Too Long At The Party

A couple of weeks ago, the guy who runs the Philadelphia Phillies, Dave Montgomery, gave an interview to the Bucks County Courier Times (subscription required) in which he explained why the team was not ready to accept the obvious. The obvious is, of course, that the team has aged and the farm system is barren and fans are abandoning ship or, at least, showing up in alarmingly smaller numbers. But despite a hue and cry from the fan base, the management has chosen to stick with "the core" -- the richly-compensated players left from the 2008 World Champions -- and, to date, have been holding onto hope that things will turn around despite all appearances (and despite this week's sweep of Milwaukee on the road). The reasoning: Fans love the familiar core of Howard-Utley-Rollins, love the memory of 2008. If we blow it all up and start over (like the NBA team on the other side of Pattison Avenue), fans won't show up. Can't lose that base. And so, the rebuilding is being delayed further and further. At this rate, the team will once again be competitive in, say, 2035.

But at least a baseball team, even one with its head in the sand which refuses to embrace the advanced statistical analysis every other team now uses, CAN decide to change course and become competitive again. Baseball's economic model still involves huge television rights deals, extensive merchandising, and growth. Radio, on the other hand....

Yes, the Phillies, of whom I am a fan, are reminding me of radio, of which I am a fan. It's in the way management of both rejected the idea that the decks needed to be cleared until it was too late to avoid trouble. You've undoubtedly seen the stories about the ratings decline for the talk radio format -- I've written about it before, and when I called it a "free fall" then, I got criticized for overstating the case. Anyone want to make that argument now? What's discouraging is that the seeds of this decline were planted way back when things were looking fine -- I'd argue that you could go back 15 or even 20 years and mark the moments talk radio could have seen the iceberg on the horizon.

I could say that because I DID say that. I was saying that in the early '90s, warning that AM talk was ultimately going to suffer from demographic shifts, that the industry was ignoring a real appetite for talk that isn't stuffy old guys in suits fulminating about inside-the-Beltway issues, that the format HAD to move to FM and adapt to younger demographics or ultimately be left behind. Among the responses: "Yeah, but what do we do with the AM?" "We'll lose a revenue stream." "We'll know when it's necessary, and we'll move the AM format to FM." "You don't have to change anything." And so, little happened. New ideas were pretty much ignored or even ridiculed. Little new talent was developed, and the minimal new talent development tended to be of younger versions of the same old bloviators, maybe with rock bumpers.

And here we are. More heritage AM talkers are seeing rapid declines in shares, and the demos are, in a word, old. It's interesting that sports radio was treated differently -- stations moved to, or were launched on, FM, younger talent with a decidedly more aggressive and youthful approach was developed, and it was successful. Talk radio? Waiting for the "election bump." That's two years away, folks, and it's temporary. Meanwhile, generations are indeed discovering talk programs relevant to their interests... online. Radio people always denigrated podcasting ("that's not radio!") and streaming ("that's not radio!"). And now, all the interesting stuff seems to be happening in the digital space. This didn't have to happen.

But it did. Like the Phillies not wanting to lose their hardcore fan base and managing to shrink it anyway, talk radio management held onto the old ways too long. Unlike in baseball, though, talk radio can't rebuild through the draft or trading for prospects. Is there hope? Probably not on AM. FM isn't a panacea anymore, either, and unless music royalties go WAY, WAY up, I don't think broadcast station owners will spend money on talent for an FM station when they can run a voice-tracked jukebox and take advantage of the deficiencies of the PPM, for now, at least. Yet, if management wakes up and realizes that they run content creation companies and not just broadcast stations, and if they develop content that's tailored to the way people consume spoken word programming now -- on demand, strong personalities and/or specific niche topics -- and deliver it however people want to get it.... Ah, but that requires them to think about the future. That hasn't been their strong suit up to now.

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Running late, I am, so let's quickly cut-and-paste a plug for All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, which offers hundreds of items and ideas for segments on your shows no matter who your target audience might be, plus kicker stories you won't see anywhere else. Find it by clicking here. And the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics has every story individually linked to the appropriate item. While you're here, read "10 Questions With..." Jeffrey Gorman, who co-hosts cousin Steve Gorman's show on Fox Sports Radio -- unusual show, unusual hosts, unusual path to radio.

And follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and maybe I'll have time for some new posts at pmsimon.com.

Full Disclosure: I also serve as Director of Programming for Nerdist Industries (a division of Legendary Pictures), which includes the Nerdist Podcast Network, one of your major podcast entities.

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Okay, then, gotta run. Don't even have time for a LeBron joke. Not that there are any left after Twitter got hold of the story this morning....

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