Let It Snow

It was not surprising that there was a public reaction a few weeks ago when it dawned on people in Philadelphia that KYW was no longer doing school closing announcements on the air -- the decision was quietly made before the season, but it took actually being IN the season for people to realize that The Numbers were gone. "The Numbers" were a tradition -- instead of school names, your school or district would get a number, and on a snow day, your alarm clock would click on at 6 am and you'd hear something like "342, 343, 346, 347 one hour late, 348... now Montgomery County 121, 122...." and you'd wait for your number or, if you were me in college or law school, you'd hear numbers being read off and assume there was snow on the ground and you'd roll over and go back to sleep, number or no. But The Numbers were how you got the good (or bad, if you were a parent) news, and snow closings were what radio did, just as it was everywhere there was snow.

No more, and that's neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is. Society adapts to new technology. There are easier and better ways to disseminate school closing information than taking up 20 minutes of air time with a recitation of school closings. There are plenty of people who would say the same thing about practically all of the other service elements radio does, too. Traffic? Waze, Google Maps, your in-car nav system. Weather? Your phone has that. Time? Oh, come on, people, Apple's blandishments notwithstanding, don't even wear watches anymore. And more. Lively discussion of what's in the news? Twitter and Facebook, or podcasts. Music? Spotify, Apple Music, your iTunes library. News? Wait, a CNN notification just popped up on my home screen.

You could say that everything radio does is available elsewhere. And you'd be right. Plus, as I noted in Thursday's video which you should go watch right now because why not, you can even get all of those things with Alexa or Google Home or Siri or Cortana -- "Alexa, what's the weather? Alexa, give me a Flash Update. Alexa, play polka music from Spotify. Alexa, tell me a joke. Alexa, what's the traffic like to work today?" It's not perfect -- in the video, one of my commands went awry and I had to abort the mission before hearing something I did not want to hear -- but that's certainly where we're going.

And what does that mean for radio? Does that mean radio is obsolete and we're just waiting for rigor mortis to set in?

No, I don't think so, not nearly in the way that newspapers were made obsolete in many ways by technology -- and newspapers, in case you haven't noticed, are somehow still with us, even if they're not what they used to be. When we talk about technological revolutions, we have to recognize a few aspects that get lost in the hype: one is that delivery methods change but the essential product can still survive, and two is that sometimes it's less about the specifics of the content and more about the packaging.

That first point's easy. You have a talk show. Up until recently, the only way to deliver it was over a broadcast station. Now, the same kind of material can be delivered via streaming, on-demand in a podcast, or even in text as social media posts. You know that, and you're doing all of that. It's one of the reasons I've been saying that unless you overpaid for a broadcast stick, or unless you need to be making old-media dollars on your show, this is a great time to be a creative type. Monetization aside -- I know, that's a fairly big "aside," but we'll cover that in another column -- it's never been easier to do exactly what you want to do in the creative fields. And technological changes just mean that you have even more opportunity to reach people, whether it's on the web or in the car or by creating an Alexa skill.

On the second point, let's go back to the broadcast stick. Broadcast radio still, at least for now, has that advantage of ubiquity and ease of use, and as technology changes, there'll be opportunity to maintain that position even as other entrants attain the same level -- your station or show's icon can be on that dashboard screen, you'll be available to be called up with a voice command, you can produce those elements for other apps, you can still reach people. But there's another element to it, and it's not about technology, it's about humanity. Sure, you can get comparable content from apps and social media, but is the information the only reason people listen? No, it's always been about companionship, the human voice, the sound and the packaging. I hear people say that the days of the service elements are over, but even if listeners don't need traffic reports anymore, the sound of Traffic and Weather Together is familiar, reassuring, a reminder that you are where you are and you're connected, not via the Internet but just by listening, to other humans. Alexa isn't a human, Waze has social elements but doesn't feel human, Twitter can be inhuman. But radio, done right, is a comfort to have around.

Sure, if all you do is serve up music from a computer like a jukebox, you'll be in trouble. And if your hosts are boring, your imaging unappealing, your spot load too heavy, you'll drive people away. But if you give people something that you can do better than a device app can do -- a complete entity of entertainment and information that's easy to access and makes people feel less alone -- then it's not even an issue whether traffic and weather and phone calls and news should be part of it. It's part of the overall package, it's always been part of the package, and whatever you might hear from a focus group or a consultant, it's part of the expectations people have from radio, and there's no reason to be in a hurry to strip any of it out of your schedule.

Except for school closings. We really don't need The Numbers anymore.

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It occurs to me that nostalgia for snow closings is easier for those of us who ended up moving far, far away from snow. They don't do snow closings on L.A. radio. We reserve the STORM WATCH 2017!!! treatment for light drizzle, which tends to turn the freeways into bumper car tracks. Speaking of which, there's a storm on its way any minute now....

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