In Mediaweek yesterday, Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) chief executive Grant Blackley shared with us some of the learnings the company had gleaned from its digital transformation.
Today Blackley talks more about that journey and some of the strategies they are considering for the digital LiSTNR platform.
Asked about rules LiSTNR has regarding audio exclusivity on the platform, Blackley said they are flexible. “Sometimes,” he added with a grin.
“There is certain content that needs mass reach. We are finding things that we put on LiSTNR exclusively are having more success.”
As an example, Blackley talked about SCA’s most successful broadcasters who have moved from linear radio to on-demand podcasts. “The Hamish & Andy podcast is available across all platforms to build mass reach. However, the newer Hamish and Andy podcast, The Remembering Project, will now be a LiSTNR-only exclusive.
“We are starting to experiment with LiSTNR-only content. This is about learning. How can we develop a very loyal audience who consumes the #1 podcast in Australia? They will move on to LiSTNR if that audience knows there is another product they are interested in.
“We look at our 108 podcasts and decide which should be behind the exclusive wall. We thought that would build loyalty to the LiSTNR app and it is proving to be true.”
Getting an audience to LiSTNR on an app for free is one thing, is the next step trying to monetise that audience beyond selling ads?
Blackley noted the experience when the company bought the Kinderling podcast brand. “It is a kids’ product which sits in our parenting and kids vertical. They already had a paid-per-listen model which we have maintained. Kids’ content is very sticky and mums, dads, grandparents and carers will all consider paying for something to enrich the children’s lives.
“If we want to charge for content, we have to make sure the value proposition is demonstrable and meaningful for the consumer. We are learning as we hear from more publishers, and they all seem to be working on a combination of both. It is not one or the other. I don’t think there is anyone surviving in the podcast environment on a pure pay-per-play.”
It seems unlikely that one of the options LiSTNR will offer listeners is an ad-free listen.
“We are a mass-reach vehicle and there is a flourishing advertising community and we are quadrupling the number of people we are now talking to about advertising revenue. The business is funding itself through an advertising model.
“We have made many learnings since we launched PodcastOne five years ago that others are just starting to learn. There is a CPM premium in podcasting versus broadcast radio. And it should be that way because it is highly engaging, enormously immersive and it is light on commercials.”
SCA & Australian broadcasters invested early in podcasting
In London at The Podcast Show, it was hard to find commercial radio broadcasters apart from a small Global presence. Unlike Australia where the podcast market is dominated by radio companies.
“From an Australian perspective we all looked at the US,” said Blackley answering a question about commercial radio betting big on podcasting.
“It was the most mature market. Four years ago we were four years behind the US. Podcasting revenues in the US are due to hit US$2b next year. It’s not huge compared to other sectors, but it shows it’s an investible medium and it is becoming mainstream.
“Australia is in many ways now number two [in developed podcast markets] and we went very early. We weren’t pioneers, but we risked more, went early and went hard.
“We had early success with the content and the monetisation came second. It has to happen that way because you are building a marketplace. When that happened you started to see others in the market compete.
“Australia is a very dynamic market and it’s an important place to a lot of international players. Television has been a bit like that over the years. We have always been well advanced and bat above our weight. Radio is no different.
“In the UK, some broadcasters haven’t started the journey of building any podcasts.
“In the US it has been the independent breakaway networks that have been the most successful, not necessarily the major media and audio companies.
“Australia has caught up, we went from four years to three, then just two behind [the US]. We are now equal in terms of delivering content outcomes, but we are behind in the monetisation of the audio. I would say we are ahead of the UK.”
SCA, LiSTNR and Radio app
The major commercial broadcasters built audiences for streaming radio by uniting to recommend the Radio App. But will they keep supporting it?
“Radio App was a product we built and we owned,” explained Blackley. “We gifted it to the industry through CRA. It helped facilitate the development of radio on smart speakers. We were the first market that Amazon Alexa went to. They approached CRA because it was overseeing the whole industry and it had the audio available on one app. It was an easy access point for them.
“That then brought Google to the table. They have about a 62% market share of smart speakers in Australia. That meant we had the two biggest players driving a marketplace of new radio listening through smart speakers which helped fast track us to where we are today.
“Radio App is not seen as the place we will all be for the future. We built LiSTNR for SCA because we wanted to house our 99 radio stations and our 108 podcasts and our 25 music streaming stations, our 65 markets of news and information, our sporting broadcasts of AFL, NRL and cricket and our international partners.
“We will continue to experiment with things like Andy Lee’s book and other books too.
“The house of LiSTNR is there to have first-party data, to offer choice and ease of convenience for entry. It is also intriguing and entertaining. That attracts an audience to listen longer.
“We have dwell times over two hours, sometimes over four hours. LiSTNR is not open to all of the industry and we are not an aggregator. We are a premium audio provider.”
Blackley said SCA gets approaches locally and internationally from people wanting to start a discussion about joining LiSTNR.
Regarding the future of Radio App, Blackley said that will be a decision for the board of CRA, who now own the app.
When asked if LiSTNR and SCA would continue to support Radio App, Blackley said that is something they will review. “We have turned off access to TuneIn in early May because we felt it was a breach of our copyright. They were taking our feeds and benefiting from it without [giving us] any compensation. It was not providing any strategic business need for us so we stopped it.”
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See also
SCA’s Grant Blackley tells international market about five-year digital transformation
Blackley on the launch of LiSTNR: ‘We are happy to take risks, but they are calculated risks’
Later this week
Wednesday: Audio futurologist James Cridland in London – what he shared with global players
Thursday: Special double edition of Podcast Week with news of the hottest sessions from The Podcast Show London