lost them.

And social media is the same way.

Digital media is the same way.

So really, we kind of program to, to both.

Now, for radio, everything is in segments.

So we have, you know, four segments in an hour, and the longest segment is going to be 12 or 13 minutes, and the shortest one is going to be 3 to 5 minutes.

You're kind of constrained by the commercial breaks there, whereas in digital, I can talk for however long I want to.

And yes, I may insert spots in there, but it's got a lot more flow to it.

So there's a little bit of difference there, but quite honestly, the way we talk to people and, and, and the topics that we talk about are similar.

There are some differences in the way we cut that audio and video up and distribute it to the different platforms on YouTube and Instagram reels, shorts, 60 second or less cuts do really well, and that sits at the top of our funnel to help discovery and people find us and know who we are.

And then as you go down that funnel, we have longer clips that are anywhere from 8 to 13 minutes, maybe a little bit longer.

And that helps people get to know us a little better and really like what we do.

And then as you drive those people down the funnel to the longer form content, the full show that might be anywhere from an hour to two hours.

In our case that's when we get to serve commercials, and we have really deep engagement with the, with the audience, and and, and it's something where we create that, that bond with the audience as we've gotten to know them down the funnel.

Carel: What does it take to deeply engage your audience?

Rich: Talk about the things that they are interested in, and in an entertaining and informative way.

And don't talk at them, talk with them.

Carel: Yes.

Rich: If you can engage them by first and foremost, I have something that you're interested in.

Secondly, I have something that you're interested in.

And I'm going to really inform you, but I'm not going to be boring.

I'm going to be entertaining about it.

I'm, if you're going to give me your time, I'm going to make it worth your time.

Carel: Okay.

Rich: And so that's how we engage is personality and information.

Carel: If you were just to sum up quickly for me, what would you say are the key differences between or in terms of audio engagement between traditional radio and podcasting?

Rich: In audio engagement like on the radio?

Carel: Yes

Rich: I'm building a long term relationship.

I don't really get that opportunity to create a funnel effect.

Whereas in digital I can I can meet you and say hello like a billboard walking down the street and then feed you another billboard and another billboard until you kind of get curious about who I am and what I'm talking about.

And then you engage with my channel a little deeper until you subscribe.

With radio, it's, it's a little harder.

I, I can't format the content in these quick little billboard snippet type things.

So I have to catch you whenever you turn that dial to my channel and I have to realize that people are tuning in.

And tuning out constantly.

So I have to always reset the topic, tell you who I am and make sure that I'm entertaining and informing you.

And sometimes you may catch me in the middle of a story.

So I might need to bring you up to speed on what we're talking about and never forget that people are always tuning in.

So it is a little bit of a difference.

So we have shows that are on both the radio and podcast and then digital YouTube, whatever it is, and that we have shows that are only podcast, YouTube, Facebook Instagram type thing.

And so we do program those a little differently than the ones that are on both platforms.

Carel: In terms of the differences, specifically just, just in terms of what do you do when you, you approach it, say you're, you're starting your program, you want sections of it to go on, on, on podcasts and sections of it are in live radio, how do you search the differences?

Rich: In the digital shows, we tend to break those up a little bit so that for example, we have the one show that airs every morning and it goes for almost two hours and within that two hours, they may talk about 20, 30 different topics every few minutes.

And those topics may be connected, but every few minutes there could just kind of go on and, you know, and we talk about this, we talk about this and then switches whereas in radio, if it's primarily radio, we may spend that whole 14 minute segment talking about two or three topics that are maybe connected, maybe not.

We get a little bit longer process to explain and dive into the topic there, whereas in a digital, we, we tend to kind of keep it moving.

And then we also have other digital shows where they might spend 30 minutes talking about one topic, but even in that 30 minutes.

We keep it moving so that there's new points of interest every few minutes.

Carel: Of course, you don't, you don't have to, if you've just joined us.

As you would have to do in radio.

Rich: Yeah, because podcasting or even YouTube is intentional specifically podcasting.

It's intentional.

Somebody seeked us out, clicked on a button, downloaded the episode.

They read the title.

They read the description.

Whereas radio, it's more of like, okay, I know this station.

Let me see who's on and what they're talking about.

And I've got to, I've got to convince you in the next 30 to 90 seconds that there's something worth sticking around for another five to six to 11 minutes for the average radio listener will listen for six to 11 minutes.

Carel: Is there a difference between the way one would grow and maintain listenership in traditional radio as opposed to podcasting?

Rich: Yeah, that's a great question.

Yeah, it's again it's a longer relationship in radio.

You're going to hope that that radio station will cross promote you and other day parts so that people even know you exist.

