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Laporte: 'Our Business Is Content'
SAN JOSE -- March 11, 2008: Premiere-syndicated Tech Guy host, author -- and producer of a dozen podcasts -- Leo Laporte was the Tuesday keynoter at Radio Ink's Convergence conference in San Jose, talking candidly about his own model for success online and about how radio can keep the attention of an audience that's soon to be "constantly wired."
After giving some of his own industry history -- he once worked for now-Spanish-language KLOK/San Jose -- Laporte said he often hears technology people say radio is dead. "To me, still, radio is the queen of all mass media," he said -- but it will need to rethink what it does. "Our business is not transmitters and towers," he said. "Our business is content."
He continued, "We must stop thinking of ourselves as radio people, as broadcasters, and start thinking of yourselves as content people. My strong belief is that if you create great content, you will generate big audiences, and the rest will follow."
Laporte produces a dozen successful podcasts, and he said podcasting felt to him like "the rebirth of the audio medium." He acknowledged that sometimes people working in older media can feel like new media is "a freight train bearing down on them," but added, "It's a freight train of opportunity."
Talking about radio's new competition, Laporte said there are 10,000 podcasts out there, and thousands of streaming stations. "The good news is," he said, "they're mostly crap. We dodged a bullet there -- for a little while." But radio is still looking at a ubiquitous Internet and an audience, he said, that that will soon be "constantly wired."
Laporte talked candidly about his own successful online audio business, giving details on the recording technology -- he records via VOIP provider Skype -- and saying, "It costs me almost nothing to make these." His network reaches 470,000 people in the U.S. and charges a CPM of $35, though he believes that will eventually rise to $50 or $75. But there are ways in which podcasting can't compete with radio, he said, since radio is "live, it's local, it's human, it's personal."
Like many other Convergence presenters, Laporte emphasized the importance of building a community online. He showed his Facebook site, which has the maximum of 5,000 friends signed on, and said he offers regular donors to his network access to special areas of his website and custom content. He said, "It's really important that you begin a dialogue with your audience," through forums, chats, and other venues. "You're not creating a show," he said, "you're creating a community."
Responding to an audience question about what he'd do first if he had a terrestrial station, Laporte said he'd "get the personalities enrolled in this. But first of all, get some personality." He added, though, that if he had a terrestrial station, "I'd make sure I had an Internet radio station."
About the much-discussed "long tail" of niche content, Laporte said, "I go after this very small niche, but I own that niche." He added, "That's not a bad position to be in."
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