Podcasts at VRT — Moving from ‘catch-up’ radio to true on-demand audio
Podcasts have been booming these past couple of years, that’s no secret.
However, when talking to listeners they indicate they have a hard time finding what they are looking for in the overabundance of content on large international platforms.
VRT (the Flemish public broadcaster) has long been building a strong podcast offering, but it was spread out over the different apps and sites of our organization.
As a consequence, our knowledge and expertise about this ‘new’ medium was scattered as well.
It became necessary to bring together this rich offering to better guide listeners in the discovery of our podcasts.
Breaking down those organizational silos
First step: gather the knowledge and expertise about podcasts and its listeners from all corners of VRT.
A small core team was formed, bringing together people from different departments, breaking down the proverbial organizational silos.
This allowed us to link product, design and content expertise to innovation, creative labs and data science from the get-go.
A core team that started working during lockdown. We ran the gamut of online collaboration tools and seriously put them through their paces.
Despite (or because of) this, we became a very tight team. Even though it would be 6 months before people who had never worked together met in person for the very first time.
Building knowledge and expertise
As a core team, we totally immersed ourselves in the world of podcasts and on-demand audio.
Assembling existing research from inside and outside our organization. (Documented in a ‘short overview’ of about 200 slides.)
And together with our Research Department, we conducted what was at that time, the most extensive research about podcast use in Flanders.
We came away with lots of open questions and potential opportunities, which we tackled in hands-on workshops with experts from outside the core team.
- How can we help our listeners find and discover new podcasts?
- How can we deliver an optimal listening experience?
This yielded lots of insights and ideas that guided our next steps in the design phase.
Value proposition as a compass
The first ideas and concepts, coming from the core team — the direction we wanted to go in, the form we wanted this to take — were presented and checked at regular intervals with a wider Steering Committee of VRT Stakeholders.
From all these insights and feedback, emerged a strong storyline, that we condensed in a clear and distinctive value proposition.
This ‘compass’ gave us a sharp focus and helped us make important choices throughout the rest of the project.
The VRT Audio platform will be …
A trustworthy and intuitive compass
Curating quality, local audio content
For everyone looking to spend valued moments
In a personalized, relaxing listening experience
That connects, inspires and surprises
Spotlight on the Listener
But the real ‘North Star’, the focal point of all our efforts was always: the podcast listener.
Based on our research, we consciously chose to focus on the “light” podcast users.
These are listeners who know what a podcast is, have listened to one or two, but still have to discover the medium in full.
To design a product that adequately fits into their daily routines, we first wanted to hear from them what their habits and needs are.
Do they have favorite podcasts, and why did they pick those specific ones? Where do they listen? And when? Do they listen to podcasts to learn, fall asleep, or kill time while doing the dishes or other household chores?
We had to conduct our first user interviews over Zoom or Skype (because of a little virus that shall not be named).
But that gave us the opportunity to get to talk to these listeners in their own environment: at home, in a student dorm room or even on holiday.
Test & Learn
Talking to our audience was something we kept on doing all through the different stages of our project.
Every time, as our concepts started to take shape, we tested and validated even the first sketches and prototypes with real users.
This allowed us to paint an ever-clearer picture of who these ‘Flemish podcast listeners’ are, what their habits and needs are, and what potential opportunities this opens up for our product and content.
No Big Bang
Bringing together our full podcast offering also meant adding new podcast content to an established and strong product: VRT NU (up until then a video streaming platform).
We didn’t want a sudden and radical change that would confuse our existing users. We opted instead for an incremental approach to ease our users into finding this new podcast content in the familiar environment of VRT NU.
And again, we stayed true to our ‘test & learn’ principle. With each new step, we took the time to analyze, learn and optimize.
Step-by-step integration
The first element we built was a new audio player, the core of the listening experience.
We knew that if this wasn’t working properly, it would be a major deal-breaker for the users.
When that core functionality was established, we worked on designing screens for podcast series and episodes presenting information to convince users to start listening. A newly established Audio Team worked with editorial teams to ensure that the information on those pages was relevant and appealing.
Finally, we shifted our focus to discovery: how would we guide our users to this new content?
Podcasts in VRT NU went live at the end of 2021. A soft launch, starting with just a low-key banner on the home page announcing the new offering. In the 6 months since then, we have been constantly fine-tuning and expanding the listening experience.
Challenging changes
By keeping podcast content a bit below the radar when we added it in VRT NU in December 2021, we wanted to allow the existing VRT NU product to evolve gradually.
An approach that we hoped would be beneficial to both our users and our internal operations.
Product teams needed to adapt to this new reality: a different way of working leading to new collaborations with new colleagues.
Our step-by-step approach gave us the opportunity to validate these new processes and internal workflows with our teams.
Things also changed under the hood. If we want VRT NU to continue to grow into a large and beloved content destination, we need to make sure the technology behind it is robust and future-proof.
Among other things we developed a Podcast Manager tool, giving editorial staff an easy way to manage and publish their podcast content more professionally.
Last but not least, all of this was a big shift for our existing users.
It represented an important change to the proposition of the VRT NU product: no longer just a video streaming platform, but a fully-fledged on-demand service offering both audio and video content. A constant companion for more users at more moments during the day.
No product without content…
Involving listeners every step of the way wasn’t just a crucial element in the design process.
We also want to make sure we are offering them the content they are really longing for.
In this digital media world, listeners are their own curators, making personal choices from the vast amount of content that is on offer.
We realized we needed to incorporate this new reality into how we make and distribute our content.
Content principles
From international benchmarks, talking with independent podcast makers and our own Flemish podcast study, we distilled our list of principles for creating quality podcast content.
As with everything we did, we discussed these content-related guidelines with our audience.
Through interviews and qualitative research, we made sure our guidelines were sufficiently aligned with the needs and expectations of the Flemish podcast listeners.
Content inventory of our podcast offer
We also took a truly deep dive into our podcast offer, making a detailed content inventory and benchmarking it against the rest of the Dutch-speaking podcast market.
We wanted a clear picture of where there were gaps (and opportunities) in our offer.
How did our local Flemish content measure up against international trends?
What steps could we take to fill the gaps and build a more balanced offer for each of our listeners, in every situation and mood, and for every time of the day?
Moving from ‘catch-up’ radio to on-demand audio
These content-related tracks were catalysts allowing us to move from offering ‘catch-up’ radio as an extra service, to a fully-fledged on-demand audio platform.
Offering podcast series with a strong identity, grounded in communities that revolve around personalities and topics, makes for a strong and growing portfolio of audio content that rises above the traditional brands and audiences we had at VRT.
A new Audio Team
From this content perspective as well, a shift in our organization was inevitable.
Originating from the Radio department, a new team was mandated to establish and build a solid digital audio content practice within VRT.
Combining content and product, our aim, as a public broadcaster, in this new digital reality is to keep guiding the Flemish audience to our socially relevant VRT content on our owned platforms.
And this is just beginning…
The impact of all these efforts, and of our chosen approach, can already be felt clearly.
And together with our end users, we are continuously dedicated to extend our service and content offering and to optimize the listening experience for everyone.
But we’ll have to get back to that some other time…
For now, why don’t you take a look at what we’ve been talking about and discover our full podcast offering at: www.vrt.be/vrtnu/luister/
co-authored with: Margot Masui, Julie Donckers and Maarten Kerstens
