Futuri and ReelWorld Announce Strategic Partnership, Launch the Future of Interactive Programming: Tether

By AIT News Desk On May 21, 2020

Creative by ReelWorld, Connection by Futuri: Leaders in technology and creative innovation join forces to enable turnkey creation of standout programming moments

Futuri, the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software, and ReelWorld, the radio industry’s leading jingle, imaging, and sonic branding company, announced a strategic partnership that includes the launch of the new interactive programming platform Tether, designed to help programming teams create truly standout, engaging on-air moments with minimal drain on resources.

The Tether system marries Futuri’s powerful interactive programming technology — the evolution of its groundbreaking LDR and #engage products — with ReelWorld’s world-class creative audio production. Key Tether features include:

Listener Voting Sessions: Designed to create anticipation and excitement, and keep listeners tuned in, Tether helps programmers quickly build listener voting battles, takeovers, and more that boost audience involvement while programmers maintain total control.

Turnkey Production: Each week stations receive new creative audio features from ReelWorld that include setups, recaps, and payoffs – all produced with their own station VO – that take the hard work out of bringing listener voting sessions to life.

The Power to Customize: Tether’s simple yet powerful audio editor lets stations quickly customize the content further or create their own features in seconds. Tether even lets stations upload their own audio for total creative freedom.

Song Alerts and Playlist Social Integration: Automatic integration with social platforms and all major playout systems means stations can achieve maximum reach with minimal effort while keeping listeners connected. Data on all interactions, including music preferences, is available to all station users.

Social Video: Each Tether audio feature is accompanied by a supporting video piece for station socials and websites to keep station programming top of mind even when listeners aren’t tuned in.

The strategic partnership between Futuri and ReelWorld was born from the like-minded companies identifying the need for broadcasters to differentiate their programming with solutions that marry standout creative with ROI-driven audience engagement technology, and are simple for stations to execute. Prep+, ReelWorld’s all-inclusive show prep system, joined the Futuri portfolio in late 2019, and Tether is the partnership’s first collaborative endeavor.

“Tether is designed to make it easy to create meaningful connections with listeners and differentiate your station. Our goal in combining ReelWorld’s world-class audio production with Futuri’s innovative technology is to help our partner stations quickly create standout moments that deeply engage their audience on-air, online, and on socials. There are no better partners in this endeavor than Mike Thomas and ReelWorld, who are the best in their field, bar none,” said Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig.

ReelWorld CEO Mike Thomas adds, “We’ve been big fans of Daniel and Futuri for years. They know the tech, research and listener engagement side of radio better than anybody else out there, just like ReelWorld knows a thing or two about making amazing jingles, imaging and sonic branding. With Tether, we were able to focus on our core strengths and join together to build a product that gives stations the best of both companies.”

Tether with ReelWorld audio is currently available for CHR, Country, Classic Rock, and Classic Hits formats, with more formats to be announced soon. Tether’s core audience engagement features are available for all formats.