The More Things Change

You know the line. When William Holden's cynical writer Joe Gillis first meets Gloria Swanson's faded movie queen Norma Desmond in the classic "Sunset Boulevard," he blurts out in recognition, "you used to be big." Her response is always on the lists of most memorable lines in movie history: "I AM big," she protests. "It's the pictures that got small."

This walk into cinematic history isn't random, because it came to mind when I was pondering yet another article that purported to look into Millennials' minds and treated them again as a monolithic entity with peculiar characteristics so different from those of boomers and Gen-Xers as to warrant more blather from self-appointed experts who taught an extension course once or worked with this twenty-something who wouldn't take a lunch break or something. Reading it reminded me of the countless panels and discussions and articles we've seen about radio and reaching Millennials and how they're different and you need to account for that because they don't put up with commercials or phoniness or whatever. I've done that myself. But I realized that perhaps we're approaching this from the wrong angle.

What occurred to me is that when we talk about younger generations, we start out assuming they have a very different mindset and go on from there. I'm wondering now if that's backwards. See, if you're a Millennial or whatever we're going to call the next wave of whippersnappers, I'm not so sure that you have concerns any different from what the old farts complaining about you had when they were the New Generation themselves. You're worried about the economy? So did your elders. You're worried about student loans? Let me tell you about scrambling to pay for mine, 30 years ago. You're concerned about security, the environment, discrimination, privacy? Check all them boxes. You ended up moving back in with your parents? So did YOUR parents.

No, the differences are mostly cultural, and there have always been cultural schisms between generations. You loved rock, your kids love hip-hop, your parents loved big band. That part's easy to deal with if you're an audio provider: You just give 'em what they want. Music? Whatever's most popular. Talk? Make it relevant to their lives and entertaining. The hard part is that the way you deliver that to them has changed.

The important differences, and the approach taken to all the other concerns, are shaped not so much by differences in the people as they are by differences in technology. Millennials aren't suddenly more discriminating in their entertainment choices because of some vast cultural or genetic shift; they just have different options, and are taking advantage of them. This has happened before. It probably happened to YOU. Apply it to radio: If you came of age in the '50s and '60s, you listened to AM Top 40 and vinyl 45s and LPs, because those were the options you had. A decade later, youth-oriented, genre-specific formats came to FM, and that generation flocked to that and away from scratchy AM and formats that mashed Dean Martin in with Vanilla Fudge. If you're a Millennial, you have the option of customizable music streaming and talk shows that get delivered to you for on-demand consumption, on a more convenient device that you already have in your pocket, so of COURSE you'll use that instead of traditional radio at times. The change is because a better technological option enabled different offerings that the old tech couldn't do.

Perhaps THAT will clarify things for the radio industry, even for the companies that DO have a digital strategy. The content for digital is being shaped by the technology and what that tech enables content creators to do, and it in turn shapes how listeners -- those darn Millennials -- consume that content. Like television increasingly going to on-demand and binge watching because it's only now possible to do that, audio is going in the same direction (more slowly, but still) because it can. And the younger generations are listening not, despite the anecdotal evidence of articles quoting them as hating corporate iHeartCumulus radio, because they truly hate radio (and they still use it, just not as much) but because technology gives them options older generations didn't have. Go back to 1967; if you were a teen back then and you were handed a device that would bring you ONLY the music and talk you wanted, when you wanted it, you would have behaved exactly as The Youth Of Today are behaving. It's not rocket science.

Which brings us back to Gloria Swanson and the pictures getting small. Radio is Norma Desmond right now, insisting "WE HAVE 93% REACH!!! It's those damn smartphones that got small!" And the industry still believes that it's just a matter of activating FM tuners in those things and we're good. But the device itself, and the Internet, and the way the devices lead people to behave (in other words, making them more mobile and listening to self-programmed material rather than passive, whatever's-on radio), they've changed. In the next few years, the other place radio lives -- the car dashboard -- will be unrecognizable, too.

That's where the future lies, and that's what the radio industry needs to focus on when determining what to do to remain the leading source of audio entertainment and information. What that content is, and how best to program for it, is less a matter of studying a changing audience than studying changing technology and how that in turn has changed the audience's behavior; it's less about changing the content itself than changing how that content is framed, edited, presented, and delivered. You may still be as "big" as Norma Desmond, but if you don't adapt your business to the best-option-available technology, you'll end up like her, living in the past, pumping out linear streams of traditional top-down radio programming in a customizable, playlist-driven world, insisting you're still big, ready for your close-up.

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However it's delivered, your talk show (or music morning show, or podcast) needs fresh, interesting material. For free, because you can't get the bosses to pay for too much show prep. Here's your handy solution: All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, your source for news items and kickers and bad jokes 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.

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.

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Next week: Halloween. Not sure how I'll rope that into a column about radio, but if I can do that with "Sunset Boulevard," I might just be able to do that with anything.

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