KCRW Shares Ways Public Media Can Be Fun and Informative

Public media is aware of it has an issue. Since becoming a member of the business two years in the past, the most typical phrase we’ve heard is “We have to meet people where they are.” They’re proper—we’ve got a distribution downside.

However we’re skirting round a much bigger challenge. You should buy attain. You possibly can put your present on social. However none of it issues if folks don’t discover, care, or take into consideration you in any respect.

Public media, identified for its severe journalism and academic programming, desires so badly to be necessary that it usually forgets to be partaking and entertaining. The problem is, when we meet people where they are, we’d like them to need to be round us. On this crowded media panorama, it’s too simple to get misplaced and unnoticed, even with the most effective of intentions.

In a study by Oracle, 91% of individuals globally want manufacturers to be humorous and 88% of individuals are in search of new experiences to make them smile and giggle. But, 95% of enterprise leaders worry humor in shopper interactions.

What if we tried being enjoyable? Being funny? (I’d say, being human, however there are numerous uninteresting people). And never simply in a small TikTok-sized nook of the group. We have to inject enjoyable into all the things; content material and occasions, interactions with donors, and advertising.

Listed here are 4 methods KCRW is assembly the problem and learnings alongside the way in which.

Social-first content material is “necessary”

When public radio thinks of hiring present expertise, we default to journalists. To alter it up, KCRW collaborated with social media comic Katherine Ellis, whose fictional character Concordia Shawarma McGraw gained fame with NPR voice impressions whereas explaining lyrics to fashionable hits like Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Sizzling” and Cardi B’s “WAP.”

The social-first, satirical information present “Necessary Issues of Nice Significance” takes on LA tales in a goofy means whereas nonetheless instructing audiences one thing new. Company embrace a puppet fox discussing a wildlife overpass over the 101 Freeway, LA billboard icon Chaz Dean speaking about model consistency, and our personal KCRW local weather reporter Caleigh Wells on algae-killing nanobubbles.