The 140-Character Sprint

I will freely admit that I do not have all the answers to every radio industry dilemma. This week, all I can do is observe, and the answer is escaping me.

I'm talking about talk radio's reaction to fast-moving events, the kind that seemingly change by the minute. Take the Ryan Lochte story, for example: We went from taxi cab robbery to suspicion of his account to the gas station guy's story to pee jokes to total chaos to sort-of-resolution within 48 hours. A snapshot at any time during that timeline may have led you to a different conclusion about what really happened than at another time. The prudent thing for regular, non-talk-show-host people would have been to shut up and wait for the facts to prove themselves out.

But you are not regular, non-talk-show-host people. You're in talk radio, or podcasting, and your job is to have an opinion, a strong and entertaining opinion, about whatever topic is hot at the moment. You are a Hot Take Machine, you are, and if a famous doofus swimmer is involved in an international incident at the Olympics, you are going to have to talk about it, so you crack the mic and pontificate about crime and corruption in Rio and then, hours later, everything changes. And you look silly.

Yet you can't help that, not just because things change but because the discourse is being driven by social media. If you don't want to talk about something before the facts are in, Twitter and Facebook are off and running and you'll be left behind. Nobody on Twitter waits for the facts. And so, you can't, either.

Or can you? We're back to how I started this column: I don't have the answers on this one. Has social media's incessant flow of Hot Takes changed talk radio's mission? If people's desire for off-the-cuff, visceral reactions to news as it happens is being satisfied by Twitter and Facebook, should talk radio pivot to a more thoughtful, careful analysis of events as they... okay, not gonna happen, but you see what the problem is. Unnamed Candidate says something outrageous, and by the time you get on the air, the story's moved on to the next outrage, and that story's morphed so fast that you're lagging behind and the Internet's on to debating something you haven't even heard yet. The speed of everything has increased beyond our capacity to keep up. What, you haven't binge-watched "Stranger Things" yet? We've all moved on to another show. What's wrong with you? You might still have the older audience with you, the ones who don't go on The Twitter and pride themselves on holding out against the trendy and viral (your basic "NCIS" audience), but that's not a growth segment, to say the least.

So the pace of material for talk radio, political or social or sports or whatever it is you talk about, is far faster than it used to be. If talk radio is going to be part of the conversation going forward, it has to figure out whether it's still going to try and control the debate and be on the leading edge of the conversation, whether to cede that to social media and be where you go for deeper dives into the topics, or something radically different. The environment, the market for what talk radio does is different from what you've been used to. I don't know what the next phase will be, but the time for it is here.

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Okay, not EVERY topic moves at a lightning pace, and you CAN find stuff to talk about that isn't flooding your social timelines. For that, you can go to All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, which has all the news items and kickers and bad jokes you need and won't find anywhere else, all in one place, available by clicking here and at the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts. This week, we also have "10 Questions With..." Nate Lundy, an old friend with a couple of new jobs, one hosting on what was Yahoo! Sports Radio and is now SB Nation Radio, and the other a new Denver podcasting/video sports operation, 5280 Sports. He's always been a forward-thinker and he has interesting things to say about everything, so do not miss it.

You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

And, yes, some news: After six years, I'm leaving Nerdist, the podcast network/website/video thing. So, one last Full Disclosure statement: I have been serving as Director of Programming for Nerdist Industries, a division of Legendary Pictures and Legendary Digital Networks, which includes the Nerdist Podcast Network, one of your major podcast entities. (Why leaving? Time.) It's been a blast, and the folks there are great (thank you, Chris Hardwick!), but I'm also looking forward to reclaiming some time for other things, like sleeping. That'll be nice. I wonder if I'll remember how to do that.

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Not only do I have no answers for the dilemma I wrote about, but I have no pithy, humorous closing lines for this space. I'm falling short in every way this week....

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