Schrödinger’s Radio

Cars are dead. You saw the news, right? The stories about Ford killing off all but two non-SUV, non-truck, non-crossover models because nobody wants a plain ol' car anymore? They are, they don't, that's it. All over but the shouting. Regular ol' cars are past tense, six feet under, done for, toast. Stick a fork in 'em.

Then I went for a run this morning and watched the traffic go by on Palos Verdes Drive South. Sure enough, there were a lot of SUVs. But there were a lot of sedans and compacts and everything else you'd call a "regular ol' car." BMWs and Mercedes. Kia and Fiat. Toyota and Honda and Ford and Volvo and Tesla. A few Ferraris and Lambos -- they don't count. But about half of the vehicles flying by weren't trucks or SUVs, they were your basic four-door family car.

So, cars aren't dead. But you can look at trends and sales charts and what you see with your own eyes and you can reasonably project which way things are headed, and that's towards larger, non-sedan vehicles. And if you're a heretic like me, you can interject that, no, the future will more likely be vehicles of a different shape and size that drive themselves, because you won't be sitting in standard vehicle formation, you'll be lounging in a moving living room.

Which means cars are dead, but they're not, but they will be, but they aren't yet, but they might not be after all, but everyone's wrong.

And radio's like that, too.

It's one reason I've never joined the "radio is dead" campaign, even while I was working at a podcast network. It's not dead. People still listen, even if they're listening less and some, especially younger, audiences aren't listening much at all. There's still a business model at present, based on advertising and reach and frequency and ubiquity and a huge head start in cars, even if that's steadily shrinking. There's good will remaining, even if a lot of it has been squandered. It's still the easiest audio medium to use, even if voice control and smart devices are going to make that advantage irrelevant soon. Even at its nadir, there's still more revenue for radio than for the digital competition. Radio is not dead.

But we're increasingly in an on-demand world. Radio's lost the portable battle, FM chip in phones or no. Home listening is going to be through the courtesy of Alexa and Google. When the latter systems are widespread in cars, and 5G is entrenched, there'll be no advantage to AM/FM -- to the listener -- other than as brands. You can see what's happening in the Infinite Dial studies, or the TechSurvey studies, or any studies you want. Things have been rapidly changing for at least the last decade, and that isn't going to stop because we have a great nostalgia for Musicradio 77 or Boss Radio. And it's entirely possible that what we're all listening to in ten years from now isn't even on the radar yet. Were you listening to podcasts ten years ago? Did you see Spotify and Pandora coming? Just before the iPhone came out, did you expect your phone to be the primary media consumption device, at least as quickly as it ascended? When did it dawn on you that streaming Netflix was going to change the way we watch TV? The Netflixing of radio hasn't even happened yet; podcasting is a start, but how that's going to manifest itself when it takes a more dominant position is yet to materialize.

So radio is dead, but it's not, but it will be, but it isn't yet, but it might not be after all, but everyone's wrong. Like cars. Like newspapers -- they're dead, except they're still profitable, except that owners are strip-mining them for cash so they're being killed. Like retail, which wasn't quite prepared for Amazon but still figured that people wouldn't shop for EVERYTHING online, yet somehow is still alive.

It turns out that both can be true, that a medium can be dead and alive at the same time. (Schrödinger might disagree, but we're not talking about cats and subatomic particles. At least, I don't THINK we are.) Sweeping generalizations about the state of the industry are doomed to misinterpret what's really happening. And what's really happening is this: Make good content, make it available on whatever platform people want to use, and none of it matters. Even the name doesn't matter. Call it radio, call it streaming, call it on-demand audio, call it Bob. Whatever it is, just do it well and the market will do what it does. You'll listen in your car, or your SUV, or your autonomous people mover. It's gonna be awesome. Unless it isn't. Or both.

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How will you make a living doing this if radio is dead, or alive, or whatever? That's what we're going to be talking about next Thursday afternoon on the panel I'm moderating at the Worldwide Radio Summit at the W Hotel Hollywood. The panel is made up of radio folks who have moved into various forms of The Future Of Our Business, and we'll be discussing what they're experiencing and what they've learned. If you want to know what to expect from the next stage of your career, you should be at this panel. Tom Leykis will be talking about his subscription streaming show, Steve Goldstein is on the smart speaker skills beat, Rob Greenlee is one of podcasting's leaders, Doug Reed is offering music licensing the big PROs aren't, and Gina Juliano has an app that takes music and engagement to a new level, making users into singing stars. It's not a typical "podcast panel." Come, listen, ask questions. Register here.

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The immediate future is that you need to get a show or podcast together. Need topics? Use Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, where you can get material to talk about on the radio or in a podcast or to the barista at The Coffee Bean, and it's all free. Check it out 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.

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My podcast is "The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," a quick (two minutes or less) daily thing, and you can get it at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Spotify, too. You can also use the RSS feed and the website where you can listen in your browser, or my own website where they're all embedded, too.

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.

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More schedule stuff: After WWRS, I'll be on panel about podcasting with Seth Resler, Dave Beasing, Sheryl Worsley, and Michael Brandvold at The Conclave in July in Minneapolis. After that, I'll be at Podcast Movement in Philadelphia in July. We should talk.

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