Gauteng's latest player in the Talk Radio business, Power FM unveiled their star-studded line up of hosts last week. It looks like they spared no expense in marketing campaign and PR campaigns and got a lot of ink both in print and digital media ahead of their inaugural broadcast on the 18th of June 2013.
But it looks like they've neglected one of the most important tools no media organisation should be without - their website. They've secured the .co.za domain but instead using it to communicate with potential listeners they've just put two boxes on the front page that harvest cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses from listeners. This is a wasted opportunity they could have profiles of their personalities and the behind the scenes going ons and a countdown clock on there to keep the listeners updated. I hope they that know people outside Gauteng would want to listen too and will at least have streaming service up and running by launch date.
It look like they're following the industry norm - the pretence that the internet doesn't exist - despite proclamations that they've come to shake things up and give us something different. Radios's indifference to the internet echoes that of the newspapers and the music business before it. Newspapers first dismissed the internet as a fad, then proceeded to put their content online for free, and only now they're waking up to the realisation that nobody is going to buy their physical product if they can access it for free on the net and are erecting paywalls. Radio appears to be still in the denial phase - just pretending that the internet is over there and they're over here talking into the mic and playing music.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun here and Power FM are real innovators and will have a fully fledged website with schedules, profiles, news, live streams, podcasts and other great content by launch date. It would be a real shame if they didn't.