Carel: Yeah.

Rich: And then when people do tune into that station at that time trying to engage them So that they will stick around for that six to 11 minutes.

And a lot of times, you know, your average radio listener, again, six to 11 minutes.

You know, three or four times a week.

It's very rare that somebody turns you on at noon and listens all the way till 3 PM until the show's over.

That rarely happens.

Those are you know, small audience.

Most people are on their drive to work.

So you've got that 20 minutes there or that 15 minutes there or 40 minutes there.

And then with a podcast, they kind of time it for the commute.

I'm going to walk my dog for half an hour.

What fits that, that time that I have.

And then you have them for that, that whole time.

I mean, for the most part, we'd look at our consumption rates on our podcasts and they're usually 75 to 90 percent when people hit play, they usually stick around.

Carel: Have you found in your experience in both, both radio on the one hand and then podcasting on the other, that there is a duration, a program duration that works for both or for either?

Rich: Yes the, the radio shows have to be a little bit longer form just because if you're a one hour show on a radio station or a half hour show, it's hard to, it's hard to get anybody's attention with the commercial breaks.

And so to get that deeper engagement, they have to listen to you for 11, 12 minutes, a couple of times a week to really get that connection.

And it's harder to do in that, that circumstance.

Whereas in podcasting, we generally go for, it depends on the show and the content.

20 to 40 minutes is a sweet spot.

And there are some shows that will go an hour and a half, two hours.

But you know, we find that most people can, their consumption opportunity is about 30 minutes.

So we kind of try and fit it around there.

If you're, if you're an hour and a half to, you know, two, three hours they're going to do you in chunks like Joe Rogan.

Nobody's sitting down to listen to Joe Rogan all in one sitting.

They're listening to him throughout the you know course of the day or even two days.

Carel: As a result of that, do the monetization models differ between broadcast radio and podcasting?

Rich: Oh, yes, definitely.

Absolutely.

Carel: Could you run us through them?

Rich: Yeah.

So broadcast is basically done on total aggregate audience through a 15 minute period.

So what's your 15, what's your average quarter hour?

How many people will listen to you in a 15 minute span across all of your radio stations?

And you take that number and you you add it up and, and that's the rate you get.

And you can't always guarantee, you know, this is about what it is from every month to month.

You know, it's not going to vary too wildly, but you know, ratings change.

They go up, down, you know, they kind of swim around.

And in digital we can get a little bit more exact.

I can tell you exactly how many people listen to this podcast on this day.

And I can tell you about how much of that podcast, most of them consumed.

And so I can tell you in the first commercial break in you know, at 10 minutes in, and then the second commercial break at 20 minutes in, and then the third commercial break at, at 30 minutes in about how many people were there and then I can add in.

If somebody, if we had X amount of thousands of viewers on YouTube and then Facebook, I can add all of that audience up and create an aggregate audience and sell those impressions across the board.

And so it's a, it's a little bit easier to get the numbers that the agencies want through digital.

And it's a little bit more difficult to kind of put together a really clear scene in radio, but we've been doing it for years and we all know how it works.

The other thing that's great about digital is the breaks are less frequent.

And shorter.

So the spot breaks themselves have a little bit more value.

And so we can, we can sell at a higher spot rate.

Carel: What sort of spots have you found work best?

Duration wise?

Rich: So if it's a programmatic ad, meaning that it's an agency selling something like Home Depot or Geico or something like that, 30 seconds is best or shorter 15 seconds.

Carel: I was, I was told by somebody quite recently on the show that they felt that the ads that were top of the heap were host reads because they were.

Rich: 100 percent.

Carel: They were the most authentic.

Okay.

So you agree with that?

Rich: Absolutely.

That's our bread and butter.

That's where we make all of our money.

So in our advertising waterfall, so you've got your, your highest CPM, highest cost per thousand for every thousand downloads, this dollar amount assigned to that is host endorsed and then programmatic would fill in all of the holes that you might not sell with your host endorsed ads, but host endorsed ads will bring a higher cost per thousand CPM by far over the programmatic.

So if you get the Geico Gecko talking to you about insurance, he's gonna bring you X dollars.

Let's say 10 dollars.

But a host endorsed ad is going to bring you 25, 30, 50 and up for a thousand people.

So there's definitely a big difference and, and we see great success in host endorsed ads.

It's the bread and butter that we, we live on.

And part of the trick with that is not making it a commercial.

Keeping it as entertaining and informative as the show you're doing at that moment.

So it really doesn't, it's, it's not like you go away for a commercial break.

It's just, you're talking about something else for a minute, but I'm just as entertaining.

I'm just as informative.

