Friend in a Box

One of the essential elements of radio's success over the decades has been that the medium is uniquely suited to providing a feeling of companionship, a personal connection that's different from the engagement you get from social media, different from the more passive television medium, different from reading or gaming or anything else. I'm not an expert and I haven't researched it, but I imagine that the connection comes from the human voice, the feeling that the host or jock or announcer is talking directly to you.

This came to mind again while I was falling once again down the Newspapers.com rabbit hole. That site is a paid archive of newspapers around the country, like having a searchable version of the microfilm/microfiche machines at the library but on your computer, and for someone like me who revels in 20th century history but especially on the kind of pop culture ephemera that has been forgotten by everyone but me, it's a godsend and a time suck and fascinating and incredibly educational about things nobody cares to learn about but me. Long-forgotten concerts, the battle over incorporating the town in which I live today, a minor league baseball game 40 years ago that the people who played in the game probably don't remember, all in the original news accounts the way people read about them back in the day? A classified ad from 1963 selling the house we live in now? A big, great photo of my wife from when she was a high school student raising funds for the school radio station? Plus ads for stores and items that no longer exist? I'm in.

I can't root through old newspapers, however, without looking for radio stuff. Despite what some people think, I love radio. I still love radio. Criticizing the present state of the industry doesn't equate to being a "hater." And so, I tend to clip a lot of stories and ads I find about radio, which is how I found some ads for WFIL Philadelphia circa 1965, before the station entered its "Famous 56" Top 40 heyday, and saw a phrase describing one show that first made me laugh:

"Join him for the person-to-person pleasantries..."

Person-to-person pleasantries?

Yeah, that's what non-Top 40 radio was like back then. With the then-still-rare exception of the Joe Pyne-style angry-guy shows, AM radio was... polite, or at least more polite than it later became. It's easy to forget that while the Top 40 stations got all the attention, some of the ratings monsters were what you'd call Full Service today, or Middle-of-the-Road, the WORs and WGNs and KSFOs with genial hosts and gentle humor and corny, very, very corny bits. The idea was to be a companion to the listeners, to offer what that same ad called "a steady diet of cozy chatter and personable patter... a cheery companion."

They don't make radio like that anymore, with good reason. To today's ears, corny doesn't begin to describe it. What your mom loved to listen to all day is what you thought was embarrassing even back then. But it worked for its day, and more importantly, it offered something I think is missing from a lot of what radio does today, companionship. We see in research like TechSurvey that people value radio for companionship, but we don't hear it on the air the way it used to be. There are exceptions -- morning shows, in particular, but there are others -- but I guess what doesn't always come across in an age of imaging over personality and political pronouncements over entertainment is that feeling that you KNOW the host, that you're virtually a friend. You get more of that on social media when a host engages with listeners; on the air, I can leave the radio on all day while I do my work but it's a more passive experience than it once was. And when talk radio is built on conflict, it can sometimes be the antithesis of companionship; you don't WANT to know a host who's that angry.

It's a shame, because it's one thing at which traditional radio can excel, better than social media because the human voice is a better conveyor of warmth and humanity, better than streaming, customizable music services that really don't have personality at all. Podcasts can do it, but they're a form of on-demand radio, and there's something about a live voice -- knowing that it's live -- that has a different feel to it.

So, yeah, person-to-person pleasantries, cozy chatter, personable patter... they're relics of a bygone era, but we know that people WANT that even today, not necessarily the old WNEWs or KMPCs, not corny, but a human connection grounded in 2017 sensibilities. And if we can tear ourselves away from staring at PPM data and start to value personality over "shut up and play the hits," maybe radio can be the companion Alexa can only dream of being.

=============================

One way to get that connection is to talk about things that are interesting and eye-level to your listeners, and you can find that stuff at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, available by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item, too. And there's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts.

Make sure you're getting Today's Talk, the daily email newsletter, every day, too. We send it out each afternoon, and it's your daily rundown of the top news stories in News, Talk, and Sports radio and podcasting, plus my PerryVision! video commentaries three times a week and more. If you aren't getting it, go subscribe in your All Access account profile's Format Preferences and Email Preferences sections.

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.

=============================

Let's see, what else? Well, as I've mentioned here before, I'll be at the NAB Show in April in Vegas, and, of course, on May 3rd through 5th, I'll be at All Access' own Worldwide Radio Summit, for which you can register here. Then at Talkers and the Conclave and Podcast Movement and the NAB Radio Show, but I'll talk about them closer to the actual events. Meanwhile, if you want MY person-to-person pleasantries, you'll find me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, because I don't have a radio show. No, it isn't the same, but you go with what you got.

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