Angela Stengel, head of Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Innovation Lab, started the last session of the day titled What younger audiences really want, with features most expected to see in the future, mainly connection, community and talent. Although there are great numbers of followers throughout the world crises, “ABC and radio in general is not something that interests young people anymore.” According to her, in ten years, Millennials and Gen Z will make up largest age bracket and the bulk of the working population.
A survey with mainly young respondents aged 18-21, resulted in conclusions that young people don’t believe in most sources and that they like easy and short content. The ABC then came up with a short and catchy video content series about politics that convinced most of the respondents to engage with politics even more. At the end of her speech, Angela summed up with some key takeaways in reaching young audiences, that included being persistent but patient, being agile, supportive of young people and true to your brand.
The second part of the session was hosted by a young duo working for BBC, Grace Jasper, Research Manager of BBC Sounds and Anisha Ratan, Audience Research Manager for the youth music portfolio at the BBC. In the presentation they explained why young audiences find media unclear and unpredictible even though it has a key role for them and that they as well as any other generation count on it when worried. Nowadays, young people have access to unlimited amounts of content and the influence, and popularity of podcasts and audiobooks is constantly overgrowing the speech radio. They agreed that younger audience wants ‘easier’ entertainment since it is often only put in the background or listened to in a car and preferred topics are friendship, love and sex. Speech radio listeners are mostly driven by live sport, however, this is only a tiny amount. 15-24 weekly podcast listeners statistically do not listen to any radio at all.
