When I was registering for PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 I noticed that 96.1’s Morning Freak Show hosts Mikey and Big Bob were leading a session called, “We Do a Radio Show … But Not Really”. I listen to the Freak Show in the morning and I also follow both Mikey and Big Bob on Twitter so I was interested in seeing what they had to say. I also figured that the session would be funny and it ended up being the best session of the day. The reason I titled this post “Old Media Using New Media” is because Mikey and Big Bob do a show on traditional radio, which is considered old media.

Twitter
Being a Pittsburgh Blogger I try to follow as many people from Pittsburgh as I can. I started Following Mikey and Big Bob on Twitter a good while ago and always enjoyed their tweets. Being the hosts of Pittsburgh’s most popular morning show they are sort of celebrity’s here in Pittsburgh. So it is cool to see what they are up to by reading their tweets and check out their twitpic’s, except for Big Bob’s poop pic’s! Having Twitter accounts allows them to connect with their audience by other means then just the radio show.

In their session they also talked about using Twitter to run contest for Penguins tickets and other prizes. They said that Twitter allowed them to tell people about the contest when they did not have access to the radio station since they received the Penguin tickets after their radio show was over. Also Twitter allows them to say things that they may not be able to say on the radio.

YouTube & USTREAM
Mikey and Big Bob have used YouTube with huge sucess. If you can make any video you make become viral you can bring a tremendous amout of attention to yourself. This is evident from iJustine’s 300-page iPhone bill, Chocalate Rain, and many others. Probably the most popular video Mikey and Big Bob have made is the In a Snuggie video. It has got over 130,000 views on YouTube! The song has actually been played all over different radio stations too! Because of the popularity of the Snuggie video 96.1 and Mikey and Big Bob did a Snuggie bar crawl on the southside, which was a huge sucess.

Both Mikey and Big Bob have USTREAM.tv accounts where they boradcast their shows and whatever else they may be doing while at work. This let’s people who may not live in the Pittsburgh area watch their shows and it also gives the listeners of the show some insight into what they do. During their session they recalled a funny moment when they were in the office and the Pitt cheerleaders showed up and Mikey was in a wrestling mask for no apparent reason.

Does it Work?
So does traditional media using new media work? I think Mikey and Big Bob are great examples of how well traditional media can use new media to give them more exposure and build their audience. It is great to see that they are doing it right, hopefully more traditional media will follow in their footsteps.

Like I said this was one of the best sessions at PodCamp, thanks to Mikey and Big Bob for taking the time to lead the session!