Specialization In A Jack-Of-All-Trades World

Days like these throw a lot at you, and so it was that on Thursday, there was breaking news from Washington that was all over the news and talk stations and then, suddenly, everyone pivoted to O.J., and for the rest of the day listeners were bombarded with O.J. live coverage, O.J.'s parole vote, O.J. post-game coverage, O.J. analysis. It was everywhere, and it was notable to me that the saturation coverage was not confined to news and talk stations and cable news networks; it was everywhere, notably sports stations, many of which broke format to carry the coverage. In this case, the rationale was understandable: O.J. was a football star, ergo sports. Sure, you can see it that way.

This time, the call was pretty clear. Next time, it might not be. But it reminded me about something that's evolved in media consumption that radio really hasn't confronted to date. In the past, at least since FM came of age and tight formats catering to specific genres of music became dominant, we told ourselves that our stations, our brands, needed to stand for a specific thing. WXXX needed to mean "conservative talk," or "breaking news," or "the best variety of the '70s, '80s, and today." (Okay, that last one was always impossibly vague, but you had to show the boss you got SOMETHING out of that expensive focus group.) On music stations, you couldn't -- you still can't -- break format. On talk stations, you had to give them "more of what they came for," even if it meant a lineup of middle-aged white guys who seemed to have been born in suits and ties. On sports stations, heaven forbid you talked about anything BUT sports and immediately-adjacent acceptable "guy talk," lest you get calls and letters and emails insisting that you "stick to sports."

That worked for radio for years, and to a certain extent, it still works, but I'm wondering out loud whether things are changing. (SPOILER ALERT: I will be raising questions and utterly failing to come up with answers.) That's because while we're following the marketing and social media experts' advice on brand building and staying in our lanes, the public is saying something different in the way it consumes media. I'll tell you what really triggered this thought: a story, which I can't find but I saw in the last couple of days, about how people increasingly have no idea about the identity of the source of the news they see. They see it on social media, of course, but they rarely if ever look at from whence the original story came. That has implications on the "fake news" front, of course -- you see friends posting stories that are apocryphal, and people responding as if it's true. But it also has implications for you, since people are less and less relying on brands at all. News breaks, and they aren't as likely to seek out the old reliable Heritage News Operation as they are to peruse their Facebook and Twitter feeds and absorb whatever comes up.

That's by design, at least Facebook's design. Facebook doesn't want you to care where the news is coming from, not really. It doesn't want you to see a story and go to another trusted website to get more information. It wants to keep you right there in Facebook, where they'll feed you what they want to feed you and you'll take it. And then there's Alexa and Google Home and whatever else is coming down that pike: you can customize by picking specific sources for your news and music, but I'm gonna bet that most people will just plug the things in and say "Alexa, give me the news" and take whatever it offers.

The idea is to keep people from touching that dial. If a major story's breaking, and you're not on it right away, they'll go to wherever they think it IS being covered. If you're a sports station and President Trump (insert random outrage here), and it begins to overwhelm social media and becomes a meme, do you "stick to sports" or -- I'm gonna use a word I'm hating these days -- pivot and at least work it into the conversation between the football talk and more football talk? If a new "Star Wars" trailer comes out and your audience would be interested but you're a political talker or a sports host... you get the idea. I have to be honest here, I'm not sure what the right answer is, but if the number one digital siphon of advertising dollars from traditional media is using the philosophy of being all things to all people and not staying in any particular lane, that might signal something that radio needs to address. After all, Walmart put a lot of small town Main Street specialty stores out of business. And when Spotify and its brethren in customizable music programming are beyond formats, is a station that stays in its lane better for them than a service where, if you decide to listen to a different genre, you're still listening to the same "station"?

It's quite possible that a single-frequency mass-audience broadcast station can't break format and retain its audience. But the competition out there is not encumbered by "formats." If radio brands need to stand for single, inflexible formats, but consumers are increasingly format-agnostic and just go to their standbys like Facebook and Spotify for everything, how is traditional radio going to fit into that new dynamic? Are we indeed rapidly moving from a world where your brand is everything to a world where content is a commodity and people don't know or care what the source is? What are we going to do when all the lanes merge?

I have no answers, but next time I have to sit through a panel or presentation about the importance of making brands mean something, I'm hoping that someone at least recognizes that the questions have changed again.

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Good thing that All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics is loaded with show prep topics covering whatever you might want or need to talk about. Also good thing that it's free. Find it all by clicking here and/or by following 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, you'll also find "10 Questions With..." Walter M. Sterling, Esq., Sunday night host at WPHT/Philadelphia, who sounds a lot like... okay, it IS yer ol' pal and prominent talk radio consultant Walter Sabo, who's applying -- quite successfully, as it turns out -- many of his talk radio programming theories to a show that takes a different approach to talk radio, especially in the area of topics.

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Final reminder: I'll be at the Conclave in Almost Minneapolis July 26-28, which is next week, you know. Get all the details by clicking here. If you're going to be there, track me down and say hello, if you're so inclined.

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