Digital Sources of Residual Revenue Streams Broadcasters Ignore

Broadcasters slow at embracing rewarding digital technology

For a couple of months, I have been working to open eyes of broadcasters to some sustainable digital sources of residual income streams they can invest in at very minimal cost or no extra cash at all to grow their broadcasts reach and revenue base The revenue streams are from the changing digital broadcast technology. The advancement evidently redefining the way people consume broadcast products and how broadcasters have been reaching their target audiences.

Years into the digital transformation we still have analogue-minded individuals including IT technicians in some broadcast media organizations who are still very cynical and clueless about how they can capitalize on their media house’s existing digital infrastructure to grow revenue from their content beyond the traditional sources of income. Amazingly, some are still imprisoned by sluggish internal organizational bureaucracies and costly processes belonging to past centuries. Processes only serve to erode quick decision-making and rewarding advancement.

The speed at which technological advancement in the broadcast industry is moving has no patience for analogue bureaucracies, unnecessary feeling of importance, cynical tendencies and rigidity to positive change. The faster those firmly in the industry take advantage of opportunities that continue to surface within the dynamic technology realm the better. In the next lines I share with you some digital revenue streams most broadcasters today ignore, or simply take for granted.

High Internet Speeds and Mobile Phone Penetration Opportunity 

The advent of high-speed internet connectivity and advanced mobile phone penetration across villages in the world presents humanity with new opportunities. Traditional radio is particularly among industries that have been granted a new lease of survival by this modern development.  Keen observers have taken advantage of this new revolution to invest in ideas that are full of benefits to both broadcasters and the listener.

A notable individual who is positively taking advantage of this new dawn is Baruch Herzfeld, a New York City based entrepreneur and the founder of ZenoRadio which offers more opportunities and flexibility to radio broadcasters and listeners worldwide. ZenoRadio is offering among other keynote services: Free Streaming (Hosting), monetized dial to listen facility targeting mainly listeners from countries across the world who work or live in the diaspora, online audio advertising services, virtual digital broadcasting tools with real time statistics, scheduled recording servers for live broadcasts and mobile applications. ZenoRadio services are free of charge.

Free Streaming (Hosting) by ZenoRadio

The person or service provider who hosts your stream (if you are already streaming) is most likely charging you anything from $25/month to over $ 1000 annually depending on your bandwidth share and quality of output sound. ZenoRadio is shouldering that cost with the free streaming offer thus helping broadcasters to reduce streaming costs.
   

To help you understand this service, let us do some simple calculation. It should be an easy problem to solve for radio stations that are already streaming. A broadcaster who has been paying $1000 each year for streaming starts saving that very amount of money once they accept the free streaming offer by ZenoRadio. The amount of money saved is free for use by the broadcaster towards other other operational costs within the station.

ZenoRadio’s streaming is uncapped and is of high quality. Many companies offer inexpensive “unlimited” streaming but truth be told most of them have caps imposed. Broadcasters who have used the free streaming by Zeno are witnesses to the fact that their online audiences have increased because ZenoRadio does not throttle.

ZenoRadio’s Monetized Dial to listen

ZenoRadio’s free streaming opens a wide revenue-generating door for broadcasters who enter into a long-term agreement with ZenoRadio. Today if you asked most broadcasters how much income they generate from their streams online other than the excitement from reaching out to the online audience with the same content received by their local listeners through transmitters, the most likely answer you are to receive is “nothing”.

Initially the service was designed to help immigrants in the US to stay in touch with their respective home countries, targeting over 50 million potential listeners. Today this service is available across many countries in the world where telephone numbers are available. Broadcasters with a huge presence of followers in the US would have their online stream submitted to a telephone number through which listeners can call free of charge to listen to their favourite radio from back home. No data plan is needed for this service. It has become a very popular for people away from home to listen to radio from home as long as they have a mobile phone.

Kameme FM and Radio Waumini from Kenya are already benefiting from this service. Broadcasters using this service are progressively growing their audience bases and are earning about $500 for every 1 million-listener minutes. This means a listener minute earns a broadcaster about 0.0005. Therefore each minute counts when a listener in the US calls say +1 7017193128 for FREE to listen to Radio Waumini. In other countries where local telephone numbers are available for listeners to call in and listen to their favourite radio normal local calling charges may apply. However radio stations still have an opportunity for cashing in on pre-roll advertisements.

The other beauty of this service is its ability to go beyond the coverage boundaries traditionally defined by transmitters. It has taken access to information to the remotest part of the world where a listener can afford a simple mobile phone. A listener in a region where a station like Radio Waumini’s coverage is absent can call +254205231009 to listen a favourite radio program. In the United Kingdom a listener interested in listening to Radio Waumini can dial +443309981191. As I have pointed out unlike it is for those in the US local charges apply for those calling the Kenyan number or the UK number to listen to radio station.

ZenoRadio Audio Advertising

The other source of sustainable digital revenue stream available from ZenoRadio for broadcasters is advertising. The company has arrangements for programmatic audio adverts with top brands and with no effort at all on the broadcaster’s part a pre-roll audio advert relevant to the listeners’ geography and which are sensitive to the station’s content policy can be inserted.

Basically this is to say the audience in the US will hear adverts that are relevant to that region and those in the UK or in Uganda will hear adverts that are relevant to those countries. In other words the adverts are targeted. The difference between audio adverts and the advertising you see on websites or blog sites is simple: audio adverts are popular with online audio content such as podcasts, online terrestrial live radio streams or purely online radio stations.

A radio station that goes for this source of residual revenue stream makes money from the impressions the stream generates. It is calculated with the use of the CPM formula and the revenue is shared is between ZenoRadio and the broadcaster based on a % to be agreed between the two. Most of the time revenue is shared on a 50/50 basis.

It is important to point out that radio stations should make it a priority to promote their websites or the other platforms where people can listen to their content online. Designing a website or having your content online then assume people will get to know about it can be simply a waste of time and resources.

Scheduled recording server and Podcast by Phone

ZenoRadio is cognisant of the fact that radio is transient in nature and that due to factors such as differences in time zones some listeners may not be able to listen real time to their favourite shows on real time basis.  For the sake of such listeners Zeno has a scheduled recording server service and podcast by phone available to broadcasters.

A broadcaster’s broadcast schedule is entered into the ZenoRadio’s server and as soon as each scheduled program is over, a recording is available for the broadcaster to use. RSS feeds are auto generated for these recordings and can be offered to listeners for consumption. Broadcasters are also free to use the RSS feeds to publish their content in major stores as podcasts.

Podcast by Phone is similar to dial-to-listen service discussed earlier.  It is aimed at providing listeners who could not listen to shows when they were live on air to listen to the missed program. They will simply have access to the shows by simply calling back to a number assigned for this purpose to listen at their convenience. All podcast by phone minutes are paid out as it is for the call to listen service, at $ 0.0005/Minute.

Custom Mobile App for your Stream

Mobile applications are the in-thing these days and ZenoRadio has presented herself as a handy solution to radio stations that would have never secured a mobile application for their streams. It is understood that mobile app development is still a very expensive venture. Thanks to ZenoRadio radio stations today can distribute their streams via a free custom mobile application.

Why then would a person with a good intention of growing his or her radio station’s audience base or even increasing the revenue stream resist these kinds of services? ZenoRadio is visibly a reliable technology partner for broadcasters interested in modern technology to connect with their domestic and diaspora audience.

It is time you allowed ZenoRadio to take care of technology as you develop great broadcast content for your esteemed audience. Signing up your radio station or even starting your own online radio station is very easy. You can sign up on your own through this link or with our support. Get in touch with nicholas@zenoradio.com