Super Genius

"You know who's a genius?"

Walter Sabo, or Sterling, or whatever he's calling himself at any given time, was on the phone.

"You?"

He ignored me. "Anyone who can program an AM station in 2018 and get an audience, any numbers at all, is a genius," he said, and I had to agree. After all, you're talking about a band that the majority of listeners don't bother with anymore, technical deficiencies that are pretty much insurmountable, an image problem that just isn't going to be fixed... yeah, that's sort of the definition of an impossible task.

After hanging up, I thought about it some more, and a couple of caveats came to mind. First, forget audience. The numbers, at this stage, are secondary. Just keeping the business viable is an impressive feat. You can create a product that can make money on a 5 kw days/1 kw nights directional signal with a null over a third of the market? You're a magician. You're especially a magician if you can do it with a non-specialty, non-brokered format; doing something that someone else could do on an FM signal and making it profitable is quite a feat.

But is that genius? I concluded that it's almost genius, but not quite. You want to be known as a genius? Grow your audience. Maintenance and growth are two very different things. Hanging on to the audience you already have requires a different skill set than developing new programming to reach people you don't already have in the house. If you can grow your audience in talk radio -- AM or FM -- you're likely a genius, or at least a very good judge and coach of talent and marketing.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of that going around in talk radio today. Too many stations are content being King of 65+, because it's easier. You leave the same hosts in the same time slots saying the same things, then you go on to worry about your sports station or your soft AC or whatever other fires you have to put out for the cluster. Low expectations breed inaction. That's what got us here, where there's no "next generation of talk radio" on the actual radio and where almost nobody under, let's be generous, 50 years old is listening. Lest you think that's just a rip on commercial AM talk, public radio on FM has been wringing its collective hands over its aging broadcast demographics for several years now. It is, indeed, hard.

It shouldn't be all that hard. You have examples of what younger listeners want in their spoken-word radio right in front of you, in podcasting. Well, first, a lot of them like it on-demand, but let's assume that there's still going to be a lot of radio listening going on among Millennials and younger, and that talk radio has a chance to snag some of that. You... you think I'm going to say it's all liberal, don't you? Ignore the politics. Focus on the style. What works? Other than true crime storytelling, that is? Listen and you'll see that the talk's way more conversational and engaging and relatable than a sweaty, red-faced guy in a suit and tie ranting about whatever he's ranting about. Many of the more successful political shows sound like friends hanging out and, with a large dose of humor, talking about politics. And movies. And sports. And TV. And whatever else they care about. And sports.

I said sports twice, but that's instructive: Sports radio does this already. The biggest sports shows are mostly a bunch of people in a studio talking about sports and other stuff the way friends would over a few beers. Sports radio's still growing. Could talk radio do the same for politics and lifestyle? Could the next "Pod Save America" or "2 Dope Queens" start on the radio instead of as a podcast? Is anyone going to take a shot at it? Because if someone does, and it's a hit, we can then declare that the next generation of talk really is here. And then we can throw that "genius" title around.

(P.S.: I know that there are stations and programmers indeed moving in that direction, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you can hear elements of what I'm talking about at stations like the Bonneville FM talkers, or the long-running MyTalk in the Twin Cities, or, well, there are others. It's just not a trend. Yet. Come on, geniuses, let's get it rolling.)

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When you've run out of things to say about the news of the day -- and this week, that would be totally understandable -- you'll find more stuff to talk about at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, which, incidentally, also includes news-of-the-day material but only stuff that isn't the obvious; 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. There's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts. Speaking of different voices, "10 Questions With..." makes a return visit to another ol' pal, KEIB (The Patriot AM 1150)/Los Angeles' resident not-a-conservative, Johnny Angel Wendell, who talks about being the outlier on the station, his novels (a new one's coming out next month), his music, and a lot more. If you don't know Johnny, you should.

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Another reminder: The panel I'll be hosting at the Worldwide Radio Summit in Hollywood May 2-4 will be all about your place in what's coming next, with Tom Leykis, Steve Goldstein, Rob Greenlee, and Gina Juliano on hand. Oh, and we've added Douglas Reed of SourceAudio to talk about the knotty problem of music licensing in the digital age (and maybe some solutions). This group will tell you a lot about what's coming next, and they'll be honest. No punch-pulling allowed. Register here. AND I'll be on a panel at Don Anthony and Gabe Hobbs' Talk Show Boot Camp 9 in Dallas March 8th and 9th, with Mike McVay, Phil Boyce, Scott Masteller, and Gavin Spittle, and you know that by the end everyone will be upset with me and the cocktail party will be sorely needed. I'll also be on a panel at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Convention attached to the NAB Show in Las Vegas in April, details to come. And I'm doing something at The Conclave in Minneapolis-Adjacent, too, and again, details to come. No, I won't go away.

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