From the Back Row at Boot Camp

Oh, that's right. Friday. I have to write a column. Almost forgot.

I almost forgot because I'm at another talk radio conference, this one the annual Talk Show Boot Camp in Dallas, a city which is doing its best Polar Vortex impression, ensuring that I won't be sneaking out and doing something fun and/or non-conference related. But, yeah, I'm at another one of these, and this one's quite a good one, with a who's who of the industry here, plus me (I fall under the category of "other"). Already, there's been some interesting stuff from NuVoodoo on research they did on the talk radio audience, and from Steve Goldstein on social and mobile media, and there are panels coming up on ad sales and finding talent and I don't know because it's column time and my mind has already gone to summarizing the state of the industry and what we're hearing here before it even happens. That's unfair, except that I've been to so many of these that I feel like I kinda know what's coming. (It's a fairly useless ability, come to think of it. It's like that TV show a few years back where the guy would get the paper a day early, except I get nothing but radio news and it's always the same.)

I'm not here to give a State of the Industry Address. That doesn't mean that I don't have one, though, percolating in my mind, because... well, you know what I do by now. You can't be surprised. I won't be talking about these points when I appear on a panel here (frankly, I have no idea WHAT I'm going to say. Probably something incoherent. Hey, it's going to be Saturday morning and I'll have a plane to catch). But some of the talking points I'd hit in my Completely Unresearched, Entirely Subjective State of the Radio Union would be:

1. Talk radio's listeners are disproportionately old and male.

2. Not a lot of people IN the business know what to do about that. Nobody OUTSIDE the business who DO have ideas on what to do cares enough to want to come in and fix the demographic problem.

3. Businesses are finding other things to do with their money besides spending it on talk radio advertising. Nobody really has a coherent answer as to why they would need to reverse course, and radio's doing a terrible job of grabbing a share of the money that's going to digital and mobile. That's going to need fixing.

4. Downtown Dallas on a sub-freezing night is pretty desolate. I think they arranged it to make me eat at the hotel sports bar instead of someplace more interesting last night.

5. Talk radio is, at this stage, a struggle to maintain the status quo while suspecting that it's never going to be what it used to be. It CAN be something new and successful, but the people involved are presently just trying to make their numbers now. As long as that latter pressure is there, we're not going to be able to really move forward. Unfortunately, the new media competition isn't being pressured the same way.

6. Talent, as one panel stressed, is going to be asked to take one for the team. Salaries will slide, getting a slice of sales will be more likely for top talent. And that means that young creative people will have even less reason to take their talents to radio.

7. Radio still has advantages and can be a great medium. The greatness comes from the people who can use the medium to do creative, interesting things. Until those people are encouraged and developed rather than driven away, we're rushing headlong towards an FM band full of jukeboxes and an AM band that nobody under 60 will even know is there.

And I'm looking forward to being proven wrong. At this writing, there's a lot of convention to go, and some smart people on the panels. I'm hopeful that we'll hear some things that transcend the usual. I want to hear that. Come on, talk radio people. We can do this.

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Okay, I gotta get back to this thing, so let's just briefly plug All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, with hundreds of items and ideas for segments on your shows, plus kicker stories you won't see anywhere else. iI's all here. And the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics has every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

And follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and visit the other site I edit, Nerdist.com. And pmsimon.com, too, which I promise I'll post to more often. I will. Really.

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And if you ARE at Talk Show Boot Camp in Dallas, you know exactly where you'll find me -- back row corner as usual, by one of the few available power outlets. Come by and say hi. And thanks to Don Anthony and Gabe Hobbs for letting me be here and be my usual irritable self on a panel and in the room.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
www.facebook.com/pmsimon
www.twitter.com/pmsimon