They Have the Audience. They Still Have a Revenue Problem.

Bob Pittman has been saying the same thing for more than a decade.

Earlier this month, the CEO of iHeartMedia put it this way:

“iHeartMedia doesn’t have a radio audience challenge; it has a radio monetization challenge.”

According to Pittman, broadcast radio has twice the audience of the largest TV network and four times the reach of the largest digital-only, ad-supported audio service.

Think about what that means: They have the audience. They still have the revenue problem.

More Audience Isn't Always the Answer

According to John Mamola of Barrett Media, Pittman was talking about radio's monetization problem back in 2014. He said it again in 2015. And 2019. And last year. Now he's saying it again.

For more than a decade, the audience has been there.

The money hasn't.

That's worth thinking about if you're a content creator. When revenue isn't growing fast enough, the instinct is often to create more content in more places to reach more people:

More content → more audience → more advertising → more revenue.

That's ContentMaxxing: responding to the growing supply of content in the world by trying to produce more content, faster and better.

But Pittman's diagnosis exposes the flaw in that strategy. If one of the biggest audiences in America still has a monetization problem, then a bigger audience isn't the answer.

More Content Doesn't Fix the Business Model

Radio is a classic Content Revenue business. It creates content, attracts an audience, and monetizes the attention that content generates, primarily through advertising. A lot of creator businesses work the same way.

When Content Revenue isn't generating enough money, creating more content to attract more attention doesn't fix the underlying business model. It just doubles down on it.

Instead of asking, "How do I reach more people?" start asking, "How can I create more value with the people I already reach?"

To answer that question, you need to look for revenue opportunities beyond content. That's exactly what we do in my free Beyond Content Workshop.

We'll look at the audience, expertise, relationships, and other assets you already have to find where your next revenue stream could come from — without requiring you to keep growing your audience first.

Find Your Community Revenue Opportunity