The Local Thing

The biggest problem with reality is that it sometimes throws a wet blanket on your dreams.

The other day, I was talking to a friend about the state of talk radio, and we started to talk about what we'd love to do if we were, by some miracle, handed the reins and told to build a station from scratch. In our reverie, we kept building on a theme: We'd go local, really local, local all day. In each and every market, we'd hire people who not only knew where all the bodies were buried locally but SOUNDED like the city, accents and attitudes alike. You would KNOW where you were the moment you heard the station. New York would sound like New Yorkers, Philadelphia like Philadelphians, Boston like Bostonians, L.A. like... okay, we're all from someplace else here, but you get the idea. In some ways, it would be radio the way it used to be, but with a 2017 sensibility, not locked in on partisan, screeching politics, diverse in every way.

It will not happen. It will never happen. And reality dictates that it cannot happen, not any more. It's not just that nobody will let us do that, or that it would cost a lot to do (a wholly local lineup? The benefits alone would send any Market Manager screaming into the welcoming arms of a voice-tracked, safe music format). It's that what we knew about media from decades of experience has flown right out the window. It's more than just financial. It's....

Well, let's consider what we THOUGHT was going to happen. The Internet was going to free everyone to do anything, but it offered something previous forms of communication did not: instantaneous access to a worldwide audience. It was the first time you could send out a broadcast that was not limited to a particular signal without the expense of stringing together a network, or bouncing off multiple satellites. Your blog post, stream, video, or podcast could be international -- WAS international -- without expense or effort. But that also afforded everyone the opportunity to be as widely-distributed or as local as they wanted to be. A site dedicated to a neighborhood? A podcast dedicated to a block? A stream super-serving people living in one building? Why not? Anything was and is possible.

And that possibility sent many entrepreneurs in the direction of local, or, in the buzzword of the time, hyperlocal. Remember that? Remember how hyperlocal news was the future, and how sites like Patch popped up covering cities and scenes all over the place? Remember how they all came in a rush of optimism? Remember how they just as quickly dropped like flies? Have you heard anyone talk about hyperlocal lately?

But hyperlocal's flop came as traditional local media began a rapid descent. Newspapers keep cutting local coverage at the same time they're asking readers to subscribe to access paywalled content -- my local paper is jacking up its price at the same time they're cutting staff. State, local, and city issues go uncovered, or lightly covered. Newspapers, with some exceptions, can't figure out how to make the numbers work. They can't make it on advertising, subscriptions are a tough go, the "pivot to video" is destined to flop. Even the buzziest of pure-play, new media darling news sites are reporting revenue shortfalls. It's ugly out there, and for local news and opinion, the business model is, to be polite, lacking.

Which might be an opportunity for radio if anyone is paying attention. It is very hard to get local advertising for websites, at least at the kind of rates that would sustain a full staff. Local versions of new media -- podcasts, websites, streams -- are going to have practically by definition small audiences, so, absent advertisers willing to support the ventures like public radio underwriters ("we like what you do and want to fund it as a public service") rather than advertisers ("could you repeat that insane CPM? I don't think I heard it right"), or people willing to create that content for free or next-to-nothing, that's not going to be sustainable. Radio? It has an existing infrastructure built to reach local listeners in larger numbers than other media can deliver, it has the reach local advertisers want, it has the sales expertise on a local level to generate much more than the other media can for local content. And the talk radio format is perfect for local issues -- radio already does this in many markets, even if it's in only one or two dayparts, but making that the foundation of what it does would be simple and effective.

That's not to say that syndication is inherently bad. In fact, good national programming beats weak local material hands down. (YOU try and create local programming for television that'll beat national network shows. Good luck with that.) It's not a matter of changing what's being done now; it's really about a different format that happens to share the spoken-word category and the "talk radio" umbrella name. My dream was all about GOOD local programming, the kind radio CAN do, the kind radio HAS done, just aimed at a younger audience and sounding like they do. (On FM. Did I mention that? FM and streaming. AM is not going to cut it anymore.) It won't happen. Nobody's going to devote the money and signal to that when you can throw on some angry ranters cheap and hosts think they're above talking about local issues because the Big Guns are talking about Trump and more Trump. The reality is that radio, too, will let localism fade into memory, just like TV did and how local businesses were replaced by Walmart and Amazon and how sometimes you can't tell one city from another for all the Starbucks and Olive Gardens around.

Doesn't mean you can't dream. And maybe someone will see a business opportunity in zigging while everyone else zags. Stranger things keep happening.

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Whatever you do, local or national, there's material for everyone at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics. Get 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. Also, don't miss "10 Questions With... Ryan Lennox,", whose career trajectory has been unique -- he came to radio after working in lots of other businesses and being established as a successful event DJ, and has worked his way up to being the studio host for Villanova men's basketball at WTEL (610 Sports)/Philadelphia. It's a great story.

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No column next week -- Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. Enjoy the turkey. And the green bean casserole. Do not underrate the green bean casserole.

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