It seems that mainstream social listening solutions are excellent (and largely undifferentiated) around sucking up all public social traffic around a particular set of keywords.
What seems to be lacking is analysis and deeper understanding of information flow -- that is, instead of "listening" to all noise and treating it equally, provide actionable insights.
Ideally, we wouldn't have to hire someone fulltime to staff the listening tool just to have a good sense of the conversation.
What are you using for social and print/TV/radio media recon, and is it providing more value?