Thanks for the insights brought in by your post! We have been confronted with quality vs quantity since the beginning days of our startup. In Voizzup we measure audience engagement to talk-radio aired content by tracking the behaviors of listeners while they interact within their radio-branded online app.

Most industry stakeholders have difficulty understanding that a large enough amount of loyal audience is continuously and spontaneously providing content makers with extremely valuable feedback about the topics on-air, the way they are being presented and the personalities telling those stories. We focus on highlighting awareness about time spent listening, passion indicators or disengagement.

Instead many business owners mainly (and wrongly, in my opinion) focus on the breadth rather than the depth: increasing audience reach at the cost of meaningful tailored products. They wonder whether on-line listeners capture all their audience on FM, why don’t we track listeners on every single worldwide radio aggregator app, making the listener numbers grow… in short: how do they sell to advertisers more listeners rather than better engaged, loyal ones, who do tune in regularly. Unfortunately in the meantime their product quality decreases steadily, and their listeners (especially the younger ones) tune out to find great content elsewhere (like well produced podcasts).

We are a stubborn kind of people who shall keep on advocating of quality vs quantity, highlighting the long term value of pursuing that strategy, also for the media industry business.