And it doesn't feel like a commercial break.

It still feels like the show.

Carel: Yes, so you don't break the flow necessarily.

It just becomes part of the program.

Tell me, Rich, from your perspective now and given your history and your experience in both radio distribution and podcasting distribution.

What challenges would you say you've faced and have overcome distributing audio content?

Rich: In, in our specific circumstance being a nationally syndicated network, that does not own the radio stations that we distribute to.

That has always been, you know, a challenge.

We've been able to, to work it pretty well, but you know, we have to go to those radio stations that are owned by big corporations and convince them that our radio show is the best one for their radio station.

Carel: Yes.

Rich: And then we have to prove that our ratings.

are better than anything else that they would have in that slot.

And so that's, you know, so you kind of have these gatekeepers.

Carel: Are advertisers still as fickle as they used to be?

Rich: Yes, always.

It doesn't matter, terrestrial broadcast or digital, they're still as fickle as they used to be?

Carel: How do you see the relationship between traditional radio and podcasting evolving, say, next five years or so?

Rich: Oh, evolving is absolutely the word.

I was just at a radio conference last week, as a matter of fact, where that's a big part of the conversation.

And radio stations have finally, you know, some most have, have finally kind of wrapped their heads around the fact that we are content creators and good ones.

Carel: Yes.

Rich: And all we need to do is roll a camera on this content that we're creating.

and repurpose it on these platforms and create new revenue streams.

And it took a long time for a lot of radio companies and stations to do that.

They've, they tried to fight it.

And then they finally realized, listen, we're already making this content.

Why not take advantage of these other revenue streams?

It's, it's not cheap to do, but once you do it, you, you open up 10, 12 revenue streams that you didn't have access to before.

So it's, it's smart business.

Carel: Have you found that there's a difference in audio audience demographics between Radio America's listeners and podcast subscribers?

Rich: Oh, definitely.

Yeah.

Traditional, we're in talk radio news talk radio.

And so the news talk radio audience is going to be older.

55 plus is kind of probably the average.

Whereas you put that same show on digital, YouTube or, or RSS.

And now you're, you know, you're still news talk, so you're probably looking at 40, 45 plus and then if you can really kind of work your programming properly and get shorts and good graphics and good titles and good keywords and, and topics going for that digital audience, now you're 35 plus.

Carel: Okay.

Rich: So it's kind of how you package that content that you created on the radio for digital that allows you to reach a broader audience

Carel: And how do you reach the Gen-Z's?

Rich: Keep it short let them know immediately what you're talking about and why it's important and then tell them why it's important.

And then you know, play in their sandbox If they're on YouTube, if they're on TikTok, if they're on Instagram, have your content there and have that content optimized for that platform.

Don't go there.

A lot of, you know, and we did it too.

A lot of radio will repurpose their content for Instagram and it just looks like radio, it's a guy in a studio sitting around with, you know, mic booms and speakers and foam walls and poorly lit and just, you know, it just doesn't look right.

So if you're going to repurpose that content for those platforms, work it a little bit so that you look like you belong on that platform.

Carel: I have a last question for you.

What role do you think traditional broadcast radio can play and continue to play in a media landscape that's increasingly being dominated by AI, which we haven't really touched on, and on demand digital content?

Rich: Again we are the pros at storytelling and getting the information out there and getting the information right.

Carel: Yes.

Rich: And so that's very important.

I would say that if we can lead people in how to present information in a responsible way that gives you all the facts, but let's you make up your own mind.

It's a conversation.

That's a very important role that radio and broadcast plays in this digital community.

And I think with regard to AI, it's a great tool.

I use it.

We use it not only in editing to help things sound better.

Maybe somebody was on a microphone that wasn't so great or in a room that didn't sound great.

So we can use it to help with that.

We use it with sometimes with you know, helping to create backgrounds or, or, you know, for certain sets but we also use it for some writing you know I wrote some liners the other day, me and ChatGPT.

Carel: You are one of the few who admit it.

Everybody does it, but very few admit it.

Rich: Well, but here's the thing, I'm not just telling ChatGPT, write this for me.

And then I spit it out.

It's never right.

It doesn't know the personality of the show like I do, and it never will.

But you know what, in 15 seconds it can spit out 10 liners that give me a good launch point.

And then I take those and massage them so that they are right.

So I don't worry about AI, like it's going to take my job because it will never know the personality of the program the host and the audience, the way I do.

Carel: Rich McFadden of Radio America.

Thank you so much for joining us on AV123.

Rich: It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you.

Carel: It's been enlightening.

Thank you.

Lovely chatting to you.

Rich: Lovely chatting with you as well.

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