COMMENT | If Newstalk ZB was a blog…

I had the unfortunate necessity to have to drive someone else’s company car around Auckland this morning, and as such didn’t want to re-tune their radio, so for two hours was stuck listening to Newstalk ZB. I know, I could have turned it off, but I figured I’d listen in to see what the appeal was.

It is of course very opinionated, but you’d expect nothing else from talkback, or a blog for that matter, but the thing that really got me was the sheer amount of adverts. And radio adverts, unlike those little google adverts I have down the side, are an in your face part of the listening experience.

So what would Newstalk be like if it were a blog, well basically you’d have to post at least three adverts – or infomercials – for every real blog post you made. So instead of having a happy blog that people wanted to read, you’d have frustrated visitors struggling to find the actual content.

But the listener ship of Newstalk doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe that says more about the people who (regularly) listen to Newstalk then the business model behind that station.